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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/168/3627/Rutherford, Les.2.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/168/3627/ARutherfordL151005.1.mp3
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Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Rutherford, Les
R L Rutherford
Robert Leslie Rutherford
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. The collection contains four oral history interviews with bomb aimer Robert Leslie "Les" Rutherford (1918 - 2019, 146263 Royal Air Force), his prisoner of war diary, material about entertainment in the Stalag Luft 3 Belaria compound and a photograph. Les Rutherford served as a despatch rider in the army, he was evacuated from Dunkirk and volunteered to transfer to the RAF. He became a bomb aimer with 50 Squadron and completed 24 operations. He was shot down over Germany on 20th December 1943 and became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Les Rutherford 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
2015-12-09
2015-10-05
2015-06-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Rutherford, RL
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So, this is an interview with Les Rutherford at Riseholme Hall. It is the 5th of October 2015. My name is Dan Ellin and this is an interview for the International Bomber Command Digital Archive. So, Les, you were telling me just now about how you came to be the owner of that. That book.
LR: Yes. The, the book originally came in the Canadian Red Cross parcels to be given to Canadians and the Canadian in the next room to me wasn’t interested in having it really. So, the currency, or one of the currencies in the prison camp was the chocolate bars that we got in the Red Cross parcels and he said he would sell it to me for three chocolate bars. Which, so, I gave him three chocolate bars for it. Quite expensive I would say in those, in those circumstances but it was well worth it in the long run. And so, I started this diary.
DE: Why did you want to have a diary?
LR: I thought it was a good thing to keep a record of what I was doing for future reference. And, of course, I had to start it. I’d been in the prison camp for two or three months then so I had to put the original part of it, the early part from memory but then I was able to record it day by day. Or when anything happened. Days where nothing happened of course. The boring days.
DE: Could you tell me a little bit about how you came to be in the POW camp?
LR: Well, I was flying on a mission to Frankfurt. It was my twenty fourth mission and a night fighter attacked us. We were shot down. He made three attacks and set the plane on fire. The pilot gave the order to abandon the aircraft and as he gave that order I began to put my parachute on, which was a breast tag parachute. Portable parachute. And at that time the aircraft blew up and the nose of the aircraft where I was — I was a bomb aimer — I was in the nose of the aircraft — was blown off completely. And I found myself — I was unconscious for a short while but it couldn’t have been very long because I came to and I found my leg was trapped a bit and I was having difficulty freeing it. I didn’t know how far I’d fallen. So, I pulled the parachute rip cord and the parachute pulled me out. I was on the parachute for a very short while before I landed so I always think that if I hadn’t done that I might have been too late. But then I buried my parachute and flying suit, the harness, the parachute’s harness and things under some bushes. And I landed in a wood, in actual fact, and then I made my way out of there and I walked as best I could. My leg was a bit damaged. I kept, it kept giving away under me but I walked most of that night and in the morning, as it was beginning to get light, I found myself in a large village and people were going to work in this village and passing me and saying good morning as they went past. ‘Guten morgen.’ So, I was just answering, ‘Morgen,’ and went on. Eventually — I was in flying gear, flying kit, you know — battle dress and everything. So, they just didn’t take any notice. Just heads down and going off to work sort of thing. And then I managed to get out of there and found myself on a river. On the banks of a big river. So, there was some bushes on this river and I hid. I hid up in the bushes and stayed all that day hiding in these bushes. Then, at night, I started walking again and I’d gone for quite a while and I was out in the open road and then all of a sudden I heard somebody shout, ‘Halt.’ And so, I thought I’ll try the old ‘morgen,’ trick so I just turned around and said, ‘morgen,’ and walked on. But it didn’t work. I think three soldiers, three as I remember and they came on and one of them shone a torch up and down and another one said, ‘Englisher flieger.’ Of course, the rifles came off the shoulders and my hands went up and that was it. I was a prisoner of war then. They took me to the headquarters, their headquarters and sat me at the table. I was sat on this stool at this table and this officer came up, in and he was questioning me or trying to question me, in very poor English. So, I was able to say I couldn’t able to understand him. You know, I couldn’t answer him. But then all of a sudden, I got this almighty clout to the side of the head. Knocked me off the stool onto the floor. And this German, German NCO said, ‘You stand up when you talk to a German officer.’ And I stood up and that was it. And he said — there was no mistaking this man, he could speak perfect English. I found out later he’d spent a lot of time in London and, he asked me my name, number and rank and I said flying officer. He said, ‘You’re not an officer.’ So, I said, ‘Well, yes, I am,’ you know. ‘No. No.’ He said, ‘Officers wear their badges up —’ Oh, he said, ‘Where’s your badge of rank?’ I said, ‘On the shoulder.’ Which it was on the battle dress. He said, ‘No,’ he said, ‘Badges of rank are worn on the sleeve.’ I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘On there. On the shoulder.’ And he said, ‘Where are your papers?’ I said, ‘I don’t have any papers.’ So, he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘When the Luftwaffe flew over Germany — over London,’ he said, ‘They took papers.’ And I said, ‘Well I’m not in the Luftwaffe.’ I said, ‘I’m in the Royal Air Force.’ And he — I said, ‘What I have got are my identity disks.’ You know we had two identity disks which we wore around our necks. And he looked at those and they were stamped on the back, ‘Officer’ and he said, ‘Oh, you are an officer.’ So I said, ‘Well. Yes.’ He said, ‘Well, no doubt you’ll be hungry and thirsty.’ He said, ‘I’ll just go and get you something to eat and drink.’ And off he went and he came with a plate of black bread which was filthy stuff and a glass of lager which I often say was the best glass of lager I’ve ever had because I’d had nothing to eat or drink for a couple of days. So, he questioned me for a while and then took me to have a, took me for a wash and brush up and what not. And then the next morning I was taken to Dulag Luft. Our target for the night where I was shot down was Frankfurt and the main interrogation centre for the RAF prisoners of war was in Frankfurt. Dulag Luft. And I was taken there and put in solitary confinement. Now, while I was there, after a couple of days, there was a chap came to see me. He said, ‘I’m from the Red Cross.’ I said, ‘Oh. Great.’ He said, ‘We want to get some information from you about — you know, so I can tell your relatives that you’re safe and sound.’ So, I thought that was fair enough. So, then he started to ask me about my name and number and what not and then he started on to, ‘What aircraft were you flying?’ ‘Which airfield were you at?’ ‘Who was your commanding officer?’ And things like this. And I said, ‘I can’t tell you that.’ In actual fact he wasn’t from the Red Cross at all. And so, then, after a few days — I was shot down on the 20th of December which was just before Christmas. Now, normally they put prisoners in solitary confinement for at least a week. Sometimes two weeks. And if you’ve been in solitary confinement for that length of time — it’s psychological really — you want to talk your head off when you come out. And this was the idea of course. But they took us out, took, well took me out of there and a lot more that they had there the day before Christmas. Christmas Eve they took us out. We were interrogated in the meantime and by proper bone fide, well fide German officers and that was quite an experience because one of the things they said to me — they said, ‘Well, there’s no harm in telling us what, you know, all about yourself,’ he said, ‘Because we know all about you anyway.’ So, I said, ‘Well, if you know all about me you know who I, you know, who I am.’ ‘Well, of course, you might be a spy,’ they said. I said, ‘Again, if you know all about me you know I’m not a spy.’ And they said, ‘Well, tell me, how did flight lieutenant,’ oh dear. I can’t remember his name now. Anyway, ‘How is he enjoying his squadron leadership?’ Well, this man had been promoted to squadron leader from flight commander the day before I was shot down and they knew about it which is a bit — shakes you a bit. You know. And you get — well they do know. Anyway, the rest of it went all right and they let us out all together in a big room. Something about the size of this and of course we all start talking straightaway until somebody said, ‘You know, this place might be set up for microphones.’ And so we stopped telling each other where we from and everything like that. And eventually we spent Christmas Day there and then early January, or late December actually we were taken on cattle trucks, on cattle trucks on the railway to Stalag Luft III which was on the Polish border. And so, I began life as a prisoner of war.
DE: And it was there that you were, after, after several weeks —
LR: Oh for several weeks.
DE: Purchased the diary.
LR: We had Red Cross parcels. There were Red Cross parcels supposed to be, serve one man for a week. We were getting them in not very regular periods and it was one parcel to two men. And later in the war when supplies were getting strict and not very regular it was one parcel to about three men and then it got to four and then [laughs] it got to none at all. But when I was shot down, when I was first in the prison camp after about oh, a couple of months, I should think, the Canadians received these logbooks in their Red Cross parcels which, this chap in the next room to me, he wasn’t interested in his log book at all and I decided to buy it from him. The currency in those days was chocolate bars and I gave him three chocolate bars for this log book. And so I started to keep a diary.
DE: Could you perhaps open it up and talk us through some of the pages?
LR: Yeah. Yes.
[pages turning]
LR: That was pages. It shows a flightless parrot. A coat of arms that we made up. Flightless parrot saying, “All talk and no fly.”
DE: Who — who drew those?
LR: Prisoners of war. Well, I copied that. It was — it was — I don’t know who the original artist was but I copied it as a start of the –
DE: Is that the first thing in the book?
LR: The first thing was the Sagan which is where Stulag Luft III was. It’s their coat of arms. I don’t know where I got that from. I didn’t know. I must have copied it.
DE: Did you copy or draw these things actually in the camp?
LR: Yes. Oh yes. Yes. I didn’t touch this book after I came home. That was PO Prune who always did everything wrong in the air force manuals. We had special information manuals and had this PO Prune and he was a well-known character.
DE: So was that drawn from memory?
LR: That was. Yes. Yes. This one is, shows Donald Duck behind bars saying underneath, entitled, ‘I wanted wings.’ And then these were black and — black and white. They’re pencil drawings. We weren’t allowed ink. Pencil drawings. And that was a Lancaster. And that one was a Halifax. That was a Wellington. And that was those three. Now, this one was, the goons were guards in the camp who went around looking for anybody that was doing something they shouldn’t. They would walk in to a room and then look around to see, you know, there was nothing illicit going on. And this is just a cartoon about that. This one was a cartoon about the kitchen. There was a kitchen at the end of each hut and you were allocated so long to do any cooking that you wanted to do over the food that we got and, in that time, you had to get that food ready. Ready or not it was, when your time was up you were out and that was it.
DE: So how many, how many people did you have to cater for in that? In that kitchen?
LR: In the kitchen? Well at first there was — how many? About twelve of us I think in the room and there were [pause] I’ve got it down here somewhere. Or I thought I had. Oh dear. And they were, I think two, four, six, eight. About eight rooms. So, there’d be ninety six, a hundred men in a hut and, as I say, you were allowed so much, so much time in the kitchen and that was it for a meal.
DE: And what sort of food was it? You say you had Red Cross parcels. What did you get in them?
LR: Well, we got things like spam. Tinned meat. Biscuits and tinned milk or powdered milk. Basic things like that. So, at Christmas time — we got special parcels at Christmas. This one was showing a fed-up German guard at the top and another man digging a tunnel. Which was —
DE: Did the goons come and look at your book?
LR: I don’t know. There was always the fear that they would. Well, not the fear but that was why we tried not to put anything in it that would, sort of, get their attention. At the end, when the Russians were advancing and when the, when the second front started we had maps. We drew some maps in but they were right at the end of the thing and we thought, well I thought, we’d get away with it if we did but we weren’t supposed to have. And there was always that thing that, you see, every now and then we had what they called appell in the morning which was a roll call. And we used to parade out on the, outside every hut. They would count us up to see everything was in order. Now, every now and then they would keep the men out, seal the hut up and then go through it and search everything. The German guards would search right through the hut and that was when they could possibly have looked at this. I don’t know whether they did or not.
DE: Did you keep it hidden?
LR: Sorry?
DE: Did you hide it?
LR: No. No. I just put it in the bed.
DE: I just wondered what they would think if they saw that cartoon on the previous page.
LR: Oh, they were, they were quite open minded about that sort of thing. We used to — we had concerts in the theatre. The [musical?] theatre. We had concerts in the theatre and we’d do skits mimicking the fuehrer and German officers and that and they used to attend these concerts and they used to laugh along with the rest of us. So, the theatre was quite a thing actually. There was a chap that was, there was a chap from our squadron — another plane from our squadron was shot down the same night as I was and the navigator of that plane and myself we knew each other on the squadron and became quite good friends. He was a master carpenter. And the Germans said, ‘There’s one empty hut there. If you want to make that into a theatre or something like that you can do.’ And this chap, apparently, we had the Red Cross parcels used to come in plywood boxes. You know. Tea chests. The old tea chests. They used to come in boxes like that and what he did he took the sides, took the sides off these boxes and made seats from them. And in the hut, he took the floor off and he lowered it at one end and with the soil that was taken out to lower it it made it higher at the other end so we had a sloping auditorium. And then he did all these seats and at the other end made a stage with exits and what not on each side. And it was quite, you know, a wonderful job really. And it took quite a while but of course he was working at, working at it all day. Nothing else to do. As I said he did a wonderful job.
DE: You haven’t talked about that page.
LR: This page? Oh, another chap did that for me. That’s a German film actress. And I asked him to put something in the book for me and he was the other guitarist in the band. There were two guitarists. Me and this chap. And he wrote that in. Or drew that. That is a poem called “Bomber Command” and this is the, “Lie in the dark and listen,” by Noel Coward. So, I had that but I did the illustrations around the sides of the various things. And, as I say, that was, it was read out at the, at the, the do on Friday.
DE: The opening memorial.
LR: The Memorial do. Yeah.
DE: So, did you have to write that poem down from memory or was it —? Did you —
LR: No. No. Somebody already had it. Had it written down. And they loaned it to me so I could copy it. And that was a chap that was shot down on Mustangs. Fighter pilot. And he drew that with apologies to my former, former drawings that I did. He did one like that to copy them. That was a drawing of the Tyne bridge. Being a Geordie that was a bit nostalgic. That was a Canadian. I drew that and as a matter of fact the [Barger?] girls who used to be very popular during the war and I drew that. And then a Canadian, who came to our room later on, he asked me to do another one. He said, ‘Could you put one of those —do that again in my logbook?’ And, he said, ‘But this time make her topless.’ [laughs] So I did. And that was another one by somebody else. It shows hunter dogs. It’s entitled, “The Kriegies on the loose.” Kriegie was short for Kriegsgefangener. Prisoner of war, in German.
DE: How did you decide what to put on each page? Or —
LR: Sorry?
DE: How did you decide what to put on each page? Some have been done by other people.
LR: Oh, just asked them to put a — you know. Get a blank page and asked them to put something on it. To draw something. This was, that one was drawn, “No rest for the devil,” and there’s somebody clearing a table. And that was done by the chap I was telling you about. The chap that built the theatre. This one was a parody on the poem “If” — If you can, by Rudyard Kipling and it was about escaping. You know, “If you can leave the compound undetected and clear your way. Clear your tracks nor leave the slightest trace and follow out the programme you selected you will lose your grasp or distance, time and place,” and it goes on to describe — “if you can do this,” you know, “Then you’ll reach home.” That was a drawing, a pencil drawing by somebody else. Somebody else did that one. Another chap. Oh, that one was — I did that I sort of designed and drew that in water colours and it was in memory of the — those men that were shot after escaping. The Great Escape. And I drew that in memory. There’s all their names in there.
DE: Were you —
LR: When that, when that happened [pause] we heard about it before the German guards did. We knew about it then. And we used to talk to the German guards and barter with them for, you know, a cigarette would get you, perhaps, one egg or something like that. You know. Barter. And when we heard about it we said, ‘Well that’s it. No more friendliness with the Germans. Cut them out.’ And the Germans couldn’t understand this. They asked, you know, ‘Why aren’t you talking to us?’ What was wrong? And eventually we told them what was wrong. And they wouldn’t believe us. They didn’t know about it. They wouldn’t believe us. They said, ‘Oh no. No. We wouldn’t do such a thing.’ And they were absolutely horrified when they found out it was true. So, mind you, the guards themselves, they were — not the goons, the goons were, or ferrets we used to call them as well. The ferrets, they went around looking for trouble. But the guards themselves — they were more or less the equivalent of our Home Guard. People who were too old for active service or medically unfit for active service so they put them on as prisoner of war guards. That was the squadron crest. 50 Squadron crest. That cost me a fiver that one did because on the crest actually there’s a cloak with a sword and it shows the sword cutting the cloak and I put it the other way around. The sword resting on the cloak. So I drew it from memory and I got it wrong and a chap, another chap said, ‘That’s, that is wrong,’ He said, ‘It should be cutting.’ So I said, ‘No. No. No.’ He said, ‘I bet you a fiver that’s right.’ So I had to cough up a fiver when we got back home. That was more or less a view of the camp. A sort of aerial view. From memory. That was another, another man did that for me. That was the motif that was on the front of the music stands for the band where I played because I played in the band.
DE: Yeah. You mentioned you played guitar.
LR: I played guitar. Yes.
DE: Where did —?
LR: When I got there I was — with my leg being a bit dicey I was in hospital for about three weeks. Two or three weeks. And while I was there this lad who was shot down with me told the band leader that I played piano. Now, I did but not very well. He came. The band leader came to see me and asked me if I would play in the band. I said, ‘I’m not good enough to play in the band.’ I said, ‘I do play guitar.’ So, he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, We’ve got two guitarists already.’ So he said, I said — well I said, ‘I’m not good enough to play in the band on the piano.’ So, we left it at that. And then this West Indian chap came to see me. He said, ‘I’m the other guitarist in the band,’ he said, ‘Now, I’m not interested really in the band music,’ he said, ‘I’m more calypsos and that sort of thing.’ He said, ‘If you’d like to take over the guitar for the band,’ he said, ‘I’m quite happy to hand it over to you,’ he said, ‘But I’d just like to borrow it every now and then to have a bit of a strum.’ So — and that man was, if you’ve heard of him, Cy Grant. That was Cy Grant. And every now and then we used to get together and I used to get the other guitar and we used to go off and find a quiet place and do a bit of — I would show him band rhythms and he would show me calypso rhythms and things. We exchanged that and then we’d have a bit of a sing song to ourselves but when, once we started singing or anything like that inevitably somebody would hear and there would be a gathering and then you’d get people, ‘Sing this,’ ‘Play this’ and, you know so, and it used to spoil it then. But we used to, did used to manage to get some time together.
DE: Wonderful.
LR: This was a —
DE: Can I, can I just hold you there while we pause for a minute?
[recording paused]
DE: So, we’re back recording.
LR: Back to this.
DE: Yeah.
LR: Well this page is entitled, “Prisoner of war,” and it’s by Churchill. Written when he was a prisoner of war with the Boers and I’ll read it to you. “It is a melancholy state. You are in the power of your enemies. You owe your life to his humanity. Your daily bread to his compassion. You must obey his orders. Awaiting pleasures, waiting — sorry awaiting his pleasures. Possess your soul in patience. The days are long. The hours crawl by like paralytic centipedes. Moreover, the wholesale atmosphere of prison, even the best and most regulated prisons is odious. Companions quarrel about nothing at all and you get the least possible enjoyment from each other’s company. You feel a constant humiliation at being fenced in by railings and wire watched by armed guards and webbed by a triangle of regulations and restrictions.” I think that puts it in a nutshell really. Of course, a wonderful man with words was Churchill, wasn’t he? That’s just a poem that somebody wrote about the second camp we were in. The man that did it, he was a drummer in another camp and he came to this camp and he was desperate to learn guitar and I used to show him a bit about it. He was pretty good actually. And he says, “Thanks for all the guitar gen.” That was a cartoon thing. A sort of cartoon about the march. The Long March which we did where there’s this man dragging his sledge behind him. That was a portrait done by a Polish officer. It’s supposed to be me. I don’t know. I suppose it is. And that one was a profile done by an American friend later on. And so we come to — that part of the book was finished. The photographs. They went missing some time ago when I loaned the book to somebody. Oh, this was the layout of the, the hut before there was. Oh, and this was the layout of the field. The camp. All the different huts. A garden. And yeah, the [abwor?], the toilet block and whatnot. That was the layout of the rooms. How many rooms were there? One, two, three, four, five, six. Twelve rooms. Twelve rooms. And there were about twelve in a room, I think. Was there? Fourteen. I was four out. Somebody was a bit careless and spilt ink all over it. These were various theatre groups. The band. With the membership. And the little, we used to have a swing quartet as well. Playing jazz and things. We had a tango section. And there was a classical orchestra. They used to scrape away at times, you know, with the violins. And these were all theatre productions which we did in the theatre. These were various shows that we did in the camp. We used to put these band shows on. Variety shows. Sort of, sort of Night at the Palladium type things. Some of them were very good. These were the Red Cross parcels. I told you what the Red Cross parcels had in them. Corned beef, meat gelatin, powdered eggs, Nestle’s condensed milk, margarine, sugar chocolate, biscuits, processed cheese, cocoa, salmon, jam and tea. It was quite a good selection. These were different recipes that we had. The main, one of the main topics of conversation we had in the camp was food because we were always hungry. And we used to tell with our mouths drooling over what we used to —favourite foods and recipes for making them and things. That’s another one that went missing. What we had for Christmas dinner. Well, is this a start of the — oh that’s, “A typical day at [Bolerea?]. [Bolerea] incidentally, was the name of the camp I was in. Stalag Luft III. When, when we went there I think we the first batch of new prisoners in that camp. They had taken some from the Stalag Luft III. It was part of Stalag Luft III. We could take some from the other camps to get it ready for us going in. For the new batch of prisoners going in. So we were one of the first lots in there. It was, as I say, it was a new camp.
DE: So, what was a typical day like?
LR: Where are we? It went back a bit didn’t it? [turning pages].
DE: I think it’s later on than that. I think you’re going the wrong way.
[pause — pages turning]
LR: Lost it. Sorry about this.
DE: That’s alright.
[pause]
DE: Perhaps you could tell me from your memory.
LR: Well, here it is. A typical day. 9am — get the, there was an issue of hot water for washing. 10am — appell. That was the parade. Go on parade. 2.30 — hot water issued again for tea and drinks. 4 o’clock — the afternoon count. The afternoon appell. 7 o’clock evening period. Dinner prepared and usually consists of potatoes and whatever vegetables the goons gave us. And with corned beef or anything else that we had to go with it. 10 o’clock was time for lights out. And I’m thinking down. Oh 12 o’clock was lights out. 10 o’clock was time on the stove to boil the water for a hot drink at night. And that was about the day. Nothing much. In between times I was lucky in as much as playing the guitar and being in the band — it kept me occupied. So that was, we were always arranging music and we got a lot of arrangements from the Red Cross. American arrangements. But we used to do special arrangements and practicing of course and when the brass section were doing the practice they did it on their own but they needed some rhythm so I had to go along and accompany them. And the same happened when it was the saxophonist’s section. You know. Used to go along and give them some rythmn to help them along. So that was all going, as I say, filling your time in. I was lucky with that. That was a review of Luckenwald. That was that drawing by Bill Reid. The VC. He did that drawing for me. He was in the room next to me. We became good friends. I don’t know when this started. This was the diary. This was just little thumbnail sketches about life in the camp.
DE: Can you talk me through some of those little —
LR: Pardon?
DE: Can you talk me through some of the little sketches?
LR: Tell?
DE: Can you talk, yeah. Can you talk about some of those ones?
LR: This one is two chaps walking around. We used to have the — we used to walk around the perimeter track for exercise. This was somebody playing netball which we did quite a lot of. That was one of the group captains. What’s he doing? Somebody else walking. This was when the water was up you were running to get the water. And then somebody’s done something wrong. Being sent to the cooler. This was Boleria air. Every now and then the — the toilets were open, just pits dug in the ground with quite big actually, it would be quite a lot of cubicles. Well not cubicles but divisions in it and every now and then they brought this great big tanker around and emptied it and it used to smell quite a bit. And somebody playing a game of soccer. Yeah. That was somebody with a peg on their nose when the abwor, as we called it, was being emptied. Somebody’s sitting in a tub having a bath. And then sweet dreams. Somebody climbing in there and dreaming. That’s washing up time. Half a man. He’s saying, “I’m only half the man I was. Ruddy half parcels.” And this is the new arrivals. See. Everyone used to crowd around the new arrivals and then it was question time after that. Asking them what was going on back at home and everything like that.
DE: Oh. So, they were, they were a link to, to home.
LR: yeah. But instead of getting it from the Germans. Course we had, we did have a radio and we used to assemble this radio every night for the 6 o’clock, BBC 6 o’clock news. And there’s a story to tell about that. You know, I said we used to barter with the Germans. Well, this radio was taken to pieces after the broadcast and distributed among different men. So, if a part was discovered it was just a part and, but there was one part went wrong one time. It was a balance in those days. I think it was a valve or something like that. Something important. So we said to one of the goons, ‘Would you,’ you know, ‘Bring this in?’ See. ‘Oh no. Too risky that is.’ Now, if a goon discovered something important like a tunnel he was given instant promotion and a week’s leave. So, we had started a tunnel but we never really got a tunnel really going at Boleria because the water was high. When we got down to a certain level we hit water. So, what we did, we took one of these that we’d started and patched it up. And we said to this goon if you tell us — if you bring that part in we will show you where there’s a tunnel. And of course his eyes lit up. Oh, a tunnel. Yah. Yah. You know. So, he brought the part in and we showed him the tunnel. He brought the commandant in. Went and informed the commandant. The commandant donned a pair of white overalls and came around to inspect the tunnel for himself. Came around all smiles. ‘Oh, you can’t fool us,’ you know. And the goon got his week’s leave and we got the valve. So, everybody was happy all around [laughs] so that was that. That was just through the ages. That was night school. We were playing cards. This was the [abwor] which was the toilets again. The [abwor] serenaders. We used to go in there. One place you could go in there and you wouldn’t get a crowd in bothering you. And then this was rumours. We started at the top with, I don’t know what they’re saying but it ends up as something entirely different. Rumours. Rumours. Rumours. We got those a lot. This was a letter from the camp commandant. Our SBO — the Senior British Officer to the Germans — to the Russians. When the Russians released us, they didn’t actually release us. The kept us still as prisoners. They let us walk a certain distance around the camp to the south end and west. South and west. And the other sides were too dangerous to go in but they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t let us be repatriated. They kept us prisoners. We were still. We were freed on — early in April. In April. In April. And we were freed the last week in May and in that time they still held us, more or less, as prisoners. We listened to the VE day celebrations in England on the radios and we weren’t very happy. And the Americans got to know that there was all these prisoners there so they sent a convoy of lorries to the camp to take us out and the Russians wouldn’t let us go. And some of the lads sort of ignored them and went to get on to the lorries and the Russians fired over their heads and made them come back and the lorries went away empty. So, it wasn’t very, it wasn’t very, it wasn’t a very good situation actually. And this was a letter that the senior British officer wrote to the Russians complaining about this treatment which I copied out. It’s a long letter so I won’t read it. But, in effect, he’s telling them that it was disgraceful that the treatment we were receiving was not anything like the treatment they had promised. But when they released us they promised us all sort of things and I think the only thing we got was a couple of radios. But we were going to get food and goodness knows what and we didn’t. So that passed by. Oh, this was, oh this was the start of the diary and as I said the first parts of it were written more or less by — from memory.
[pause — pages turning]
LR: March the 22nd I left the hospital. Which was in 1944. March the 29th we did our first band show. And then there was all the different shows that were put on. Things like that. But then [pause] there was, we put on a show at Christmas, the band did. And they did it on Christmas Eve. The first show, I think it was. And then we were doing the show during the week at odd times. And then we were having the show altogether where we wanted to invite our friends from the camp to the show and celebrate the New Year while the Germans allowed us to stop out that night. And the senior British officer came around and said, ‘Well, no,’ he said, ‘We’re not going to do that but what we’ll do, we are inviting all the senior officers to that and the Germans as well to the band show to celebrate New Year’s Eve. So, people in the band went on strike. We said, ‘No. We’re not going to do it.’ And at the finish we had to compromise. We had our friends and a few of the senior officers. So we went on strike. And then we began to hear the Russians. Just a minute. Oh, first of all we started getting refugees in. We got refugees coming in to the camp. And we woke up one morning — now, the huts at this particular camp — oh we did all the Long March first. At the end of December we could hear the Russian guns. We could hear the, all these guns going off, you know, all the — and the Germans decided to move us and we left the camp and marched for a week. We were lucky in our march in as much as we only did it for a week. In some of the other camps which were further away they did about three or four weeks, some of them. They really suffered. We suffered up to a point but nothing like them. And it was in the dead of winter of course. It was snow, ice, whatnot. It was, and it wasn’t very good because we were in no fit condition for marching anyway and we just, and at night we were sleeping down just where we could. Barns and places like that. And we eventually got to this, to Spremberg which was a rail junction and they put us on these cattle trucks there to go to the new camp. They used to pack us in these cattle trucks you know, so you really — you’d have a job to lie down sometimes. But the whole problem was that some of the lads had dysentery and they just couldn’t do anything about it. [They sat and did it?] where they were, you know. Which was not very nice. So, we had a day or more of that before we arrived at this other camp. And as I said we hadn’t been there all that long when the refugees started to arrive. Now, these huts — they were long huts and divided into two. The middle portion was [pause] there was a big concrete bowl with taps all the way around it. That was where we did the ablutions. So Fred and I got up in the morning ready to go. Off we went to do our ablutions. When we got there there were several women there. All semi naked having a good wash down and whatnot. You know. So, we sort of looked. What’s going on? We didn’t know about them. They had arrived in the night and it sort of shook for us a bit. Hadn’t seen a woman in a year and a half in my case. And, anyway, so after that we went off to the toilets. Or I went off to the toilets and the toilet block they had either three or four seats on one side and then three or four other seats on the other side facing them. No partitions or anything like that and I just got nicely sat down and a couple of women came in. No problem she said. Up with their skirts and sat down opposite us. We sort of looked, you know. There was another chap and myself in there who were looking at them and we daren’t move. And they eventually got up and went off and so did we. In a hurry. But It was something we had to get used to these women were just, had no inhibitions at all. They just went along with it. And then after the Russians released us one other incident was rather funny. Next to the camp there was a big park and there was a park lake and we were allowed in this park up to a point and we decided to go swimming in the lake. Half a dozen or so of us in the lake. So, we went in there. Stripped off and into the lake and had a swim. While we were swimming we heard a boom. You know. What the hell was that? We looked around. And then there was another one. And when we looked over there was some women soldiers. Russian women soldiers throwing grenades in to the water. So, I often say there were some swimming records [laughs] broken that day. We — and then of course we all scrambled out, run along the bank absolutely starkers. The women on the other bank, the Russian soldiers, laughing and jeering at us. So, we didn’t go swimming again [laughs] and that nearly gets us to the end of this, I think. Oh, we had this trouble with the Russians of course and when they eventually decided we could go the American convoy, the Americans were nearest to us. The American convoy came and took us over, took us to the river. I think to the river Elbe. Took us to the river. To the bridge. We got out of their lorries and walked over the bridge and on to American lorries and they took us to this aerodrome. It wasn’t active in as much as it wasn’t wartime active but they were ferrying prisoners out from there back home. And we had to take our turn of course. We were there about a week. But the first thing we did — we got over there and they took us into the mess hall. We had white bread. Oh heaven. White bread. Peanut butter. Bacon, eggs and everything you wanted. It was a wonderland for us of course. And we were warned, you know, ‘Don’t eat too much. Your stomach’s are not up to it’. So, we had to be careful. And they had film shows and anything we wanted while we were there. And then eventually we were taken aboard a Dakota and flown to Brussels. From Brussels — we landed in Brussels and it was oh late afternoon. They said, ‘Those of you who want to spend the night here and we will issue you with money. You can go into town and do what you like.’ If the others don’t want to do that there are some Lincoln bombers on the aerodome going back to England. You can go back with them. And so, we did. I decided to go back and the [pause] ‘cause I knew my mother was seriously ill. She’d been seriously ill for a long time so I wanted to go back. And we made a mad scramble for it. The first thing I did was make a bolt for the mid-upper turret. Of course in there you could look out all around and you could see what was going on. I got there at the same time as Bill Reid. It was a case of looking at one another, ‘Who’s going up?’ ‘Who is it?’ ‘You or me?’ So Bill said, ‘I think there’s room.’ They’d taken out the guns out of this turret. So he says, ‘There’s room up there for two of us. We can both get up.’ And we did. Both squeezed in to the mid-upper turret and flew back to England. Now, in England we wondered what the general feeling, this was a true feeling of prisoners about what sort of a welcome we were going to get when we got back home. Because there had been several Dear John letters about people. One letter in particular said, this girl writing to her fiancé said, “I’m getting married. I’d rather marry a 1945 hero than a 1943 coward.” So, and there was one or two letters in the same vein. There was some comical ones. I’ve got them written in here somewhere. Some comical letters but there was some in that serious vein. So it made us wonder now what will people think when we get home. So we got off the Lincoln bomber at this airfield. I’m not quite sure where it was. It was somewhere in Oxfordshire I think. We got out at it anyway and on the tarmac a crowd of WAAF and we all walked off, down to the, into the mess hall with a WAAF on each arm and [unclear] and they took us in. We were fed and deloused. You know. They put a tube down inside the tunic and dusted powder in for delousing. Not that, I don’t think we needed it but there you are. They did it. And then in the main mess hall there was, there’d been a dance going on and the band were all packing up their gear. And somebody told them about us so they set up again and played for another hour so that the lads could have a dance with the girls. So the welcome sort of reassured us. We thought, well, that’s something fine. And so, from there we was sent home. After interrogation. And that was it. And that’s — my diary ends. I think, with May the 26th my diary ends. That was, after that I didn’t put anything else in. And that was when we boarded the plane to come back to England.
DE: And did you go and get up — get up —
LR: Pardon?
DE: And were you then able to go home and see —?
LR: Yes. They sent us. One of the things that I shall never forget was we all, we were all different places of course. We had to queue in a hut to get our passes. The rail passes to get home and there was a chap in this little sort of cubicle and he was sat there. And people were saying — he was giving the passes saying, ‘Where are you going?’ And he was telling them you want such and such a train from here. You change at Birmingham or wherever and then you catch the next train. And he had all this at his fingertips. He never once looking at a timetable. And all they were all going to different places. He said to me, he said, oh if you get the train to, I think it was, I think it was Birmingham and then up to Carlisle. That was a route I’d never taken home. I always used to go up on the East Coast line. He said, ‘You go up to Carlisle and across from there to Newcastle,’ he said. And that was that. Went. No problem. As I say, he never even looked at a timetable. It was absolutely wonderful. And so, I got home. And I didn’t have time to send a telegram or anything like that. They didn’t know I was coming home. On the way home — no. Wait a minute, that wasn’t that. That was the demob when I did that. ‘Cause I went home from Oxford. Went home from Oxford and I did the East Coast line then. At that time. No, I’m mistaken there. The one when I got home was from Oxford and we were given passes. Always, when I went home if I was coming from this area I used to stop off at York. I had an aunt and uncle in York. My aunt was — she was a pastry chef at the De Grey rooms in York which were, at that time, famous. A big centre, reception centre and that sort of thing. And I used to go in by the back doors and down into the kitchens and she would have a meal on the table before I’d hardly sat down. And this time I called in again to see her on the way up and tell her I was back home. And she said, ‘Have you had any letters from home recently?’ So, I said, ‘No. I haven’t had any since the middle of the year.’ I said, ‘there was no letters came through.’ They were always blocked. ‘Oh, you don’t know then.’ So, I knew what it was. My mother had died. And so, I went home prepared for that as it happens. Well, when I got home. Sort of went to the front door, knocked on the front door because I didn’t have the key. They let me in. ‘God, what are you doing home? We got it all arranged.’ They’d got it all arranged. They’d got the horse and cart all decorated to meet me at the station when I got home. And I foiled that and I was thankful for it as well. I said, ‘Thank God for that.’ So that was it. That was my war.
DE: Wonderful. Thank you ever so much. I’m just looking to see if there’s any notes that I’ve made. Were you in the camp when the Great Escape people got out?
LR: Yes. But it was a different compound.
DE: Oh. I see.
LR: Not my compound.
DE: I see.
LR: Not the one I was in but a different compound. It was the north compound I think. And we heard about it the next day. The shooting. I don’t know how it got out but there was a wonderful telegraph system between the camps. Between one and the others. And as I said the Germans wouldn’t believe it when we stopped speaking to them.
DE: Did you ever consider escaping?
LR: Yes. We all considered escaping. What we would do. But of course, you had to have, you had to be able to speak German and [pause] not necessarily but you had to be specially equipped and everything. And, well, the occasion never, in our camp the occasion never arose because tunnels, we couldn’t build a tunnel because of the water level. So, although we always said, you know the first chance we got — the only chance we got was on the Long March really and, but we were in no fit state then for escaping. I think some people did go. But no. Anything to get out, out from the wire. We gave our parole up to go for walks. The Germans said if we give our parole they would take us for walks around, you know, outside. Under guard of course. And so we did of course. We gave up parole and then we’d done about two walks and then on the third one, I think it was the third one, one of the chaps left a note in the barrack block saying he was going to commit suicide while he was on this walk. Somehow. Going to. I don’t know how he was going to do it. And, of course, it was a panic. We were all hustled back in to the camp again and they never give, never give us another chance. So that was that.
DE: The other thing I think I’ve got jotted down here. I think you mentioned it when we’d paused it for the, for the camera. About getting your identity papers from, from the Germans.
LR: When the, we woke up one morning and the guards had all left. The Germans had gone completely and so we went, of course into the German quarters. We all stormed in there and had a look around and whatnot. Then we came across, and the officers came across these files with all the identity discs, papers in. A big card with all the details and a photograph. A photograph taken when we were shot down and all the details of what went on. And I had that at home in my logbook but somebody took it. Somebody borrowed the logbook and they’ve took that. I lost it anyway. Unfortunately. I would have liked to have kept that. But that’s reminded me of another incident actually. Saying about waking up and the guards had gone. Earlier in the year while I was at Stalag Luft III I woke up one morning and somebody came charging in to the room. ‘Oi you want to get out here. They’ve got British soldiers in all the sentry boxes and the Union Jack flying in the [forelager?],’ which was the German side. I said, you know, ‘It can’t be.’ And we went out and sure enough the British tommies all dressed up in the German, in the sentry boxes so, you know. So talking, you know, ‘Hey where are you from? ‘What are you doing?’ Nothing. Just sort of stony look sort of thing. And then there was a camera crew rolled up and they were filming this shot and what they were doing — they had a German dressed up as a sergeant in the army with a bandage around his head. In the German army with a bandage around his head and they were taking them. There was British soldiers of course — they were dressed as British soldiers. They brought them to the camp gates and sort of kicked them through the gate and we all stood there and we all laughed and cheered [laughs] and so they had to shoot it again. And the same thing happened again. They shoved him again and we all cheered. So, they decided to shove us all in the huts. We were in a big hut facing this, where this was taking place so we were shut in this hut and posted great big Vs on the windows and stood behind them with our thumbs up, you know. I don’t think they noticed after that because they got up. They didn’t do any more takes after that. Yeah.
DE: Fascinating.
LR: [unclear] a bit.
DE: I think that absolutely marvellous. Thank you, Les.
LR: That’s alright. How’s the time going?
DE: We’ve been going for about an hour and a quarter, so — that’s wonderful. How — how much do you think England had changed while you had been away?
LR: Not a lot.
DE: No. Still felt like home.
LR: My circumstances had changed [pause] because before the war I used to live with my grandmother who owned the general dealer’s shop, and a very good dealer’s shop. On the entrance to the big shipyards in Wallsend near Newcastle. She died in 1932 and left the business to my mother who had not much idea of running a business but I’d been helping in the shop at the time. I was fourteen years old at the time and I’d been helping in the shop. My mother set me up to look after the shop while everything was going on with the funeral and everything like that and then when it was all over she kept me there because in the meantime I’d left school. So, she kept me there and from then on running the business was what I did. I did all the buying and selling. Everything. All she did was signed the cheques and what not. And then came the war. And mother said, ‘Well,’ you know, ‘I shall have to come in.’ She came in to the shop I had to put her right on prices and everything before I went and she said, ‘After the war,’ she said, ‘I shall turn the business over to you and you will arrange a pension for me to retire.’ And so that was arranged. In the meantime, during the war, in 1944 she died of cancer. The executors of the will were two supposed friends of the family and they absolutely fleeced everything in this shop. We had points, you know, there was a points system and they’d taken, they’d used all the things like butter and cooked meats and things like that. Chocolates and things like that and sort of taken them among their friends and what not. Given them all free butter and what not, you know and in actual fact when I got back the business was bankrupt. So, I had to find a job then. I put a lot of my own money. When I got back, of course, when I got back I got a good amount of back pay. I put a good lot of that in to paying my debts and then the business had to be sold. And I had to look for a job then. Well, I had no experience. I mean, nobody wanted air force gunners, navigators, bomb aimers. So I had a look around and of course the only experience I’d had was in the shop which was nothing at all. So, I tried my hand as a representative at a fancy goods firm. I didn’t get on with that at all. So, then I took another job as a representative for United Dominions Trust. Commercial bankers. Covering just Lincolnshire. The previous job I covered the whole of the south of England. With the bank, with this other job I was at home all the time. And then I’d just got nicely settled in to that when they decided they were going to move me down the south coast to Worthing. And I said. ‘I don’t want to go to Worthing.’ And they said, well they called me to head office. In this big meeting. All the directors were there and they said, ‘You have to go. We said you’re going.’ And I said, ‘No.’ You know. I said. ‘When I was in the forces,’ I said, ‘I was told where I had to go and where I hadn’t to go.’ I said, ‘Now I’m a civilian,’ I said, ‘I decide where I want to go. Nobody else.’ And they said, ‘Well, it’s a case of go or resign.’ So, I said, ‘Well I’ll resign then.’ And the chief clerk came with me, out of the room, to take me out and he said, ‘I should give it another thought if I were you,’ he said, because, he says, ‘There is no way they are going to keep you in Lincolnshire.’ He said, ‘One of the director’s son has just come out of the army and they want Lincolnshire for him because it’s an up and coming place.’ At that time there wasn’t a lot but there was plenty of scope for business and they wanted the job for him. So, I said, ‘Right,’ I said, ‘I’m not having it.’ So, I resigned and I was on the dole then for — oh I applied to go back in to the air force and they said yes, I could go back but I didn’t hear anything and I waited oh, six weeks of doing nothing. Nothing. Just on the dole and I was absolutely fed up to the teeth. And I got the offer of — they was setting people on with the engineering firm in Lincoln. I was based in Lincoln then. A big engineering firm in Lincoln who were taking people on and training them as machinists. So, I applied and got in there. And that’s where I finished up. Working in a Lincoln factory. Doing a dead-end job. Fed up. Yeah. So, when I came back I got in touch with a girlfriend that I had and we married in 1945. And she was from Lincoln and that’s why I came down to Lincoln for the first job. As a central point. So she [pause] she died young. Forty two, I think, she was. Died very young and a year and half, two years later I met my present wife and we were married. And been happily married ever since. Very happily married.
DE: Wonderful.
LR: And that was it. and she said if she’d been my wife at the time when I came out of the air force she says I should never have gone into the [laughs] in to the factory. She would have seen to that. And knowing my present wife she would have done. And that was [the pre-war?].
DE: I see. If you’re happy to carry on. Just a couple more questions. One, you started your service life in the army and I know you have stories to tell about the Battle of France. And then you obviously transferred into the RAF. Could you tell me how that came about?
LR: I was called up in to the army in 1939. October 1939. Into the 51st Highland Division. And after initial training we went down to Aldershot. Square bashing and that sort of thing. Getting organised. And in early January we went across to France. We were stationed up in Northern France for a while. Moved across country to Alsace Lorraine and the Maginot Line. That was an experience. Used to go in to the Maginot Line when they were doing all the bombardments. If you gave the French soldiers a cigarette they would let you fire their gun [laughs] Yeah. Free and easy the French soldiers were. Too free and easy. And then we moved from there when the Germans, while we were there the Germans broke through in to the low countries and we were moved very quickly across in to the north of France to — the idea was, at the time they were trying to stop the German army so they could get the other, the rest of the forces evacuated and the 51st Highland Division was one that fought the rear-guard action so that Dunkirk could be take place. And when Dunkirk had been successfully evacuated they just left us and we were left in France. And we listened to Churchill on the radio saying all troops left in the north of France must be given up as lost. And [laughs] there we were. So, we still went on fighting. The 51st. I wasn’t involved in the fighting actually. I was a despatch rider. But then we were trapped then. Forced back and back in, forced back to a small coastal town called St Valerie. And we were surrounded on all sides by the Germans and we had the bulk of the division around in that, in that area. But further along the coast was a place called Veules les Roses and they, they were managing to get some ships in there to get troops out. So, we were obviously, we’d been bombarded all day from the air and from the Germans around about and that. The town was ablaze. That was the first time I ever heard, you know, the ricochet from a bullet. You used to see it on the Westerns, you know. The first time, the first time I heard that ricochet of bullets going from the walls. And anyway, it was obvious we were going to surrender the next morning. It got towards night time. And I asked several of the chaps, if we got together I said there was a barn door. The barn. The side of a barn had been blown up. The barn had been blown up. And if we could launch that into the water it would hold several of us and we could get out and get in to that line of ships, you see. So, we set the deadline for 10 o’clock and when it came to the 10 o’clock they wouldn’t go. So, another chap said, ‘Well I would do it. I would go.’ So, I said, ‘Well, it’s just be the two of us,’ I said, ‘There’s a big door there so we could manage that across into the water and try that.’ So, he was, ‘Right. Let’s have a go.’ So, we went. Carried the door between us down to the rocks and launched it. And as we were launching it then he informed me he couldn’t swim. So [laughs] I got him sat on the door and I thought well I’ll stop in the water and I’ll sort of act more or less as propeller rudder and so off we set. Now, where we went. We paddled and paddled all night to get out of the way at ninety degrees. Out into the water. Into the sea. And I get into this line of ships who were coming out. These ships were going directly into the harbour and then directly out again. Right out to sea before they turned to go back to England and by the time by the time it began to get light it was, St Valerie was just a smoking ruin. It was a pall of smoke on the horizon. You couldn’t see it. We were way out to sea. And sometime in the morning when it started to get light we got into the line of ships as it happened. There were two to come. There were two trawlers. French trawlers. I think they were both French. The first one threw us a life belt as they went past. So, I said thank you very much sort of thing. And the next one picked us up. This chap on the raft he couldn’t move his legs. He’d been sat cramped up there all night and they tied a rope around his waist and they hauled him up and then they hauled me up. And the first thing they did they gave me a glass hot rum. And I’d had nothing to eat for a couple of days because we were on the move all over the place and I went out like a light. I vaguely remember them cutting my boots. My gaiters and my boots. And when I came to I was in a bunk somewhere in the ship and they were shaking me and saying, ‘We’re taking you to an English ship.’ So, I said, ‘Right. Fair enough.’ So, they wrapped a blanket around me. Took me to this English ship. Put downside into this ship and on the way, I found the chap who was in charge of the life boat that took us off and I said, ‘Can you tell me what happened to my clothes?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We didn’t bring any clothes over’. So, I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve only got this blanket.’ So, he says, ‘Well I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I can’t help you. I can give you a pair of socks to protect your feet.’ So, I landed at Southampton with a pair of socks and a blanket. And as it happened, good old British organisation again, they always called it but they had a warehouse on the docks and they got laid out with uniforms for people that were in similar situations. I just went out and picked out clothes and what not. Got clothes and took us back home.
DE: So, you had a close call from being —
LR: From there we were taken up to Scotland to report the division and so we just carried on duties up there and in 1941 they, there was an order came out on the part one orders a request for volunteers for air crew duties in the RAF. So, I volunteered and I was accepted. I did, I had to do education tests and health tests and all sorts of tests. I had to go down to Edinburgh for all this and came through. Was posted to Stratford on Avon where they changed us over from army to RAF with the different uniform and the different types of drill and what not. And from there to Scarborough where we were billeted in the Grand Hotel and one of the lasting things about all this was after months, well a year and a half really of sleeping on the floor we got — in Stratford upon Avon we had a bed with sheets on it. Wonderful. And the food was a lot different as well. It was a lot better. Anyway, from Stratford we went to Scarborough as I said. Did our initial training. RAF training. And then we were posted. First of all, I was posted to Florida. So, I thought oh wonderful. And then we got to the transit camp they found that they’d got two to many on the list so they took two off. There was me, Rutherford and another chap — Roberts. So they’d taken the two next to one another and took us off the course and sent us back to Scarborough. From there we were posted then to Rhodesia which is now Zimbabwe of course. Southern Rhodesia. And did our training in Rhodesia and then South Africa, in East London and then back home. And then in to Bomber Command.
DE: I see. So why did you choose to volunteer for the RAF?
LR: Well if I’d have had a choice at the beginning of the war when I was called up I’d have opted for the RAF. Of course, my brother and I were always interested. We were always, we knew all the first world war fighters and we were always interested in the RAF. Right through. And all the pre-war planes. We knew them all. And my brother, in actual fact, was in the Volunteer Reserve before the war and I thought well great, I’m going to try this. I might get in line with my brother you see. And I went home and told my mother I was volunteering for the RAF. ‘Oh great,’ she said, ‘That’s fine,’ She said, ‘You might get to go with Bill.’ My brother. I said, ‘Yeah.’ And while I was on leave I got a telegram to say he’d been killed. Well he was missing but believed killed. He was just finishing his training for the Coastal Command. He was almost finished and they crashed into the Irish Sea. He was based in Silloth. And my mother said, ‘Don’t you go in that RAF.’ So, I said, ‘No. Alright.’ [unclear] And that’s how I came to be in the RAF. The best move I’ve ever made I think.
DE: It was.
LR: As far as I was concerned. And I’ve always been proud of being in the RAF. And that was that.
DE: Ok. Why, why do you feel proud about your service in the RAF?
LR: Because of what we did. Not proud of what we did but proud of the part we played. I always feel that in some way we helped to end the war. Did our part in ending the war. I was proud to be part of that.
DE: What do you think about the way that Bomber Command has been remembered since the war?
LR: After the war Bomber Command was vilified. They called us aerial gangsters because of the bombing and what not. Killing innocent people. But that was total war. That was what it was all about. I mean let’s face it, the Germans had started it with Warsaw and then they bombed without any declaration of war or anything like that. They went in and they bomber Rotterdam and Amsterdam and all the low country places and invaded. And after that of course there was London and poor Coventry and all these places. Hull. So, I don’t know why we got the thick end. I think there was a lot of these do-gooders that said, you know, we shouldn’t have done it. But then heard nothing. There was no, sort of, anything ever said about Bomber Command. When, when the leaders of the various forces got their honours after the war they all went to the House of Lords except Sir Arthur Harris. He was Sir Arthur and that was, he stopped there. Nothing else. And as I say, after, after that, you know, later years nothing was said much about Bomber Command at all until the last three, four, five years when there’s suddenly been a sudden surge in the interest in the part that Bomber Command actually played. And I’m finding now that people are beginning to say, you know, what a good job we did. And it’s very gratifying. Very.
DE: Smashing. Thank you ever so much.
LR: It’s my pleasure.
DE: Ok. Before I press stop is there anything else that you can think of off the top of your head that you want to tell me.
LR: I think we’ve about covered everything.
DE: I’ll call that a day then. Thank you ever so much. Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Les Rutherford. Three
Creator
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Dan Ellin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-05
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ARutherfordL151005
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Pending review
Format
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01:42:32 audio recording
Language
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eng
Description
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Les Rutherford joined the army and was in the 51st Highland Division which formed the rear-guard defence, allowing for the evacuation of Dunkirk. He escaped out to sea on a barn door and was picked up and taken to England by a French trawler. He later volunteered for the Royal Air Force and became a bomb aimer. He completed 23 operations with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe but was shot down by a fighter on his 24th operation. He managed to bail out before the aircraft exploded. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft III. He discusses the diary he kept during his time as a prisoner of war.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
British Army
Spatial Coverage
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France
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Lincolnshire
France--Dunkerque
Poland--Żagań
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1940
1941
1942
1943-12-20
1944
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
50 Squadron
aircrew
arts and crafts
bale out
bomb aimer
displaced person
Dulag Luft
entertainment
perimeter track
prisoner of war
RAF Skellingthorpe
sanitation
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/369/6115/AHicksDK151103.2.mp3
8f3b62f9200c69a23551ea40528cc813
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Hicks, Ken
Ken Hicks
D K Hicks
Description
An account of the resource
61 items. An oral history interview with Chief Technician David Kennedy Hicks (b. 1922, 0574954 Royal Air force), memories of the Battle of Britain, his Royal Air Force record, and photographs of his Halton entry, his time in Southern Rhodesia and 56 photographs, many of his time in Southern Africa. Ken Hicks joined the Royal Air Force in 1938 as a Halton apprentice. He served with 202 Squadron at RAF Hornchurch during the Battle of Britain as an aircraft rigger. Subsequently he served on training unit in Southern Rhodesia and then in Egypt, staying in the Royal Air Force after the war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ken Hicks and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-03
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Hicks, DK
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: Right. My name is Chris Brockbank and I’m here to talk with Ken Hicks on the 3rd of November 2015 about his experiences in World War Two but if you’d like to start please Ken with your earliest recollections and then just go through your life in sequence please.
KH: To start with, my father, a coal miner down in Wales and when I was fifteen he said to me, ‘Lad you’re not going down the pit. I want you to learn a trade. I want you to go to see the headmaster and join the royal aircraft as an aircraft apprentice.’ I went and saw the headmaster and he said, ‘There’s no one been up from this school. The curriculum doesn’t cover it.’ But my old man went down and thumped the table. And he said ok and he sent for the exam paper and I sat in his office in his chair and I had one hour and I answered all the questions and he came in and he said, ‘Put your pen down.’ So I had just I just worked out the last answer so I jotted that down and he went bananas. ‘When I say put the pen down put the pen down.’ So he put it in a big brown envelope and he said, ‘Lick that,’ and I licked it. And he got hold of me by the ear and said, ‘Come on. I want to see you post it.’ So I posted it. I passed. He had me up in front of the school, tapping my head saying, ‘There’s a clever boy. I want all you boys to try this examination now.’ So I learned a lot about humanity [laughs]. So off I went to RAF Halton as a civilian lad of sixteen. Never been out of the Welsh valley even alone Wales on a train up to London. We got, we got to London and all the apprentices were sort of gathering there on the last train to Wendover and we all straggled up to, up to the camp. Not marched. And I was very impressed. I would, became a member of B Squadron. Two Wing Aircraft Apprentice RAF Halton. There was over a thousand boys in our entry and it was quite an eye opener but I adapted very well. My education wasn’t all that clever so I wasn’t one of the brainy blokes. I never became a snag — a corporal apprentice, or a sergeant apprentice [laughs]. I was still an AA. I got a three year training course but the war broke out 1939 and they cut it down to two years. Cut out a lot of sport and concentrated on teaching us. We marched down to schools, we marched down to the workshops and we marched down to the airfield for the aircraft training. We were training on Hawker Harts and Demons drilling, rigging. Stripping them down. Building them up. And an old Hampden there as the bomber side of it. I passed out in June 1940 and posted to 222 Squadron which was based at Kirton Lindsey, Lincoln at the time. And I’d only been there a week and beginning to settle down when we moved down to Hornchurch which moved straight into the Battle of Britain which commenced then and with two Spitfire squadrons at Hornchurch — 222 and I think it’s 603 City of Glasgow Spitfire squadron. I worked with a LAC 1GC who called me a sprog and I soon picked up we were repairing bullet holes in Spitfires. Filing around. If they, if they weren’t too bad we put a fabric patch on them. Anything to keep the aeroplane flying. Or we had to rivet two small riveting patches. I fitted in well with the, with the airman. We worked until the aircraft was serviceable. Sometimes gone midnight. We lost thirty seven pilots in that three months on my squadron and I wasn’t, I didn’t realise what was happening up there in the sky above us. The Germans were bombing our airfields and the Dorniers were coming across at about six thousand feet and mounds of earth — bombs were dropping and they were trying to – the grass airfields and they were trying to obliterate the RAF camps altogether. Bombs on the airfield. We had civilians out there with shovels filling in the bomb holes. They were bombing our hangars. And I was in the bath one night, 10 o’clock, when a bomb landed right outside the building and blew all the glass from the door into the bath with me and plaster. I reached over for my towel and that was covered in bits of glass. So I turned the duckboard upside down and stood on that. It was pitch dark. Half the block had been knocked down so the next night they moved us over to a round nissen hut the other side of the airfield and we were all in bed and about 1 o’clock in the morning a landmine which had come down went off and blew the roof right off our head. This corrugated roof. And we were all shouting at each other in our beds. Everybody. ‘Everybody alright.’ So we said we were alright and nobody hurt so we went back to sleep looking up at the stars. So that was a good opening. [pause] Where were we?
CB: We’re going to have a break for a mo.
[Recording paused]
CB: Ok. So you’ve lost the roof.
KH: Yeah.
CB: And what happened next day?
KH: The next day I had to go with the corporal. Corporal airframe fitter. I was, I was an airframe fitter. A land rover down, one of our Spitfires had landed down in Kent. In Manston. So we had to go down there and repair it. On the way down through the Kentish fields all the fields that were unharvested at that time of the year and they were all burning. Flames going across the road as we were driving along. I don’t know if that was a ploy to destroy the harvest or what but anyway we got to this Manston. Manston was a place heavily bombed. Anything left, any bombs left, any bombs left going back to Germany they picked Manston out and dropped them there. So there was no one on the station except a skeleton staff but we had a billet and there was, there was an emergency cook laid on for meals and we got to the Spitfire which had bent a prop and a pitot head and the corporal fitter in charge he changed the prop and I had to help him. There was no one on the station so we helped ourselves in the empty yard and anywhere else for equipment and stuff. We worked in the middle of the airfield. There was also a lorry there full of civilian workers. They were shovelling and filling in the bomb holes trying to put the airfield back in to some sort of serviceability state and one of them was binoculars scouring the skies. He was lookout and when he blew the whistle they all dropped their shovels, jumped in the truck and tore off the airfield. So we soon twigged it and when they went off the airfield we went off as well [laughs]. We dropped our tools and went off as well. So we fixed this Spitfire and the pilot came down in an Anson, dropped him off and he took off and flew it back to Hornchurch and then we got home and that was my first introduction to the war as it were. What was happening? Stop.
CB: Ok.
[Recording paused]
CB: Ok Ken can we just talk about what was your role as a rigger? What did you actually do in your job?
KH: As an airframe fitter I’d done the basic training and trained on older type of aircraft but now I was on a Spitfire which I’d never seen before in my life and didn’t know. Hadn’t done any training on it but I was given, I was told to work with an LAC 1GC airframe fitter who knew the ropes and he had to sort of teach me. So any riveting he was riveting that side and I held the block on this side sort of thing. So we were doing patches on the skins and things like that. Change undercart. Change the wheels. Tyre bay. How to use, how to use the tyre levers to change those, get those tyres off. Things like that. They were all practical work which I’d never done before and everything we did I learned. I learned more all the time. We had to learn the hydraulic system, the pneumatic system, the electrical system, anti-freeze system and even spraying. We had to spray and paint the camouflage back on the aircraft. And another role came out. We had to paint the underneath of the Spitfires a duck egg, duck egg blue, a light duck egg blue. So there we were lying on the hangar floor with a twelve inch, two inch paint brush painting the underside of a Spitfire. And we had to do the whole squadron. We’d got a mat to lie on on the hard concrete floor. That took us about a week to do the squadron. I can’t remember other things which I did because it was a long time ago.
CB: What about the flying controls which were wire operated?
KH: Well they were alright but I I had to do some splicing and I got a wire out and made a measurement and got a new wire from stores and spliced in the buckle on both ends. That’s seven and a half tucks on the splicing and then, and then fit it, wire, pull it back through with the string and connect it up. Tension the turn buckle to get it all right. And then the aircraft used to go out then on air test. On one occasion I was working in a hangar and apparently a Spitfire had come over from dispersal. They disbursed the Spits instead of having them in one place and be a target for a bomb they disbursed the other side of the airfield all over the place. Well this one came over and stopped in between the hangars and the chaps coming back from lunch, dinnertime thought it was the next Spitfire to be done so they pushed it into the hangar but this one was armed and nobody knew about it. They came back from dinner and I was down just about opening my toolbox underneath the wing of this aircraft when an instrument basher had got into this aircraft he’d shoved in to check his instruments and he pressed the firing button for some reason and all of a sudden four machine guns blasting. Blasting the hangar wall with the armour piercing tracer bullets flying around all over the place. Quite a long burst. And I was crouching down behind my tool box and I thought [laughs] well it’s a bit dodgy this is. [laughs] Lots of things happened when we were working there. Every now and again we had to drop — drop our tools and run for the air raid shelter and get down there fast. I was down the air raid shelter one day and I was about the last one in I think ‘cause I was near the entrance and I heard an aircraft taxiing off so I l had a look out and there was a Hurricane had come in. It was taxiing around. There was nobody about. We were all down the air raid shelter. And the pilot was waving so I ran out, crossed and jumped on to the wing and it was, it was a Polish pilot and he wanted to know what airfield he’d landed on. He had a map on his knee which showed him more or less the east coast so I turned it over and I pointed out where we were. Hornchurch. Hornchurch. And he had a look around and I knew the Poles were over at, over the other side of London so I said to him, ‘Balloon barrage. Fly over the top.’ ‘Oh yah yah,’ he said, you know and off he went. I hope he got back alright. There were quite a few instances but when you’re young and you’re new to the game you learn pretty fast. You make mates but the Air Ministry post you as numbers and you just get a serviceable team going nicely and you’re posted overseas invariably. Never to, never to see each other again. So you don’t make friends too long in the air force. They come and go fast. Some are posted to the desert. Some are posted to Iceland to the snow. Some are posted up the Far East. I was on the boat. Went down to Uxbridge got my KD and [torpee?] Up to Liverpool. Got on a troop ship RMS Scythia. Hammocks. No bunks. Out in a fifty two boat convoy. Left the Clyde, staggered course, escorted by destroyers and one battleship. Out in to the North Atlantic. I heard depth charges going off. The destroyers were chasing the subs which were after the convoy. Apparently, we heard that they did get one. One of our troop ships. We came down towards the equator and on the day we crossed the equator I had my nineteenth birthday. Crossing the equator going down south on a staggered course. Then we headed west, west again to Freetown. Out into the Atlantic and down the South Atlantic to Cape Town. Mostly army bods on board. They were going around, they were going around up to the Suez Canal, Cairo and they were tackling Rommel in North Africa. But the twenty eight names of the RAF were shouted out. ‘Get your kit off the boat. Get on that train.’ The train set off up for a day and a half and we knew there wasn’t a river line going all the way to Cairo which we thought we were going there. And we came to Salisbury Rhodesia and I was posted to mount, RAF Mount Hampden. There were three stations around Salisbury. One was Tiger Moths, one was Harvards for training fighters and one was Oxfords training bombers and I was posted to Mount Hampden — Tiger Moths. We got there. We were advanced party. Twenty eight men in an advanced party. All trades. And we were setting up, setting it up it. Getting it prepared. The entry arrived on a train from the [wool?] station. Corrugated sink, roofs. Billets with mosquito net windows and doors. Storm ditches. And we soon settled down. Guards. Guard duty. I don’t know what we were guarding from. The natives weren’t, we could hear their jungle drums going all night when they’d had some Kafa beer down them from the village and that was about all. We had no problems from the outside but we still had to do guards. We were assembling aircraft out of packing cases. Tiger Moths. And we kept doing that until we got, we got about forty and they were doing circuits and bumps training pilots and one time there were four prangs on the airfield at the same time. One had landed heavy. Busted his undercart. Another one had landed, watching him, landed on top of another one and they both turned over like that. Upside down. And then another one crash landed and we had a big sign on the hangar wall, “You bend them, we mend them.” When we finished in the aircraft I had to go flying with the pilot on a test flight to test the aircraft before they handed over on to flying training. Loops and rolls and spins. So I used to put my parachute on and pull the straps tight and practice grabbing the, grabbing the rip cord to open the ‘chute. I always wanted to bale out. We were up there flying one day doing aerobatics and the aircraft, the engine cut so I thought, ah. So I shouted down the tube, ‘Can I bale out? ’ He said, ‘No. I can see a clearing in the jungle down there. So I thought oh. So we landed in this clearing. It was about four foot high grass stuff and we hit a termite hill which whipped the undercart off, dug our nose in and slammed us over on our back upside down. So I undid slowly on to the back of my neck, wriggled out and it didn’t catch fire. And that was at half past six in the morning. When the sun got up there it gets up to a hundred and ten, a hundred and twenty in the shade in the summertime. We had no food. No water. And the pilot said, ‘I can hear, I heard a lion roaring.’ Well there were lions around that area. I thought well we can’t leave the aircraft ‘cause they’ll never find us. So we were lumbered. We were stuck. Mid-day a Moth flew over, spotted us, waggled his wings and flew back and told them where we were. At about five o’clock a three tonner came through the jungle with Chiefy and a couple of bods and brought us food and water. Our Chiefy had a look at the aircraft. It had broken its back, it had broken its spruce bars and the wings had gone. This, that and the other. And I was watching him. He took his pipe out and he put his tobacco in. He struck a match and he took a couple of puffs and he went over and he threw the lit match down where the petrol was and up went the petrol and he said to the pilot, he said, ‘When you landed it burned didn’t it? ’ He said. He said it wasn’t worth taking back so (laughs] we went and left it. Yeah. Crumbs.
CB: Do you want a break?
KH: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
CB: So the plane was a write off and caught fire so you went back but this was the sort of aeroplane you were trained on.
KH: Yes. That was no problem. They used to use me a lot because I was trained on aircraft and I could rig, I could rig the Tiger Moth so that there was no — it wasn’t flying left wing low, right wing low and all this that and the other and I used to do the trimming. I used to do any control work on it and I used to go up on air tests and make sure with the pilots that it was perfectly serviceable to hand over to flying training. That was primarily my job.
CB: What rank were you at this stage?
KH: I started off AC1, AC2, LAC.
CB: Right.
KH: I was stuck out in Rhodesia. No promotion for three years. I was doing an essential job training. Training pilots. I trained them in Rhodesia, South Africa and Canada so they were out of the way of the war. And that meant no promotion otherwise everybody would be flight sergeant [laughs] on the station [laughs]. Well there was no promotion at all for three years. One. One. He was a chippy carpenter. He got corporal stripes. He was the only one on the station that got promoted in that three years. The rest of the war was going on. That was more important. They were fighting out in Burma, they were fighting out in the Middle East and they were fighting out everywhere. They were moving around and getting places and getting promoted. They were on squadrons, my trade and the corporal would get killed and they thought they’d make an LAC up. There was promotion going on but not down there where we were on the training so I was still an LAC when I got home after three years. Six, six months I was only home in the UK six months and then I was posted overseas again. Egypt. A boat across the channel, a train down to [Touronne?] living in tents in the flooded water in the heavy rain until, for three days, until we got on a troop ship. Took us across the Med. Called in at Malta and I got rid of stuff there. And we didn’t know where we were going of course and then we saw the lovely blue Mediterranean Sea turning brown and we couldn’t see any land but that was the, that was the river coming down from North Africa.
CB: So this is the Nile Delta.
KH: The Nile. And that was coming out in to the Mediterranean and running and it was still brown full days sailing out from, you know. We came Alexandra. Dropped a few people off there and then we got on a train up to Cairo and we were nodding off on the train, with my head on the woodwork at the side and I started scratching and it was bugs come out of the woodwork and was biting me. I was lumps coming up [laughs] so I thought that’s our entrance to Egypt, you know. And this was the thing which we had to do. First of all it was a PGC Almaza in tents and before we left to go out in the evening into Cairo we used to put everything in our kit bag and lock it on to the tent pole because we’d heard that thieves used to get into the camp and pinch airmen’s equipment. When we came back, the rows of tents, there was a tent missing. They’d come in with a lorry and they’d picked the whole tent up pegs and all and put it in a lorry and drove out and nobody said anything. But ours was alright. Then we were waiting for our postings and we were posted everywhere. Down to, down the coast of Africa, down further down in to Egypt. They were posted up to Palestine. They were posted everywhere from there. Distribution place. And I got, I got Almaza Flying Station itself on Dakotas. So I soon picked that up then. We all had to move out of Egypt then so we all moved out of the Canal Zone. Two hundred mile across the desert to the Canal Zone. There was a great bit of lake half way down. It was Deversoir. Kibrit. Kibrit. Deversoir and 107MU and I was posted to 107MU repairing aircraft. But it was good in one thing. There was nothing to do. We had three yacht clubs on the station on the canal and I joined 107MU Sailing Club. I had put my name down first in a queue and then I was called up after about three weeks to join a club. The first thing I had to was allocate myself to a skipper who used to take me out and teach me how to use a jib. When I’d logged eight hours on the jib I was then free to be picked up by any skipper to go out on the main sail and give it dual instruction. And I found that I had a natural ability which I didn’t know I had and I could sail it pretty good. I learned. We’d got the rule book and I passed. Passed the B Helmsman Certificate and I became — I could take a boat out myself so I could book a boat out and take someone out. So, and every – we stopped – we finished, we started work at a quarter to six in the morning and we finished at one because it got too hot after that. So it was straight down the sailing club and I spent a lot of hours on the lake.
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
KH: I’ve never done that before. [pause] Yeah. So I genned up on my racing rules and I passed my Helmsman Certificate. I could take a boat out and race. I could race. Compete. And I found I had the natural ability and I was, at the end of the year I was coming in first. I had three. The monthly race I was coming in first.
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
CB: So, we’ve just paused for the phone. We’ve been talking about after the war in Egypt.
KH: Yeah.
CB: But you came back for six months.
KH: Yeah.
CB: What did you do in that six month period because this was at the end of ‘44?
KH: During that six months I was posted on to a squadron of [pause] of Hunters I think it was and I found out I knew nothing about modern aircraft and I asked and I got, I was away on aircraft instructional courses some lasting a month to various stations. I did three courses altogether and briefed up working on aircraft with the hydraulic systems and pneumatic systems, de-icer systems and all types of operational retraction handling and getting used to modern aircraft.
CB: Were these fighters or bombers or both?
KH: Everything.
CB: Right. And where were you stationed?
KH: Bombers. Transport. I was stationed actually at [paused] at — I don’t —
CB: Well we’ll pick up with it later.
KH: I can’t remember it.
CB: But you were getting up to date on modern aircraft systems.
KH: Yeah. Yeah. I did. You realise that I’d been out in the desert I hadn’t worked on them. But that developed rapidly during the war while I was out there.
CB: So after you finished at 107MU.
KH: Yeah.
CB: What did you do then? So you did sailing in the part time but after you left the MU in Egypt —
KH: Yeah.
CB: Where did you go?
KH: Well let’s see. I was posted to RAF [pause] as an instructor at Cosford. That’s right. RAF Cosford. As an instructor instructing air frames, hydraulic systems on the aircraft. From there the Berlin Airlift started and we were we were taken off to do a three month detachment on to the Berlin airlift so I was out of my first Berlin Airlift and straight into Berlin. Shift work. The aircraft. The Russians had surrounded Berlin and so we had to fly everything in. Food, coal, everything. So one aircraft landing every three minutes right around the clock. Avro Yorks, Hastings. Hastings were carrying fuel. But mainly Dakotas. American Dakotas flying right around the clock in shift work and we had the German labour to offload the aircraft and we had to – I was involved in seeing the aircraft in. Marshalling them, stopping them, putting the chocks there and getting them all in line and when they were emptied the pilot came back from having a cup of tea, got all back in the aircraft and started them up. I had a torch. That’s all. Start one, two, three, four engines or whatever what they were and the same all off. Right around the clock. If there was anything wrong we had to tackle it. We had to check, check the tyres, oil leaks, if there was a cut in the tyre we’d put it serviceable to fly back to base if we thought they wouldn’t make it. We didn’t want them stuck in Berlin. It was tough going and it was January. Snow. Three or four of inches of snow. We kept on flying and I was going from one aircraft to the other in the snow and there was a big pile of snow there. And I give it a kick. I thought, ‘What?’ And there was a dead man underneath it. It was a German labourer unloading the aircraft. He’d walked through a prop which was running under the wing and he didn’t see the prop and chopped him and covered with him snow as it taxied away. It was that bad but we kept it going. It was shift work and we were, we were shattered. The food we were having from the cookhouse was what we were flying in. Dehydrated. Everything was dehydrated potatoes dehydrated. Pomme. Dehydrated peas. Dehydrated powdered stuff and we weren’t getting good food at all. For Christmas Day we had one whole orange each. That was a treat. That was the toughest part I’ve ever been in I think. That Berlin Airlift. And the station commander wasn’t satisfied when he walked around our billets because we were doing shift work. We were piling out of bed and getting to work six o’clock in the morning. Leave our, leave our bed made down and that wasn’t good enough. All beds had to be made up. This that and the other. And everybody was put on a charge and we were all given a reprimand. A block punishment. [laughs] But I used to get time off. I was chatting up, my mate and I chatting up a couple of deutsche bints as we called them. [laughs] Yeah. It was alright. Anyway, we were back, back at Bassingbourn which was our base then. On Avro Yorks. Working on Yorks and they put me, when I got back to Bassingbourn, the warrant officer in charge says, ‘You’re a married man. I want you to go to the R&D section,’ receive and despatch section in charge of ten WAAFs. ‘I want a married man to look after them.’ So I went over to the edge of a hangar there was a section and they were sort of changing the white covers over the back of the seats in the aircraft and the airmen I had were doing the fitting of the seats. Taking them out and stacking them on a tractor and a trailer and we used to, an aircraft, a York used to come in, different rolls. Some had a roller. Some had lashing chains. Some had power seats. Some had VIP seats and all these had to be handled. And strip the aircraft and hand it over for it to do the servicing. Into maintenance and then fit them all back in afterwards so it was quite a busy operation and variation and they were all airmen and WAAFs and I was a corporal put in charge of them [laughs] and the first day I knocked off at 5 o’clock. They all left the section and I locked the hangar. Locked the section up which was a steel door. I was going to lock it and one of the WAAFs had come back, had got hold of me and pinned me against a wall. Grabbed a handful. So I thought, Jones, her name was. Bloody thing. So I talked her out of that one. I thought I’ve got to handle these buggers myself now [laughs]. So it was quite a struggle too because some of the airmen were a bit bolshie. They were, they all had demob numbers. They all wanted to get out, get out of the mob. That happened to start with down when I was down in Egypt. I had a, I had a team, servicing team. I was in charge of two aircraft servicing teams and every now and again a demob number would come up and I’d lose a man, lose another man, and lose a man – no replacements. Getting less and less and we had I was training two natives. Two Egyptian natives to do some of the work. Some of the rigging and fitting work. Just the donkey work stuff. And I thought well this is no good. We had fifteen Dakotas there servicing on the line. And then, and Chiefy says, ‘You’ll have to take that Dakota there he said, get in it, get somebody to start it up, pull the trolley acc away and taxi it yourself out into the desert as far as you can. Switch your engines off, get out and shut the door and walk back here.’ And that’s what I had to do. All these Dakotas. The war had finished. The Yanks didn’t want the Dakotas back. Nobody wanted them so took them out in the desert and left them there. And the third day I was going out, I taxied out and there was another one of them starting up so I went over. There was a truck there. It was Israelis there from Israel. They come down starting up to tax, taxiing to the runway and flying them back to Israel. [laughs]. So all I was doing was helping the bloody Israelis out [laughs] nicking all our Dakotas. Well they were supposed to be but they were perfectly alright. We were working all that time to get them serviceable. Cor flipping heck. But I soon adapted to that.
CB: So that was in your desert time. We were just having a reflection there. So back to Bassingbourn.
KH: Bassingbourn.
CB: Were you losing people to demob there as well?
KH: Yes. All the time.
CB: We’re on National Service now of course.
KH: Yeah.
CB: Because we’re on 1948.
KH: Yeah. Yeah it was. It got difficult then. What did I do? I went on courses. Bassingbourn. [pause] Cosford as instructor. Yeah. Married. Yeah Bassingbourn. Airlift.
CB: So Bassingbourn had Yorks.
KH: Yeah.
CB: And then did you keep on that aircraft or did you go to something quite different somewhere else?
KH: Oh no. I’m trying to think what happened then.
CB: We’ll take a —
KH: Oh yeah
CB: Sorry.
KH: I got quite fed up then and I was – what was it? I was at Abingdon. No. I was in digs in Reading. I was married. Digs in reading. I was on a motorbike back and forth to Abingdon. Working RAF Abingdon on Yorks and I was passing Benson and I was chatting to in bloke in Wallingford, a RAF chap from Benson. He said there’s a Queen’s Flight, Benson, King’s Flight at Benson then and he says, ‘Why don’t you come to Benson, you know, instead of going back and forth to Reading all the time.’ Reading to Abingdon. So I went to the orderly room and I I asked if I could be posted and I filled in a form and then I was posted to a Kings Flight. Well I was sent over there for interview. I arrived at a guardroom and I was escorted down to the hangar and up to the warrant officer in charge and I was interviewed and then he took me through to the flight lieutenant who happened to be in my entry. Thirty eighth entry at Halton. He was one of the brainy ones. He got, he got a technical commission and so he says, he says, ‘Right,’ you know, ‘We’ll have you.’ So I was posted to the Kings Flight. I applied for married quarters and I got it. 11 Spitfire Square and and everything was fine. Then it was the Queen’s Flight. The Queen’s Flight [pause]. Two children born there. Halton Hospital. Yeah. I enjoyed my stay there. I did so well when I left and yeah, I got the Royal Victoria Medal presented to me when I left. I was in Germany and I was sent, I was sent down to Bonn where a group captain was dishing out medals and I was presented with the RVM for being on the Queen’s Flight. For the good work I’d done there. I was working on Swift, Swift aircraft. There was only two squadrons of Swifts made. 2 Squadron down on Aden. I was on 79 Squadron and Chief Tech Airframe and nobody knew anything about these bloody aeroplanes. And I reckon I did some good work on them. The warrant officer relied on me for everything. Any snag that came up he used to come and ask me. There was one Swift sitting there. They couldn’t keep it in a hangar because it was running fuel all the time out of a pipe out of the back. Filled the drip trays so they kept it outside. They kept it out over a drain. The next thing the farmer down the road said his cows were getting ill. It was the fuel was going into the brook and drinking the oily, oily water so he asked me to do something about it. So I’ve got, I never seen Swift before in my life and I got, I went and got the one and only book on it and I took it home that night and read it. It was gone midnight when I finished reading that. And I studied all the circuits and this that and the other to where that fuel could come from. So then I went over and I undid a couple of panels and I got to the bottom of the tank, main front tank behind the pilot of this Swift and there was three pipes there and I traced them in the book and one was going up to a recuperator tank which was inside the main tank. It was pressurised from the engine. There was a rubber sock in the middle of that little tank. Pressure from the engine so that when you went into a G turn you was still getting full pressure from the engine on to his fuel to keep the fuel pressure up for his engine and that was the rubber sock in the middle of the front tank and that that pipe was the only one, I thought well there must be a pinhole in that rubber sock that’s getting through to the outside of that, but the air side of it and then coming out the drain at the back. And I told, I told the warrant officer this and he said, ‘Righto,’ and he took me onto another job then and he put a sergeant and a few riggers to work the tank out and put it on test to make sure what I said was true and it was. It was leaking. I’d pinpointed it alright. Then I was posted wasn’t I? Where was it? What do you call them? I can’t remember.
CB: So you were in Germany.
KH: In Germany.
CB: Where was that? Bruggen?
KH: Gutersloh.
CB: Oh Gutersloh. Right.
KH: Gutersloh [pause] Bassingbourn. Bassingbourn.
CB: Tell you what. We’ll have a break.
KH: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
CB: Ok Ken. So after Gutersloh where did you go? You came back to Benson did you?
KH: Came back to Benson and the flights, flight commander said, ‘All the technical jobs are occupied but I want somebody to sort out a pain in my neck,’ he says, ‘Which is the roll equipment. I want to put you in charge of roll equipment and I want you to sort it out.’ I didn’t know what roll equipment was and I got down there and I had three sergeants. They were store bashers in the office and I had been an LAC I had a few corporals and a lot of men out in the hangar and they had twenty five Avro Yorks on the station that they could drop the ramp down the back and they could fit it out with roller seats or any anything [barrow?] and all that equipment, the roll equipment is stacked up in the back hangar at Benson and it, and it had to be sorted out. So I I had them all, all in the hangar there together in a group and I told them what's got to be done. So first of all we got some, some of the roller equipment which is racks with roller, roller balls on them. You could put things on so you could move, move everything around on them easily and assembled racks in the hangar to store these things and you’ve got to go through a servicing and then a servicing bay. US that side, serviceable that side and get a gang on servicing that lot and when they finished put them back on the serviceable rack and there were racks for holding all the chains for lashing down. All the straps, all the buckles and rings you could screw into the floor. There was all the seating. There was all the para seating. There was, there was all kinds of rolls. Centre poles you could put down from the floor to ceiling and fit seats in. All that sort of thing which was quite complicated really and these aircraft was going down the route and there was trouble down in [Muharraq?] and I was told by the wing commander to go down the route to [Muharraq?] and sort it out. The roll equipment there. And I walked in to roll equipment there and the flight sergeant in charge there and he’d put there from somewhere else. He didn’t know a thing about it and he was overloaded with the stuff. It was building up and he didn’t know what to do with it. It was the AQMs were slinging stuff off. They were getting a job sheet to carry so much and drop it off to there and this that and the other and no one was taking into account what was in the aircraft and what wasn’t and if there was room or not and it was chaos and the stuff was piling up down the end of the route. And so I went back and I told the wing commander and he said well make out, make out, he made out sent a directive down the route that any aircraft coming back with room has got to put roll equipment on it to bring it back to roll equipment Benson. So they brought it all back slowly so we got it all back and we could work it, work better then. Sorted that one out. What happened from there? From Benson.
CB: What year are we talking about now? 1954.
KH: Oh crumbs yeah.
CB: ’54.
KH: Yeah.
[pause]
CB: Ok. We’ll stop there for a bit.
KH: Yeah. Stop.
[Recording paused]
CB: So Ken, you’re posted to Hornchurch which is on Spitfire’s and they’re much more sophisticated than you’d been trained at Halton.
KH: Yeah.
CB: So how did they get you, ‘cause it’s the height of the Battle of Britain. How did they get you in on the act as it were?
KH: Yes well as an airman. Aircraft fitter. Airframe fitter. Trained but with lack of experience I was told to work with a LAC 1GC airframe fitter which – and we went through all his normal work and I was his mate as it were and I picked up a lot about the Spitfire. I was always questioning. I was always trying to get hold of air publication books so that I could, but I couldn’t get hold of any to learn more about the aircraft. The aircraft was developing in such a pace that new things were happening to the Spitfire all the time. They were improving this, improving that, improving the other and I wasn’t in a position to go in the flight sergeants office and have a look at the, have a look at all the APs and things like that. In any case that wasn’t my main interest at all. It was just getting the overtime worked. Usually working until you got the aircraft serviceable even if you were working until the midnight. It’s got to be ready first thing in the morning. If not and you do a shift work on it until it is ready. Most of the air frame work was you could, you could do it within a couple of hours. Undercart checks, this that and the other I could do in a couple of hours and carry on with the next aircraft but as an AC you could be taken off that job and put on another job even if you were halfway through it to work with somebody else but you don’t make the decisions. They do and they tell you what to do and it was that state of affairs but the more I did of that the more experience I got and the more experience you got the more responsibility they gave you to do. If you got three men and one of them has some experience and the other two are not its experienced bloke that gets the job and he’s the chap they rely on. So I found out, you find out the hard way. Sometimes you’re given the dirty jobs all the time and other times you’re not. You’re given the good jobs. So it depends who the next rank above you is and what he decides. So you’re bobbing around your corporals and your sergeants. Your sergeants were up top. They were miles away.
CB: You mentioned having to check documents. The APs are air force publications aren’t they?
KH: Yes. Yeah.
CB: When an aeroplane lands what has to be done to it before it can fly again? There are some basic procedures are there?
KH: Yeah. The pilot, pilot signs the aircraft in and he puts his signature down and puts down anything he finds wrong with it and he puts it down. That goes down in to the technical section and they put a man on to rectify that fault. So the pilot’s signature’s always there and before he takes the aircraft up he has to do the last signature that it is serviceable is down and then he signs over the top before he takes over and flies the aeroplane. He’s not allowed to take it up unless he signs the 700 first ‘cause that is the bible.
CB: In the heat of the battle they didn’t have time to do that so what happened then?
KH: Oh they did. They did.
CB: Oh they did.
KH: Yeah. Chiefy used to stick the 700 and a pen in his hand and he used to sign that and run. He didn’t know what he’d signed. [laughs]
CB: Amazing. So you’re working long hours. You get to finish the task. Where are you living on the airfield?
KH: Well before I was married I was in a block with the airmen.
CB: Right.
KH: And it was a station then at Benson here. As an airman, before I got married, and was quartered we used to march down from the block, across the main road, down to the hangars and march back again in those days. But they packed that in because it got too difficult in the end.
CB: Because the war was on.
KH: Yeah. This that and the other. Yeah. They got rid of that lot.
CB: And in the, so in a barrack block there are a number of rooms on several floors. How many people in a room?
KH: There’s a ten, ten. Twenty in a room.
CB: Yeah.
KH: And a snag in a bunk.
CB: Yeah. That’s the corporal.
KH: Six, six rooms and there’s a, there’s a static order. Everybody takes a turn in doing certain jobs. Domestic jobs that’s got to be done.
CB: What would they be?
KH: Bumpering the floor. Everyone had got his own space to do. In the old days you used to make your kit up into blankets. They had biscuits. Three biscuits stacked and then the blankets and sheets folded and the last sheet folded right around the top. Put on the top there and they had to leave that before they went, left to go to work like that. But they eased off on that situation later on.
CB: So bumpering the floor meant polishing the floor with a big bumper.
KH: Yeah.
CB: What other jobs were there you had to do?
KH: Well the, when it was your turn, what was it? Now everybody had his own window to clean. His own floor space. Bed. Locker.
CB: And the communal areas.
KH: The room orderly. There were certain things he had to do.
CB: Who was the room orderly?
KH: Everybody took it in turns.
CB: For a week or a day?
KH: No. A week.
CB: Right.
KH: There was a drying room down the back and a wash. A shower room. The toilets.
CB: How did they get cleaned?
KH: They were, they were all on a roster. So they were all done, all covered. The corporal in the bunk was usually the man who run it so it was run very smooth.
CB: Yeah.
KH: You was directly in contact with him.
CB: So in each room there’s a corporal and twenty men.
KH: Yeah.
CB: And now about eating. What was the procedure for that?
KH: Oh well. You just – what was it? [pause] You just wander over to the cookhouse with your mug and irons and no problem. Yeah. Certain times there was times when we had to work overtime on this that and the other and go back to the cookhouse and it still, it still, you’d still get fed and all that. There was no problem. IF you were orderly corporal or a orderly sergeant. An orderly sergeant in the guardroom. He’s got his job laid down down down. He’s got to make sure the NAAFI’s shut at 9 o’clock and he’s got to make sure that this and the other is done. He’s got to go around. It’s all automatic and back to the guardroom. I went to the guardroom the other day and there was two sailors there running it [laughs].
CB: A bit different now.
KH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So what were the mealtimes?
KH: Oh normal. Half past seven ‘til eight. Work at half past eight. Nine hours. Or 8 o’clock. Depends what what you’re doing. Some earlier than others. The pen pushers well they were static but the fitters and riggers they have to adapt their work time to suit the job. If there was early start aircraft in the morning they had to be there. They were knocking off early and it was all covered that way.
CB: How often did you sleep next to the aircraft?
KH: Never. No. Never got to that stage.
CB: Not even in the Battle of Britain.
KH: No. Well I don’t know what they did our in the flights but they were, we were the fitters in the hangar.
CB: Right.
KH: Working on the aircraft. There were airframe mechanics, engine mechanics out on the flights dealing with them first hand and they had a different system to cover all eventualities.
KH: And the armourers.
CB: And the same with all. All trades the same. Yeah. The armaments sections. Yeah. Instrument section. This that and the other and they all had their ICs and they were the chaps looking after them. It worked very well.
KH: Yeah. Ok. Stopping there for a mo.
[Recording paused]
JLE: [First days?] I’d find quite interesting to know about.
CB: Apprenticeship days. Right.
KH: Apprenticeship days. Well. You were in a billet. Twenty men and a corporal or the senior man in the bunk. Six rooms to a, six rooms to a block. You’re forming, when I first joined, you’re forming outside with your mug and irons in your hand. Marched to breakfast 8 o’clock. Quarter to eight. Something like that. After breakfast came back and you squared your bed up, rolls your overalls, put them under your arm, fall in outside and you marched on to the square. A Squadron, B Squadron, C Squadron. The man in charge. The band would start up and you’d all march behind the band out the guard room and down the hill. And some would go to workshops, some would go down to the airfield and some would go to the school. About twelve — march back. Dinner. Down again. Marched down again and you’re probably a different, different place the next time and you’d go down the airfield in the morning. You were probably in schools in the afternoon. The schools cover all the theories. Worked everything out there. You’d do practical jobs. You’d dismantle it and assemble it again and various components on the aircraft. Engine fitters would be running the engines and the airframe fitters would be doing this that and the other and instruments were all covered. It was training. We would manage to get a few extra aircraft. I started off with a, with a Hampden bomber and a Hawker Demon and we had all kinds of jobs on that. We had to go over and do fabric work. You know to strip a fabric wing and build it up and repair inside. The type of wood used, the glue used and there are pins and rivets. The balance of the aircraft had to be rigged properly with a, with a straight edge, straight edge and get a bubble right in the middle, on whatever you set it at. Wing incidents. Dihedral tail. The fin slightly offset perhaps. The hinges – no play in the hinges. No play in the aileron hinges. No slack in the controls. Even had to polish the glass in the windows. Make sure everything works properly. Sliding hoods. The tyres of course had to be checked. They’d be taken off. Brakes checked to see that they worked properly. Assembled on again, undercart jacked it up, undercarriage actions. Check the hydraulic pressures. When everything’s been signed up you sign up and the NCO would sign over the lot and that’s it. The aircraft’s serviceable and nothing was allowed out until the last signature was there and it wasn’t even flying unless the pilot signs it as well. So it’s all covered. If anything goes wrong pinpoint who did it, who did what and when and who checked it. So it was a double check. Treble check. The safety of the aircraft must come first.
CB: Ok.
[Recording paused]
KH: There wasn’t much.
CB: Wait. We’re just talking about what Ken and his colleagues did in their time off.
KH: Well we took part in sport. I myself played rugby and so I used to go with the rugby team. I also did, what was it? Had to go for long walks. There was walking gangs. There was PTI down on the, down on the airfield. The PTI instructor would have us all out, arms wide, touch your fingertips all along in a line — two lines, three lines, four lines and as he did the manoeuvre and everybody followed him. Jumping up and down, arms waving, legs doing this, that and the other. Running on the spot and all this sort of thing you know and then always march. March back and, invariably with the band. The band were a pain in the ass. They used to go down in the drying room there practicing and it was din and you’re trying to gen up on a book and there was the bloody noise of these blokes trying to play these instruments. Banging their bloody drums. [laughs]
CB: Nightmare.
KH: But you had to live with it, you know. You learned to live with it. Practicing the bagpipes. They used to go up in the woods with the pipes. That was a good thing.
CB: At Wendover.
KH: In fine weather. Up in Wendover. Yeah. Heard them wailing away out there. They’re terrible things when you can’t play. If you play it properly it sounds good but pipes are terrible when they can’t play.
CB: So when you are then on a squadron we are on the front line effectively. What, how did the time off come and what did you?
KH: Well I was young in those days on the squadron. During the Battle of Britain it was, I can’t remember what I did. I just can’t. Because it was all work. I didn’t have much time off. I never went on holiday that summer. Some blokes used to go because they had a death in the family or something. I felt sorry for them but we took no leave. I couldn’t. I didn’t take any leave to go all the way down to Wales. Took a day and a half to get home some times and down again with the old puffer trains and this that and the other so I never bothered. Just go with the lads down to the village, to a pub and have a game of darts and this that and the other. Whenever possible if there was an organisation or sport I used to put my name down to play rugby and I did very well at that. Although I was small I was scrum half. Put the ball in. Talking about rugby I got in the desert in Egypt and the scrum down and the sand was blowing up the dust and you had the ball to shove in to the scrum and you could hardly see the hole to put the ball in. And the dust would cake around your mouth and you were covered in it and it were — [laughs]. Then again in Berlin I played rugby in the Olympic Stadium, Hitler’s Olympic stadium and snow was on the deck there. On the grass. And we played in three inches of snow. We played rugby there. So there’s a contrast for you. Desert and snow. But mainly it’s a grotty old station camp, station field which had probably got a slope in it and probably a low end where there was a load of mud and a dry end up the top but you adapt yourself to all these conditions and sometimes to your advantage.
CB: Good. Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Ken Hicks
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AHicksDK151103
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2015-11-03
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:21:54 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
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Pending review
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Description
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Ken Hicks grew up in Wales and joined the Royal Air Force as an Apprentice Mechanic at RAF Halton. He worked on Spitfires during the Battle of Britain. He was later posted to Rhodesia and survived a crash in the bush. After the war, He took part in the Berlin Airlift and found a civilian worker who had died and been buried under the snow.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Africa
Egypt
Germany
Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Kent
Germany--Berlin
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1948
Contributor
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Julie Williams
222 Squadron
C-47
fitter airframe
ground crew
ground personnel
RAF Abingdon
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Benson
RAF Halton
RAF Hornchurch
RAF Manston
Spitfire
Tiger Moth
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/377/6709/LDawsonSR142531v1.1.pdf
6abbc58e3bc5bd55a8c78eafc9746dec
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/.
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Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
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LDawsonSR142531v1
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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One booklet
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Pilots flying log book for Stephen Dawson, covering the period from 11 June 1939 to 30 March 1942. Detailing his flying training, operations and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF Southampton, RAF Hastings, RAF Hatfield, RAF Little Rissington, RAF St Athan, RAF Cottesmore, RAF Finningly, RAF Lindholme, RAF Swinderby, RAF Upwood and RAF Swanton Morley. Aircraft flown were, Cadet, Tiger Moth, Anson, Hampden and Oxford. He flew a total of 31 night operations with 50 Squadron. Targets were, Dusseldorf, Hannover, Bordeaux, Brest, Berlin, Keil, Lorient, La Rochelle, Copenhagen, Duisberg, Soest, Cologne, Bremen, Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Magdeburg and Frankfurt.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Denmark
France
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Denmark--Copenhagen
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Hampshire
England--Hertfordshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Rutland
England--Sussex
England--Yorkshire
France--Brest
France--La Rochelle
France--Lorient
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Soest
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1941-02-04
1941-02-10
1941-02-11
1941-02-15
1941-02-21
1941-03-12
1941-03-13
1941-03-14
1941-03-15
1941-03-18
1941-03-20
1941-03-21
1941-03-23
1941-03-24
1941-04-08
1941-04-09
1941-04-10
1941-04-11
1941-04-13
1941-04-14
1941-04-15
1941-04-16
1941-04-20
1941-04-21
1941-04-24
1941-04-25
1941-06-02
1941-06-03
1941-06-11
1941-06-12
1941-06-13
1941-06-14
1941-06-15
1941-06-21
1941-06-22
1941-06-24
1941-06-25
1941-06-27
1941-06-28
1941-06-29
1941-06-30
1941-07-04
1941-07-05
1941-07-16
1941-07-17
1941-07-20
1941-07-21
1941-08-05
1941-08-06
1941-08-08
1941-08-09
1941-08-12
1941-08-13
1941-08-29
1941-08-30
1941-09-02
1941-09-03
Title
A name given to the resource
Stephen Dawson's pilot's flying log book. One
14 OTU
25 OTU
50 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Flying Training School
Hampden
Initial Training Wing
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Finningley
RAF Hatfield
RAF Lindholme
RAF Little Rissington
RAF St Athan
RAF Swanton Morley
RAF Swinderby
RAF Upwood
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/380/6891/MHattersleyCR40699-160506-030001.2.pdf
285015105f751b1a073cff037b679249
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
Hattersley, Peter
Peter Hattersley
C R Hattersley
Charles Raymond Hattersley
Description
An account of the resource
77 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Charles Raymond Hattersley DFC (1914-1948, 800429, 40699 Royal Air Force). Peter Hattersley served in the Royal Engineers between 1930 and 1935 but enlisted in the RAF in 1936. He trained as a pilot and flew with 106, 44 and 199 Squadrons. He completed 32 operations with 44 Squadron but had to force land his Wellington in France on his first operation with 199 Squadron in December 1942. He became a prisoner of war. He married Miss Kathleen Hattersley nee Croft after the war. The collection contains his logbook, notebooks, service material, his decorations and items of memorabilia in a tin box and 39 photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Charles William Hattersley 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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-06
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hattersley, CR
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 document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HATTERSLEY
SERVICE DIARY
ROYAL AIR FORCE
LARGE NOTE BOOK
[page break]
[blank page]
[page break]
[underlined] 27TH. LONDON BTN R.E. (TA)
(London Elec. Engineers)
Nov 1930 – Dec 1935
[bracketed] Sapper L/Cpl Cpl [/bracketed] 306 Coy.
Lewis Sun. Sound Locator. Driver M.T.
[page break]
[underlined] 600 (CITY OF LONDON) B. SQDN AAF [/underlined]
Feb 1936 – Mch 1937
[inserted] ACH [/inserted]
AC.2 W/OP T.21 & TF. T.R.9.D.
Hant (passenger) 6 hrs
[page break]
[underlined] R.A.F.V.R. [/underlined]
Mch 30th 1937 – 3rd Apl 1938
Sgt.
[bracketed] Blackburn B.2 Hant (T) Audax [/bracketed] Flying Training Flt Hanworth Aerodrome
Assessment – above average pilot.
[page break]
[underlined] RA.F.
READING CIVIL SCHOOL
4th April 1938 – 7/5/38
MilesHawk Trainer & Magister
UXBRIDGE
7/5/38 – 21/5/38
NO 6 F.T.S.
Netheravon 21/5/38 – 4/9/38
L. Rissington 4/9/38 – 17/12/38
Audax & Hart (T)
Attachments.
NO.1 A.T.C. CATFOSS
31/10/38 – 4/12/38
Assessment – above average pilot
[page break]
S. of AN. MANSTON
2/1/39 – 11/3/39
Anson (1st & 2nd Navigator)
Obtained 2nd cl. Nav ticker (R.A.F.)
106 (B) SQDN. THORNABY (“B” flt)
11/3/39 –
Regarded as P.O. 7/3/39
Fairy [underlined] Battles [/underlined]
Dual .35 mins to solo
Avro [underlined] Ansons [/underlined]
Dual 1 1/2 hrs to solo
Handley Page [underlined] Hampdens [/underlined]
Dual 1 1/2 hrs to solo
July assessment – Pilot – average Navigator – above average
[page break]
[duplicated bookmark]
[page break]
[underlined] 106 Sqdn (contd) [/underlined]
Made Sqdn Signals Officer abt 10/7/39 (Blackpool)
19/8/39. Squadron moved to Armament Training Camp Evanton
4/9/39 Squadron moved to Cottesmore
6/10/39 Squadron moved to Finningley.
10-11-39 Made Regional Control Officer [deleted] 10-11-39 [/deleted]
(& Sigs. Officer)
[bracketed] 1/1/40 26/1/40 [/bracketed] Astro Course at St Athan
28/1/40 Finningley made Sqdn. Navigation Officer.
[photograph of a Handley Page Hampden aircraft]
[page break]
[underlined] 44 Sqdn. Waddington [/underlined]
15/6/40
Posted to 44 Sqdn ‘B’ flt.
17/5/40 1st Operational flight [underlined] over Germany [/underlined]
Hamburg 4 x 500 lb G.P. bombs
Won D.F.C. (& navigator DFM). Crew [bracketed] Windle Atkinson Edmunds [/bracketed]
L.4154 (Q)
14/9/40 Posted to SHQ. & act. Flight Lieutenant
[inserted two newspaper cuttings]
[indecipherable text]
[underlined] 31 ANS [/underlined] (cont)
19/12/41 No 17 Co. ends. [underlined] Passed![/underlined]
19-26/12 Leave
[deleted] 26/12 [/deleted] 26-29/12 Lectures to SFTSs in Ontario
29-31/12 Party in Royal York – Toronto.
[boxed note 1/1/42 Mention in Dispatches {sic] (Ron. Gayette)]
31-6/1/42 Party in [indecipherable] Royal – Montreal.
6/1 – 27/1 Bermuda
27/1 – 28/1 Elizabeth City. N.C.
28/1 – 8/2 Bermuda
[collective explanatory note for period 8-9/2 to 12/2 – Posted 1 Group HQ.]
8-9/2 – Flying Atlantic
9/2 [deleted] [indecipherable] [/deleted] Stranraer
10/2 [two indecipherable words]
12/2 Leave
18/2 Reporting 1 Gp
[underlined] 1 Gp HQ Bawtry [/underlined]
8/2/42 Posted [inserted] (supernumary pending posting to S/L post G.N.O.). [/inserted]
18/2/42 Reported for Nav duties
1/3/42 Granted acting rank of Squadron Leader. – G.N.O. 1 group
7/11/42. Posted to BLYTON to form and command No. 199 Sqdn Granted acting rank of WING COMMANDER.
9/12/42 Missing. France.
12/12/42 Captured P.O.W until 2/5/45.
1/1/43 Mentioned in Despatches (Jan. honours list.)
2/5/45 Released near Lübeck
7/5/45 Arrived England (Wing)
8/5/45 Cosford
9/5/45 Leave until 22/6/45
1/6/45 Applied for P.C.
[page break]
22/6/45 Cosford
23/6/45 Medical = A1B.
23/6/45 – 9/7/45 Leave
10/7/45 Reported 7. F.I.S. Upavon for refresher fly course.
[inserted] 24/7/45 Applied for 18 months postponement of release. [/inserted]
7/8/45 Posted to HQ 43 Group for S.P.S.O. duties. [inserted] as CO Unit. [/inserted] w.ef. 17/8/46 [/inserted]
26/3/46 A.M. P’gram advising will be offered E.S. Comm.
28/3/46 Signalled AM from 43 Gp provisionally accepts.
1/4/46 Posted to AM [inserted] D of Nav [/inserted] as NAV. P.I. retaining acting rank.
Aug ’46 Gazetted Permanent Commission
20/3/47 Posted to HQTC for disposal (Sfy) [indecipherable word]
8/4/47 Posted to 1382 T.C.U. on no35 Course. Passed
15/8/47 Posted Syerston further T.C. course passed
17/9/47 Trip to India flying Dakotas until Oct. 2 [underlined]nd[/underlined]
10/10/47 Posted Abingdon Deputy o/c Flying Wing
2/12/47 Posted Oakington Senior Nav officer & Dep. o/C F.W.
29/6/48 Jun & July 48 Berlin Airlift
24/9/48 Died at RAF Oakington.
[page break]
[blank page]
[page break]
Ode to the skies [underlined] – Up There. [/underlined]
Up there we speed amongst the clouds, Whose billowing shrouds absorb the sounds Emitted with the smoke & flame, From our steed – the aeroplane.
Up there we travel in between Great towering banks of pure white screen. Truly – Castles in the Air, Whose beauty takes your breath, - up there.
Up there we sit and let our gaze Wander in a cloudy maze, And think ’tis shame that Beauty reigns – But seen by us, in aeroplanes
Up there we roam in sunlit sky, A world apart for those who fly. Whilst men upon the surface lurk In cold November’s fog and murk.
Up there unfolds the beauteous night, The moon in all her glorious might, The stars undimmed by Autumns mist, The distant hills by sunset kissed.
[page break]
Up there and now the early dawn Begins to herald in the morn. Long ‘ere earthly man’s aware The rays are lighting us, - up there
[underlined] Finningley Nov 1939 [/underlined]
[page break]
[underlined] To my beloved Sally [/underlined]
Sweet Sally how I miss your loving charm, The feel of you, your hand upon my arm; Your sweet warm breath upon my eager lips; The lovely imperfection of your hips.
Dear Sally how I love your flaxen hair; The breath of Spring about you everywhere. The soft light melting on your smooth white skin, The gentle perfume of your lovely skin.
Hey Sally I can’t say how much I miss The exquisite trembling of your tender kiss; The thrill of sensing your dear lips on mine, My body pressed into the warmth of thine.
Fair Sally how I love your eyes to show That feeling of such tenderness I know; That lovliness [sic] those perfect lids conceal, But opened such a wealth of charm reveal.
Sweet Sally within those slender arms entwined Is our love’s great [indecipherable word] defined. Such moments in their sweet embrace exist, I could not, - if I wanted to, resist.
[page break]
Oh Sally that we two should ever part Not always hand in hand and heart to heart, That this should happen darling, never fear, I’ll fight the very Gods to keep you near.
- Finningley Dec. 1939.
[page break]
[underlined] To – a Love, - a requeim [sic] [/underlined]
We met, we saw, we noticed, In times of strain, of strife. Our paths ran close together, Sweet moment in a life. Tis not for me to wonder Why paths should so converge, And enter realms of beauty Then suddenly emerge.
Nor ‘tis for me to question The fancies of the Fates, Who play their human playthings Behind their golden gates. But rather should I show my thanks For moments far too rare, For seconds in this passing hour Too lovely to compare.
‘Tis better for to love and lose, Than never know that bliss, That height to which you raised me In the heaven of your kiss. And so I thank thee Sally, For moments we embraced, And look towards the future Which can better now be faced.
[page break]
For though our paths diverge again, That fleeting instant showed, A world of such complexity, - Of magic yet untold; A world if I’d not known thee Would still be dull and bare, But having met thee dearest I’ll so much better fare.
And so into a memory So sweet, your presence parts, But say not that we wasted Those hours near our hearts. For memories we have Dear, That I’d not give away, For all the worlds sweet treasures Could never mine repay.
Finningley. March. 1940.
[page break]
[underlined] To Ann. [/underlined]
I saw you vaguely one vague day Not thinking that again we’d meet, But I felt your impression stay, - Oh Ann, - I found you very sweet.
I found beneath your face of calm, Shown with bold trust and openly, - A world of gay and subtle charm, Oh Ann, - how much I’d give for thee.
I write and see your face appear – You’re in my thoughts so constantly, Your voice in every sound I hear, Oh Ann, - I pray thee smile on me. –
Cottesmore, June 1941
[page break]
[underlined] Ode to an invitation [/underlined]
Come, give me your lips fair Pamela, give me your lips, Let their ripeness be mine fair Pamela, - so sweetly mine. Keep not their fair sweet freshness yourself Keep not their joy and fragrant wealth, - Give me your lips fair Pamela, - so sweetly thine.
Come, give me your hand sweet Pamela, give me your hand, Place its’ smallness in mine fair Pamela, sweetly in mine. Hold not its’ sweetness in solitude Hold not its’ fairness and beautytude [sic], - Give me your hand sweet Pamela, give me your hand.
Come, give me your self fair Pamela, give me your self, To love and to hold sweet Pamela, to hold and to love. Keep not your purity obscure, Keep [deleted] [indecipherable] [/deleted] your goddesslike [sic] allure – But give me your Self fair Pamela, give me your Self
Bawtry [underlined] June 1942 [/underlined]
[page break]
[underlined] To Kay, as Love appeared. [/underlined]
In all Her bountiful and queenly grace arrayed Views from high Olympus Earthwards strayed, And gave Her blessing. Thus enchanted she Did bid me kneel and pledge my faith to thee.
Uncalled unthought [sic] of, unexpected came That sweet sensation; with a name So often lipped unmeaningly [sic], yet far above All other words, - sweet Love.
Undream’d [sic] of, unexpected happiness Encompassed me, as I perceived that this Ungiven [sic] heart could err no more, Now given to my Katherine’s tender care.
Sagan, August 1943
[page break]
[underlined] To Kay. [/underlined]
Calm moments give to golden thoughts, from thoughts to reverie On untold things in days to come, With Thou and me in harmony.
Such thoughts make life seem beautiful, And seeming, therefore is. What need of other wishes, What more achieve than this?
Sweet Kay, what need to pen these words When all to this succumbs, - Dear when I shall have won thee Life itself a poem becomes.
Sagan, February 1944
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
Peter Hattersley's Service Diary
Description
An account of the resource
A service diary written by Peter Hattersley covering the period from November 1930 to 24 September 1948.Initially he served in the Royal Engineers but in February 1936 he joined the RAF. It covers his training and operations including a newspaper cutting of the award of a Distinguished Flying Cross in 1940. There are poems written before and during his time as a POW.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Peter Hattersley
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One diary
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text. Diary
Text. Poetry
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MHattersleyCR40699-160506-03
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
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.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Poland
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Kent
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Rutland
England--Shropshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
Poland--Żagań
Scotland--Ross and Cromarty
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
Steve Christian
David Bloomfield
1 Group
106 Squadron
44 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
arts and crafts
Battle
C-47
Distinguished Flying Cross
Hampden
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Abingdon
RAF Bawtry
RAF Blyton
RAF Catfoss
RAF Cosford
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Evanton
RAF Finningley
RAF Little Rissington
RAF Manston
RAF Netheravon
RAF Oakington
RAF St Athan
RAF Syerston
RAF Thornaby
RAF Uxbridge
RAF Waddington
Stalag Luft 3
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/380/7012/LHattersleyCR40699v1.1.pdf
099f001bc26b394fc0440d57cacdb995
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
Hattersley, Peter
Peter Hattersley
C R Hattersley
Charles Raymond Hattersley
Description
An account of the resource
77 items. The collection concerns Wing Commander Charles Raymond Hattersley DFC (1914-1948, 800429, 40699 Royal Air Force). Peter Hattersley served in the Royal Engineers between 1930 and 1935 but enlisted in the RAF in 1936. He trained as a pilot and flew with 106, 44 and 199 Squadrons. He completed 32 operations with 44 Squadron but had to force land his Wellington in France on his first operation with 199 Squadron in December 1942. He became a prisoner of war. He married Miss Kathleen Hattersley nee Croft after the war. The collection contains his logbook, notebooks, service material, his decorations and items of memorabilia in a tin box and 39 photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Charles William Hattersley 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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-06
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hattersley, CR
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/.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Bermuda Islands
Canada
France
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Berkshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Kent
England--Gloucestershire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Middlesex
England--Norfolk
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Rutland
England--Shropshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
Ontario
Scotland--Ross and Cromarty
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Belgium--Liège
France--Soissons
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dessau (Dessau)
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Leuna
Germany--Lingen (Lower Saxony)
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Sylt
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
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
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
Title
A name given to the resource
Peter Hattersley's pilot's flying log book
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
LHattersleyCR40699v1
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1945
1946
1947
1948
1940-05-17
1940-05-18
1940-05-19
1940-05-20
1940-05-23
1940-05-24
1940-05-25
1940-05-26
1940-05-27
1940-05-28
1940-06-01
1940-06-02
1940-06-03
1940-06-04
1940-06-07
1940-06-08
1940-06-09
1940-06-10
1940-06-11
1940-06-12
1940-06-20
1940-06-21
1940-06-25
1940-06-26
1940-07-01
1940-07-02
1940-07-05
1940-07-06
1940-07-09
1940-07-10
1940-07-20
1940-07-21
1940-07-22
1940-07-23
1940-07-25
1940-07-26
1940-07-28
1940-07-29
1940-07-31
1940-08-01
1940-08-03
1940-08-04
1940-08-07
1940-08-08
1940-08-11
1940-08-12
1940-08-13
1940-08-14
1940-08-16
1940-08-17
1940-08-21
1940-08-22
1940-08-25
1940-08-26
1940-08-28
1940-08-29
1940-08-31
1940-09-01
1940-09-03
1940-09-04
1940-09-06
1940-09-07
1940-09-08
1940-09-09
1942-12-09
1942-12-10
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Pilot's log book for Wing Commander Peter Hattersley, covering the period 10 April 1937 to 24 September 1948. It details his flying training, operations flown and other flying duties. He was stationed at Hanworth Park, RAF Reading, RAF Netheravon, RAF Little Rissington, RAF Catfoss, RAF Manston, RAF Thornaby, RAF Evanton, RAF Cottesmore, RAF Finningley, RAF St. Athan, RAF Waddington, RCAF Port Albert, Darrels Island-Bermuda, RAF Bawtry, RAF Blyton, RAF Upavon, RAF Shawbury, RAF Bircham Newton, RAF Wymeswold, RAF Syerston, RAF Oakington, RAF Cosford, RAF Stanmore and RAF Abingdon. Aircraft Flown in were, Blackburn B2, Hart, Audax, Mile Hawk, Magister, Battle I, Anson, Hampden, Tiger Moth, Lysander, Catalina, Wellington, Oxford II, Hudson, Harvard IIb, Proctor and Dakota. He flew a total of 32 night operations in Hampdens with 44 Squadron from RAF Waddington, and one operation with 199 Squadron. Took part in Berlin Airlift (Operation Plainfare).Targets in Belgium, France, and Germany were Hannover, Hamburg, Lingan, Rhine, Leige, Keil, Frankfurt, Duisberg, Soisson, Rhur, Sylt, Dessau, Leuna, Magdeburg, Berlin and Munster. Some navigation logs and correspondence concerning the award of his Distinguished Flying Cross are included in his log book. He became a POW in late 1942.
106 Squadron
14 OTU
199 Squadron
44 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Battle
bombing
C-47
Catalina
Distinguished Flying Cross
Flying Training School
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
Hampden
Harvard
Hudson
Lysander
Magister
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
Proctor
RAF Abingdon
RAF Bawtry
RAF Bircham Newton
RAF Blyton
RAF Catfoss
RAF Cosford
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Evanton
RAF Finningley
RAF Little Rissington
RAF Manston
RAF Netheravon
RAF Oakington
RAF Shawbury
RAF St Athan
RAF Syerston
RAF Thornaby
RAF Upavon
RAF Waddington
RAF Wymeswold
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/407/7072/MAnsellHT1893553-160730-04.2.pdf
7da4110eec9ff2c3420a2ed45c0420d7
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
Ansell, Henry
Henry Ansell
H T Ansell
Description
An account of the resource
28 items. The collection concerns Sergeant Henry Thomas Ansell, DFM (b. 1925, 1893553 Royal Air Force) and contains his logbook, his release book, a school report, two German language documents and several photographs, his medals and other items. Henry Ansell served as a flight engineer with 61 Squadron and 83 Squadron Pathfinders.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Vicki Ansell and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-30
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
Ansell, HT
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
School Report Book of Henry Ansell
Description
An account of the resource
A record of Henry Ansell's time at Plaistow Secondary School, West Ham from 15th September 1936 to 25th July 1940. Includes marks for each subject, attendance, height and weight.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Plaistow Secondary School
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1940-07-25
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One printed book with handwritten annotations
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
MAnsellHT1893553-160730-04
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
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.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/319/8293/MRaettigDW1136657-160623-21.2.pdf
cb39913e4a36e22fa7acefbd6a0bc0f0
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
Raettig, Dennis
Dennis William Raettig
Dennis W Raettig
D W Raettig
D Raettig
Description
An account of the resource
72 items. The collection concerns the wartime service of Leading Aircraftman Dennis William Raettig (b. 1920, 1136657 Royal Air Force). Joining the Royal Air Force reserve in 1941 he trained as a flight mechanic (Engines) before being posted to 104 Squadron (Wellingtons) at RAF Driffield. This squadron number was later changed to 158 Squadron flying Halifax at RAF East Moor, followed by moves to RAF Rufford and Lisset. The collection consists of a memoir, correspondence with family and acquaintances, family history, service and personal documentation, lucky charms,personal items, cap, boots, squadron tie, research on bombing in Hull as well as photographs of air and ground crew and aircraft. It also includes an oral history interview with Joan Raettig (Dennis Raettig's wife).
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Sue Burn 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
2016-06-23
2016-07-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Raettig, DW
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
Conditions of entry and service in the pilot section of the Royal Air Force reserve
Description
An account of the resource
Provides notes for information of candidates including age limits, nationality, education, flying experience, classes ineligible, selection and medical, period of engagement, rank, liabilities, foreign powers, discharge, training, financial, travel, uniform, pensions, insurance applications and entry into regular Air Force.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1939
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Cover and nine page printed booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MRaettigDW1136657-160623-21
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
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
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. Air Ministry
aircrew
military service conditions
pilot
recruitment
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/319/8294/MRaettigDW1136657-160623-22.1.pdf
ed55a12d87a11c37fabdd52edcf65b3a
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
Raettig, Dennis
Dennis William Raettig
Dennis W Raettig
D W Raettig
D Raettig
Description
An account of the resource
72 items. The collection concerns the wartime service of Leading Aircraftman Dennis William Raettig (b. 1920, 1136657 Royal Air Force). Joining the Royal Air Force reserve in 1941 he trained as a flight mechanic (Engines) before being posted to 104 Squadron (Wellingtons) at RAF Driffield. This squadron number was later changed to 158 Squadron flying Halifax at RAF East Moor, followed by moves to RAF Rufford and Lisset. The collection consists of a memoir, correspondence with family and acquaintances, family history, service and personal documentation, lucky charms,personal items, cap, boots, squadron tie, research on bombing in Hull as well as photographs of air and ground crew and aircraft. It also includes an oral history interview with Joan Raettig (Dennis Raettig's wife).
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Sue Burn 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
2016-06-23
2016-07-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Raettig, DW
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 volunteer reserve (wireless operator/air gunner section) notes for the information of candidates
Description
An account of the resource
Information for candidates including age limits, nationality, education, classes ineligible, residence in UK, serving in other branches, selection and medical, period of engagement, rank, liabilities, service with foreign power, discharge, training, discipline, financial, travelling, uniform, pension, disabilities, insurance, applications and entry to regular Air Force.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1939-01
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Eight page printed booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MRaettigDW1136657-160623-22
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
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
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. Air Ministry
aircrew
military service conditions
recruitment
training
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/464/8346/AAngusK160608.2.mp3
6784c8dca08ace40b9ddb9bbbf00dc27
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
Angus, Kenneth
K Angus
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Angus, K
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Kenneth Angus.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IL. It’s the 8th of June roughly ten past two in the afternoon I’m Ian Locker and I am interviewing Kenneth Angus in his home in Elloughton near Hull. We are going to talk mainly about Ken’s Brother.John Henry who was in Bomber Command and was sadly killed at the age of twenty.
IL. Ken tell us a little bit about your early life and your Brothers early life.
KA.Well I was either eleven or twelve when the war started, my Brother was in in the volunteer, the RAF Volunteer Reserve and so was my Father. My Father was in the Air Force as well cause he was in. I never knew what he did to be quite honest I never saw him for five years all the time the war was on. He was at Cranwell actually, what he did I have no idea. He actually was in the First World War and he was wounded and came back, went back again. He was wounded again and he came back, actually came to Hull came to Withernsea actually and married my Mother. That was, when he came out of the Army there were no jobs, so he joined the Air Force and he was in, he is a very very close man. He wouldn’t tell about his experiences. A lot of this I didn’t know I only found out from my Sister. Anyway the both of them, my Brother and my Father were in the Volunteer Reserve, just before, well 1939 soon as War was declared Harry went into [Interupted by IL]
IL. So how did your Brother get involved with the Volunteer Reserve.
KA. I have no idea.
IL. I see.
KA. Actually my Father, I think it was extra money to be quite honest with you, It’s like the Territorial’s, you join. I used to know people in the Territorial’s and they just joined for the extra cash. As far as I know but my Father was such a close person.He never discussed his home life, as I say at the beginning of the war, well I’ll show you a photo in a minute, he was a Sergeant. Yeah em a Sergeant or something, he had three stripes anyway, I only ever saw him once, when I was stationed, when I joined the Army I went to Babington in Dorset and from there I went to Farnborough, just outside Farnborough. We had tanks stationed at the you know Farnborough Airport, De Havillands actually. He was coming there for something to do with the Air Force he said I’ll meet you there we will have some lunch and that’s it, the only time I ever saw him in five years. Eh we weren’t really close, my eldest Brother Harry was more close to the kids, you see there was six of us we were err you know a huge family. I remember, I do remember him actually because when he was killed I was evacuated. When my Mother told me at that time it didn’t register it em registers now but it didn’t register at that time. My Mother was devastated obviously, when em he went in.I don’t know a great deal about it, as soon as the war started I was off. I went to place near Helmsley and stayed there about two years I think it was and eh. I was away when he was killed, my Mother wrote to me and told me it didn’t register at all really and that was it. Anyway my Father he did his full time he did the war, full time he was there and em, we were em. It’s such a long time ago its very difficult to remember. When I was evacuated I went on a farm it was beaut. It was really good I was with two old, and old couple and they were brilliant they were the Salt of the Earth. Didn’t smoke, didn’t have electricity, we used to read by candle light, no hot water and yet we lived off the fat of the land you might say because he was a Farmer. I used to help him em I used to do everything virtually and drive a tractor and all sorts of things. I stayed there, would be about a couple of years. In the meantime my Mother was, my Mother stayed in Hull and then we were bombed, we got an incendiary bomb through the back porch, well through the house. It came through the roof, set fire to the house and my Mother had to move.
IL. So where about were you living in Hull at this time?
KA.In Jallen Street off Holderness Road. And eh I remember as I say lots of it’s very hazy. I was looking after myself actually I’ve always looked after myself, always been independent right from day one and I think that all the family has actually. Anyway, we, I went there and when my Mother, my Mother went to Wombwell, she had a friend, he was on the Council. He found her a house in Wombwell, it was just outside Wombwell. Eh she went there‘cause I was on the Farm you see. Anyway after about a couple of years my Mother said, she came back to Hull again so I came, I left the Farm and I went back to Hull with her and I stayed there. We were in the thick of the, you see I don’t remember a real lot. I do remember one thing and it’s vivid. They dropped a stick of Bombs down Holderness Road and I tell you exactly where they dropped them because I went out the next day to see the holes in the ground. They were bloody awful a huge hole, they dropped one, you won’t know it. There was a cinema called Savoy on Holderness Road they dropped one just on the main road there. They dropped one further down the er em, the main road, I forget what they call it. They dropped one there, there was a Bank on the corner, they dropped one there. They dropped one on the corner of Vies Park and three big holes, I’ve never seen holes like it to be quite honest.
IL.So where were you when these bombs were falling?
KA. We were in a shelter.[laugh].
IL. Where did you shelter in Hull, was it in your garden ?
KA. You know I can’t remember, I just can’t remember. We had a shelter in the garden in Jallen Street. We were moved around, my Mother moved around two or three times. She went from Jallen Street to eh a house, oh, somewhere near Nornabelle Street which is further up the road. Quite honestly a lot of this is very hazy it was seventy years ago. Anyway there are certain things stick in my mind once when they dropped the bombs, I was cured. You know they didn’t frighten me. I wasn’t really as far as I know I just went, I went to have a look at the holes. Of course all I saw was pipes and gas pipes and water pipes and sewage mains oh. As I say another time, another, I remember a Heinkel came over, I watched it come over it was so low I could see the Pilot, we were waving to him actually [laugh] with two fingers. He came over and I could actually see him flying the plane. He came over ever so low and behind him was a Spitfire and he chased him and they shot him down. The Pilot we heard, the Pilot waited until he got out of the built up area and he shot him down, I don’t know what happened after that. But em those are the two memories in my.
IL. Did anybody, I suppose there were civilian casualties, did anybody you know get hurt or killed?
KA. No funnily enough there might have been but I wasn’t family orientated in those days. To be quite honest it was like living a dream, I was on my own, I was evacuated on my own, I looked after myself. My Mother used to write to me occasionally, I never saw my Father. My Mother used to write whenever she could but you see having said that, there was my younger Brother and my younger Sister they were evacuated as well and to be quite honest I don’t really know where they went. I know now but I didn’t then. Because it was just like living a dream, it happened a long time ago and em. Anyway we em, what happened eh what actually, I can remember coming back to Jallen Street when they did the repairs and we moved back in.
IL. Was that during the War?
KA.Yeah, this was during the War 1943/44 and em, I left school actually when I was at Helmsley I was at Wombwell School,I was fourteen then I left school then. I remember the day I left school I went to work in an office a Colliery Office, Mitchell Main Colliery and I worked there, I was an Office Boy. Funnily enough I got on with the Agent who was the Managing Director,he was the Big White Chief. He took a shine to me funnily enough. He was a real, he was a pig actually to everybody else. You went down the Mine and they used to say Thornhills coming cause he used to have on his hat, instead of having just an ordinary lantern he used to have a beam so that when they were down the mine they could see when he was coming. Thornhills on his way, but you know, funnily enough he took a shine to me for some reason, I don’t know why. I had to go and get his sandwiches and take his briefcase to his car. I once took his bloody keys, he had a Jaguar, I once took his keys, I took his briefcase to his car, locked the car put the keys in my pocket, went home. Of course, he couldn’t get home, anyway I thought “what do I do”” I found the keys and thought “what do I do?” I could lie and tell him I left them on his desk or I could tell the truth. Anyway I thought “he knows,I know he knows.” Because what I did before he came in I put his keys on his desk you see. He said “where were my keys last night?” I said “in my pocket” He said “it’s a good job you said that because if you had said anything else you would have been through that door” “Now then” he said what’s you punishment?” I said, well I was only a lad, I was only fourteen, fourteen and a half something like that, I said “down to you” He had a big board he used to do his drawings on. He said “bend over that bench” Whack. He said “there you are forget it now” Later on he said “Would you like to go to Night School? I will pay your fees and your books, I will pay for everything and you take shorthand typing and book keeping” so I said “ok”and I went and I went to night school and I took this on.After that we left, I just left and I can’t remember leaving. Certain incidents that live in your mind, we had Mitchell Main, Dalfield Main, Dalfield Main was a subsidiary of Mitchell Main and the Manager at Dalfield Main, I don’t know. I knew him but I didn’t know anything about him. Anyway Thornhill said to me this day “I want you to take this letter to Mr what ever his name was and hand it to him personally, don’t give it to anyone else, give it to him personally.” So I thought “right” so I goes down, knocks on his door, his wife comes to the door, I say is “Mr so and so in?” “Oh he is still in bed” So I say “I’ve got to give him this letter personally” so she says “you had better come in then” So I handed it to him, it was his notice, it were unbelievable.
IL. Industrial relations would be.
KA. It were funny, I didn’t understand what was going on. But funnily he was squat thick set, he was a terror. People were frightened of him, really frightened of him and I wasn’t, I was in awe of him probably, but he didn’t frighten me. And em, he had a streak, I don’t know what it was, there was nothing funny about him ere m but he was. Anyway in the end my Mother came back to Hull and I followed her and I came back to Hull you see. This was during the war, they dropped the, when I was at home they dropped the bombs. That was my, but its six, it’s seventy years ago which is a long time to remember, but things do stick in your mind.
IL. Yes and I suppose its, I don’t know, most people don’t have much danger in their lives.
KA. To be quite honest I never thought of danger, it never bothered me. When I was on the farm there was a couple called Joe Wood and his wife was a reclusive. She wouldn’t answer the door to anyone, she wouldn’t go to the door. She was the kindest person you ever met and yet she wouldn’t talk to people, she used to, she used to call me Kenniff, Kenniff, but she was kindness itself. Both of them were but they were very insular people you know, never went into the village. I used to I, so I joined the choir, I was in the choir there actually and things like that.
IL. In Helmsley?
KA. Yes it was in Oswaldkirk, its next to Ampleforth, we used to go to Ampleforth School, not Ample, not College because when people say where were you educated, I say Ampleforth [laugh] which is, one was the village school, one was the top ranking, it were Roman Catholic College, yeah. We used to go there because we used to get an invite to go beagling from the College. We used to take the dogs out and go after hares and things like that. Oh no, it was a life, a secular life, I looked after myself I bought my own clothes, I did everything, I made. I used to catch rabbits, I’d sell them at the Market, Helmsley Market em, I used to make, I used to sell them, two for a shilling and probably about three or four pairs of rabbits and sell them. I used to buy Wellingtons, trousers things like that. You know I never saw any of my family at all, I was on my own and I have always been like that. I’ve been like that ever since, you get like that don’t you yeah, but it seems you know. Now my Father, the whole Family, my Brothers died, my eldest Sisters dead and my Brother above me died last year. He was in the Air Force he was in Bomber Command as well and there is em me. No then there is my younger Brother he died he was in the Military Police the Red Caps and there is only me left. My Sister who was the youngest Joan, there is only the two of us left out of six of us, you know. It’s sad really, I’ve had a charmed life actually [laugh] when you think about it, you know it’s em. But eh, but we, you see my Father, he never spoke about his childhood, he never spoke about his Mother and Father, he was brought up by his eh, eh, Grandma. His Grandma married three times. His Grandma married an alcoholic, he also married someone with a lot of money and somebody else I don’t know but he never spoke about it. We didn’t know eh, my Grandma Waddington she was filthy rich I’d say, she left a fortune. She left it to my sist my Father’s step Sister. Her Husband was the, the Daughter was the offshoot of the one she married. My Father got, we got a thousand pound when she died and my Grandma got thirty two thousand, eh aunty Nellie got thirty two thousand. You equate that seventy years ago it was about half a million quid, most probably more than that then. But, em I know we got, we got a thousand and I’ll never, we sat round the table and it came in white five pound notes, we got cash, white five pound notes in a rolls,with plastic bands on and we passed it round [laugh]. That’s when we bought Jallen Street, my Father bought Jallen Street, that was five hundred quid, the house was five hundred quid. Nice house as well, beautiful house. Eh you know my Fathers dead now and my Mothers dead. But em he was very em, very secular, he he he wouldn’t speak, he never spoke about his army career. He never told us what he did in the Air Force em. He never said anything you know, the only information I have is from the youngest Sister,‘cause Joan is the youngest. She was the Darling of the Family and my Father sort of doted on her a little bit more. I used to get my back side kicked [laugh] but he was, funnily enough towards the end of his life he did change. He changed eh, when I first, when my first Wife eh, we were married when I was twenty two and my first wife died when I was forty and eh I met Beryl and we have been married now forty odd years. But eh, Beryl and my Father got on like a house on fire. I think my Father was a little bit eh, a little bit upper class more than my Mother. My Mother was Hessle Road you might say and my Father was eh eh, he had a Class about him funny how he had a class about him eh, and you talk to him and he got on with Beryl very well, Beryl said he was an unreal chap. I remember him when he was a bloody old tyrant, you know. But this is it he had six kids, whither, I don’t know whither I don’t know if it was the marriage, if he was happy, I don’t think he was that happy to be quite honest. Eh my Mother went her own way and my Father went his own way and I just have a feeling em, that my Grandma Waddington was em em, she had two cars actually, the days nobody had cars and she had two. Two Rovers, and she used to come and visit us, not very often, we used, when she was good she used to, you know fox furs and all every thing else and flaunting, when she went out we used to stand there, she used to give us half a crown. I suppose it was alright in these days, no I eh eh you as I say my Father, he never. I’ve a feeling my Father I don’t know, was he illegitimate, there was something he never spoke about at all until his last, till he was about seventy, seventy five. Then he opened up to my Sister, yeah my younger Sister and she knows more about him than I do. The information I have I got it only from Joan. It’s funny. Anyway.
IL.A different generation.
KA. That’s our war you might say.
IL. Ok what about your Brother Harry then?
KA. Well Harry as I say he was called up straight away, in fact I’ve got the details here, I’ve got the photographs. We didn’t have photographs, we didn’t have cameras we weren’t allowed cameras in those days and em yes, John Henry Angus aged twenty, he was at RAF Waddington, he died 17th of the ninth, 1940 his service number was 751690 he was in 44 Squadron, em eh. He got three war medals, he got Aircrew Europe, War Medal and 1945. He was only in as I say he died in 1940, 1939 the war started in, he would only have been in the Service a year when he trained and was flying. He was shot down over Burcht just outside Antwerp and think he was bombing barges actually. They were building barges to invade in these days, the Operation Sea Lion. I think it was something like that, and they were building barges at Antwerp and I think that is what he was bombing. That is what I have heard, he was in a Hampden, MK1 Hampden a KM MK1 Hampden series number P2121. I got all this off the Internet. But that’s em, so basically he was only in the Air Force and he trained and he was Aircrew.
IT. What did he do, what was he in the aeroplane?
KA. He was eh, no then, I think he was a WOPAG, Wireless Operator Air Gunner. I’m not sure about that, I struggle with a Master Signaller. That was the Brother [garbled] he was in the war as well. When we were in Wombwell he went down the mines actually. He didn’t get, he didn’t get an option as soon as he was sixteen he went down the mines and he went down the mines for two years.Then when he came out the mines, when we came back to Hull. He couldn’t go down the mines then, he joined the Air Force and he was in the Air Force all his life he, he, started off, he was in Bomber Command and what I can gather he was bombing Germany. When the war finished he was on the Berlin Airlift, humping coal. He was flying coal backwards and forwards. He then went in, well when Bomber Command finished he went into Transport Command and then as I say he was on the Berlin Airlift. He has had a chequered career, fantastic career. He went to Australia when they set the Atom Bomb off he took the animals, took some of the monkeys out there when they exploded the Atom Bomb. He was in India when they petitioned Pakistan. He was flying people backwards and forwards, he was there for three years I think. Then he went to Cyprus, he was in Cyprus flying all over the place. Then he went to Benson where the Queens Flight was and he was on the Queens Flight he was eh, Master Signaller a [garbled] he was telling me they have offered me a Commission and I have worked it out I get more money being a Master Signaller than I do being a Flight Lieutenant. So he said I don’t want it I will stay as I am and he stayed as a Master Signaller right through his career. He actually, Oh then he went to Leuchars in Scotland he was on Helicopters. He was at Driffield on Thor Missiles when the Missile Base was there. What else did he do, oh he’s been to Sweden he’s been to America he’s been all over. Then when he came out of, when he retired, I mean this is going back, he was in the Air Force thirty odd years. When he retired he joined Dan Air, he went to Dan Air and Dan Air was taken over by British Airways. So when he was, when he, when he retired when he finished completely he got a pension from British Airways. He was stationed, actually it was, it was never, again. It just shows you how sick our family is, he had six children or five or six or five I think, I’ve never seen any of them because they were all born abroad. Two was born in Cyprus one was born in India I think it was. [garbled] peculiar life, well not a peculiar life, he was stationed at, well he was stationed at Abingdon and em, he stayed there. Well he was in the Air Force right until he retired out the Air Force and then he joined Dan Air.
IL. Was he in Abingdon during the War or was this subsequent to the War?
KA. No I don’t know where he was when he was actually bombing I don’t know. We weren’t really in contact with each other then. I know he was at Benson because when I came back to Hull, I went on to, I started driving, transport. I started of my career in transport I used to go there I used to go to Benson stay the night and I used to do London, I used to go to London backwards and forwards. So I used to go to Benson, stay there the night, go onto London and come back. Eh as I say, this is, this is when the Atom Bomb was exploded because he said, he said come on we will have a walk around the airfield and there were Viking’s of the Queens Flight, Valetta’s and Viking’s and he showed me one, went in one. There were steel cages in there and he said “what do you think those are for?” I said “I have no idea, prisoners, is it for carting prisoners” He said “no he said, I can’t tell you now because we are sworn to secrecy but you will read about it” and sure enough he took a load of monkeys out in this cage. So these are the things I remember you know and where else was he? Ah he was in Cyprus for three years and its em, Akrotiri I think it was em, where else? He was in the North West Frontier, he was in India for three years, he was at Karachi I think it was and em. It was, they were flying, cause in those days see, I didn’t understand what they were doing in India. I didn’t know that they were petitioning and the Muslims were going North and the Hindus were going south but he said there were a lot of people killed. He said there was a massacre, he said we were flying officials out. I remember he was on the front page of em, one of the big newspapers, new magazine, Tattler or something like that, showed him throwing rice out to the Indians, Hindus. He said, they used the front page and he said, that’s me, well you could see it was him. He said “I got a bollocking for that” I said “why” he said “because I didn’t have a belt on, I should have been strapped in and I was just slinging these bags out” [laugh]. He has had a terrific career, he was on the Berlin Air Lift I said “ what were you doing there” he said “ we were humping coal and we had three minutes to land, unload and take off again. If you missed the slot you had to go round with a full load. You couldn’t, if for some reason you were late or something you had to take his load back, fly round and then come back again” He said, because there were God knows how many aircraft, well they brought everything into Berlin. He was on coal actually I said “did you hump coal then?” he said “No”
IL. Well he had his previous training didn’t he?
KA. Then he was in, they had a little sideline going that was it, they used to take coffee into Berlin then used to go somewhere just outside Berlin and buy ornaments, glassware take the glassware back. Take the coffee there, do a bit of training. He was on Dakota’s actually at that time he was on a Dakota. He said, he said funny thing is the one he was on he said “ we only had to whistle and the floor boards jumped”[laugh] No he has, yes he is very unassuming you know. No he has had a terrific life.
IL. So do you know anything about his Second World War Service, did he complete a tour or ?
KA. I don’t know all I can say I know when he was bombing Berlin he said “we used to take off, circle round gain height, join a Squadron” and then he said “we used to fly over, when we got over the Channel when we got into France you could actually see the glow of Berlin burning” he said “when you were flying over, as soon as you got over Berlin you plane just Woof! The air currents, the hot air current coming up used to lift your plane up” he said “we used to drop the bloody bombs and scarper” He never really eh never, never bragged about anything I mean. I said “did you ever fly any of the Royal Family?” he said “well we used to fly” he never flew the Queen,he never flew the Duke of Edinburgh. He said “we used to fly a lot of officials, next to you know, next to the Queen. They used to use the Queens Flight for all sorts of things actually. I said “did you ever fly the Queen” he said “no, no” em but he never really said anything, he said em. you know only through away questions you might say. But em you know. He said “when we were in India, these bloody Afghans, we used to fly over Afghanistan the Afghans then had these pop guns, these blunder buses. We used to fly in low, you know go in to the North” and he said “they’d be there with these guns firing at us they didn’t have a cat in hells chance of hitting us” but you know he is. That was Cyril but he died last year, his wife had died quite a few years ago, she was a real nice girl but she died of Cancer, all these things.
IL Just coming back to Harry then, have you been over to,did?
KA. No
IL. Do you have a grave in Antwerp?
KA. I have a photograph of it.
IL We’ll take some photographs.
KA. I keep saying I’ll go, we’ve been, since we’ve been married and that we’ve been everywhere and its Antwerp is one place I’ve never been. I keep saying you know we ought to go we ought to go. I’ve been to the Somme, the World War Battlefields, I’ve been to Normandy as well, Dun, you know where they invaded in the last war, the last war yeah. No it’s a place, I keep say, you know. It’s too late now to be quite honest. He’s buried with the other, there were five crew,they are all buried together apparently. I’ve got a photograph of the grave my Mother was. I am really doing this for my Mother, I hope you feel that maybe I was a bit outside looking in. I was in business, you know what business is like you are working eight, seven days a week twenty four hours a day virtually, you know. Bit em, sometimes we did all right I mean eh, funny I had a good job. I worked for George Halton at one time and em I was there five years. I knew Dick Halton, the Managing Director in fact it is his son in law who got me the job there. I was friendly with Frank Briar, he was the. Well it was actually Frank’s wife Sister, Dicks, I don’t know, there is some relation anyway. He was a real nice guy he’s dead now In fact his son now is in [unreadable] his son has taken the business over and eh, do you, do you know?
IL. I know that some of the Children were at school with my kids, my kids were at Highmers and I know the name and I would have met them at certain.
KA. This would have been the generation before them.
IL Absolutely as I say the next generation would be at school with my kids.
KA. Dicks son was only a boy when I was working for Halton’s. There were three of them Dick, George and Peter. Peter and Dick were the main stay of Halton’s. George was too much and you very rarely saw him. Dick I knew very well actually in fact he said to me when I told him I was leaving and going on me own he said “if it doesn’t go right, come back but I hope it does” Well it, the trouble is when you start on your own you can’t fail, you just can’t fail you’ve got to put the hours to do this you’ve got to do that.
IL Yeah.
KA.I don’t know, we did all right. I’ve been retired now for twenty four years now. As I say we had the Garage at Anlaby, one of the Garages in Anlaby it’s a tyre place now its opposite, used to be Jacksons and then it went into a Supermarket.
IL Yes I know exactly where it is.
KA. We took it over, it was called Someleys actually, Gordon and Roy Someley, eh they owned the old. His Father was a Blacksmiths there in Anlaby in the days of Blacksmiths and eh, Roy sold out and Mogel bought it and I took it over. It was state of the art, when it was built it was state of the art. I’ve got photographs of it. We had state of the art pumps and all sorts. I mean now they are old fashioned but in these days they were really, really something you know. No I was there about thirty odd years I think. I had another garage, I had two down Sutton Road as well. One is still there funnily enough, one of them, you know where the new, the bridge, you remember the old bridge?
IL. I don’t, I don’t know that part of Hull that well.
KA. Well it used to be a real narrow, narrow iron bridge, if two cars went across you couldn’t get across. Anyway they have taken it away and put a huge bridge there. Right on the corner there is a big roundabout there now, right on the corner there is a garage there now, well I had that one as well. But no I mean things have changed a lot [laugh] But as I say Harry I don’t know, it was actually a friend of mine that told me about this and eh, she’s got two cousins that are flyers as well and they got the, she gave me the information. In fact she gave me the information, this is em. Because I didn’t know anything about it and its em eh. No this was just the two people I had to get in touch with, Peter Jones and Helen Durham.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Kenneth Angus
Creator
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Ian Locker
Date
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2016-06-08
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00:42:24 audio recording
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AAngusK160608
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Type
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Sound
Description
An account of the resource
Kenneth Angus lived in Hull, and was 12 when war was declared. He discusses life on a farm after being evacuated, the bombing of Hull and his brother Harry Angus, who was killed flying as a wireless operator / air gunner with 44 Squadron from RAF Waddington.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
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Hugh Donnelly
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Hull
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1940
1943
1945
44 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
childhood in wartime
evacuation
Hampden
He 111
home front
incendiary device
killed in action
RAF Cranwell
RAF Waddington
Spitfire
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/475/8357/PBoyntonS1512.1.jpg
b8f48f9aeb2acc9b01ed571e88e5da23
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/475/8357/ABoyntonS150624.1.mp3
0ed41bfbe8c8db1cab395ef730cc5b81
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Boynton, Stuart
Thomas Stuart Boynton
T S Boynton
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Boynton, S
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Stuart Boynton (1622415 Royal Air Force), He served as an air gunner with 103 Squadron.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Stuart Boynton and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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TSB. 1923,19,1939 I left Bridlington Grammar School eh, then, which I didn’t join the RAF straight away I joined the Air Training Corps, I was in there for about a year and a half. The war had already started after about a year and a half I thought well I’ll volunteer for Aircrew, which I went down to London, passed with flying colours, as I think and after that I was eh. I am trying to think where I went after various placed in the RAF in England. I was in Harrogate, I was in, up at South Shields. Then, I am trying to think of it, dates. That’s 1939 so, in after I had been in the RAF a few months I was posted to South Africa and my first wife and I then decided, ‘shall we get married and save the money until the war’s finished?’ Which, I got married when I was only twenty it was in the February ’43. And eh, the next within a week of being married I was transferred to South Africa where I, where I was on the Ansons, flying in the Ansons. On returning from South Africa about a year afterwards I as posted to LLandwrog in Wales. While in Wales there was quite a lot of flying the Anson again and eh just before my birthday which was 21st of March 1924, 1924 yes my first birthday my I was, my was transferred, I was transferred and posted to Finningley which is now Doncaster Airfield. So, so in February 1923, I was born in ’23, 1943 I was flying to South Africa which I say after South Africa I went to LLandwrog. Getting to Finningley which is on 21st birthday which was 1944 I was travelling from LLandwrog to Finningley with a kit bag over my shoulder, that was my 21st birthday. So consequently I flew from Finningley, I was on the Wellingtons for a short time. Eh, a leaflet trip to Holland dropping leaflets then from Finningley I went to Lindholme just down the road onto Halifax’s. While there I had a leaflet trip again to Holland and then from Lindholme I was posted to Hemswell onto the Lancasters. From Hemswell I was posted to Elsham, that’s where I did my first operation. I am only guessing now, Elsham I should say get to Elsham some time in September which was ’44. Our first operational trip was early I should say early November and I you ask me what that was like I can only answer [unclear] It was absolutely horrendous. The flak and everything else was shocking we were caught in the eh, eh the searchlights. Anyway with a bit of luck we got home safely. I just said to skipper ‘I am pleased were back from that,’ I said ‘ thirty trips like this we will double grave before we get to thirty trips.’ Anyway that was all right, we went into land, as we landed we flew straight off the airfield. The plane went up on its side we were straight off, all flat tyres. so that was the first one. After that most of our trips was over what we call the Happy Valley which was the German Steel places, Essen, most of mine was to Essen. Anyway we flew to Essen, we was very pleased to get back. Anyway we did about another ten trips after that ten or eleven trips after that. A couple of pretty bad ones after that but the biggest majority were what you call very easy. The last one we never made as we were coming on our way back, we had a very easy trip, a very quiet trip. The Rear Gunner said ‘We got a; fighter on our port side Skipper.’ Anyway he tried to do the evasive did a bit of a mm a mm, tried to get rid of him anyway. Consequently after about ten minutes, half an hour. Oh I thought we were on our way home. The next thing I knew was the Pilot saying ‘Abandon aircraft were on fire.’ I said, I was I went off in rotation. Just as I was going I saw, three [unclear] last thing I remember saying to my Skipper ‘I’ll see you down stairs Phil.’ With that I was pulling me ‘chute, just as I was pulling me ‘chute, I just heard on intercom the Rear Gunner say ‘Christ I’ve pulled me ‘chute.’ With that I’d gone, I didn’t know what happened after that. But what happened after that I was, only left on the plane was the Pilot, the Rear Gunner and the Mid Upper both the Gunners were Canadians. The young lad I thought I was the ablest, the youngest twenty one. Eddie was only just turned eight, nineteen for all I know he panicked and wouldn’t jump with the Mid Upper, Canadian, wanted him to jump with him, but he refused to jump. ‘No I’m not jumping.’ So all the Pilot said to Mid Upper ‘Get yourself off I’ll try to land the plane.’ The Mid Upper said, he jumped, as his ‘chute opened, all he saw was the wing dropped off with that the plane went straight into the ground, both killed. I have always said, I have always tried to find out to find out why this time, he was a bit older than me but had got two daughters. His wife had left Jersey, she was living in a hotel. Where ever he went she was living in hotels. So what she was left with was two daughters, no home to go to. I said I’ll, I always said he should have got decorated but he never did. So that is about all that I can say about that. So anyway when we was, when we were shot down we were taken to just a little village near from where we was shot down. They had seen us coming down so we had no chance of escaping. So they put me into a billet a Nissan hut with about thirty young Germans in. As I went in I was the only one of the crew that at the time, they found. I thought ‘well I am going to get knocked about here with all these lads.’ I had been in there about half an hour, one of them sidled up to me ‘there you are,’ gave me a bit of their ersatz bread. I thought it was awful, I put it in me pocket. Anyway about another half hour went by another young lad came, German lad, could speak, he could speak a bit of English. He just said ‘ me was a prisoner of Americans me look after you.’ With that he gave me a couple of blankets for the night. That is about all I could say about them, they were very good. But even today I still think now that would be December 1944 we were shot down. Even today he said, ah that is what he did say to me, ‘We have,’ when I was in this Nissan hut, ‘you have broken our lines we are now going to push you back.’ I never thought anything more about that at all until after the war. It must have been what you called ‘The Battle of the Bulge.’ So automatically now I often think ‘ I wonder if there are any of these young lads still living today?’ That’s all, that’s all I can say about that one. So after that we, we I was posted to eh, I can’t remember the name where was it, posted into Poland and one night, one morning woke up, right evacuating the camp. The Russians were coming very close to where, to where we were, so we had to, as the Russians were advancing we had to march away from them. So we were on, in the middle of winter, we were marching until about one or two in the morning carried on might have been one or two weeks, I don’t know. But there again I was one of the lucky ones, the last morning we were on the walk we’d get into farm, I’d went into the farm I were in the barn. I was one of the last in the barn and this would be one o’clock in the morning. When I woke up, whatever time it was, I don’t know all I can say it was light, it could have been five o’clock in the morning. There I was laid outside where it was twenty degrees below. I went, I couldn’t, me hands were, I couldn’t get me hands together, me feet was frozen, I said ‘ the only thing if the lads lit a fire.’ Got warmed up within two or three hours we were back on the wa,march again. So consequently we marched and again for another week, how long I don’t know. Once again I was very lucky one day they just piled all our section, our section were piled into rail trucks and how many were in the trucks I don’t know how we got on for weeing or whatever I don’t know how we got on about that. All I know before it took us about a day a day and a half on this truck, finished up somewhere near Berlin. That is when the Russians liberated us which was what I gather, I don’t know. I don’t know [unclear] prisoners. Once again I would be guessing but it was sometime in April time, May. I don’t know when the war finished. But once they, I always remember the Russians coming through our camp knocking all the fences down. There were men and women on the tanks, just the same and I must admit at the time I thought ‘well they are just like a pack a bandit these lot.’ We got on well with them, they didn’t bother with us, we didn’t bother with them. They would not, we were there two or three weeks at least, the Americans sent a couple of Troops to move us and they said ‘ you are going when it is out turn, we will let you know when you are going.’ So we got fed up of waiting, one day we set off from the camp ‘we will make our way to the Elbe to get across ourselves.’ So we [unclear] a mile down the road next thing we got, the Russians were in front of us back to the camp ‘ you go when we tell you.’ Consequently eh why I know a bit about the time there eh when they did allow us to go we got to Brussels, we got a bit of money, we got showered and everything, money we had a night out in, in Brussels. Consequently when I got back home my second birthday was May the 23rd 1945, So but, so consequently I didn’t get back for me twenty first, I didn’t get back until after me birthday which would be after the 23rd 1945. Consequently I was one of the last prisoners back so I got indefinite leave. So indefinite leave I was posted, well I was in Bridlington, got posted to Scarborough so I was backwards and forwards from Brid to Scarborough for about three or four months. Finally when the war finished they decided aircrew you could [unclear] aircrew but you could only go as ground crew. I just had to come out, I came out of the forces. So that’s about all I can tell you, that’s about it in a nutshell. That’s about all I could say. My Pilot was one of the last to leave Jersey before the Germans occupied Jersey. He was on the last boat to leave, his wife went with him, a young girl, went with him. They got married before they [unclear] over to England and where ever he was posted, Phil, she was in the hotel somewhere. She followed him around so there she was when he got shot down she was stood there on her own with two kids and that’s why I think he should have got married. The main thing of all so consequently I knew Phil only five months of my life and for seventy odd years I have never forgotten him [appears upset].
MJ. You shouldn’t you don’t have to worry, that’s part of it you see.
TSB. Yeah and all that I can say is that a marvellous lad, man, fellow.
MJ. Do you remember his full name, do you remember his full name, do you remember his name?
TSB. Phillip.
MJ. Do you remember his surname?
TSB. Picot that all it was and consequently I mentioned the two daughters and his three aunties all the rest of the family have all died. But the daughters have married very well they are very happy. Two lovely families two and two and eh three aunties I think they have all lost their husbands. But they are all lovely people, lovely people.
MJ. Went to London for your medical ?. [?].[unclear]
TSB. Yeah I can’t think [unclear] I know I went from Kings Cross [unclear] I walked from Kings Cross I can’t remember where it was now but I nineteen, as I say about eighteen to nineteen I was twenty three ‘40 to 1942 I should think would be when I came in forces, long time [laugh]. But eh no at least I have often said eh you have got your memories haven’t you, they are worth a lot your memories. That is why I get so sentimental with Phil my Pilot because as I say I only knew him five months. We were very friendly, we were very very friendly. Not many days gone bye without I think something about him.
MJ. What made you so friendly, what what ?
TSB. I don’t know, just the crew, I think during the war you you, fact, you you made up as a crew, seven of you and I think they tried to keep that crew as separate as they could. So in other words eh anybody lost they weren’t missed as much, they look after themselves because each crew was more or less, they look after themselves. So whenever we went down to the pub the seven of us went out together eh at least most nights of the week, five or six but we always stuck together all the time we were flying. Your mates, you were what you call mates as simple as that. In other words at the end of the day unless you were lucky, you died together. But eh I say I have these thoughts many a time but I am very happy and [unclear] I have had a marvellous life, marvellous life. As I say one of my old aunties I used to see her ninety five or so, she fell down stairs, I have not forgot she turned round to us and she said ‘Stuart I don’t want anybody to live as long as I have lived,’ she said ‘ I am not ready for going yet’ she lived till ninety seven well I got to ninety two now and she was definitely the eldest of all of my family. If I could get to ninety eight whither I do or not, grace of Gods is that. Eh but if I get to ninety eight I shall finish up as the eldest one in the family that’s it.[laugh]. But she was a right battle axe was my auntie, she taught me a lot and I still think of her at ninety seven anyway I’ve got to ninety two whither I get to ninety five by the grace of God, you don’t know, you don’t know. One thing certain and a betting man and I used to like betting on the horses and that as a betting man one certainty is we all know we have to die sometime. It’s a good job we don’t know when. We do we all know we have got to go sometime. And I say when I talk about luck if I get to a hundred very good but whither I do or not you don’t know. There is a lot of luck in life as well you know some people are born lucky and some are [unclear]. And I don’t know about you, you had an accident didn’t you. Was it motor accident you had then?
MJ. Em I’ll make sure this is on, go on.
TSB. After the war my mother, well during the war my mother got a telegram eh, just missing. So she went berserk, demented, crackers then of course shortly after that, presumed killed. So that she is worse than ever then about a month after that somebody came dashing into mums shop at Hilderthorpe Road End Bridlington saying ‘Nellie, Nellie, Stuarts alive, Stuarts alive.’And how they got to know that, not from the Air Ministry it was given over the news by Lord Haw Haw that Flight Sergeant Boynton is now a prison of war in Germany. That’s the first time my Mother new I was living. And it wasn’t, she didn’t get it from the RAF or the Ministry, Lord Haw Haw made it over the news one night, one day that’s first thing, first time she knew I was living. [laugh] killed presumed dead, it was a totally different thing when she knew I was still living you see.
MJ. On behalf of the International Bomber Command I would like to thank Warrant Officer Stuart Boynton on the date of the 24th of June 2014. Thank you very much my name is Michael Jeffery.
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
Stuart Boynton Interview
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
2015-06-24
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABoyntonS150624, PBoyntonS1512
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
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
During 1939 Stuart left grammar school and joined the Air Training Corps. After about half a year he volunteered for air crew and was accepted. He and his girlfriend were married in February 1943. Stuart was posted to South Africa working on Ansons and about a year later was posted to Llandwrog in Wales. His next postings were to RAF Finningley, flying in Wellingtons and to Holland dropping leaflets from a Halifax. From RAF Finningley he went to RAF Lindholme, RAF Hemswell and RAF Elsham Wolds. Stuart described his first operational trip as absolutely horrendous. Most of the crew’s trips were then to the Ruhr and the German steel works in Essen. After that they did another ten or eleven trips. During the last trip the crew had to abandon the aircraft when it was shot down and burst into flames. All but two of the crew (one being the pilot, Phil Picot) baled out before the aircraft hit the ground. Stuart was captured and taken to a hut which housed about 30 Germans, but he was treated well. Stuart was detained in Poland. Their camp had to evacuate during a winter night as the Russians were advancing. They were marching for two or three weeks before being taken to a camp in Berlin by rail. They were liberated and eventually Stuart was posted to RAF Scarborough. He came out of the at the end of the war and said he had had a marvellous life.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
South Africa
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Essen
Wales--Carmarthen
Netherlands
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1943-02
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:23:24 audio recording
aircrew
Anson
bale out
bombing
Halifax
Lancaster
love and romance
military ethos
pilot
prisoner of war
propaganda
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Finningley
RAF Hemswell
RAF Lindholme
RAF Llandwrog
the long march
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/474/8361/LClydeSmithD39856v2.2.pdf
e0d96effd48c511db0b4d3f3418f4285
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
Clyde-Smith, Denis
Clyde-Smith, D
Description
An account of the resource
Collection contains 26 items and concerns Squadron Leader Denis Clyde-Smith Distinguished Service Order, Distinguished Flying Cross, who joined the Royal Air Force and trained as a pilot in 1937. He flew in the anti aircraft cooperation role including remotely piloted Queen Bee aircraft before serving on Battle aircraft on 32 Squadron. He completed operational tours on Wellington with 115 and 218 Squadrons and Wellington and Lancaster with 9 Squadron after which he went to the aircraft and armament experimental establishment at Boscombe Down. The collection consists of two logbooks, aircraft histories of some of the aircraft he flew, photographs of people and aircraft, newspaper articles and gallantry award certificate.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Clyde-Smith 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
2016-09-19
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Clyde-Smith, D
Dublin Core
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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
LClydeSmithD39856v2
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
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. Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Pilot's flying log book for Denis Clyde-Smith covering the period from 10 May 1937 to 31 May 1942. Detailing his flying training, Operations and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF Sywell, RAF Sealand, RAF Henlow, RAF Calshot, RAF Watchet, RAF Biggin Hill, RAF Farnborough, RAF Weston Zoyland, RAF Benson, RAF Ringway, RAF Wing, RAF Harwell, RAF Marham, RAF Lichfield, RAF Fradley and RAF Tatten Hill. Aircraft flown in were, Tiger Moth, Hawker Hart, Audax and Fury, Queen Bee, Avro Prefect and Tutor, Moth, Swordfish, Wallace, Magister, Henley, Battle, Gauntlet, Hurricane, Scion, Monospar, Percival 96, Leopard, Vega Gull, Proctor, Walrus, Gladiator, Lysander, Anson and Wellington. He flew a total of 30 operations with 115 Squadron and 218 Squadron. Targets attacked were, Boulogne, Hannover, Dusseldorf, Brest, Berlin, Hamburg, Lorient, Keil, Cologne, Bremen, Munster and Osnabrück.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Format
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One booklet
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 Air Force. Coastal Command
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
Germany
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Bedfordshire
England--Berkshire
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Cheshire
England--Hampshire
England--Kent
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Somerset
England--Staffordshire
France--Brest
France--Lorient
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Osnabrück
Wales--Flintshire
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1941-02-07
1941-02-10
1941-02-11
1941-02-12
1941-02-15
1941-02-25
1941-03-02
1941-03-03
1941-03-12
1941-03-13
1941-03-14
1941-03-15
1941-03-16
1941-03-30
1941-03-31
1941-04-03
1941-04-04
1941-04-07
1941-04-08
1941-04-09
1941-04-10
1941-04-11
1941-04-12
1941-04-13
1941-04-14
1941-04-15
1941-04-16
1941-04-17
1941-04-22
1941-04-23
1941-04-25
1941-04-26
1941-05-16
1941-05-17
1941-06-13
1941-06-14
1941-06-15
1941-06-16
1941-06-20
1941-06-21
1941-06-23
1941-06-24
1941-06-26
1941-06-27
1941-06-29
1941-06-30
1941-07-04
1941-07-05
1941-07-06
1941-07-07
1941-07-08
1941-07-09
1941-07-10
1942-05-30
1942-05-31
Title
A name given to the resource
Denis Clyde-Smith's pilot's flying log book. One
115 Squadron
15 OTU
218 Squadron
27 OTU
aircrew
Anson
Battle
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Flying Training School
Hurricane
Lysander
Magister
Operational Training Unit
pilot
Proctor
RAF Benson
RAF Biggin Hill
RAF Calshot
RAF Farnborough
RAF Harwell
RAF Henlow
RAF Lichfield
RAF Marham
RAF Ringway
RAF Sealand
RAF Sywell
RAF Weston Zoyland
RAF Wing
Swordfish
Tiger Moth
training
Walrus
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/474/8381/MClydeSmithD39856-160919-04.2.pdf
f7527bdcc9b68b15110a25b101935993
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
Clyde-Smith, Denis
Clyde-Smith, D
Description
An account of the resource
Collection contains 26 items and concerns Squadron Leader Denis Clyde-Smith Distinguished Service Order, Distinguished Flying Cross, who joined the Royal Air Force and trained as a pilot in 1937. He flew in the anti aircraft cooperation role including remotely piloted Queen Bee aircraft before serving on Battle aircraft on 32 Squadron. He completed operational tours on Wellington with 115 and 218 Squadrons and Wellington and Lancaster with 9 Squadron after which he went to the aircraft and armament experimental establishment at Boscombe Down. The collection consists of two logbooks, aircraft histories of some of the aircraft he flew, photographs of people and aircraft, newspaper articles and gallantry award certificate.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Clyde-Smith 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
2016-09-19
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Clyde-Smith, D
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
The enclosed aircraft histories are all in respect of Tiger Moth aircraft flown by you while undergoing ab-initio training at Sywell. I have commenced the breakdown of their service life as from the date of their impressment into RAF service. However, prior to this, the Tigers in question were operated under a Type ‘A’ Civil Contract which was put into use under the Expansion Scheme of the 1930 era. Then on the 30th of November, 1939, the Air Ministry took over command and RAF roundels were applied to the Tigers, although their civil markings were retained until 1940/41. The Tigers at Sywell were impressed under two Contracts, each issued on the 17th of September, 1940, as follows:
BB693-706 allocated to 6 E.F.T.S. under Contract No. All3015/40 dtd 17/9/40.
BB788-793 allocated to 6 E.F.T.S. under Contract No. All3015/40 (2nd part)
G-ADGF c/n 3345 impressed as BB704
Used at Sywell until 9/8/42, when it was transferred to 10 OUT at Abingdon. Released to 6 MU Brize Norton on the 9th of February, 1943, and later issued to 16 E.F.T.S. Burnaston. Here BB704 was coded ‘7’ later taking the code FIP:A (the four letter codes were issued to Flying Training Command, circa 1945/46). On 31/7/46, BB704 was flown to 9 MU Cosford, and stored until released to 21 E.F.T.S. Booker (near High Wycombe) on 25/3/48. Coded FIW:O, BB704 remained with 21 E.F.T.S. until transfer to 7 F.T.S. Cottesmore on 30/3/50. On June 19th of the same year it was transferred to Station Flight, Feltwell, taking the code ‘W’. However, it’s active use was now rapidly drawing to a close, and on 30/11/50, it was allocated the instructional airframe serial 6805M and delivered to No. 664 ATC Squadron, St. Walter & St. John’s Godalming County School (Surrey Wing).
[page break]
G-ADGG c/n 3346 impressed as BB695
Used at Sywell throughout it’s entire career and was destroyed in a landing accident on 12/5/41.
G-ADGT c/n 3338 impressed as BB697
Continued in use at Sywell until transfer to 26 E.F.T.S. Theale on, 15/7/42. Coded B26, BB697 remained in use at Theale until it was released to store at 12 MU Kirkbridge on 18/7/45. It’s next move was overseas to Germany and 652 Squadron where it served from 17/10/45 to 9/5/46. Following a year spent at No. 151 Aircraft Repair Unit, BB697 was flown to 5 MU Kemble for disposal.
On 27/8/47, BB697 was sold to a civilian operator, and was restored to the Civil Register, and during the early 1960’s it was still in use, registered to Westwick Distributors, Foulsham.
G-ADGV c/n 3340 impressed as BB694
Used by 6 E.F.T.S. until transfer to 29 E.F.T.S. Clyffe Pypard on 15/7/42. Released to 5 MU Kemble on 14/8/46, BB694 was eventually released to the Royal Navy. In RNAS service BB694 served at Stretton, Lossiemouth, and Arbroath before transfer on 17/11/60, to the Britannia Flight at Roborough (Plymouth).
G-ADGW c/n 3341 impressed as BB706
Sevred at Sywell throughout the war years, and was eventually released to store at 10 MU Hullavington. Struck off Charge on 22/5/50, BB706 was disposed of to W.A. Rollason Ltd., who in turn sold it to the D.H. Technical College for ground instruction purposes.
[page break]
G-ADGX c/n 3342 impressed as BB698
Continued in use at Sywell until 9/8/42, when it was flown to RAF Doncaster. Following a brief spell at Taylorcraft, BB698 was released to 5 MU Kemble on 24/6/43. From Kemble BB698 was transfered [sic] to the Royal Navy and delivered to RNAS Hinstock. Attached to 758 Squadron and later RNAS Lee-on-Solent, BB698 went on to serve with B Flight of 798 Squadron, Station Flight Lee-on-Solent, RNAS Evarton, and 727 Squadron RNAS Gosport, in that order before being sold to the Wiltshire School of Flying on 5/2/51. Restored to the Civil Register it was lost in a crash at Thruxton on 11/7/53, when it’s pilot overshot the airfield.
G-ADGY c/n 3343 impressed as BB699
Served for it’s entire life at Sywell, and was lost in a crash during a low flying exercise near Turvey, Bedfordshire, on 25/7/44, when it struck some power cables.
G-ADGZ c/n 3344 impressed as BB700
Used at Sywell until transfer to 7 A.G.S. Stormy Down on 13/8/42. Delivered to Towyn U.A.S. in 1943, and damaged beyond repair taxing [sic] at RAF Towyn, 10/2/44.
[page break]
G-ADIH c/n 3349 impressed as BB789
While in use at 6 E.F.T.S. BB789 took the code ‘89’. Released to 5 MU Kemble on 9/8/42, and then to RAF Speke on 31/10/42. However, by 6/12/42, BB789 had found it’s way back to 5 MU, where it was eventually converted to an instructional airframe. Bearing the serial 3654M it was delivered to 2006 ATC Squadron at Cheltenham on 2/4/43.
During 1946 this Tiger was handed over – without Air Ministry approval – to the Gloucester Flying Club, who promptly spent £425 in restoring G-ADIH to flying condition, and naturally thought the Tiger their property. However, the Air Ministry then stepped in and requested the return of their aircraft – the matter being eventually settled by a payment by the Gloucester Flying Club of £50 to Air Ministry. G-ADIH remained on the Civil Register until 20/11/52, when it was destroyed during a landing accident near Ramsgate.
G-ADII c/n 3350 impressed as BB701
Served with 6 E.F.T.S. throughout the war years, and was released to 9 MU Cosford on 30/8/46. Remaining in storage until 6/4/49, when it was delivered to 9 R.F.S. Doncaster. Destroyed on 22/4/50, when it spun into a sports field near Hansworth.
G-ADIJ c/n 3351 impressed as BB788
Used at Sywell throughout the war, and taken to 9 MU Cosford on 19/7/45, for disposal. Sold to Marshalls of Cambridge in 4/46, and restored to [crossed out]the the[/crossed out]
[page break]
to/ [sic]
the Civil Register as G-ADIJ. In December 1952 G-ADIJ was sold abroad to New Zealand as ZK-BBS and was converted for crop spraying. Used in this role by Northern Aviation Limited, ZK-BBS was destroyed in a crash near Dargaville on, [sic] 15/12/55.
No details at present for G-ADEZ – may have been lost prior to 1939. Further information on the aircraft that you flew will be passed in due course.
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
Aircraft histories of Tiger Moth aircraft flown by Denis Clyde-Smith
Description
An account of the resource
Histories of twelve Tiger Moth aircraft flown by Denis Clyde Smith while undergoing ab-initio training at Sywell.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Five page typewritten document
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Personal research
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MClydeSmithD39856-160919-04
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Navy
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Oxfordshire
England--West Midlands
England--Wolverhampton
England--Lincolnshire
England--Stamford
England--Norfolk
England--Thetford
England--Cumbria
England--Carlisle
England--Berkshire
England--Theale (West Berkshire)
England--Northamptonshire
England--Northampton
England--Buckinghamshire
England--High Wycombe
England--Surrey
England--Godalming
England--Norwich
England--Wiltshire
Scotland--Moray
Scotland--Angus
Scotland--Arbroath
England--Cheshire
England--Warrington
England--Devon
England--Plymouth
England--Yorkshire
England--Doncaster
England--Hampshire
England--Gosport
England--Bedfordshire
England--Bedford
England--Gloucestershire
England--Cheltenham
England--Cirencester
England--Chippenham (Wiltshire)
England--Shropshire
England--Shrewsbury
Scotland--Ross and Cromarty
Scotland--Invergordon
England--Andover
Wales--Mid Glamorgan
Wales--Bridgend
Wales--Dyfed
Wales--Aberystwyth
England--Kent
England--Ramsgate
Germany
New Zealand
New Zealand--Dargaville
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cambridge
England--London
England--Hounslow
England--Cumberland
England--Middlesex
England--Staffordshire
England--Royal Wootton Bassett
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1955
1960
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Steve Baldwin
Flying Training School
RAF Brize Norton
RAF Clyffe Pypard
RAF Cosford
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Feltwell
RAF Kemble
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Sywell
RAF Towyn
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/576/8845/AGoughH150922.2.mp3
c57cda680fc05053c4ed864f4febb674
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
Gough, Harry
H Gough
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Gough, H
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Harry Gough (1925 - 2016, 1590911 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 10 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok so it’s Tuesday 22nd September 2015 and we are in Tingly near Wakefield and this is Annie Moody for the International Bomber Command Centre and I’m talking today to
HG: Harry Gough.
AM: Harry Gough. So if you would Harry would you just tell me a little bit about your childhood, and where you were born and what your parents did.
HG: I was born in Dewsbury, er Dewsbury Moor actually. My father at that time was er worked in the steel industry at Click Heaton up to me being probably six or seven and then he er decided to leave that and er go into the licensing trade being er, what is it, er steward at a working men’s club that would be when I was six or seven er.
AM: What was it like being a child working in a, er living near a working men’s club then, where you living there in it?
HG: No no we lived away from it
AM: Oh, Oh
HG: But er at that time, funnily enough we were only on about this a few days ago er the way families were brought up, I think it was when Victor was up er, I was the youngest of seven and the house we had a small terraced house (pause) you couldn’t say it was a one up and one down but that’s basically what it was one large bedroom and a small one at the top of the landing so that was the earliest I remember being there er.
AM: What about the bathroom and toilet, where were they?
HG: Oh no bathroom (laughs) there there were sink in the corner
AM: And a tin bath
HG: Tin bath yeah and a toilet way up the yard and er you prayed every day that it didn’t you didn’t have heavy rain (laughs) er but we moved into a council house at that time when I was seven and er there again seven of us and it was a three bedroomed council house you know people just wouldn’t have that today would they and er from there er went to the local school, broke my leg playing football er recovered from that and we moved into a public house then in Dewsbury the Great (unclear) Hotel in Dewsbury and we were there for two years transferred our interest to Leeds another pub, another two years, or less than two years, back to Morley (unclear) Morley and that another pub eventually er and that when my schooling finished that would be 1939
AM: So how old were you then?
HG: Fourteen
AM: Fourteen
HG: My eldest my second eldest brother he worked in the textiles and he had to work at Putsey and he had to go by bike from Morley to Putsey on the night shift his wage was twenty six bob a week so he’d had enough of that and he volunteered for the army me being the stupid lad, oh no I’m not stupid, er if he was having action I wanted it as well so I wanted to go in the boys army along with him er, my father agreed to it but er mother said no you’re not and that was the end of that up to er 41 and er I joined the air training corps local squadron at Morley and er in there until volunteering for the air force in 43 and er eventually accepted and I did the er air crew assessment at Doncaster and er they were full up with pilots and full up with navigators
AM: Everybody wanted to be a pilot
HG: (Laughs) that’s right (laughs) right well if you got to be a gunnery course that’s it well I wanted to fly anyway so it was August 43 when I eventually went and er signed on down at Lords cricket ground, lad at 18 years old and going to London you know, never been out of his home town I don’t think, occasional holiday but not many of those I kind of remember going on holiday with my parents more than once
AM: How did you get to London then did you go on the train?
HG: Train yeah yeah, I suppose you get on the train and follow the crowd (laughs) er when we were there our initial signing and initial whatever it is medicals and er up to er for a fortnight to three weeks and then back up into Yorkshire to Bridlington
AM: So in that three weeks what were you doing?
HG: er getting kitted out
AM: What sort of things?
HG: Medicals er several injections whatever they call them er but er my sister was stationed in London at the time she was in the WAFS and er we met up a few times at er I think it was just routine things er drills whatever marching to the London zoo for meals and er yeah and I met up with a gunner we met on the first day we were there
AM: What was he called?
HG: Bill Field from Chester we were about the same age and er we were together right the way through to finishing flying
AM: Really
HG: We did a gunnery course did our basic training in Bridlington over to Belfast or near Belfast for gunnery school
AM: What was the gunnery school like what sort of things were you doing there did you have to strip em and put em back together and all that sort of stuff
HG: No no you had to do theory work on the guns but er mainly it was er rifle shooting for the clay pigeon shooting er then up in the Avro Ansons for air to air gunnery
AM: So when you say air to air what were you shooting at
HG: A draw yeah there’d be another Emerson dragging a draw if you were lucky he ate it (laughs)
AM: Did you
HG: Well I got a percentage of it whether that’s true or not I don’t know I think they just put this percentage out to get you through and make sure you had a rear gunner or something.
AM: Mmm
HG: But er that was I finished there New Year’s Eve we left New Year’s Eve in 43 that was it so from August I’d done all the basic training air gunnery training and passed out as a Sergeant air gunner before I was nineteen
AM: Blimey
HG: When you think about that you know think about that lady how stupid can it be but er it wasn’t just me everybody was on it er and after a short period at home then oh we finished up in Scotland on New Year’s Eve at Stranraer bit frightening (laughs) as an eighteen year old a bit frightening
AM: Laughs
HG: But er nevertheless we caught the train early morning and er early morning made our way home. After a few days at home up to er Kinross forest in Kinross in Scotland
AM: Scotland again
HG: That was for er crewing up and er operational training
AM: So how did the crewing up go cos’ you’d already got your mate with you
HG: Yes we stuck together all the time did Bill and I and er I don’t remember er well
AM: Who chose who?
HG: (Pause) I think the pilot chose us (laughs) why he did I don’t know er
AM: Maybe he could see there were two mates together and he wanted…
HG: Yes I think that had a lot to do with it we’d been together as pals and Harry Harrison the pilot er then he’d already met the er navigator Johnny Hall from Bradford from there we all got together Scottish wireless operator Cockney lad for a flight engineer and er I don’t remember where he come from South Midlands somewhere… Leicester and er how long did that last probably January late February early March
AM: So that’s where you flew together as a crew then
HG: Crew yes flying Whitley’s doing all the basic things turning dinghy’s over in the bath (laughs) when you can’t swim it’s er a bit of a nightmare but we got through it er
AM: Why turning dinghy’s over in the bath, in case you got shot down
HG: Yeah in case you got shot down
AM: Or crash landed in the sea
HG: Yeah yeah and er flying Whitley’s er the flying coffin some of the cross countries that we did six hours in the rear turret of a Whitley not very nice but it was enjoyable because that’s what I wanted to do er from there we went to er Marston Moor er heavy conversion unit flying the Halifax Mk 2.
AM: Right
HG: Which you don’t get to know until later that was the worst period of your service flying in a Halifax Mk 2 you were safer flying in the Mk 3 and 4 going on operations
AM: Why was that?
HG: They were very unreliable er basically because of the engine I think er and the tail unit the tail unit of the Halifax changed a great deal and they put revised engines in then and they were a much sounder aircraft
AM: Right
HG: But er we didn’t get none (unclear) you were in a death trap really (laughs) but er we got through that and we floated about then in Yorkshire for some reason (unclear) and Maltby, Driffield just for nightly stays and things like until we got posted to a squadron which was Melbourne ten squadron
AM: And there was ten squadron
HG: Mmm from there well
AM: What was your first operation like then
HG: What was it like
AM: Well can you just, I can’t imagine how it must of felt
HG: (Pause)
AM: I bet you can’t remember (laughs)
HG: No I can’t remember, no I can’t remember (pause)
AM: Bacon and eggs
HG: (Laughs) oh aye coming back to bacon and eggs that’s what that’s what you looked forward to but never when they all went out on operations did I ever think that I wouldn’t get back never never entered my head that I would never get back
AM: Did you have any close shaves
HG: (Pause) I suppose there were one or two where er the fighters were about but er in the main there were I think the biggest (unclear) were the night operations which you know they were a bit backwards at coming forwards at coming up in the dark they’d wait till the Yanks went over in the day light and have a go at them
AM: Have a go at them
HG: But er anti-aircraft fire unnerving but even then never entered my head that er I wouldn’t get back
AM: And you were right
HG: Mmm
AM: What was it like ‘cos you were the rear gunner so as you’re coming away bombs have been dropped?
HG: That’s right
AM: And you can see
HG: Yeah
AM: What’s, what’s happened
HG: Oh the in most cases the place was ablaze down below and er I suppose you think at the time oh great we’ve done a good job
AM: Yeah
HG: It isn’t until later days you know was it all that good you know what damage did we do I mean innocent people were killed but this is years later you think about this
AM: I was gonna say that because at the time you were doing it
HG: We were doing what we would been trained to do and er got satisfaction out of doing it as well but er pub visits at the night when you weren’t on operation a little bit naughty at times but er
AM: I’m gonna have to ask you, in what way naughty
HG: Well I don’t know it er probably drink more than what you should really
AM: You’re still only twenty by this time nineteen
HG: Nineteen yes I finished flying before I was twenty so I were only well at that time you were what you called kids at eighteen you weren’t adults at all you were classed as kiddies really
AM: Did you fly with the same crew all the way through
HG: Yes yes stuck together all the way through thirty three operations
AM: Thirty three, blimey, I can see we’ve got your log book is there anything
HG: Laughs
GR: Well your first operation was a daylight
HG: Yeah it was
GR: According to this yeah Macer Owen
HG: Taverni was it
GR: Yeah Macer Owen…and your last op was Christmas Eve (Laughs)
HG: Yeah yeah fly from the 23rd (unclear) the 24th
AM: And you said to me before about the fact that it was Christmas Eve and that was your last one
HG: Yeah
AM: About your mum and dad
HG: Yeah at the time it never struck me at all that it was any different to any other operation or you know you feel a sense of relief that the operations are over but it was only oh much later that I thought about these things. I don’t know what my parents were really thought about me being in the Air Force and what I was doing what it meant to them but what a Christmas box it must have been if that’s the way they thought about that I wasn’t in danger of being shot down or losing my life or whatever er after that particular time I never mentioned it to them in fact it was after they’d both passed I think my dad thought about it but er
AM: Yeah so what did you do after you finished your operations
HG: Oh dear I got kicked about and er
AM: (Laughs) did you do any training or TU stuff
HG: No I went into air traffic control actually
AM: Ahh
HG: Er when they finally got me settled down at Shawbury which was the number one flying training school was it, that’s where the (unclear) flew from when we went over the North Pole wing commander Mcclurough I think it was er I did a few months there I was there up to er VE day which was in May wasn’t it
AM: Mmm
HG: 45 and on VE day I travelled to Valley on the Isle of Anglesey and I was there until after VJ Day, (pause) VJ day what a night
AM: (Laughs)
HG: There was a black and tan drink then wasn’t there Guinness and beer black and tan
GR: That’s right yeah
AM: Mmm
HG: Still only twenty and I’m drinking black and tans I didn’t eat anything for four days (laughs)
AM: Laughs
GR: Laughs
HG: That’s when I learnt how to drive er air traffic control there was a (unclear) out there are you alright, yes I’m alright, never driven a van in my life (laughs) and there was some…how do I start this thing, (laughs) and away I went, but er bit precarious but er
AM: On a road or
HG: No no on the air field on the air field
AM: Just as well
HG: Yeah (laughs) well from the mess to the er traffic control and whatever to the end of the runway and back and things like that but er and from there not long after VJ Day I went back to Shawbury again well just how long I was there I can’t remember can’t remember and by this time I’d er already got my Flight Sergeant that was late 44 I got my Officer late 45 when I was still at Shawbury and then went to various places then just two or three days stopping at one near Warrington I can’t remember I can’t remember what place it was
AM: I wonder why, why were they moving you about like that?
HG: To find getting a posting you just couldn’t get (unclear) to come out I did want to come out anyway because I had the chance to come out on was it class B release or something because I worked in the textiles before I went in and there was no way that I’m going back into textiles after being in the air force and the excitement that I’d had or the life that I’d had and they kick you about a bit until er they get you a posting and I finally got a posting to er Austria just outside Vienna (Schwechat) but in the meantime for some reason that I don’t know why and I always thought it was a bit unfair you had to re-muster and you lost your seniority rank you were taken down from Warrant Officer back down to sergeant in rank but not in pay you still got your Warrant officers pay and it always hit me that er you know you’ve done this, you’ve volunteered for this, you’ve done your flying you’ve done your duty and everything that’s been asked of you and you’ve been fortunate enough to get through and then they demote you which didn’t seem fair to me at all, er but as I say the money was still there you were a Sergeant with a Warrant Officer’s pay and er went to Vienna (pause) mid July 46 July 46 that’s right er (pause) yeah and I enjoyed that er in air traffic control again er the surrounding area you were in the Russian border so you had to be very careful what you were doing but you were allowed out of camp and there was woodlands and through the woodlands you got to the er river what is it in Vienna come on Clarice what river is it in Vienna
AM: I can’t think I should know and I can’t it’s not erm
HG: I’ll be dammed
AM: No it’s gone I can’t remember
GR: Could be the Rhine
HG: No
GR: The Rhone
HG: No
AM: I can’t remember either
HG: Crazy isn’t it, crazy
AM: I’ll find it after, the river in Vienna anyway
HG: Yeah er out of camp and through this woodland I actually walked on the river it was that cold it was frozen over it was really really cold but er the camp that’s about itas much as I can remember about it other than we often visited Vienna itself not nightly but certainly two or three nights a week and really enjoyable and er the diesel in the truck that took us down would often freeze up so you were stuck there in the middle of the night (laughs) trying to keep warm
AM: Laughs
HG: But er I suppose the most that I remember about that there were three of us myself a Geordie lad ex air crew and a Scotch lad ex air crew and we got to like our drinks a little bit I always remember one afternoon we were drinking in the bar and we drunk that bar absolutely dry
AM: There’s a there’s a thread running through this story isn’t there (laughs)
HG: (Laughs) we drank that bar absolutely dry we finished up drinking port of all things and we sat in this bar and an electric light, (pause) can’t be a fire can’t that and it was and er the electrics in upstairs room had caught fire and er everybody had to bail out of course and this Scots lad he went absolutely berserk and we were just across from the er guard room and er the three of us were taken into the guard room and this guy was given morphine to quieten him down he was really really bad so that was almost the end of my service in Vienna we got kitted out and put in with the airmen for the rest of our stay there but er came back to er Blackpool and we were de-mobbed
AM: You were de-mobbed so you did leave in the end
HG: Yes
AM: What did you do afterwards, not textiles?
HG: Oh dear er I did for a very short period my brother worked in the textiles then my elder brother er and I batted it out (unclear) while the money lasted you know (laughs) er eventually I had to get a job so I went there and er oh I think three or four week I’m not sticking this (laughs) and er what did I do from there oh cigarette people Ardath cigarette people they had er they were based in Leeds and I met Gladys then well we’d known each other years but we got together then and er I was there for quite a while months not years months and then we got married February 48 wasn’t it
GH: Mmm
HG: And er these people kind as they are you know oh yes you can have a week off it’s your summer holiday that’s fine as long as I can have a week off we got married had the week off and went down to Kent on our honeymoon and came back and gave my notice in (laughs) they can’t do that to Harry and er from there I went into engineering in Bradford not a very happy time because I was working with people who’d been er what do they call when they weren’t called up
AM: Erm not (unclear) to subject as if they’d been in a reserved occupation
HG: Like a reserved occupation and you’re working with these guys and (unclear) so that didn’t last very long either (laughs) er and from then I went to the Gas Board
AM: Right
HG: In 49 and er that’s been my life I suppose ever since
AM: You stayed there ever since
HG: The Gas Board er finished and had a period with the water authority and I had one spell in between the Gas Board and the water what was that er what do they call it fibre glass moulds making moulds out of fibre glass and it was the summer of 49 I don’t know if you remember it and it was absolutely scorching I think it was 49 48 48 49
GH: There weren’t many in 48
AM: Late forties must’ve been 48
HG: Yeah around 48 49 really scorching and a perspex roof and you could see all this fibre glass
AM: I was gonna say dust I would imagine it’s
HG: Floating about I though oooh Harry (laughs) get out
AM: You don’t want that on your lungs
HG: That was enough of that so from there I went to an outside job with the water authority and thankfully was able to stay there
AM: Stay there ever since
HG: Until I retired
AM: and you know you said just just going back to the bombing bit for a minute you said that at the time what everybody’s said to me we had to do it that’s what we were there for you did it
HG: That’s right
AM: But later on you did start to think about
HG: Yes you did yes you did
AM: The women and children and what have you
HG: And I think what brought that to my mind more than anything was er Munich ‘cos they really did we never went to Munich but er they really did flatten Munich and there must’ve been thousands of innocent people that died because of that and er (pause) were we doing the right thing that’s the way I thought of it later but er but at the time yes that’s what you joined up for that’s what you volunteered for they want you to do it get it done
AM: And that was to bring the war to an end
HG: That’s right yeah
AM: Excellent, I’m going to switch off now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Harry Gough
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-09-22
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Sound
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AGoughH150922
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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00:30:08 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Gough was born in Dewsbury, he finished school in 1939 aged fourteen, joined the Air Training Corps in 1941 and volunteered for the Air Force in 1943. He recounts his training as an air gunner and flying over the North Pole. After flying operations he was posted to Austria as an air traffic controller. He was demobbed and after the war he worked for the Gas Board and Water Authority.
Contributor
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Carron Moss
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Austria
Great Britain
Austria--Vienna
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Anglesey
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1941
1943
1944
1945
1946
10 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
crewing up
guard room
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Initial Training Wing
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
promotion
RAF Bridlington
RAF Kinloss
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Melbourne
RAF Shawbury
RAF Valley
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/580/8849/PHawkinsIFV1501.2.jpg
782ab0bbc92c323c50838bd64ea7a1e8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/580/8849/AHawkinsIFV151103.1.mp3
8d893fa98e4005bc85e1fb6e25a049a1
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Hawkins, Ian
I F V Hawkins
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Hawkins, IFV
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Ian Hawkins (- 2022, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 214 and 299 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-03
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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MJ: It’s on.
IH: Hello, my name is Ian Hawkins. I served in the RAF as a pilot with 214 and 299 Squadrons. In 1939, in common with other members of my family, I was destined to become a teacher, and after my first year at Winchester the college was commandeered by the army. We were told to report to Culham [?] College for our second year but some of us didn’t like it. So, come the end of 1940, some fourteen of us volunteered for the RAF. I was actually called up early in 1941, did the usual reception centre and ITW at Scarborough and then was destined to join a group sailing to the United States under the Arnold Training Scheme. Arnold because of General Arnold, who had helped to introduce this scheme of training as civilians [emphasis] in the United States before they were in the war. Having embarked on a ship, Duchess of Atholl, at Glasgow and sailed down the river and parked, or moored [emphasis], for two weeks we then went back to Glasgow again because the, the survival of life on the convoys was not very high. We transferred subsequently to a late, later vessel and sailed across the Atlantic to Canada and from Canada we landed, landed and went to Toronto and we had the most marvellous food which we hadn’t seen for a couple of years, and then we went down to the south-eastern part of the United States to start our flying training. I was lucky. I passed after two hundred years, two hundred hours [emphasis] flying to get my pilot’s wings. Several of us were not so lucky because we were being trained under American peacetime standards and the standard was higher. [pause] Those who failed the course often went on to become navigators, or bomb aimers, or wireless operators. A member of, er, my course, who unfortunately I never actually met, was Michael Beetham, who went on to become Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sir Michael Beetham, Chief of Staff. He volunteered to stay in America for a further six months to become an instructor. I was too keen to come back. He got his commission. I came back as a sergeant. Back in England I did my usual advanced flying course on Oxfords, twins, and then on to OTU on Wellingtons where I was crewed up. Then on to a conversion unit on to four-engined Stirlings, adding two members of the crew to make a crew of seven, and finally on to 214 Squadron. I did my first three trips as second pilot to get the experience I could pass on to my crew. The first bit of luck I had was that my first two trips as a second pilot was as, with a Sergeant Baldock [?]. I was due to go with him on my, on a third trip but didn’t. He went missing. The whole crew killed. My third trip as a second pilot was with Flight Lieutenant Youseman, who became better known later in the war, and I knew the difference immediately on how he organised his crew to how Sergeant Baldock had organised his. So I carried on after that as first pilot with my own crew. After I’d completed sixteen operations my crew was called before the commanding officer and we were told, ‘You are going to be instructors.’ We objected to this because we wanted to finish our tour but, as subsequently dis– we discovered, hardly anybody finished thirty trips on a Stirling at that time. This was in 1943 and the OTUs were desperately in need of instructors to bring on the next generation. So I went off to become an instructor at an OTU at Chipping Warden. I spent about eighteen months there instructing, instructing crews, ending up as a course shepherd [?]. It was during this time that my, one of my friends got killed. He was my bomb aimer who had transferred to the, er, Dambusters’ Squadron and he was killed on a subsequent trip to Kembs, K-E-M-B-S, after the original Dambusters’ route, raids. At the end of my period as an instructor I was reintroduced to the Stirling and I obtained a new crew, of seven, had a refresher course and joined 299 Squadron. 299 Squadron was glider towing and we were being trained and practiced towing gliders. This was just after the invasion and the Rhine crossing. So I missed out on that but we were being prepared for the invasion of Japan [emphasis], if you please, glider towing in a Stirling with a large glider with forty soldiers in the back. Not something we were looking forward to but fortunately for us the atomic bombs came and Japan capitulated. Staying on in 299 Squadron I changed over, eventually, to Transport Command and was flying a variety of different aircraft, never a Spitfire, never a Lancaster, anything from a Tiger Moth to a Stirling, carrying air– aircraft abroad, bringing troops back. Eventually, I was due for de-mob. One sad occasion was that my second navigator, by the name of Jim Holborough [?], who was due for de-mob, decided to make one last trip with a strange pilot in a Mosquito and he was unfortunately killed. Very sad. The day before he was due to be de-mobbed. One further sad occasion was that my cousin, Leo Hawkins, who was on 218 Squadron Stirlings as a navigator was, er, struck by lightning, the aircraft was struck by lightning, soon after take-off and he was killed. I was de-mobbed, went back to train and become a teacher, decided to join the RAFVR to do my fortnight’s flying training with the occasional weekend and in 1951, when there was trouble in the Middle East and we were expanding the RAF, I was asked if I would care to go back into the RAF as a qualified flying instructor. I was very pleased about this and in 1951 did my refresher course, went to the CFS, got my qualification as a flying instructor, and for the next eighteen months I was instructing on Harvards. At the end of the time the trouble in the Middle East blew over and for the second time I was de-mobbed. I must admit I tried to stay in the RAF but this time I was considered to be too old in my 30s and although I stayed in the RAFVR as long as it, er, persisted it was not long before that was also disbanded, disbanded, so I became a teacher for the rest of my working life. I think that’s all I can say.
MJ: Why is it called brown jewels [?]
IH: Soldiers.
MJ: Yeah.
IH: Flying expression. Is it recording again now? Oh.
MJ: It’s alright.
IH: I don’t think really I have anything more to say. I know that the soldiers were very happy when we, when we brought them back to, er, this, this country after the war was over. The Stirlings were converted into troop char– troop carriers, as well as, er, glider towers.
MJ: So you got everything.
IH: Yes.
MJ: I’ll turn it off. On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank Ian Hawkins at his home in Lee-on-Solent on the date of the 3rd of December 2015. For this recording once again we thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ian Hawkins
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
2015-11-03
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHawkinsIFV151103
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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00:12:39 audio recording
Description
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Ian Hawkins was training to be a teacher when he decided to volunteer for the RAF, joining in 1941. He commenced training under the Arnold Scheme in Canada and the United States and passed the course as a pilot. He returned to England as a sergeant and eventually joined 214 Squadron flying Stirlings. After sixteen operations he became an instructor at an Operational Training Unit at RAF Chipping Warden. He later returned to flying, this time with 299 Squadron, towing gliders in Stirlings. He describes how, at the end of the war he was flying a variety of aircraft with Transport Command before being de-mobbed. He returned to teaching but joined the RAFVR to fly at weekends and in 1951 was pleased to be invited back to the RAF as a flying instructor. He was later de-mobbed again and returned to teaching for the rest of his working life.
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Christine Kavanagh
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Canada
Great Britain
England--Northamptonshire
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1940
1941
1943
214 Squadron
299 Squadron
aircrew
Harvard
Oxford
pilot
Stirling
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/589/8858/AHughesWR150713.2.mp3
18e37bacec69f09e545be17b9d8cdabd
Dublin Core
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Title
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Hughes, Bob
William Robert Hughes
W R Hughes
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Hughes, WR
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Bob Hughes (751133, 137124 Royal Air Force). He flew operations with 149, 50 and 23 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
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NM: So, this is now recording, and my name is Nigel Moore, I’m the interviewer, and I’m interviewing Flight Lieutenant Bob Hughes on the 13th of July. I’m in Mr Hughes’ home in North Hants. So, Mr Hughes, would you like to tell us something about your upbringing and your life before you joined the RAF?
BH: I was only a, a ordinary seniors school and I never went, never passed Eleven Plus, so I went to the, one of the senior productive schools and then I, I passed, I suppose, most things, you know, and when the opportunity came, I took [unclear] said we had a – I’d been working as a coachbuilder, or in, with a coachbuilding firm, and we were, were making Rolls Royce – taking Rolls Royce chassis in and making them into finished cars. And while I was there, we had a fellow named Serge Kalinsky, he was a Scandinavian diplomat and he started swearing and said ‘There’s gonna be a bloody war any time now! Within the next few months, I guarantee it, in the next few months!’ So, knowing that I – my father had had a rough time in the army, in the trenches, I thought ‘ Well, no army for me, I’m gonna join the air force now,’ because Sywell was a handy aerodrome, so I went and joined weekend air force. And, once I was in there and the war was declared, naturally I was transferred straight away into the main RAF. And, erm –
NM: So, you joined a reserve squadron, did you?
BH: That’s right, RAF Volunteer Reserves. And I don’t know the na – well, I think it was 23 Squadron that I went to, which was when – during the Battle of Britain.
NM: So, how – can you describe your training, your flying training?
BH: Flying training?
NM: What were you training on? What were you flying?
BH: Well, mostly, in Ansons and, well, you know, I, I’m terrible at trying to remember the names of these aircraft tonight, but the – oh dear, two, two, two engined, the planes that we flew in, and – oh, I can’t think of the, the names, have I got it in here at all? [sound of turning pages]
NM: Not to worry, what about the training itself?
BH: Well, this was to go in these aircraft and did a few bail-outs practices and in the, in the, oh dear, in the yards of some big firms where they, they’d got escape possibility there, so we tried, tried those out several times. [background noises, turning pages]
NM: So, you say you flew in the Battle of Britain?
BH: Yes.
NM: What –
BH: That was in Blenheims.
NM: Can you de – can you talk –
BH: Now, this is the thing: quite often, when the Battle of Britain is mentioned, it’s either – what’s the two [unclear] the two aircraft that were always noticed? I think every time they mention these two aircraft, I think, how about the Night Shifts? ‘Cause I flew in, in the, in the Night Shift, and the aircraft we flew in wasn’t – oh dear, I’m terrible at names, I’m a terrible, terrible person to interview, really, because my memory is absolutely shocking. Blenheim, yes, but [pause] these, these were the usual things that we flew in those days, Ansons and Blenheims.
NM: So, can you describe the role that you played in the Battle of Britain flying these Blenheims?
BH: Well, I was a wireless operator/air gunner, and of course, in the, in those aircraft, you could picture everything, what am I talking about? Got a picture here [background noises].
NM: Yep, there’s the Blenheim.
BH: That’s – do you rec – do you recognise the one?
NM: Mr Hughes is pointing out a Mark 1 Blenheim.
BH: Mark 1 Blenheim, yeah, that’s right, yeah.
NM: ‘S’ right, and you were –
BH: And we had a, we had a turret on the top.
NM: And that’s where you were.
BH: When I flew later, in, in the big aircraft, the four-engine aircraft – they’re all here [background noises] when I flew later in the Wellington – that one’s the Lancaster, that is the Dambuster, they’ve got no turret on there but we, where we flew in the Lancasters, we had a turret, you see but previously, during the Battle of Britain, it was on, on the twin-engine aircraft.
NM: So, when you flew the Blenheims during the Battle of Britain, were you on bombing missions, and what – if so, what were your targets?
BH: Well, it, we were on defence.
NM: On defence?
BH: Defence patrol, up and down from the south coast up to, up the Thames Estuary, most of the time. [pause, sound of turning pages]
NM: And this was – were you called the Night Shift?
BH: The Night Shift, yes. There we are, there’s the aircraft. And that’s the flew – the pilot I flew with most of the time, this is Alan Gowarth [?] and that was, yes, and all Blenheims.
NM: So, this was Number 23 Squadron, night –
BH: 23 Squadron, night fighter squadron, yes.
NM: And can you describe your operations flying for 23 Squadron?
BH: Well –
NM: In the Blenheim?
BH: It was a, a patrol, up and down from the south coast up the Thames, the Thames Estuary, keeping a guard on things to the starboard, you know, any incoming aircraft, and we, we had quite a few that we, we followed, and went and dived down with them but we didn’t actually have a contact. [Pause] This first one, yeah apart from anything else, we had anti-aircraft cooperation, searchlight cooperation, going backwards and forwards along the Thames Estuary. That’s what they were: night defensive patrols. And that was, that’s the fella, fella that I flew with most of the time.
NM: So, you encountered a few contacts but didn’t actually –
BH: We didn’t see anybody shot, shot down but we, we fired at them and we saw the bullets, you know, sort of going their direction but didn’t see anything falling down, not then.
NM: And what type of aircraft were you engaging?
BH: It was a Blenheim. Oh, I don’t know; well, they were twin, twin-engined aircraft, yeah. I can’t –
NM: Okay.
BH: Think of the name. [sound of turning pages] I’ve got a picture.
NM: So after the 23 Squadron, how did you move to – can you describe how you moved from Fighter Command to Bomber Command?
BH: Well, at the time, they were losing a lot of crews and aircraft and crews in, in Bomber Command, and so they were asking for volunteers and I volunteered to – went to Number 9 Bomber Squadron, which was at Honington, but I only did one air test with them, and then I was asked if I would volunteer and go to one, 149 Squadron, which was at Mildenhall, and that’s where I did most of the bombing trips that I did, up to, up to seventy-three, but they weren’t all to Germany. A lot – we had a spell over in the Middle East, and it was Benghazi that we were bombing then.
NM: So, the start of your operational life with 149 Squadron –
BH: 149, yes.
NM: Was that –
BH: Mildenhall.
NM: At Mildenhall.
BH: Yes.
NM: And –
BH: And we were –
NM: And how did you – can you describe how you met your crew and got a crew together?
BH: No, only a sort of friendly meeting and you like the look of somebody and who you think was, was genuine. This first fellow we went – I flew with was a Squadron Leader Heather, and we went to Wilhelmshaven, [unclear] class cruisers and we were, we were bombing all around it, when this – oh, we went there again another night, repeat, repeat. I tell you what, when we first, when we first went there, they, they took us to canal, canals, and we got to aim in the canal with the mines, and mind you, was such a narrow mine, margin, and having such a small tar – item, when we got back home, we told them how difficult it was, so we suggested ‘Why not bomb it instead of just putting mines there?’ So they sent us back the next night to, to do that. That was Wilhelmshaven.
NM: So, at this point, you were flying Wellingtons?
BH: Wellingtons, yes.
NM: And this was in nineteen-forty –
BH: 1949, February ’49.
NM: Forty – 1941?
BH: Ah, no, no, beg your pardon.
NM: Yes.
BH: Yes, ’41, yes.
NM: So, can you describe squadron life on 149 Bomber Command at Mil – Mildenhall?
BH: Well, it was just –
NM: What was life like?
BH: Just a friendly get-together, you know, I’m ninety, nearly ninety-five now and I was twenty, twenty then, nineteen or twenty. So, you know, to remember exactly what we did, we got friendly; whoever we met, we made friends with and wanted to know how we got on.
NM: Did you go out for nights out around Mildenhall? What was – what were they like?
BH: Yes, yes, but, you know, just a drink here and there and, but nothing to really note.
NM: And what about your crew? Do you have particular memories of your crew?
BH: Yes, I think I, quite honestly, having done so many and for such a long period, long number of ops, I reckon I was very lucky picking the, or matching up with a good set of wonderful pilots. You see, each of the pilots I flew with were absolutely wonderful; they seemed to go to the target and did the business and get back, no messing and no wandering about all over Germany.
NM: And how about the rest of the crew? Were you a close group?
BH: Yes, yes, I think, generally speaking it was with the naviga – with the observer, or navigator, as they were then, more than anything, and because with the navigator, it was a question of, when we got over the target, sort of the geography of the place. I remember one of the things, one of the worst op we went on was Essen, and the geography of that place was so – we could spot it out as easy as anything. [Pause] But then later on, we did a lot of coast, coastal things like Wilhelmshaven, bombing the cruisers there, they, they took [unclear] class cruisers up the, up the, the fjords.
NM: Why was Essen such a bad target?
BH: Well, being an ammunition manufacturing place, I believe it was very heavily defended because of that. I mean, it was a manufacturer of, manufacturer of explosives and suchlike, and we seemed to cruise around it quite a lot, and anyhow, I was always telling the skipper, ‘Such-and-such is at the, on the starboard side,’ or, you know, ‘We’ve got to turn a little bit to the port to get this thing.’ That was on a reserve flight, 149 Squadron, and then I went to a reserve flight at Stradishall where they were preparing to get crews to go out to the Middle East, and then I had a spell in the Middle East.
NM: So, just back on your bombing raids here, over Essen and other German targets, you were giving instructions to the pilot –
BH: Oh yes, yes!
NM: To help him to do what?
BH: Yes, notifying where the canals are shooting off, to the south or the, the west, you know, that sort of thing. On very sunny [?] nights, the, the water whether it was a river or a canal, you could spot it that much easier, and you would report, you know, what you could see.
NM: So, tell us a little bit how you then transferred out to the Middle East. Was this the same squadron, was the whole squadron go out to the Middle East?
BH: Oh, no, no, it was with a, a, I was with this, what, this one point one, this reserve flight to start with, wasn’t I? And then, then we heard that there’d been so many losses, crew losses, and there were appealing for people to, to go to transfer to the Middle East, and so I went to this reserve flight at Stradishall, and from there, via Malta, I went to, to 70 Squadron in Kabrit, which was in Egypt.
NM: That must have been quite a change. What – can you give us your memories of the change in going to the Middle East?
BH: Well, the thing was, we had, we had a turret to go to, and the preparations for, for raids and things were absolutely marvellous. We had an advanced base; we used to land in the desert and then take off again for the raid. Well, this one here, the first one we had, operations against enemy was Menida [?] Aerodrome, so actually, I liked the possibility of going into the front turret if we were going and attacking an aerodrome, so we can go ‘round and, you know, shooting up the, the, the arm – armoury points.
NM: So, you moved from the mid upper to the front for these raids?
BH: That’s right, yes, but most of the time, you know, we were, when you were in the rear turret, we were solely concerned about attacks by enemy aircraft, you know? So, most of our light was emphasised downwards. [Pause] We had one or two come up to us and nose – nosing towards us and managed to tell the pilot to do a dive and then we went down in, in a curve dive, you know, and got shot of them.
NM: So, you encountered enemy aircraft?
BH: Yes, yes.
NM: On many occasions?
BH: Oh, at least, oh, I’ll just think, at least a half a dozen times.
NM: So, tell us about squadron – your memories of squadron life in the desert. How different was it from the UK?
BH: Well, of course, water was the problem, sort of rationing out water, you know, and sort of having exercise, running and all the rest of it, but had to avoid having too much water. But then, in the desert, particularly, that was an even worse problem. [Pause] That was a thing that we did quite often while in the Middle East, was staffing the motor transport on the – between Cairo and Benghazi. The, the main road was, was used quite a lot by the enemy and we’d attack transport along there, and railway sidings, particularly, so they would try bringing the forces, German forces, into the desert via Benghazi and so we attacked the– oh, I can’t, I was trying to think of the, the general’s name: Rommel. Rommel was bringing all his replacement troops into Ben – Benghazi, so we went there and we – well, they called it the mailroom [?] because we hit it so many times, but it was where they were bringing the re – the new forces in.
NM: And were these daylight raids you were on, or night raids?
BH: Mostly night, but we did one or two; well, yes, I should think about a third of them were daylight, but mostly night. [Pause] Then it was a question of geography and remembering the shape of the, the land underneath you, whereabouts you’d got to. Location, on the main way up to Benghazi, we had to sort out Bardi – Bardiyah and Menidi [?] for erm, to locate us that we were hitting the right thing. Railway sidings were attacked an enormous amount, but we had to sort out our geography to make sure we were bombing, strafing the right things. [Pause, sound of turning pages]
NM: So how did, how did your war continue? Can you describe – were there any changes over this period, 1941, in terms of how the squadron life continued?
BH: Well, towards the end of my period, we did a lot of education of fresh crews.
NM: Who had come out to Egypt?
BH: Yes. [Sound of turning pages] Oh, this is Pershore.
NM: Is that –
BH: Pershore, that was the OTU there, Pershore, where I did a lot of bombing from there, and then on to 12 Squadron.
NM: So, tell me how you managed to get then transferred back from the desert, back to Bomber Command in England.
BH: [Sound of turning pages] 50 Squadron [more turning pages] It’s in –
NM: What happened between 70 Squadron and, and 50 Squadron?
BH: We – everything was going alright and we were bombing everything we were asked to, and, but then they were asking for volunteers to do – to go to, to England again.
NM: So, did you volunteer on your own or did the entire crew volunteer?
BH: Oh, I volunteered on my own, I think, but this was 50 Squadron, 5 Group, Skellingthorpe, it was a liaison visit we did there, and while we were there, they wanted us to go to, to – on Lancasters to Magdeburg. As a matter of fact, I’d been on seventy-two trips, missions, and I’d never once been to Berlin, somebody was talking about going to Berlin, so we went to Magdeburg, and after we’d bombed there, the skipper says ‘See on the starboard side, you’ll see Berlin, Bob, and that’s the nearest we shall get to it!’ [slight laugh] And of course we got ‘boo’s by the rest of the crew, and that’s where we finished up. That’s the seventy – that was my very last mission.
NM: So, we’ve jumped ahead into 1944 from 1941.
BH: 1944, January ’44, yeah.
NM: What – going back a little bit to coming out of Egypt into – back to England: you say you went to an OTU?
BH: Yes, yes.
NM: And you were still flying Wellingtons?
BH: Yes, as a trainee. No, not as a trainee, as a –
NM: So you, you became an instructor?
BH: Instructor, yes.
NM: What was it like being –
BH: Yes, was that ’43? January ’43.
NM: That’s ’43, yep.
BH: Yeah, that’s right, went to an OTU.
NM: So you became an instructor?
BH: Instructor, that’s right.
NM: What else –
BH: And we did an operation from there at – oh, to Essen, several times.
NM: Just what was it like converting from a Wellington to a Lancaster? Can you –
BH: Well, we were –
NM: - describe it from a crew’s point of view?
BH: Well, we had wonderful turrets on the Lancaster and, well, I think we were just pleased that it’s – that it was a new aircraft and we’d got four engines, you know? I don’t think we gave it much sort of consideration as to whether it was better or not, it just – we just accepted that it was [emphasis] better, and we were moved fa – we were flying faster. They, they were some of the worst planes [?] we did with Essen and mine laying, oh, we did a mine laying off Heligoland and that, that was a bit dicey; they seemed to have high defensive, the defences at these places. [Pause] While we were on OTU, of course, we did a lot of experience in cross-country, knowing our way about, you know, air-to-air fire, firing and air-to-sea firing, and that’s just for practice.
NM: Describe a little bit life as an instructor as opposed to operational air crew.
BH: Well, I was quite happy about that; I mean, I knew what I was talking about and the – I, I did see quite a lot, the fellers were coming to me for, you know, ‘Well, how do we, how do we sort out this?’ you know, the rear-see [?] retainer keeper, this was a familiar phrase, you know, ‘How do we deal with this when we’re still flying in the air?’ you know? You’ve got to do it with blinds – blindfold, and that was the case in some, sometimes, ‘cause there was machine, with machine guns. [Pause] That was the last trip we did, we were attacked by an ME-210, that was the target, and fired hundred and fifty rounds but there was no confirmed hits. [Pause] I’m sorry I’m not able to answer your questions quite as freely as I ought to, really.
NM: No, don’t worry about that, you’re doing wonderfully.
BH: Well, a few years ago, perhaps I should – I’m a bit more chatty, but – [pause, sound of moving papers] You’ve got a record of service here, you see: I joined in May the 12th 1939, I joined the RAFVR and received calling-up papers, then, into the regular air force in August of that year, August 27th.
NM: So, when you came to the end of your operations, why did you finish operations? Had you done, finished a tour, or –
BH: Yeah, well –
NM: What happened after your last operation?
BH: [Sound of turning pages] Oh yes, joined an AF – was an AFU, that was the training unit.
NM: So you became an instructor again?
BH: That’s right, yes, on gun, guns and armoury.
NM: And that took you to the end of the war, did it?
BH: Yes, well, February, February, no, Oct – no, October ’44. [Pause] Various aircraft that I flew in was a Blenheim Mark 1, a Fairey Battle, that was an early, early one that I flew in a lot, and then the Boulton Paul Defiant, which we did most of the shooting with on, on nights, and then the Avro Anson that, this was a transport aircraft most of the time, and then in the Wellingtons, I flew in the 1, 1C, 1A, Mark 2 and the 3, and then the Avro Lancasters, Marks 1 and 2, and 3. Oh, also, I flew in the Lysanders quite a few times, and Blackburn Bothas; Blackburn Botha, they were used to use for training quite a lot. I know they weren’t very popular for some reason, but they did the trick.
NM: So they were the training aircraft?
BH: Yes, Bothas.
NM: So, I’m interested in the Lysander, your role in flying in a Lysander; what was your role then?
BH: My role then was to, to, to take us into the desert for take-offs, they just, for operations, or to res – rescue from the desert after we’d landed. That’s when I used the Lysander a few times, was for – was rep – was actually saving, you know, escape. I flew also in Fairey Battle, Ansons, Bothas and Lysanders. Well, the Lysander, as I say, was a thing to save you, you know, sort of a –
NM: So, of your seventy-seven operations, either in the desert or across Germany, are any particularly memorable for you?
BH: Seven – seventy-three, it was.
NM: Oh, seventy-three missions.
BH: Yeah.
NM: Okay.
BH: Well, yeah, occasionally we got caught out with the ‘Un [?] defence plane catching catching up with us, but most of the time, we were wide awake to it and whenever we saw something on the starboard or the port side, we’d tell the skipper and we’d dive away. [Pause] Course, one of the main things, maintenance, was the machine, with the machine belts, belts of machines, you know, sort of making sure we didn’t get caught up on those. [Pause] Anyhow, there’s a – unless there a record of service in the whole, the whole lot, that I, you know, kept it down to a minimum there. I went recently to Clarence House; my wife’s been there to the Queen.
NM: When you look back on your time in Bomber Command, what are your main thoughts?
BH: Well, I was glad I was available to do it, and the friendship that you made with most of the people there was pretty good. [Pause] That was the thing; with the link trainer, I used to enjoy going in that, flying the various things through the link trainer.
NM: How do you think Bomber Command has been treated since the end of the war?
BH: What? Haven’t really, haven’t had any more to do with it or knowledge of it, really. No, I don’t think that we’ve – I think we’ve, we would have cottoned on to it a bit more if anything had gone wrong, but everything seemed to be right, we sort of sorted all the problems out.
NM: Do you think Bomber Command has had enough recognition since the end of the war for what they did, or what you did?
BH: Well, yes, I think so, I think we’ve been reason – reasonably recognised.
NM: Tell me about your life since the end of the war. Did you stay in the RAF long?
BH: Oh, no, when – I had been with a firm that repaired converted Rolls Royce from the chassis into a cars, you know, and it was a good firm to work for, and I, I did a lot of this, this work, and this is how I came to meet this Kalinsky, who came in with his Wellington, with his Rolls Royce, and so he told us that there was gonna be a war, so that’s what made me go into the fleet, into the reserve occupation, so that when I was called up, I was bound to be in the RAF.
NM: So, on leaving the RAF, you rejoined the same company?
BH: After – do you know, my memory, my memory’s terrible. Yes, I must, I must have done, went straight to Mulliner’s, who were coachbuilders, class coachbuilder, they were mainly, mostly London but we had a branch in Northampton, and then [pause] think I got the DFC for my last, last trips over Essen.
NM: So you were awarded the DFC?
BH: Yes, that was December the 12th, 12th of the 3rd, ’43, and then the other thing later, the RAF.
NM: What was the background to the award of the DFC?
BH: We were on – trying to see where this is. [Pause] Oh, it was on the second tour, I’d done a tour of ops already and volunteered for another, and it was during this that I was awarded the DFC on the secondary tour, tour.
NM: Was the reason for the DFC because of your –
BH: Length, length of service, service.
NM: Length of service, rather than a particular –
BH: Yes, volunteering for so mu – so much with the, with Flying Command, with Bomber Command. I went to another squadron, 950 Squadron, we went to, on operational liaison duties, did that quite a bit – it was nice to go to other squadrons and find out how they were getting on and tell them what we did.
NM: So that was between your tours?
BH: Yes, yeah.
NM: So, what was the role you played as a liaison officer, then?
BH: Oh! [laughs] I was to sort out the ammunition, and of course, in the early days, we had the pans to slap onto aircraft, onto the gun, but later on, of course, we had machine belt, belt machine, belt ammunition.
NM: Did you see much evolution in air gunnery between 1939 and 1945? Can you –
BH: Yes, well, we had a lot of new aircraft, new guns coming along, American, lot of new American guns that we were using, and also the, the loading, the belts, not just the belts, but ammunition belt, pan, pans. I don’t seem to be able to tell you anything more positive, really, you know, but –
NM: You received a commission during your service, didn’t you? Because you joined as a LAC and -
BH: LAC, yes.
NM: And moved up to flight lieutenant.
BH: Flight lieutenant, that’s right, yes.
NM: What was the history there?
BH: Well, I’d been, I’d been moved from one place to another and volunteered for so much, much, and there was a lot of training and did a lot of training with pupils coming along. [Pause] Show you this last one there; we had an enormous amount of people with us, we had somebody with seventy-two – oh, that was me with seventy two! So, if all the others had had twenty-four trips, then we were – this was a mission for, for training. It was a voluntary – well, it was while I was on a liaison trip to, to Skellingthorpe on training for, for measured score [?], I said that I’d, I’d done seventy, seventy-odd trips and I’d never been to Berlin, so this gunnery leader there said ‘Well, you’re alright, well go with us tonight,’ got to the end of the runway and this aircraft, this aircraft, yeah, this aircraft, and the target was changed to an alternative, and in the end, we went there and bombed that, and as we come away from it, the skipper says, ‘Well, you’ve seen Berlin on the right, on the starboard side,’ he says, but you know of course, the rest of the crew didn’t care too much for this, they wanted to get home, back home [slight laugh]!
NM: Do you keep in touch with Bomber Command through squadron associations or reunions?
BH: No, that’s – do you know, apart from our local reunions at Sywell, I haven’t gone back to any RAF squadrons at all.
NM: And what’s your association with Sywell?
BH: Well, our, our early training was there, we, we – it was the first aircraft we flew, flew in. We – every opportunity we had of getting a flight, we, we, we took it, you know?
NM: And you get – you go back there now for reunions?
BH: Oh, yes; well, we’ve got a Battle of Britain fighter association, and also, there’s a local – we’ve got a gunnery leader and – oh dear, what do we call the things now? We go to Sywell for the reunions for air, air gunners, all the air gunner, local air gunners, and we joined this local Battle of Britain – no, not Battle of Britain fighter association, it’s the – we joined this – oh dear [pause] gunnery association, really. Do you know, I – my mind’s really terrible.
NM: And do you still meet as a group?
BH: Oh yes; at Sywell, we’ve got a, quite a nice little bunch of fellers there, I think about, we’ve had as many as fourteen or fifteen, but it gradually faded, you know, died off a bit, and so we’re only getting about three or four of us go, once a month.
NM: And are these just socials, social get-togethers over lunch, or just to talk about old times?
BH: No, just at the, the aerodrome at Sywell, where there was a bar there, you see, that was the attraction amongst. There were various cross-country trips, you know, to renew our flying experience.
NM: When was the last time you flew? Was it at the end of the war, or have you flown since the end of the war?
BH: [unclear] [sound of turning pages] So, Uxbridge, we had a – was Bishop’s Court – was about ’44, February 44, it says.
NM: You haven’t flown since the war?
BH: No; oh, well, not air force. I, I, we’ve flown private, private flying ‘cause we’ve got some friends in, in France, we used to go nip across, you know, by ordinary aircraft.
NM: Okay. Shall we stop the recording there?
BH: Yes.
NM: I think.
[recording is stopped and restarted]
BH: Well, people had lost their logbook, or oil. So I managed to rescue mine and copy this from it. [Pause] Who was that?
NM: So your logbook doesn’t exist anymore but you’ve copied all this out from it?
BH: Oh, yes, that’s right, remember him.
NM: So, are you still in touch with any of your original air crew?
BH: Well, I was in touch with the skipper that I flew with most of the time, Alan Gowarth [?] of Monaco, Monaco, he was a night pilot, fighter pilot in 23 Squadron in - during the Battle of Britain, and this, this was illustrated with the seventieth anniversary of the Battle being commended.
NM: So you’re still in touch with him? Are you in touch with him now?
BH: No, no, not in the last – I think he might have pegged out since, but yes, I think it was quite late when I still, still in touch with him, March.
NM: So you were in touch by letter. Did you ever meet him again after the war?
BH: No, no, no, of course, he was New Zealand, he went to settle in his home in New Zealand. [Pause, sound of turning pages] Spires of Lincoln coming out of the mist as we got closer to home, a wonderful sight. As a matter of fact, we did have a situation where we were followed in to our own base, and we warned – we’d been warned about this, and anyhow, it was the last minute, really, before he was gonna fire at us, and we noticed that he was almost nose nose to tail with us, and so I told the skipper, you know, ‘We, we, we’re being followed, turn, turn starboard,’ you know, and he says ‘Okay, yes, fair enough,’ and we shook him off, but he got to within, oh, within a few hundred yards, I suppose, of shooting us down, and we got back home.
NM: So, you had a clear sight of this?
BH: Oh, yes, it was a, it was a Heinkel.
NM: And at this point, you were coming into which airfield?
BH: Hmm, not sure.
NM: Was that Wickenby or somewhere in Lincolnshire?
BH: Yes, somewhere, somewhere in Lincolnshire, but I can’t remember which. I should ought to remember because we were near, near to being shot down!
NM: Was that the closest you’ve, you came?
BH: I think so, to our demise, yes. [Pause] We’d been told about this: ‘Be careful, the blighter’s follow, following you in,’ and he almost on our nose, on our tail, you know, with his nose. [Pause] And then the skipper says, ‘Glad you kept your bloody eyes open, Bob!’ [laughs]
[recording is stopped and restarted]
BH: On the way back from the major target, we’d sort of go to various aerodromes, and the skipper’d ask me to go into the front turret so that we could go around the, the dispersal points shooting up all and setting fire to a lot of aircraft. We did this on quite a few occasions.
[recording is stopped and restarted]
BH: I was just wondering where to start, what, what was I talking about, now?
NM: You were talking about the geodetic construction.
BH: Oh, yes, yes, I was thankful and praised God for Barnes Wallis because of his aircraft design. We were over Benghazi, and we had a, a enormous hole inside of the fuselage (about six foot diameter), and the fact that it was geodetic construction of air, the pilot still flew the aircraft quite smoothly, and then we landed in the desert and checked up on what was what, and we took off again! And that was with a six foot diameter hole in the side of the, the fuselage, and of course, as I say, I thank God for Barnes Wallis and the fact that the geodetic construction was so, so wonderful.
NM: And the damage was caused by en –
BH: By flak, but that was bloody uncomfortable to sleep and we – ‘course, when we were in the desert, we, when we went up from Cairo up to the advanced base, we’d have to sleep in the aircraft, but the geodetic construction was as comfortable to sleep on! [laughs] You know, you’d have load of flying kit all on your hip, you know, to stop you from being scarred [?] ‘cause it was in – we slept in the co – oh, if we, if you laid out, you slept outside the aircraft in the desert, in, in the, oh dear, well, if, if you slept outside in the desert, on where there were lots of dried-up salt lakes, but you could have slept on there, and that was – but there were a lot of darn [unclear] about, and they were, actually, they sounded worse than they were, so it was a question sleeping inside the aircraft, but then, of course, you’ve got the geodetic construction, you know, made it uncomfortable, but having a lot of Irvine jackets and trousers, of course, to pad the sides.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Bob Hughes
Creator
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Nigel Moore
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-13
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHughesWR150713
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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00:58:38 audio recording
Contributor
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Beth Ellin
Sally Coulter
Carolyn Emery
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Hughes joined the RAF as war became likely to avoid repeating his father's First World War experience in the trenches and transferred to the RAF Volunteer Reserve when war was declared. He trained on Ansons and then flew in twin-engine Blenheims in the Battle of Britain as part of 23 Squadron. They carried out night defence patrols from the south coast up the Thames Estuary.
Bob volunteered for Bomber Command which had lost a lot of crews. After one air test for Number 9 Bomber Squadron, he went to 149 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall and flew in Wellingtons. He describes the difficulty of targeting well-defended Essen and bombing cruisers in coastal areas, such as Wilhelmshaven.
Bob then transferred to 70 Squadron in RAF Kabrit, Egypt and the Middle East. Water rationing was an issue. They would carry out raids on transport and railway sidings in response to Field Marshal Erich Rommel bringing German forces into the desert via Benghazi.
Bob had instructor stints at the Operational Training Unit at RAF Pershore and Advanced Flying Unit. He went on operational liaison duties to 950 Squadron. Other aircraft in which Bob flew included: Battle, Defiant, Lancasters, Lysanders and Bothas. Bob undertook 73 operations and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on 12th March 1943.
He describes the evolution in air gunnery during the war. He also praises Barnes Wallis’s geodetic construction.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
England--Thames River
North Africa
Egypt
Egypt--Kibrit
Libya
Libya--Banghāzī
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Essen
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1943
1943-03-12
1944
1945
149 Squadron
23 Squadron
49 Squadron
50 Squadron
70 Squadron
9 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
Battle
Blenheim
Botha
Defiant
Distinguished Flying Cross
Lancaster
Lysander
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
promotion
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Pershore
RAF Skellingthorpe
training
Wallis, Barnes Neville (1887-1979)
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/614/8883/PMusgroveJ1501.1.jpg
b7eca1ecabb2abfcc21142f7d37a6759
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/614/8883/AMusgroveJ150812.2.mp3
772053bb4cd364dadff721dd7f83f840
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
Musgrove, Joseph
J Musgrove
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Musgrove
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Joseph Musgrove (1922 - 2017, 1450082, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 214 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-12
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is Annie Moodie, and the interviewee is Joe Musgrove, and the interview is taking place at Mr. Musgrove’s home in Whatton, on 12th August, 2015. So Joe just to start off will you tell me a little bit about your, where you were born and your family background and school, stuff like that?
JM: Well I was born in York in 1922, my parents were Soldney [?] people, my father unfortunately had an accident when he was sixteen and lost half an arm so I was brought to appreciate the problems of people who had lost limbs. I went to school, I was at school until I was fourteen at the Loddon School in York which is very good quality school, er, did not do very well. When I went to work I decided that my education ought to be extended a bit more and spend two days a week at night school to bring myself up to a reasonable standard.
AM: What job were you doing Joe, what job were you doing then?
JM: I was working at Rowntrees which is a factory, and just ordinary work producing what is today a Kit-Kats.
AM: What did you do at night school then, what sort of things were you doing at?
JM: Well I concentrated on English and mathematics as I thought they were two basic things in life and that did stand me in good stead when I applied to join the Air Force when I was seventeen.
AM: What made you apply to join the Air Force?
JM: The main reason I think was I didn’t want to join the Army, I didn’t want to join the Navy, obvious reasons [laughs] and the Air Force appealed. The reason why in 1936 a single engined twin wing fighter landed not very far from where I was living and that got my interest in flying which I had ever since.
AM: Right. So you joined the RAF?
JM: Yes.
AM: How old were you eighteen?
JM: I joined in 19 well I went to join in 1940, had all me exams and one thing and another, but I hadn’t realised when I first applied to join that it would be such a complicated business and that, because I spent three days at [unclear] at Cardington where the airships were, going through various tests and exams and things like that, and fortunately I did quite well so they eventually accepted me as a wireless operator/air gunner and I went and trained me on that.
AM: So what was the training like where did you do it?
JM: Well.
AM: Describe the training to me?
JM: I did a bit of everything, I went to Cardington to get kitted out and I went from there to Scar to Blackpool, for initial training, which I enjoyed, because bearing in mind at the time I was just coming up to eighteen in 19. I never been away on me own before it was quite exciting to be in Blackpool in those days, and that was the doing Morse Code and things like that. I did I think reasonably well, a very kindly flight sergeant patted me on the head and said, ‘I think you’ve passed.’ I was pleased about that, and then I went on leave. And then from there I went to a place called Madley in Herefordshire for initial flying on, can’t remember the name of the aircraft now, anyhow it was a twin engine twin plane, it was my first experience of flying which I think I enjoyed at the time you went up and down it’s a little bit rough, and I found out what air sickness was all about and that particular thing, but did quite well pass there and then I went on flying with a single engine aircraft a Percival IV [?] which was quite good. And then from there on leave, Madley by the way was the place where Rudolph Hess when he came was moved to Madley first of all from Glasgow. From there I went on leave, sounds if life’s one great leave for me isn’t it, and enjoyed it. From there I went, can you just let me have a little think. I got posted to a place called Staverton, I went to the, er, railway transport office, and he said, ‘Oh I know where it is it’s not very far from blah, blah, blah.’ So off I went down to the South Coast and on to Staverton, got off train there, empty platform, I found one of the officials there, I said, ‘How do I get to Staverton aerodrome?’ He said, ‘With a great deal of difficulty from here ‘cos you’re in the wrong county the one you want is between in Gloucestershire, between Gloucester and Cheltenham.’ So they put me up overnight and the following day to Staverton which was an aerodrome just opposite Rotols Airscrews Factory. Spent some time there, I’m not quite certain what the objective at Staverton was, did a fair bit of flying. Staverton went on leave and got posted to 102 Squadron on Halifaxes at Topcliffe. Hadn’t been there very long and then moved just the other side of York, can’t remember the name of the aerodrome now, anyhow, but wasn’t on operations I was there as part of my training.
AM: Was this the Heavy Conversion Training, Heavy Conversion Training?
JM: Yes, thoroughly enjoyed it. Went on leave from there yet again, I think my parents begin to think life is one great leave for Joseph David. And from there, oh I got posted to a place called Edgehill near Banbury, which was No. 12 Operational Training Unit. From there of course I joined the usual thing there’s twenty of us of each kind, so the cup of coffee on the lawn and get crewed up which we did.
AM: How did, how did you crew up? How did that work?
JM: Well, it’s I stood there, mostly among people of my own breed if you like [unclear] and a chappie came up to me and said, ‘Are you crewed up yet?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well my pilot’s, a chap called Ces Brown, and I’m his navigator.’ And his name was dead fancy. ‘It would be very nice if you joined us and if you do of course we’ll have an idea we’ll just pop in the mess and have a cup of coffee and a beer later on in the day.’ And I thought, sounds good, so I joined them. And we did our OTU at Edgehill which was an aerodrome sit on like a little plateau which was a bit different but the beauty of it is, it was a farm that abutted the aerodrome that used to have a really good system whereby they give egg and bacon if you wanted it from the farm, which we did regularly. And from there on leave again, goodness, now this time it’s on my record in’t it this man goes on leave quite a lot. And got posted from there to 214 Squadron which was based at Chedburgh. Unfortunately on the way there I got robbed of my case with all my RAF papers in that I was studying nothing secret or anything like that but it was a bit of a loss to me, and joined 214 Squadron at Chedburgh not very far from Bury St. Edmonds. Stirlings Mark 3 Stirlings, I was quite pleased because I thought Mark 3’s, one or two were joining Mark 1’s and Mark 1’s were a little bit of a [intake of breath] I always thought a bit of a difficult thing they used to have a lot of swing on take-off, whereas a Mark 3 had one but not quite as serious as the other ones. So that was it I’m now operational.
AM: So what was your first operation like?
JM: Well it was gardening they always are aren’t they, cinnamon [?] which was just off the Baltic. I don’t know it’s when you’re sitting in the radio operator’s little compartment almost isolated from everybody else you don’t really know what’s going on outside, so what I used to approaching the target area stand in the astrodome and look out for people who were a little bit sort of not all that nice to us and that was the first one, it was uneventful insofar as we weren’t damaged anyway usual [unclear] shells and flak and that was my if you like introduction to operations. I didn’t find it very difficult at all.
AM: What were you doing as the radio operator, what did you do for your main things?
JM: Well it’s communications I suppose was the main thing about radio operators, [coughs] they it was an air gunner, the training for air gunnery and I missed that out ‘cos I did my air gunnery training on Walney Island which was nice.
AM: Near Barrow-in-Furness.
JM: It had a nice pub, and they had Boulton Paul Defiants which was nice, and enjoyed that, and of course at the end of it we did we went on leave. [laughs]
AM: So back to being a radio operator?
JM: Well the Boulton Paul Defiant one was [unclear] two seater fighter with a pilot and the turret just behind, quite fast aircraft. The only thing was with Boulton Paul Defiant’s, oh yes and the pilot that I had was a Pole who didn’t speak English and on the thing there’s a set of coloured lights which combination of each it meant something to him and to me but not necessary the same so on that we had a bit of a problem on there. And on them the undercarriage the hydraulics were a little bit dubious, if I can use that word [whispers], so the problem was if you wouldn’t come down sometimes you’d get one leg down and the other one not, so I used to take it up, oh he used to take it up to about seven or eight thousand feet put his nose down and pull it up and centrifugal force would force the other one down. Well I was a [unclear] and when I flew on it it always worked, and from there as I said before I went on leave and on to [?] squadron.
AM: So actually being the radio operator on the operation what sort of things did you have to do?
JM: Well the thing is [coughs], excuse me, when approaching the target when presumably no, no stuff was going to come off the radio, my skipper asked me if I’d go in the front turret which I did, interesting ‘cos when you sit on the front of an aircraft, with nobody in front of you and nobody at the side of you to me it was a little bit isolated and there’s only two guns in the front turret rather than four in the back, but it was not too bad and it is interesting ‘cos you get a good view of the target when you went over it. One or two times we had a difference of opinion with night fighters, which meant me spraying or hosing the guns.
AM: So you did actually use the guns then?
JM: But I never ever shot anybody down unfortunately so I can’t claim any credit for anything like that, and that was it. And of course we had leave from time to time. [coughs]
AM: How many operations did you do Joe?
JM: Well it was listed as eight, so I wasn’t all that lucky.
AM: And what sort, what areas did you target, where did you actually go on the operations, can you remember?
JM: I remember two gardening, one was cinnamon and the other one was off the isl, Ile du Ré on the Durant which was the entrance to a U-Boat base somewhere.
AM: Why did they call them gardening, why did they call them gardening?
JM: Well they codes we all was vegetables, like cinnamon and rose and things like that, so it was just a code gardening. It was supposed to be our introduction to operations more often than not on the second one we did which was Ile du Ré off the Durant, we got you’ve got to drop them at a certain height, certain speed, and we had two large ones and then going down along the powers that be that gave us the route didn’t take into consideration the facts, there was some anti-aircraft ships they used to have based there, um, which unfortunately for us were just a, if I can put it that way, just a little bit unfriendly.
AM: Describe unfriendly?
JM: And um, the I think it was port [unclear] and that destroyed the power supply to a lot of the instruments the navigator was using [coughs] so we used the, I can’t use his name, but it was “D”. The code you phoned when you were in trouble on the nights and the thing indicated it was night time and we asked for searchlight assistance to get us to our which couldn’t do, so they got us into Andrew’s Field which is an American station which mitchers [?] and marauders and of course we put this Stirling down there and of course we put the Stirling down there and of course the quite high the nose on a Stirling, and the following morning we got up there’s all the, a lot of American [unclear] looking up at us, with some right rude remarks being made about it. But the beauty of it was, was the er, one of my commanders’ said, [coughs] excuse me, ‘You can go into the PX’, I think it was called. A large building where you could buy all sorts of things, so we stocked up on, I think it was Lucky Strike Cigarettes, handkerchiefs and things like that. And I must say when we landed there we went for debriefing for these, they got the station education officer etcetera up who debriefed us and he said, ‘Well non-commission officers in the Air Force the American Air Force don’t have a mess separate, but nevertheless we can get you something that you’ll will enjoy.’ And we had steak and one thing and another for breakfast, and they said, ‘Did we mind.’ And I thought no I don’t mind but if they want to hang on to me for a month or two I don’t mind at all. Eventually we went back to Chedburgh.
AM: How did you get back? How did you get back did somebody come and fly you back?
JM: They sent a lorry for us.
AM: Oh right.
JM: Not a crew bus a lorry and we sat in the back of that, flying kit and everything. And when we went along people recognised what we were and waved to us and we waved back, which was like being on holiday, and we got back and we went on leave, which was nice. And at that time I’d been introduced to a young lady who eventually became my wife, and I went to London to, she was a Londoner, I went to London to see her.
AM: Where did you meet her?
JM: I met her in Banbury when I was at HEO, and there was no bus service from HEO that I remember into Banbury so I used to walk, it wasn’t very far six or seven miles something like that. And I used to walk in spend the day with Elsie, walk back, and we was on night flying, circuit, bumps and things like that, and after seven days I said to Elsie, ‘I wish you’d go back to London ‘cos I’m worn out with you here going backwards and forwards.’ But it was nice. So back to Chedburgh, on the 27th which is the Monday of September 1943, we was briefed to go to Hanover which we’d been before so we knew the way, at least I thought we knew the way to Hanover. I remember it quite well because the final turning point was at the far end of the Steinhoven [?] and I was illuminated by a white flare cascading at three thousand feet, and I thought great that’s exactly where we go on the last leg, unfortunately rather unpleasant German night fighters I think it was, they used to have two sets of night fighters who would [unclear] there’s the tamer soar which was the tame boar and the wilder soar which was the wild boar, and the wild boar it roamed with radar a little bit feared by the way came from nowhere and one of them took a fancy to having a closer look at aircraft and the rear gunner fought him off. The rear gunner, Tommy Brennan, thought he’d shot him down but I don’t think he did, the trouble with rear gunners they always think they’re are shooting people down and there not. But by that time by the time we’d been chased all over the sky we was down to about five thousand feet and we took a consensus of the crew whether should go on or turn back so we decided after come that far we’d keep going although five thousand feet was a little bit low for operating.
AM: Had you been actually shot up at by that time?
JM: Yes the port engine had caught fire which we put out with the Gravenor, the Gravenor is the fire extinguisher in the engine which you can only use once, got that out, got down say to five thousand feet and then got shot at by anti-aircraft fire which set the port outer one on fire, so we [laughs] the bomb aimer disposed of his little things and off we went back but it was pretty obvious we was losing fuel and the aircraft kept getting lower and lower and lower, and Ces Brown the pilot said, ‘We better bale out now otherwise I think it’ll blow up.’ So that’s what we did and I landed near Emden in the middle of a field, and the funny thing was I remember about it, it was a soft landing, so I thought get rid of the parachute and me flying jacket etcetera, but I couldn’t find a way out of the field because there was a ditch all the way round and there seemed to be no way above it to get out, so I went round again and the moon was shining on the water but just underneath the water was this black bridge that was covered by water. So I got across there and I thought right go to the village which was in the distance with a church, go to the last cottage then if it’s unpleasant I’m out in the continent. Well that was the principle but when I got to the village I’m walking along very carefully keeping well into the hedge and things, when a little thing was in me, me back, and a voice said something or other, I could never remember what he actually said but I knew what it meant and that was it, and he was, he was I think he was a Hageman [?] in the Luftwaffe on leave, serves me right for getting involved in [unclear], and he was saying goodnight to his girlfriend when I happened to walk past so I thought his eyes lit up and he thought, ooh I’ve got it, I’ve got it, and I was, and he actually took me to the end cottage anyhow. Got in there and there was my navigator, Ted Bounty, sitting there looking quite miserable but he did perk up when he saw me and that was it.
AM: What happened to the others, what happened to the rest of the crew do you know?
JM: Well see when you are baling out you’ve got to remember the aircraft is still moving, and I been bale out the next man might be half a mile further on, so I don’t know until we’d been to Interrogation Centre, Dulag Luft, and we met that was the first prisoner of war camp I went to which was Stalag VI in Heydekrug in Lithuania.
AM: Right. Tell me about Dulag, tell me about the interrogation part of it?
JM: So they sent him that picked us up to Emden and Emden which was a police marine barracks, him that picked us up, and of course on the films you see these motorbikes with Germans on with a sidecar, they sent one of those, well they sent two, one for Ted Bounty, and one for me, and off we went to Emden. And at that time [coughs] I had, every now and again aircrew a thing we used to do, one of them’s got money and I was the one that had money, currency, so I thought I’ve got to be careful here what I do with it, so I said to the interrogator and they all, interrogators they all look nice, very polite, but there are not. I said, ‘I’m awfully sorry but I must use the toilet.’ So they got a guard took me along and I went inside the little cubicle and he waited outside, and I thought I know what I’ll do I’ll put the money, it was one of the old fashioned toilets up there, lift the lid up put it inside and get it later on. That was a, so went back into interrogation and they in retrospect it was not any particular worry on that, they shout at you, they threatened you, [coughs] excuse me, they offer you cigarettes, in fact I was offered a drink, um, but I’ve always made a promise I would never drink if I was captured, at least I think I did. So I then was taken into a room and given some soup to keep me going and said to that person, ‘I must use the toilet.’ [unclear] fine I’ve got it back again, climbed up lifted it up it had gone, dereliction of duty I suppose you would if the commander found out but I tried hard to keep it. And then went from there after about two or three days by train to Frankfurt am Main which is near to Oberursal which is where Dulag Luft was, stopped at Cologne and there’s I’m in this compartment with two guards, and I thought oh gosh I don’t feel very safe here on the station at Cologne, but fortunately a Luftwaffe officer came in and what he demanded I don’t know but he came to sit in here with us so his presence kept everybody out.
AM: So it was the civilians that were —
JM: Yes.
AM: Was the worrying factor.
JM: So we got on to Frankfurt am Main and then on to Dulag Luft. Dulag Luft I’ve read many many accounts of people’s grief there but I didn’t find it particularly harrowing if that’s the best word for it, unpleasant yes but not harrowing. So again I was offered cigarettes and drink which I didn’t take, regretted it afterwards. And then after about a fortnight something like that, may be six or seven of us that was there, I mean you was in isolation by the way, they took us by tram to a park where there was a wooden hut and it was opposite the IG Farbernwerks [?], I always remember that and we’d got to spend the night there and there’s an air raid, and next to the hut was a German anti-aircraft gun unit, which pooped ‘em up all night, not particularly pleasant, but in retrospect not too bad anyhow. I think when you say in retrospect it means that as the years have gone by you’ve mellowed to the situation, and then from there we were transported by train, luxury train, well cattle trucks really, but they were clean. All the way and I think we spent, and I can’t be hundred per cent certain, but I think we spent two days and two nights going to across Germany to Lithuania to Luft VI Heydekrug, and then that was it. And then when the Russians moved and in July 1944 when the Russians were not all that far away they decided they’d move the camp, most of the camp went by train to Thorn in Poland, the rest of us about eight hundred British airmen and the Americans went by train to Memell just up the coast from Lithuania and boarded a little ship called “The Insterburg” there was nine hundred I think from Klage[?] in the hold that we were in. It was a, it was an old coal ship, a Russian coal ship the Germans had taken over, and I had got volunteered to help the medics at Heydekrug there, one of my problems in life is that I keep going and putting me hand at the back of me head to scratch it and every time I’ve done that I’ve volunteered for something and I apparently volunteered to help the medics. Particularly on aircrew that had had injuries to the joints and the joints become sort of locked with adhesions of the joints, and my job was sort of try to break them down, which was interesting on that. So I had a Red Cross Armband and when I got on “The Insterburg” I said, pointed to it and the just tore it off and backed me down [laughs], and it was a twenty foot ladder, steel ladder into the, and we was on “The Insterburg” I think can’t remember exactly three or two days and nights on that, and then we landed at Swinemünde the German Naval Base at Swinemünde. When the what appeared to be an air raid but it was an individual American aircraft, [unclear], and went from there to Kiefheide, Kiefheide Station where we was going to go onto Gross Tychow which was Luft IV, and when they eventually the following morning got us out they had Police Marine [?] men or mainly boys in running shorts and vests with fixed bayonets and some of the Luftwaffe with dogs and a chap whose name was Hauptman Pickard, I always remember, and he was stood on the back seat of a Kugelwagen which was like a German little vehicle, and shouting all sorts of things [unclear] move you to Gross Tychow Camp at a reasonably fast pace with jabbing and one thing and another and dogs biting, and a thought that occurred to me was that I’d rather be on leave right now than doing this. And it was not all that far about four kilometres from Kiefheide Station to Gross Tychow but we had lots of casualties.
AM: On the way or you had casualties that you were taking with you?
JM: Well the instructions apparently mean to the police moving people, you can do what you like but you must not kill anybody, but that gave them carte blanche to knock hell out of us. Luckily I wasn’t too bad. So when we got there we found that the camp wasn’t even finished, we slept the first night in the open. The toilet arrangement in those days were a little bit suspect and it comprised, I shouldn’t really say this, a big trench with a [unclear] over it. And then the following day we was like in we call them dog kennels, small wooden huts, we slept in there for a few nights until they got the permanent ones done and that was Gross Tychow. It was of all the camps I was in the worst of the whole lot.
AM: Worse because of the conditions or the —
JM: Well, Prisoner of War Camps are governed mainly by the people running them, they can be nice or they can be nasty, at Heydekrug there were some about average they weren’t too bad at all, Gross Tychow they were awful to any of us.
AM: Awful in what way?
JM: Well bullying and things like that, but the food wasn’t very good, didn’t have much of it. There was a man there who was six foot three, or six foot four something like that, we used to call him the big stoop, largely because I think he was a little bit embarrassed by his height and he used to walk in a stoop. He was the one that took by wristwatch, he was the one that used to knock people over and things like that. But for every villain there’s always a day of comeuppance isn’t there and when we moved out on the march towards the end of the war the Americans found him and they’d taken his head off and that was that he’d got his comeuppance didn’t he. The end of the war.
AM: Tell me about the march then?
JM: Well in February, I think it was February 2nd, they made out we had been pre-warned we hadn’t been pre-warned they told us at midnight they was moving out the following day. So you’d got to prepare everything take everything with you that you can take, and most of the people got a spare shirt, sometimes you had a spare shirt, tie the up, the arms up and button it up and it made a nice little receptacle put your things in there, and the following morning we went on the march, it was I think it was eleven o’clock if I remember rightly. And we went from Gross Tychow on the northern run to the Oder to cross the Oder, the Russians were the other side of Statin further down the Oder, and we had to take, we had to get across and what they did for the ones I was with you went into barges, there was two barges tied together and you was towed across the Oder to the other side. Unfortunately the night before when we got there the Germans said, ‘We’ve got nowhere for you to stay for the night.’ It had been snowing so we had to sleep in the open, but being aircrew boasting to the, we worked out what to do, so there’s some like a cloudy fern at the side, got those down tried to sweep away a bit of snow off, we had overcoats on.
AM: Did you have boots, did you have boots on?
JM: Oh yeah, oh shoes, in those days we’d been, well [coughs] usually when you get shot down you lose your flying boots. So the following morning I say they moved us across by barge and then we had to, we found out afterwards of course that the reason for the panic they was frightened the Russians would catch up with us, whether they was ever in a position to do that I don’t know, but the Germans obviously thought that they did. So then we went on the march across Northern Germany, various places, enjoying it, looking at Germany through the eyes of a hitchhiker. [laughs]
AM: You don’t really mean enjoying it?
JM: Well yes, but it, um, there was too many incidents happened there.
AM: What was it like, what was, ‘cos it’s cold?
JM: Well it had been snowing, remember we set out in February.
AM: Yes.
JM: And it was a cold winter. By the time we got to Fallingbostel the weather was getting better.
AM: What did you eat, what did you eat and drink?
JM: Well that’s a problem, I’ve got the world’s worst memory, so I don’t remember a lot. The two things you must do is you must get sleep and you must have liquids, liquids was a very difficult thing, some of the times the Germans got us liquids a lot of the times they didn’t. When there was snow about if you were lucky enough to get a snow that was still clean it would melt in your mouth, but that causes dysentery anyhow, I know [whispers] that’s the other problem. But, to be honest a lot of the time they found us barns and things like that to sleep in. What you had to remember at that time, March and April of 1945 it was mostly British fighter planes in the air which were having a good time, and one of the barns I was in got shot at and set on fire.
AM: How did you all get out?
JM: One or two people got killed.
AM: Did they?
JM: But to be honest the Germans tried to find us somewhere, but I’m afraid Royal Air Force fighter pilots were seeing something that’s a good target they went for it. [coughs] Fortunately we got to Fallingbostel eventually sometime in April if I remember rightly.
AM: So two months.
JM: We was then there for a couple of days on the station, the man in charge of Fallingbostel decided it was overcrowded so our little lot was moved out again on the road to Lubeck, which we went to, was one or two incidents on the way. But the man I was with, if you in the thing you’ve got to have a friend who you are with and Danny was one of mine, and Danny said to me, ‘Why don’t we just nip out sometime when we stop if there’s a time when we can do it safely.’ And there came one of those times and we just, Danny and I nipped out across the field into the woods and that was it, spent a little bit of the time keeping had to get through the German lines and through the British lines which we did when we got to the Elbe, across the Elbe.
AM: Just the two of you?
JM: Yeah, on a boat there was no oars but the hands work for oars don’t they.
AM: And did you know what you were making for that, did you know that you would find the British lines?
JM: Well not really we know the direction roughly and we’d got ears that tell you a lot, we got, there was only one time where we was in a little bit of trouble, we spent the night in a barn that didn’t have a roof but it was a barn so Dan and I spent the night in there and the village further down about two kilometres further down it was a village where there were German half-tracks and things and logic would say that they should be moving east which meant they wouldn’t come our way they’d go east and we were north of them, so we decided, we saw them moving to go so we decided we would go to the village. Unfortunately they decided to go our way north instead of going east, and it was not a lot of them I remember a Mark IV type of tank was pulling two lorries and there’s half-tracks with Germans at the back and we’re going along and they’re coming and there’s no point in running away doing anything like that, and our jackets were already prepared, chevrons everything was pulled off so there’s nothing, so we just kept on walking and we had a like a French conversation, and if they knew it was French they would have wondered what language we were talking it certainly wasn’t French but it sounded like it, and luckily they were so keen to get away they just ignored us and we just kept on going, and we just kept on going, and going, and going, eating what we could and we eventually came across an aerodrome that had some Dakotas, we went on an RAF pilot we collared him.
AM: What did you think when you finally saw it?
JM: Eh?
AM: What did you think when you finally saw it there?
JM: Well, well, contrary to what other people have said it didn’t make a lot of difference to me. It was just something was happening at the time, the fact that it was the if you like the starting point of going out didn’t occur to us, the RAF pilot he said he was on some sort of exercise for evacuation of prisoners of war, and he was, he did say he that they was taking people like to me somewhere in Belgium for transit, but he said I’m not going that way I’m going direct to Great Britain. And we talked him into taking us and he flew from there to Wing near Aylesbury, I think as part of an exercise sort of, and we got to Wing and that was the nice part. When we was coming towards, they all take you over the white cliffs of Dover don’t they you see that, and he couldn’t head them ‘cos you can’t see much so he said ‘I’ll bank to port and you can all go that side and have a look, anyway he said for goodness sake go back again the balance of the aircraft is all over.’ We got to Wing and unloaded us, Danny and I, I remember [coughs] there was WAAFS and all sorts of things, there was two rather large Salvation Army ladies I remember quite clearly came across and lifted us both up and swung us round said a lot I think then we went inside the hangar where all sorts of people came and cuddled you and things like that, yeah that was a nice thing. And one lady said to me I can send a telegram to your parents if you like, give me all the details which I did and they sent a telegram off to my mum and dad saying I was here. So we had something to eat, I always like this because you see they have all this food out and when you get a plate full suddenly a doctor comes along and takes half of it back you know, saying, ‘You mustn’t eat too much.’ And we went from there to Cosford which was set up as a reception centre, had medicals and things like that, and the station commander apparently if I believe what I’m told, given me concerning reception a chat on how to treat ex-prisoners of war and one of the things what he apparently said if I’m to believe what I’m told, ‘For goodness sake don’t leave anything lying about you’ll find it disappears you know.’ Whether that was true or not I don’t know could well have been ‘cos I was the only judge of a lot of people you live on your wits don’t you. And then after I’d been there for some time there was one little amusing incident you had to see a doctor before you could do anything you had to see a doctor, and that’s after you had been deloused that’s one of the things you get done, deloused straight up. And there was five cubicles and the word got around there’s four male doctors and one female doctor, everybody’s trying to work out where the female doctor was to avoid that one, and we, I can’t remember, say cubicle four, and this cubicle four came up you were next you used to say, ‘You go before me I’m not in a rush.’ And I got pushed into cubicle four and it was a lady doctor, mind you she was getting on a bit she was a nice lady, but it was funny the way people were avoiding her simply because they’d been away all that time. And then we were carted off [coughs] to the station, I remember it quite well it was just an ordinary little local train that went from Cosford to Birmingham, two stations at Birmingham, Snow Hill, and I can’t remember the other one.
AM: New Street, New Street, its New Street now in’t it?
JM: So we did that and when we got on the train that was going north there was just one carriage, there was an RAF policeman at either end of it and that was reserved for people like me, the train was absolutely crowded but our coach wasn’t and nice young ladies served refreshment all the time. And I got to York Station, I’d already notified Elsie my future wife and she was at York Station, and all the time I was in Germany I imagined meeting Elsie it’s a step bridge across the rails at York Station, [unclear] slow motion on that like if you’re on the films, looking forward to this, so I’m going slowly towards Elsie and she went straight past me, I remember that I thought oh dear all that time she doesn’t recognise me, it’s something you remember isn’t it, and that and at the other side there’s my sister and her husband so that was it. And I had instructions to go to the RAF York aerodrome there to see the medical officer which I did and he gave me a form to go to the food office in York, and the following day I went. A man said, ‘Join that queue.’ So I joined the queue, it was in the Assembly Rooms in York which is a lovely place, and I’m in this queue and it occurred to me there’s all pregnant women, there’s all pregnant women getting extra rations, people patting me on the back and one thing and another and I always remember that, and that was it I was back in York.
AM: Back in York, on leave.
JM: [laughs] On leave, yeah, yeah, ubiquitous leave.
AM: What happened after that then up to being demobbed how long?
JM: Well I got, er I don’t think you know that most aircrew, nearly all of them had a rehabilitation period and mine was at an aerodrome off the A1, can’t remember the name of it.
AM: No don’t matter.
JM: Doesn’t really matter, anyway I was there for a month and it just so happened the Royal Air Force band was based there so we had music, and for that four weeks what it consists of Friday morning we got up quite early and the station commander had arranged for a Queen Mary to be there on the grounds we had to go to London for some reason.
AM: Queen Mary, is that the big truck?
JM: Yes.
AM: The big open truck.
JM: And about twenty of us climbed on there and went all the way from the station about fifty miles into London on that, and we had to meet at a certain time to get back and coming back and we did that for four weeks until I got on leave yet again, to arrange the wedding with Elsie.
AM: So she’d recognised you by then?
JM: Oh yes I’d put a bit of weight on and that [laughs] yeah, and took a long time to live it down. So from there where did I go, oh I went to Compton Bassett. They decided to put me on a code and cipher course so I went and code and ciphered Compton Bassett. I was the only warrant officer there, there was all flight lieutenants and squadron leaders going to be code and cipher officers which apparently I was destined to be. So I did that and now I’m a code and cipher officer aren’t I, had to go before the board for a commission and they said, ‘The posting will be to the Middle East they’re looking for code and cipher officers.’ So next time, I got every weekend off, so I’m coming back to London to Elsie and I said I’d been offered a commission but it’s a posting to Middle East code and cipher officer, and Elsie said, ‘No way.’ So I had to turn it down. So then they thought well what do we do with him so they had to [coughs] we had a party for the people who passed the code and cipher officer, and I’m sitting next to a civilian and I said to him, ‘It’s a little bit of an impasse I’m not quite certain what to do.’ And explained the circumstances to him, so he said, ‘Write to the air officer commanding training command for this particular region and apply for a compassionate posting to where you want to go.’ Said, ‘That’s fine I don’t know who the air officer commanding is?’ And he said, ‘Oh it happens to be me.’ So he was, I got to meet him he was coming to Compton Bassett for some reason and I had an interview with him and I said, ‘Well my wife is living in Golders Green which is only two stations off Hendon, Hendon would be a nice place.’ So I got a posting to Hendon and they say what the hell do you do with him. It was nice posting, nine to five Monday to Friday living hours, most enjoyable, 24 Squadron which had the Curtiss every now and then unofficially I used to join one of them and go flying. And then I got I think July 1944 I went to Oxbridge and got demobbed.
AM: ‘45.
JM: ‘44, ’45, ’46.
AM: ’46 we’ve moved on one.
JM: Well you’re allowed a mistake now and then.
AM: Yeah go on then.
JM: And got demobbed and got involved in getting a suit. I think Burtons made a lot of them.
AM: Montague Burtons.
JM: Montague Burtons. Some of them were really quite nice, I think I wore it once, it’s the material was nice the cut not particular, but I’m demobbed anyhow. And the company I used to work for before I went in the Air Force wrote to me to say there’s a job waiting for you.
AM: Is this Rowntrees?
JM: Yeah. So I wrote back and I said, ‘I don’t mind working for you but I want to work in London ‘cos my future wife lives in London.’ They said they can’t do that. The problem is when you come out the Air Force you don’t take very kindly to being instructed and when they said we can give you a job but not especially where you want it, so I said ‘I don’t want it.’ So I went to find a job in London and I was offered a job, the people who make fridges, and they made big American ones, but the problem was the job was stores controller and the man was doing it already but he was not retiring until September October and this was early in the year. So I got a job with Express Dairy which was a place quite close to where Elsie lived and thought I’ll have that job until I get the other one, but enjoyed working at Express so much then I wouldn’t leave although the difference in salaries was quite high, and I worked for Express Dairy for all my working life, and they were taken over by various firms but I still worked for them. And one of the problems if you got taken over if it’s two people doing the same job one of them’s going.
AM: Yes.
JM: And the one that’s going is the one in the highest salary.
AM: Yes.
JM: And I kept on being retained, and I said to Elsie, ‘Must mean that my salary is too low.’ I got offered a job at the main site at Ruislip, the job was in charge of warehousing and things like that, and they said well, and then I had a heart attack everybody does if you’ve got a do you’ve got to have one if you’re in a fashion[?], and I had three months off and the chairman called me and said, ‘You mustn’t go back on this job and I’ll sort it and we’ve found a nice little job for you working as PA assistant for the director who was responsible for production.’ And that’s what I did.
AM: And that’s what you did.
JM: And Dennis Watson was my boss, well nothings been written yet so you’ve got to sit down and write your job description will go from there so that’s what I did. I spent the rest of my time on that job.
AM: As PA.
JM: And his responsibility was keeping an eye on [unclear] functions and things like that and decided on systems, his, and we had seven factories up and down the country. One of my jobs was to visit ‘em now and again, and now and again meant to me when you’re a little bit fed up you get in the car and off you go to a factory and that’s what I used to do. And then when I retired my boss Dennis made a big party at Ruislip and there was about a hundred of us there, and that was it.
AM: And that was it.
JM: Yeah.
AM: I’m going to switch off now Joe.
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 Joseph Musgrove
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
2015-08-12
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AMusgroveJ150812
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
United States Army Air Force
Format
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01:11:32 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Born in York in 1922, Joseph left school at 14 and started work in a chocolate factory and attended two nights of further education per week. In 1936, a fighter aircraft had landed nearby which stimulated his interest in flying which he retained all his life. After joining the RAF he did well in the selection tests and was offered a position of wireless operator/air gunner. After initial training he went to RAF Madley to train on twin-engined aircraft and then RAF Staverton, RAF Topcliffe and was crewed up at the operational training unit at RAF Edgehill. Gunnery training was carried out on Defiant which were notorious for undercarriage issues. Finally he was posted to 214 squadron at RAF Chedburgh, flying Stirlings.
His first operation was minelaying in the Baltic and he recalls standing in the astrodome to warn of enemy fighters. On other operations he would sit in the front turret and occasionally fire at enemy fighters, without success. Further minelaying operations were carried out and on his eighth, his aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire and diverted to a US Army Air Force airfield where he stocked up on goodies, unavailable in England from the base exchange store.
On the 22 September 1943 he took part to an operation to Hanover and describes the night fighter tactics in detail. Following lengthy evasive action his aircraft was forced down to 5,000 feet where it was hit by by anti-aircraft fire and he was forced to bail out over Emden where he was caught by a member of the Luftwaffe who was visiting his girlfriend. After initial interrogation he was sent to the interrogation centre at Dalag Luft and after a two day train journey arrived at Stalag 5 prisoner of war camp.
On July 1944 the encroaching Russian army forced the evacuation of the camp and he was moved to the unfinished Luft 4 camp and remembers the bullying guards and poor conditions. Again in February 1945 the camp was evacuated and after crossing the River Oder in barges marched across northern Germany. After two months he arrived at Lübeck and escaped the column, narrowly missing being captured by German soldiers by conversing in French. Finding an allied airfield he was repatriated to England where he was treated as a hero.
After recuperation he attended a code and cipher course and was offered a commission if he would go to the middle-east. Wanting to get married he declined and wangled his way to 24 Squadron at RAF Hendon, were he was eventually demobbed in July 1946.
Contributor
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Terry Holmes
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Gloucestershire
England--Herefordshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
England--London
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany
Europe--Oder River
Germany--Lübeck
Poland
Poland--Tychowo
Lithuania
Lithuania--Šilutė
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1936
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1943-09-22
1944-07
1945-02
1946-07
102 Squadron
214 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
animal
bale out
bombing
crewing up
Defiant
demobilisation
Dulag Luft
Halifax
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Compton Bassett
RAF Madley
RAF Shenington
RAF Staverton
RAF Topcliffe
shot down
Stalag Luft 4
Stalag Luft 6
Stirling
strafing
the long march
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/784/9338/AHooleyRE180913.2.mp3
959ba7b32f8f5aa8d36151ced4c69ca7
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
Hooley, Ray
Raymond Edward Hooley
R E Hooley
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ray Hooley (b.1928). He served in the Royal Observer Corps.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-09-13
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
Hooley, RE
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MS: So, I’ve got some stuff to go through first of all. So, the time is 10.24. We’re at [buzz] at Lincoln. I’m with Mr Raymond Edward Hooley and you don’t mind being called Ray, do you?
RH: No.
MS: In fact, prefer it.
RH: Prefer it. Yes
MS: Right. The interviewer, that’s me Michael Sheehan and the purpose of the interview is it’s in relation to the International Bomber Command Centre. There are no other persons present. Mr Hooley, Ray has consented to be interviewed without anybody here. One thing I’ve got to say to you Ray is that anytime if you want a comfort break, the loo, anything like that just say and we’ll just stop the interview. No problem at all.
RH: Ok.
MS: So, are you happy to be interviewed?
RH: Yes.
MS: Good.
RH: Certainly.
MS: Lovely. Just a quickie then the idea of these recordings and I’m looking at this now is to, it’s a vital part telling the story of Bomber Command for future generations. And, so the idea is that the University of Lincoln with the IBCC are involved with these interviews and that’s what we’re doing today. The quickest way to start this it to say what were you doing before the war? Before it started.
RH: I was at school. In 1939, just before war broke out I passed the Eleven Plus to go to Grammar School. When the day came to go, I was surprised to find I had to go to the Victoria Train Station in Nottingham and not the school. We were being evacuated. The whole school was. They decided they would evacuate because they were expecting lots of bombing raids and so on. Nothing had happened at that point, but they were being safe rather than sorry. We were evacuated to Mansfield, about fifteen miles from Nottingham, but reckoned it wouldn’t be a target like Nottingham might be. And that was the first time I’d left home with my two years older sister looking after me. Eleven year old me. First time away from home. Both of us. Her school was also evacuated. She was at the girl’s Grammar School, and fortunately we had a relative in Grantham. An uncle. He had a pawn shop, and he had a car and we were billeted with him.
MS: In Mansfield or Grantham?
RH: That was Mansfield.
MS: Mansfield. Yeah.
RH: Yeah. And it was interesting because as kids you know we were always investigating and we had to search out all the air raid shelters in Mansfield which were usually old caves because Mansfield is built on to sandstone and it’s full of caves. People used to live in them at one stage. But we had great fun finding, discovering these caves which normally were closed, but they’d been opened up as air raid shelters. So —
MS: During the war. What year was this?
RH: This was ’39.
MS: Right, In the, in the sort of false war before it all got [underway].
RH: Yes. But we had problems. We shared the Mansfield Grammar School for boys, and we went in the mornings and they went in the afternoon and there was the usual thing amongst lads. You know. ‘Oh, you’re Mansfield. We’re Nottingham. We’re better than you.’ You know. And they said the same and there were scuffles and it got a bit, a bit nasty. And as first formers we were the targets so we had to be make sure when we left because as we left school the Mansfield lads were coming in and there was a long drive, about a quarter of a mile drive up to the Mansfield Grammar School. And so we had to run the gauntlet as it were. So, we had to learn to be nippy, or stick close to the older boys, you know who you know, we felt safer then. But this situation deteriorated, and the teachers started bickering at each other protecting their wards you see. And then that lead to the councils bickering.
MS: Really?
RH: To support the teachers. So after about four months, this isn’t working and we had to go back to Nottingham. So the evacuation was reversed. There had been no raids in Nottingham at that time so they thought oh, you know we got over the first fright. It’s not so bad after all. You can come back. But when we got back to Nottingham our school, High Pavement Grammar School had been taken over by the ARP as their headquarters. What shall we do? Of course, the girls came back in sympathy with us and they’d got a school. We could share their school. So, we went in the morning and the girls came in the afternoon.
MS: We’re fighting the girls.
RH: The boys all left notes in the desks, you know for the girls who they never saw [laughs] and it was a different relationship altogether and that went on for about a year. And then the ARP had a more purpose-built headquarters assigned to them and we got our school back. So, I didn’t see my Grammar School until nearly two years after I’d supposed to have joined it. Well, then the air raids were starting so when the sirens went, we, we had to go down in to the school basement. High Pavement Grammar School was a big block, multi storey old Victorian block in the middle of a residential estate. Couldn’t expand anywhere so, you know it was a very old-fashioned school but they had a basement. In fact, there was a swimming pool in the basement. This had been emptied. The first time we went down when the sirens went we were, well the younger lads especially, upset to find that the swimming pool had been filled with coffins. Cheap coffins for emergency, you know. In case of mass deaths. This was covered over with a tarpaulin eventually and after we’d had a few sessions down in the basement we lads, some of us anyway, ‘We’re not going down there. It’s a stuffy old hole and we might get buried if they bomb it.’ But we wanted to see a bit of the action. Sirens went. The German bombers were coming over. Most of them going over towards Coventry and Sheffield you know. And we went up on to the roof. It was very, you know, banned.
MS: Yeah. Sure.
RH: We were supposed to be down in the shelter but as far as I remember we were never missed. But we used to go up on the roof to spot these bombers. Well, the anti-aircraft guns were firing at them from around Nottingham. It had a screen of anti-aircraft bases and in those days we didn’t collect marbles, well we did before the war but once the war started we collected shrapnel. It was usually bits of anti-aircraft shells. Because a barrage of anti-aircraft shells is quite a lot of shrapnel comes down as you can imagine. So, you had a pocket full of shrapnel. It tore your clothes to bits but you swapped the small pieces, several small pieces for a bigger piece, and if you got any with any writing on it well you got the prize then, you know. So, whilst we were up on the roof and the anti-aircraft guns were going we were listening to tinkling sounds of metal hitting earth, you see. Oh, over there. I must remember that and when we were out to school we went looking for the shrapnel. So that was my memory of the early days of the war, you know.
MS: Did you ever get hit by the shrapnel?
RH: Sorry?
MS: Did anybody, any of your colleagues get hit by the shrapnel?
RH: Oh no. Never. You never thought about that. That you could be hit by it. We were just listening, you hoped it was closer so you that could pinpoint —
MS: Right.
RH: Where it handed landed. Yeah. I suppose half way through my five years at the Grammar School I joined the Army Cadets and reached the exalted place of corporal. So, I did training. I was in charge of squads doing certain operational duties, you know and when the, when I reached the fifth form there was this opportunity to join the Observer Corps because you were always made aware of what you could do. I mean in the summer we went away on farm camps for example, you know and slept in village halls in Lincolnshire, and did potato picking and harvesting in the summer, and had a grand old time driving tractors and things, you know. And it was whilst I was in the Army Cadets that I heard about the Observer Corps. So, right, so my first night on the Observer Corps, I can’t remember how I got there because I lived at Aspley which was about three miles from Wilford. Must have gone by bus, but going in to this graveyard at midnight or just after, because we had to be there for the time they returned which was generally about dawn. It was just getting light, you know.
MS: The return of the bombers.
RH: But you can imagine negotiating this graveyard because it’s on a hill. The crematorium is right on the top and the graveyard is all around and it’s full of marble chips, and you get the moonlight shining on the marble chips, and the clouds going over and you can see all sorts of things from up there floating about the, the graveyard. But when the bombers started to appear of course we were concentrating on them then and the thing was to watch for any aircraft that appeared to be damaged, or if the engines were giving trouble. If the engines didn’t sound right, you know or they were flying low, too low, you’d think they could be in trouble. You’d take a bearing on them. Telephone it back to base, and this was happening from all the different observer points and the triangulation was taking place. So, we would take as many bearings as we could until that aircraft disappeared from view from us. And I forget how many of us there were, but there were several of us so one would be, once you spotted one you were assigned to that, getting the bearings, and the others were watching for other planes of course. You might have two or three at the same time. And it was fascinating and we felt that we were really part of the war, you know. As kids it was a big thing.
MS: Can you just go back and explain first of all I know we discussed this earlier but exactly where was your observation point in Nottingham?
RH: Where was — ?
MS: Where? Tell me exactly.
RH: The observation point?
MS: Yeah.
RH: Right. The observation point was the roof of the crematorium chapel at Wilford Hill cemetery. Wilford Hill is on a hill.
MS: Yeah.
RH: And the crematorium is right at the top, so it’s a perfect viewing point. You could see over the whole of Nottingham.
MS: Did you have any protection up there?
RH: I wasn’t up there when Nottingham had its bigger raids, so I imagine that on those occasions they would also be spotting damage to Nottingham. I’m not sure but —
MS: It’s, am I right in saying it’s actually very very close to the centre of Nottingham?
RH: It’s on the outskirts of the Nottingham.
MS: On the edge of the city.
RH: Nottingham is surrounded by places like West Bridgford, Broxtowe, Mapperley. They’re, they’re all separate estates if you like, and Wilford had a village, there was a village of Wilford but it was attached to Nottingham. It was part of Nottingham.
MS: Lovely.
RH: Yeah.
MS: And could you just explain a little bit more detail about how the triangulation took place and what was the purpose of it?
RH: Well, we knew more about what we were seeing then what happened in the base. We never saw the base.
MS: Yeah.
RH: But we were told so that we would know what part we were playing. We would take a bearing on an aircraft. Other spotting places would take their bearings. We would all be relaying our bearings, and bearings that were relayed at the same time were plotted from the base, triangulated to pinpoint the aircraft. So, at base they were more interested in the aircraft’s route. Which way it was heading and if it came down where it was likely to come down. Sometimes they would come down whilst the spotters were spotting it. I didn’t experience that whereas when I was on duty we saw plenty of aircraft in trouble because a lot of them got shot up as you know. But they always were still limping until out of sight you know, but obviously going down. So, we were concentrating on the next until the last aircraft and everything was quiet. We can only imagine what was going on at base. They would have triangulated. Some will have come down and they’ll have alerted the services and the emergency services would have homed in on the crash spot much quicker than if they hadn’t had this information I suppose.
MS: Yeah. Did you, where was the base?
RH: I never, never discovered. It would be somewhere in Nottingham. In a safe place I imagine. In a bunker somewhere. We didn’t worry about things like that.
MS: That’s alright. It’s —
RH: I think if I’d been older I would have been a lot more inquisitive. Yes. because a lot of things were happening in our lives at that time. You know, you’re going to school. You’re in the Army Cadets. You’re wondering what you were going to do when you leave school, and all the rest of it. And this was, this was an adventure if you like during that period of —
MS: You were playing your bit.
RH: Teenage.
MS: You were playing your bit as well.
RH: Well, yeah, you didn’t feel like that. It felt like a chance to have a bit of adventure in your life, you know. It was, it was something that we found fascinating as young boys, you know. We were part of it. Ooh, you know, the bombers, you know. They were relying on us to you know spot the guys in trouble.
MS: Did you ever, did you have any adults with you at all?
RH: There was [pause] we used to get visits. Yes. There was always one adult at least assigned to whatever group was, was on there on duty. But you know it’s a long time ago and I can’t remember what sort of conversations took place between, between us.
MS: What training did you have?
RH: Sorry?
MS: What training did you have?
RH: Well, we were just told in some sort of detail what we were doing, why we were doing it, how it worked, and this was how we knew that there were other observer stations. They were all doing what we did, and it was coordinated at headquarters and they were pinpointing and following the course of this aircraft in distress.
MS: Could, did you ever see, were you ever close enough to see the serial numbers on the sides of the aircraft?
RH: No. And it, it wasn’t that light. It was usually at twilight, you know.
MS: Yeah.
RH: It, it was dawn. They must have gone off about midnight and were returning in first light. I don’t know how long they stayed airborne, the Lancasters. Do you?
MS: I think they could stay airborne for about eight hours.
RH: How many?
MS: Eight hours at least.
RH: About eight hours. Yeah.
MS: At least. Yeah.
RH: Oh, so they could say —
MS: And that’s, that’s a neighbour, is it?
RH: No. It’s a guy who’s come, he’s been cleaning my guttering all the way around.
MS: Right.
RH: And when he got to one of the down pipes he found it was blocked.
MS: Right.
RH: And that was the end of his day’s work yesterday so I said, ‘Oh, can you fix it?’ He’s a young lad. He’s nineteen. He, he’s in the Reserves waiting to go in the regular Army.
MS: Oh right.
RH: So, he’s doing any jobs he can get hold of. He’s a friend of my daughters who live at Bassingham. Not far from here. And they said, ‘Oh, he’s looking for work. Can you find any work for him?’
MS: So, you have. Now, do you know —
RH: I don’t like going up ladders so much now.
MS: No.
RH: So, I thought the guttering was a good job for him.
MS: Right. You know when you were taking bearings —
RH: Yes.
MS: What did you, what, what did you have? What was the device you had to take the bearings?
RH: Do you know I can’t remember the detail,. It was some sort of scope.
MS: Yeah.
RH: I imagine.
MS: On a tripod like this?
RH: It was on a tripod but no I couldn’t describe that.
MS: That’s alright.
RH: To be in any way meaningful. We used to, it must have been a telescope sort of device like a theodolite.
MS: Yeah. Sure.
RH: Something like that. Yeah, because I used theodolites a bit later in life, and [pause] yeah, it probably was a theodolite. I mean you used whatever was available at the time for things like that, didn’t you?
MS: Did you, did you only take azimuth bearings, or did you go for elevation as well or was it just literally —
RH: I think the instrumentation indicated the elevation. So, we were mainly getting the angle.
MS: Yeah. That would make more sense. Yeah.
RH: Yeah.
MS: How did the war affect your home life?
RH: Well, being one of ten children it didn’t affect my, I was the hero of the family. Well, I wasn’t the hero because I had two older brothers who joined the forces, but they were away from home. But I was in uniform because I was in my Army Cadet uniform of course.
MS: Yes.
RH: To make it look a bit better and yeah, I, I used to leave home knowing I was, I was, yeah, I was in the Army, in effect.
MS: So, you used to go to school. You’d have homework.
RH: Yeah.
MS: You’d then go out. How many nights a week?
RH: I can’t remember that. I know we had a rota. Probably two. I think two nights a week. Yes. There would be one midweek, and always one at weekends. Yeah.
MS: And then you’d, so you’d go through, you’d go out about midnight.
RH: Yes.
MS: And then you’d go to school the next day.
RH: Oh yes. Yeah [laughs] Well, we were on, I forget how many hours it was. I mean [pause] we had to, probably after midnight. I think it was about 2 o’clock in the morning we got there. So, I had to sleep at home and, and get up at two and we must have had a special bus to take us because buses don’t run at 2 o’clock in the morning.
MS: No.
RH: But the only way I could get there then was by buses. We didn’t have cars, you know. I think there was, in the close where I lived there was one car. And that was a taxi that the chap didn’t own himself, you know. He was driving it for a taxi firm. But yes.
MS: Was there a curfew?
RH: I’m sorry I can’t remember more about this but —
MS: Don’t worry. Was, was there a curfew?
RH: A curfew?
MS: Yeah.
RH: There was a blackout.
MS: A blackout?
RH: Oh yes.
MS: But you could travel about no problem at all.
RH: Oh yeah.
MS: Yeah.
RH: You got used to the blackout. Yeah. it was just like the thick fogs you know. If you got both at the same time.
MS: You wouldn’t see the aircraft.
RH: Yeah.
MS: What else can you remember about your experiences as a child during the war? As a teenager.
RH: Well, the first bit was the evacuation part. The second was the roof of the school.
MS: Yeah.
RH: Waiting for shrapnel. The next big memory was when Nottingham had what we called its big raid. Mass, mass raid and they did target Nottingham. They wanted Raleigh and Boots, and the gun factory. Royal Ordnance factory. And the marshalling yards at Towton. They were all targets. So, we were in our air raid shelter at home in those times. We had Anderson shelters and we, I always remember this we, we dug a hole to bury it completely. Most people had them in a bit of a hole, and then a mound over them. We made sure that ours had plenty of stuff over it. And so we, we dug a, about a seven foot deep hole, and had steps going down to it.
MS: Oh right.
RH: You know, you know the Anderson shelters.
MS: Oh yeah. Absolutely.
RH: And then we had a two foot mound of earth over the top of it and we had food stored in it for emergency, you know. Tinned fruit and that sort of thing and so we were down in the air raid shelter when the big raid took over. We could hear all the, the bombs going off and our main thing, well firstly we hoped they didn’t target the outlying estates but they weren’t likely to anyway. It was just a big housing estate we were on. A council house. But first thing in the morning we were off in to town to see the damage. Didn’t think about all the mangled bodies, you know. They’d probably been still working on them. But we were just interested to see how much damage and to look for any trophies, you know. I’m ashamed to say. Looking for old fire, incendiary bombs. Burned out ones and things like that. You got some really good trophies after the big bombing raids. Yeah.
MS: Well, it wasn’t only children who were finding trophies. It was adults as well.
RH: Well, I suppose they were. Yeah. Well, yeah, they appreciated bigger and better trophies I suppose. We were just happy with our chunks of shrapnel, you know. Pieces of bombs. Especially if they had markings on them. They became real traders, you know.
MS: German markings,
RH: Then I joined the Army Cadets, and that was interesting because there was a place at Bedford where we trained. Bedford Park. It was a big house with park and they sort of loaned it to the War Office for, for training purposes. So, we had training, you know. All the usual stuff. Trenches and learning to fire rifles. Learning to take a Bren gun to pieces. Clean it. Put it back. You had to do that in a certain number of minutes, you know before you got your next equivalent of a badge if you like or a stripe. So yeah. So, it was like being in the boy scouts in a way but a bit, a bit more, a bit more meaningful.
MS: Warlike [laughs]
RH: Yeah. So, yes it was still boyhood until I left school. My first job when I left school was with the Ministry of Works, and it was working with surveyors who went around the local area working out what compensation should be given to people who had had iron, ferrous stuff taken from their property like iron railings.
MS: Yeah. Sure.
RH: Any big house with iron railings that were cut off at the bottom and you can still see them to this day, you know. The stumps.
MS: Yes.
RH: If they’d not been replaced and they were compensated. The surveyor, well the owners had their surveyor and the Ministry had their surveyor and between them they arrived at a figure of compensation. That was one of two jobs they did. The second was going out in to the country where open cast coal mining had been done and compensating the farmers for the loss of their land whilst this coal was being got out.
MS: What year was this?
RH: Straight after the war. ’46. ’45/46 it started and I was working with this surveyor. He had an estate agency business in Heanor, in Derbyshire, and he said to me, ‘You don’t want to be doing this all your life do you? Working as a civil servant.’ So, I said, ‘Well, it’s a bit boring, isn’t it? Yeah.’ It wasn’t for him. He was out doing the surveying. I was just doing the office work when he came back. Occasionally I went out with him, and that’s how I got friendly with him. And he said, ‘Would you like to work for me?’ And I said, ‘Doing what?’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got an office in Heanor,’ he said. ‘And we collect the rents from all the surrounding countryside.’ He said, ‘You’d be in charge of the office. And, you’d be collecting the rents.’ Well, that sounded my own boss more or less because he was working for the Ministry and I’d be out at this office on, on my own. So, I thought well that sounds good so I said yes and I met him at the office one weekend and he said, ‘Can you drive?’ I said, ‘Oh, I’ve driven tractors. I’ve never driven a car.’ I don’t think I’d ever sat in a car at that time. I’m not sure. But I’d driven tractors on the farm camps. We used to go from school in Lincolnshire. So, he said, ‘Oh, if you can drive a tractor, you can drive an Austin 7.’ You know. He said, he said, ‘These are the keys,’ he said, ‘It’s in a lockup at Codnor.’ Well, this was about five miles further into Derbyshire, and the route was really up and down. That route out of Nottingham it’s through Kimberley, Langley Mill, Heanor, Codnor, every one was, was a hill. He said, ‘Catch the bus to Codnor.’ He told me where this lock up was. It was in a, up a private drive and a row of lockups. So, I couldn’t say no, could I? And I couldn’t say, ‘Well, I don’t know how to handle a car,’ you know, so I went off with these keys, found this lockup. The car had been driven in so had to be backed out. So, my first experience of a car was backing this car out of the garage and then down a narrow drive onto the byroad that it, the drive came off. It was a narrow drive. It took me about half an hour because I kept backing in to the site [laughs] but I managed to not to scrape it all but eventually I got out on to this side street. Then the main road was the main Nottingham Road from Nottingham to all these.
MS: It's the Ripley Road.
RH: Heanor and so on.
MS: Yeah.
RH: And so, it was a busy road. So, I had to wait there. I’d got there in first gear. Oh, and I found the handbook by the way. How to start the car. I went through all that before I dare do anything, you know. And anyway, I sat until I could see nothing either way on this main road then I ventured out. I travelled in bottom gear all the way to Heanor. Five miles up and down these hills. When I reached Heanor that was at the top of the hill and he was standing on the pavement looking a bit annoyed. ‘Where have you been all this time?’ I said ‘Oh, I had trouble starting the car.’ I was wet through with sweat by the way. And I pulled it in to the curb, put the brake on, stopped the engine, heaved a sigh of relief. I’d made it. So, I said, ‘It wouldn’t start.’ He said, ‘It always starts,’ he said, ‘There’s no problem with this car.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m not used to cars, you know. It wouldn’t start for me.’ So anyway, he gave me my list of addresses, all in country cottages or villages to go off and collect some rents. So as soon as I drove out into the country I found a quiet spot, quiet lane and I drove up and down it, did three point turns and spent an hour just learning the controls of the car before [laughs] before I collected any rent.
MS: No licence.
RH: No licence. No. No nothing. You didn’t want them then. It was still wartime things. Later on, you could drive on a provisional without a person alongside you. So yeah. I learned to drive and, you know. There were no regulations.
MS: How old were you at this time?
RH: Pardon?
MS: How old were you at this time?
RH: Well, I was sixteen going on seventeen I suppose. Yes.
MS: Driving around the countryside.
RH: Well, I was sixteen when I left school. No. I’d be seventeen then.
MS: Yeah.
RH: So underage. Everything, yeah. But I’d driven a tractor you know [laughs] so —
MS: So you must be able to drive.
RH: Yeah. But I soon realised that he’d kidded me into working for him, to get some cheap labour.
MS: Yeah.
RH: To work in his office while he worked for the Ministry. So, I realised, you know I needed to do something a bit more positive. So, because he was a surveyor, surveyor came into my mind. I thought building surveyor, that’s, that would be a good job. So, I went to college then to study for building surveyors and valuers sort of career and I spent a year doing that. Learned how to use a theodolite and did a triangulation around the college buildings and things like that. Very interesting but unfortunately, I hadn’t gone far enough. It was part time. It wasn’t full time. It was Trent College evening classes and I hadn’t gone far enough to give me exemption and I was called up at eighteen and went down to Corsham to be kitted out and, ‘What branch do you want to have?’ So, I’d studied the different options and I thought well the radio mechanics was the longest course. It was a six month course. All the other courses were three months so, I thought, well if I’m going in, I’ll make them pay, you know. I’ll learn something. So, I said I’ll be, I’ll go on the radio mechanics. ‘Oh, well that’s the one course you can only have it if you sign in for twelve and five. Twelve regular, five reserves.’ So, I thought, well ok, in for a penny in for a pound I might as well make it my career. Why not see the world. So, I said, ‘Alright. I’ll sign up for twelve.’ So, the guy said, ‘Well, I have to tell you, you can’t do that on the spot. You’ve got to have forty eight hours to think it over and then you can sign.’ So, I said, ‘Well, I don’t need forty eight hours. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll sign now.’ ‘No. This is obligatory. We advise you to go home and talk it over with your family.’ I said, ‘No. They won’t have any influence. Waste of time going home.’ He said, ‘Well, go in to the NAAFI.’ Corsham was a recruiting, it was also a demob centre. So, he said, ‘Talk to some of the old salts who are here for demob, and get a better idea what you’d be letting yourself in for.’
MS: Good advice.
RH: So, I thought, well, that’s good advice so I went into the NAAFI and I got talking to some of the old salts. You could always tell because their collars, bell bottom sailors, their collars were all bleached. Old timers always bleached their —
MS: Yeah.
RH: Because that was a status thing.
MS: Yeah.
RH: The paler it was the longer you’d been in. The more washes it had had, you know. So, I got talking to a guy and fortunately I met two guys who were from Nottingham. My home town. And I told them what my plan was and they said, ‘Well, you’d be a fool. Remember it’s peacetime. It won’t be like wartime. You might be bored stiff. Why don’t you take the electricians course, because the electrician’s course is the first part of the radio mechanics course anyway? So, if you still liked it after three months you could change to radio mechanic and then you could sign on if you wanted to.’ I thought well I’ve nothing to lose if I do that.
MS: Yeah.
RH: So yes. On the Monday morning I went in and I said, ‘No. I’ll take the electrician’s course so, and if I like it after three months I might have the opportunity to change.’ ‘That’s good sense. Good sense.’ And I never regretted that either because I found that three years of peacetime at that time with everything being economised, you know. There was very little flying. I was ground crew on Seafires, Barracudas, and did major inspections. And the most exciting part was going up to do a check on the instruments in flight. You had to do both.
MS: Yeah. What were you flying in?
RH: Barracudas.
MS: What’s the Barracuda? Because I know what a Seafire is.
RH: It’s a dive bomber.
MS: Right.
RH: A two seater dive bomber. And thereby hangs a tale. I must have a quick word with this guy.
MS: I’ll put this on standby.
RH: Yeah.
[recording paused]
RH: Eh?
MS: Right. Before we were interrupted by your tradesman who needed paying. Have you paid him?
RH: Yeah.
MS: You have. Right. He’ll be a happy man now then.
RH: Yeah. He can go now.
MS: You were reminiscing about your time in the Fleet Air Arm. I understand you joined the gun crew.
RH: Yes. Having joined the Fleet Air Arm, and thinking I was going to be in for about two years I thought this is going to be boring so I began to look for something more exciting and I discovered that the Fleet Air Arm had a field gun crew training for the Royal Tournament at, at Olympia. And I watched them training in 1946. That’s when I was assigned to Lee on Solent, and I saw the crew training and this looked like something exciting enough to relieve the boredom so I enquired about it. The possibility of joining. But I was too late for that year. They’d already whittled down the numbers to the final crew, and I set my sights on the following year. When the following year came, I volunteered. There was about a hundred and fifty volunteers from the Fleet Air Arm all around the world and that was whittled down to about forty which would give you two crews and a couple of spares so that two crews could train opposing each other and we started training. Then we got a, a message that an aircraft carrier which had been at sea when the volunteers were making their applications, they’d had no opportunity to apply for some reason so they decided that was unfair. So there must be, they must be allowed to volunteer another group, about thirty from that aircraft carrier. So, we all had to go through the rigid selection process again, and the selection process was really rigorous. It was punishing. It really was because they wanted to weed out the people who hadn’t got staying power and, but the one advantage we had is we knew what it would involve and we knew where to sort of keep our reserves ready for the next bit which we knew was going to be harder. And although some of the guys, they didn’t want to go through it again and they dropped out but I was still determined to, to have a go and I got through the second selection process, and that meant I was in the, in the squad and made the final eighteen that went to the tournament at, at Olympia. And that was a great occasion. That went on for just over a week I think, and finished up after we had competed with each other, each other, there were three other teams, so competing with them twice. Rather like the Football League do. And there were different trophies to be won. The fastest time, the best average time and so on, and we carried off all the trophies that year and —
MS: The Fleet Air Arm did.
RH: We were heroes [laughs] We were heroes.
MS: You were the new boys.
RH: I thought, well I’ve got some real good Brownie points now and when I get back to Lee on Solent I’ll perhaps have a chance to get a better, a better ship that’s going somewhere interesting like Australia or America, you know. But that wasn’t to be because most of the ships had been mothballed in Scapa Flow and they were, the Navy were economising. They were keeping as few ships as necessary at sea and only the one aircraft carrier which I thought I could have gone to Gibraltar on I learned that finished up doing a world cruise and had a whale of a time. They were feted and wined and dined wherever they —
MS: And you’d missed it.
RH: Put in port. And I missed that.
MS: Because you’d gone to the —
RH: But, but I wouldn’t have missed the Royal Tournament.
MS: No.
RH: You know, so six of one and half a dozen of the other. I think on balance I probably was happy with what I, the choice I’d made because I did have a chance later in life to see the world, and we’ve done a few cruises with them but we’ve had to pay for them [laughs]
MS: Just one final question if you don’t mind. When, first of all, thank you very much for everything you’ve told me. It’s, I’ll explain what we’re going to do with it shortly. It won’t be anything horrible. What, how did you make your career after the Fleet Air Arm? What’s been your career through the rest of your life?
RH: Right. Well, coming out of the Fleet Air Arm I was too late to go back in to the building training that I was, building surveying training. But I was looking for something that involved outdoors as you do and I saw an advert for a draughtsman for the Dorsey Exploration Company. They were a subsidiary of BP, or at that time the Anglo Iranian Oil Company and this Dorsey Exploration Company were a seismic survey party going around doing seismic surveys, looking for oil around different parts of the country. So, I thought that’s just the ticket, you know. So, I applied and got the job. The job was, as a draughtsman was to plot on maps where the geophones should be planted to get the echoes from the substrata where the oil is lying, and then to make a map of the results of the echoes which were registered on these, what they called geophones which were set out in certain patterns. And by doing lots of patterns, lots of little explosions to get the echo from the rock strata there was a system of plotting that underground strata. So I was making a map of the underground strata that we were interested in where the oil hopefully was lying. And we did surveys. Started off in Nottinghamshire, then went to Wiltshire, then went to Lancashire, then went to Dorset, and then went to the Isle of Wight. It just suited me fine this did, but eventually back to the base which was a Research Centre at a place called Kirklington. Kirklington Hall was an old mansion in beautiful grounds. A lovely place to be and, and we, we spent some years there then analysing these results and me drawing my maps. Eventually that came to an end and BP suffered a huge blow when Iran nationalised their oil industry, and it included them taking over the biggest oil refinery in the world at a place called Abadan with no compensation to BP. So BP had to pull in their horns and they closed down the Dorsey Exploration Party as a survey party and the people were all absorbed in to the BP’s Research Centre at Sunbury on Thames. And at that time, we in Nottingham were offered that chance of going to Sunbury on Thames, to you know what, question mark, or leaving with a golden handshake. So, I chose the golden handshake. Got three hundred and eighty pound [laughs] after nine years with, with them. But it was enough to put a deposit on my first house, you know, and get my first mortgage. And I moved from there to Rolls Royce at Derby and sort of with their aero division. But whilst I was there, after a few months they started a new division, the rocket division developing engines for the Blue Streak rocket ballistic missile. That was a sort of excitement that attracted me so I applied to, to move and was accepted and went up to Spadeadam in Cumbria where the test bay was, and spent two years there after which the Blue Streak was cancelled as being obsolete, which was a blow because that was exciting. Testing that engine. It drew people from miles around. Especially after dark to see the flames going down the chute from the exhaust of these rockets. The rocket was tethered but the engines shot their exhaust down a concrete spillway, and you could see across the valley. People used to queue up in their cars along the old Roman road between Carlisle and Newcastle and they used to watch this fireworks display. Every night we were testing these engines twenty four seven. And —
MS: Expensive firework display.
RH: It was. It was, it was a fancy firework display, and after that of course I had the chance of going back to Derby. Well, they say never go back don’t they and I didn’t fancy going back to Derby. And Ruston and Hornsby at Lincoln who I’d only barely heard of, I knew they made excavators because I’d seen them working quarries and I thought excavators. Yeah. Exciting piece of machinery. So, I applied and got a job but when I got to Lincoln, I found that it wasn’t with Ruston Bucyrus, the excavator builders. It was with Ruston and Hornsby the engine builders. Diesel engine builders. Of course, you don’t see their products. They’re in ships, they’re in basements, and so on so I’d not seen anything of Ruston and Hornby products. I only knew about Ruston Bucyrus so it was a bit disappointing to find out I was going to a different company to what I expected. But it didn’t take me long to realise what an amazing history Ruston and Hornsby had. They’d built everything you could think of.
MS: Have you been to the Museum of Lincolnshire life?
RH: Oh yeah. I’m a friend of them.
MS: Well, you’ll know then.
RH: Anything with the name Ruston on it I’ve put it there.
MS: Is that right?
RH: Oh yes. Yes. I’ve spent my life collecting Ruston stuff and getting it restored one way or another and put in the museum. Yes.
MS: Oh, right? I’m pleased to meet you in that case. Wonderful.
RH: I’ve bought a traction engine back from the south of France. I’ve brought another one back from Australia. Oh, I’ve been involved in all sorts of things. My shed, well I don’t know what time you’ve got but my shed’s full of paperwork and photographs of the different projects I’ve been in.
MS: Now then, you mentioned a book earlier on.
RH: Yes.
MS: Is that to do with your wartime experience?
RH: Well, it’s to do with aeroplanes I suppose. Ruston’s, in the First World War were the third biggest builder of aircraft. Two thousand seven hundred and fifty aircraft they built. And, and Robeys built aircraft. And Clayton Suttleworth. Lincoln, there were more aircraft built in Lincoln than in any other town.
MS: In the First World War.
RH: In the First World War.
MS: Right. What I’ll do then is I will have a look at that but I’ll close this interview down first of all, right. And look at this in a second.
RH: Yeah.
MS: Right. What I’ll deal with first of all I’ll close the interview about your experiences.
RH: Yeah.
MS: During the Second World War down.
RH: Right.
MS: And I’ve got to do it with some formal stuff here.
RH: After, I’ve got this. This is what we were given when we finished.
MS: Oh right. Right. I’m looking at a certificate. “City of Nottingham. Civil Defence Service. The Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of the City of Nottingham convey to Raymond Edward Hooley their warm appreciation of the untiring services rendered during the war 1939-1945 in the Civil Defence of the city.” Signed in July 1945. And witnessed by the town clerk. If you want that to go in to the collection then I’ll tell Peter Jones and he’ll, a copy of it anyway, and he’ll, in fact, I tell you what can I take a photograph of it?
RH: Yeah.
MS: Right. I’ll do that.
RH: I can photocopy it.
MS: You can? I’ll take a photocopy off you later in that case.
RH: Yeah. Yeah.
MS: That’s great. So, I just need to read this to you. In a minute I’m going to ask you to sign a declaration. Yeah.
RH: Yeah. That’s ok.
MS: And what you’re saying is you confirm you consented to take part in the interview, which you did and they’re asking you to assign to the University of Lincoln all copyright for use of any media, and you understand it won’t affect your moral right to be identified as the performer in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. Now, do you agree that your name will be publicly associated with the interview we’ve just taken and all personal details will be stored under strict confidential conditions, and will not be shared with third parties?
RH: I’m happy about that. Yes.
MS: Ok. So, I’ll just tick that. Do you grant permission for me to take your photograph for the Archive?
RH: Yes.
MS: Ok. You don’t need to put any make up on [laughs] Right, and do you agree to the interview being made available online so people can get the interview.
RH: Yes. Yeah.
MS: Lovely. Right. Yeah.
RH: I’ve got a website by the way.
MS: You have. Really?
RH: It’s a Ruston website.
MS: Ok. We’ll talk about that in a minute because I’m quite interested in that.
RH: Yeah.
MS: Especially after I’ve been in —
RH: I’ll give you my letterhead which has the website address on it.
MS: Alright.
RH: And you can —
MS: No. I am genuinely interested.
RH: Yeah.
MS: I’m going back to that museum.
RH: I don’t know if you knew but last year I won the Civic Award. Lincoln Civic Award.
MS: No.
RH: Two years before me it was the Red Arrows. And the year after me, which is now is Lincoln City Football Club.
MS: So, you on your own. Right.
RH: Me on my own.
MS: Is that to do with your work at the museum?
RH: I don’t remember any one on their own. Due to my, well the Lincoln Civic Award is awarded to the person or group who have done the most that year to raise the awareness of the name Lincoln around the world.
MS: Oh right. Ok. Well, I’m pleased to meet you [laughs] I am actually. Right. Just to let you know the Archive, well it aims to be the most comprehensive repository of information on Bomber Command and just out of interest they have just opened their database to the public and before I go I’ll give you a link to it because you might just be interested to go on —
RH: Yeah.
MS: And see. I mean, I think it’s three million items will be going on there.
RH: Yeah.
MS: They’re only part of the way through it.
RH: Wow. That’s at Canwick Hill.
MS: No. It’s at the university.
RH: Oh, at the university. Right.
MS: Yes. It’s the university. It’s a collaboration between the university and the IBCC, but it could be that some parts of the interview you’ve done today might appear, some snippets of it might appear actually, you know as you go around the building.
RH: Yeah.
MS: How you hear voices. Your voice might be on there so you might hear yourself. Right. Any details you provide on this document will not be made publicly available. The agreement that we are now going to make is governed, excuse me, in accordance with the English law and the jurisdiction of the English courts. So, are you happy to sign that?
RH: Yes.
MS: Yeah. Right. So, if I give you this. There’s a pen. And if you sign on the top line for me, please.
[pause]
MS: That’s lovely. Thank you very much indeed.
RH: It’s a bit shaky these days.
MS: That’s alright. I was just going to say your handwriting’s better than mine. So, R E Hooley. And I’ll take the photograph of you if I may. My phone. So, try and look handsome. Let’s turn this off.
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 Ray Hooley
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Michael Sheehan
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
2018-09-13
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHooleyRE180913
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:59:31 audio recording
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Navy
Language
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eng
Description
An account of the resource
Ray Hooley was at school in 1939 when war broke out and was evacuated to Mansfield. When the boys were returned to their school in Nottingham their shelter was in the basement and they were horrified to find when they went down for the practice that the old swimming pool had been drained and was filled with coffins. He joined the Observer Corps where he helped plot, track and triangulate aeroplanes in conjunction with other centres. He was called up to National Service and joined the Fleet Air Arm as an electrician, and worked as ground crew on Seafire and Barracuda aircraft. He decided to join the selection process as a gun crew member to compete against other crews and made the final eighteen, and competed at the Royal Tournament at Olympia. When he came out of the Fleet Air Arm, he became a draughtsman for the Dorsey Exploration Company who were mapping sites for potential oil exploration throughout the country. He went to work for the Rolls Royce aero, rocket division who were testing the Blue Streak missile, and went up to the Spadedaam testing range in Cumbria. He went on to work for Ruston and Hornsby engine division in Lincoln, and is friends of The Museum of Lincolnshire Life.
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Nottingham
Contributor
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Julie Williams
bombing
childhood in wartime
evacuation
home front
Royal Observer Corps
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/780/9339/PSwallowP1801.2.jpg
9b31f1ce807ba92eab35e3b4283acca8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/780/9339/ASwallowRP180914.2.mp3
60ab47068015824b41841c1828d1c3a4
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
Swallow, Peter
R P Swallow
Raymond Peter Swallow
Description
An account of the resource
One item. An oral history interview with Peter Swallow (b.1929), who reminisces wartime years in Sheffield.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-09-14
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
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Swallow, RP
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MC: Right. This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewee is Peter Swallow and the interviewer is Mike Connock. The interview is taking place at Peter’s home in Heighington on Friday the 14th of September 2018. Also in attendance is daughter Suzanne Bellhouse. Ok. Peter, tell me a bit about when and where you were born. a
PS: I was born in Sheffield. It’s a steel city, which is not much now like it was before, you know. Yeah. And I was in the house on my own one day. I had the radio on. We had a proper radio then, and Chamberlain came on and, you know was ever so serious giving his little talk and said, ‘We are now at war with Germany.’
MC: So how old were you there then?
PS: About ten, I think.
MC: Ten. So you were born in ’29.
PS: Yeah.
MC: You were born in 1929. What about your early days before the war? Growing up. What was it like? You know, your childhood and school.
[pause]
PS: I went to Walkley Church School and it was, it was the church was there and there was a hall and, and the sorry and the classrooms. And the headmaster used to come in his car. Not many people had cars.
MC: No.
PS: My dad had one. And you had to modify the lights on your car, you know in case Germans came over and spotted you.
MC: That was during the war. Yeah.
PS: And there was a hood. You got this steel plate with a round hood in it about four or five inches in the middle with slots cut in and moved slightly forward so the light would shine down. Your sidelights, you had to paint the, paint the glass and leave just the size of a penny . So it was a bit dark, and of course at that time all the side streets were lit with gas. Gas lamps. This is taking you back isn’t it? Gas lamps. And that’s how the transport was.
MC: Did you enjoy your schooldays?
PS: Yes. Some of, some of the time. We left the schools and went on to home learning and various people volunteered to let us use their houses so that all the children were spread between housing and not altogether in one. One block.
MC: This would have been during the war.
PS: This was during the war. Yeah. And —
MC: So you remember Chamberlain making the announcement.
PS: It wasn’t Chamberlain. Were it? Yeah.
MC: Chamberlain, did you say? The outbreak of war. Yeah.
PS: Yes. I remember that coming up on the radio. It didn’t seem to make much sense to me you know. It was just, it was a bit like you got it whether you liked or whether you didn’t. And of course he started thinking of what were we going to do for defence and they set up the what they called at the time LDV. Local Defence Volunteers. It changed its name because they used to call them the Look, Duck and Vanish [laughs] And my dad was in a Reserved Occupation because he was a plumber, you know.
MC: I was going to ask what he did.
PS: You had to have that sort of person around. And he volunteered to join the LDV and he finished up as a sergeant armourer. And he did a lot of things he shouldn’t have done. He used to bring guns home and all sorts. You know he had a tommy gun in the kitchen one day which was like the ones that Al Capone had with a flat cylinder, sticky bombs. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a sticky bomb but they were a glass vial with explosives in and a handle with a detonator to set them off and it was covered in metal for safety. And he, he had to take this glass off and stick it. You were supposed to stick it on a tank. Well, this sticky stuff was real sticky. He brought one of them home one day to show us. And he was posted. One of the things they were told to do was if the Germans come and they were coming up the streets, got to come up the streets put your sheets out between the houses on one side of the road and the other because all the houses were up to, up to the pavement you know and just room for a couple of cars or something like that. And so I seem to have lost my —
MC: That’s ok. No. So, I mean what did you come in to contact with any of the RAF during those days? Those war days.
PS: No. I saw, well we had various salute the soldier and salute the airman and this that and the other exhibitions in the town. There was one by the Army and he’d got this gun, you know. A howitzer and I walked up and had a look at it and opened the breech and then just got the breech in pieces when I got caught. So they were saying, ‘Who are you? Where do you live? What are you doing?’ And oh dear.
MC: Yeah.
PS: But I was inquisitive you know and I give it him back.
MC: And of course your dad had been bringing weapons you knew about them as well.
PS: Oh yeah. Well, anything mechanical I was interested in. And he went on to be a sergeant armourer. In the town itself and the suburbs they put big tanks in on the edge of the pavement or back on the pavement about oh, about that wide.
MC: About three foot wide. A yard wide.
PS: Yeah.
MC: A yard wide.
PS: Yeah. They did those in town anyway and quite a long bit of mesh over the top for water. And they also put iron water pipes down the edges of the pavement, about four inch for places you could stick a hose on. You know, in case of fire. So we had to be careful where we put the feet. But you got used to the darkness.
MC: Yeah.
PS: Yeah. And of course you had blackouts every night. People going around shouting, ‘Put that light out.’ And so you did like. But during the war a couple of mates of, mates of mine who were at the Boy Scouts like I was used to go down to the Sheffield Infirmary which was at the bottom of the hill and we used to go put the blackout up in the wards and that. As a service you know. Which was quite a walk down there and walk back because it’s very hill, Sheffield is very hilly. It’s, there are only two cities in the world with seven hills around. One is Sheffield. The other is Rome. So we were used to hills. I mean everywhere you went it was hilly and the transport of course was tram cars. And come rain, snow you know we would carry on. They had single decker one with a board across underneath at an angle which used to go along and clear the tracks. And then turn it around at the terminus, come back and go somewhere else. You know running backwards and forwards keeping the snow away. It —
MC: So growing up in Sheffield during the war then. What, you were in Sheffield all during the war.
PS: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. So did you experience any of the bombing of Sheffield?
PS: Yes. Hitler decided to have a go at Sheffield because Sheffield was a steelworks. Biggest steelworks. So the, originally we just had the odd plane come over and drop a few bombs you know. Which wasn’t a nice thing to hear. You’d hear them whistle. If you heard them go bang you were alright [laughs] If you didn’t you weren’t. And when, when we, when we had the Sheffield blitz that was on, I’m not quite sure what night it was on. Thursday or Friday. They came over with incendiaries. Incendiary bombs mainly. There were some other bombs as well but they dropped what they called bread baskets of incendiaries. They were in a tall canister which flew open and all these bombs came out. They were solid magnesium. You could, as they burned that was it you know. But they put buckets of sand in various places so you could throw them on them. Stop them by cutting off our oxygen supply. When the, during the Blitz —
MC: Just sorry I was going to say did you spend much time in air raid shelters?
PS: Well, air raid shelters. We had, our house was a, was a detached house. There was, had been some stables at one time and then we got the driveway and then three houses to take around the corner. And of course the toilets were there so we hadn’t got much room. We hadn’t got a lot of room for an Anderson shelter. So they decided to, if anything happened we’d go through to the top, go through to the top house which is reinforced. So they, they dug a channel across the driveway and cut in to that cellar, and cut into our cellar, and cut into the next one until you got to the top. And they were about well you got a bit of shoulder room but they weren’t, they weren’t that tall. You had to go through on your hands and knees more or less and get to the first one and then go up the first one to the second one and so on. Which wasn’t very comfortable. But we got two, two Anderson shelter bunk beds in our cellar and my dad took some of the floor up in the front room and our house sloped so he put some bolts and things through the joists and some timbers and filled it with concrete so we could go down there instead of crawling through this lot. Because you could crawl through there and then you got the all clear went. You know.
MC: So you had to crawl through there on your own.
PS: Yeah. So we had somewhere to go on and we had two bunk beds which I had one and my sister had the other. And during the night of the Blitz when the bombs were coming down you could hear them whistle as they came down like and then, then they’d crash. Then you knew you were safe because it had gone off. We had a storm lantern hung on a beam and that swung like this you know with the, with the wind. Our house only suffered two things. One it fetched a big bit of the plaster off my dad’s ceiling in his bedroom and another room. But the ceilings in those days were lats and plaster. You know they put some lats up and then plastered them. So that all had to all be repaired. Then we had something called Essex board up at the windows which we used to put on. Put, turn these turn buttons because you had to do it yourself because it was a blackout every night. And it wasn’t —
MC: So, after the air raids did you used to go and explore the sites of the air raids?
PS: Yeah. I went down with my mother. We walked to town and there were no trams running because some of them had been hit or set on fire. So that was it, you know. The route is off. So we walked down and when we got to town, this I think, this was a morning. The first morning and the second morning after the Blitz and the Moor which was a big shopping centre round the centre of Sheffield that was all bombed. With Marks and Spencer’s and all the big shops all set on fire. And where the wind, windows used to be and some of them were these windows that were put in at the time which were curved so that there wasn’t any reflection. With all, I mean deflects the top down and blew the girders up and along the bottom was this glass that had been burned which had just come down saggy in a lump you know. And if you spit on it it went hisss. And that was right down, right down the Moor which was a shopping centre. So —
MC: Did you not, did you go out with your mates at all? You know. Friends. Collecting bits from the sites.
PS: Yeah. Well, the night after, the morning after the Blitz my sister and I went out with a bucket and got about three parts of it full with shrapnel that we’d picked up in the street in about a quarter of an hour. I mean they were bang bang bang bang above you at the time as the artillery went off. There was, on the opposite hillside an area which they put some rocket guns on. In a square. You know these things that went off. And they could, if they set them off they would be, like a square mile of the sky would be covered, covered with bombs because they set the distance to go off. But I don’t them remember going off. Not far away from where we lived there was our school and the local church and a, what did you call them? They sent these bombs. Came down by, with a, from a parachute which [unclear] and it could swing as it could go anywhere and the parachute itself was green and knitted. Like knitted nylon. Thick and heavy. And one, one went on the main road, not, came down on the main road not far from us and just missed the church and there were lumps of it everywhere you know. The parachute on somebody’s roof.
MC: Did you recover any of these bombs? These incendiary bombs?
PS: I recovered one. Yeah.
MC: Did you?
PS: Yeah. But I mean I left that house to another one and so I lost that. I lost everything I’d got like that.
MC: Did you get anything else? Did you got any?
PS: Well, we got some parts of a, there was an American fort, Flying Fortress came down in the woods and crashed. Well, it’s on the edge of the wood. One of the parks and I think they deliberately tried to avoid the known areas where the kids play and things like that and it just burned down to nothing and trees were burned and there was like a little river that flowed through. It was all muddy. So we would go and have a scrounge through that and I got a couple of bits of metal. Also got something which was a clip. And I later found out it was a parachute harness clip. Fastener. That’s gone. Everything’s gone with changing house you know. And happened that that was it. You know.
MC: So, how come you finished up with a hand grenade?
PS: Oh, my dad used to bring the bloody things home. In fact the chalk white. A couple of years ago I said, ‘What did you do with them hand grenades that you’d got?’ Because I found a box full in, over his garage. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I went to where the convent was like, and chucked them over their wall.’ Because there was a convent which was [pause] on the top of the hill on a slope. Because it was very hilly there. We used to go up a big hill, then a dip and then along and down another dip to get to the end of the main road. And that particular period was was coming up for Christmas and I’d been invited to a party by one of the lads at school. And that was up on the top of the hill. And so that was off. I mean you got plaster in your pudding and things like that.
MC: So the bombing obviously interfered with quite a few of your parties.
PS: Yeah. I mean I didn’t know at the time but the lady I eventually married was going to the same party and she lived further down the hill. Which I didn’t know because they’d moved from there into a brand new council house. And I met her at the Speedway I think. Sheffield Speedway. I don’t know if they’ve still got Sheffield Speedway going on but we used to go down on a Thursday night. But not during the war.
MC: So, I mean obviously the Germans were trying to bomb the steelworks.
PS: Well, that, that came later. I think it was a Thursday or Friday when they blitzed the town. Then they came back on the Sunday to go to the steelworks. And I believe that they were recalled to the base because of thick fog over the bases. So they took them back but they started going down from the, from the top. And all the steelworks went along by the River Don all the way to Doncaster and so they didn’t do as much damage as they could have done.
MC: No. So they didn’t do a lot of damage.
PS: If they’d got that lot there was only one firm there that made crankshafts for Spitfires. If they’d have got that it would have caused a lot of trouble in the war because that was defence. And —
MC: So you used to travel around a lot of the time by the trams.
PS: Yeah.
MC: Did they have any protection, you know?
PS: No. All they had was this mesh on the windows.
MC: Oh, oh yeah. Yes. To stop the glass shattering.
PS: Stop the glass. Yeah. But it caught fire a few of those, it were, some were scrapped. We got some from Edinburgh or somewhere like that I think. I mean all ours was fairly modern some of the stuff they sent us I think they were glad to get rid of it. But at least we’d got transport. It was in the middle town. They’d got this, they’d got this shopping centre. Right in the shopping centre where the road divided in to about four and all the big shops got burned. It looked a horrible mess. And it were like that for a long time after with weeds growing on it and etcetera. But —
MC: What was food like in, in that, during that period? Getting food.
PS: Well, you got rations.
MC: Did you, did you have to go out and get food for your parents?? Did they send you shopping?
PS: I used, I used to go shopping for vegetables because I used to look around what was going. If there was anything special like bananas, you know. Well, I think it’s our turn for the bananas this week, you know. Everything was in short supply. But we managed. The meat. I think you could have the ration was ten, ten pennyworth of meat. So we got, you didn’t get the best cuts because you wouldn’t get as much. Things like that.
MC: Yeah. The story about a turkey.
PS: We didn’t have a turkey.
MC: No. You didn’t have a turkey.
PS: No.
MC: Walking a turkey home.
PS: Oh. That was a friend of my dad’s got one. And he put a cord around its neck and brought it. Walked it down to our house. Knocked and came in and my mother said, ‘What they heck are you doing with that?’ You know.
MC: It’s lucky he didn’t get mugged for the turkey.
PS: Yeah. It was one of those with a big tail, you know. Big cock turkey. A bit further on the road we moved to after that place there was the Co-op. There were local shops at the corners of streets you know. Not like here. You could order your vegetables and go and get them. Somebody would bring them back in the wheelbarrow. But food was in short supply. But you know you had to make do with what you could get. And ice cream. I went to the cinema and had an ice cream and I think they made it out of potato or something like that. Tasted horrible. A block of ice cream, uugh. But we were in the, we went in one afternoon we went to the Palladium at, in Sheffield in our suburb and we were watching a film called, “Heidi.” It was a, you know a continental thing. Swiss or something. And during it, while we were watching this in the afternoon notice came up on the screen, “Air raid warning has just sounded.” If you want, which you may leave the room and come back when it’s, when it’s gone. Well, we sit out there for a while and thought well we’d better go out so we went out. Then we heard the all clear so we came back. And when we came back and sat down the film was still on and Heidi had got a big cauldron and she was making soup or something. And right across the middle of the screen comes the notice, “All clear.” Which was an very appropriate at the time. So —
MC: So what, well amongst your friends obviously you were a teenager growing up. Becoming a teenager during the war. What about antics you got up to as a young lad?
PS: Well, we always, we used to go fishing with fishing nets down at the River Lin which is at the bottom which goes, that river flows through more or less to Derbyshire. And not so far away there was an old quarry which we called the Bald Hills. And it came down in stages with a little, like an ash finish on. Just ashes. We used to go and play football up there. There was also tennis if you wanted it. We didn’t play tennis. Things like that. This party I went to well I was going to go to I later found out that the lady I was to marry was also going to this party. And I had no idea.
MC: So, did you meet her at that? Oh, you didn’t get to the party did you?
PS: No. I met her at the Speedway Club. That kind of thing I used to go on.
MC: Was this after the war or during the war?
PS: Yeah. I got married in 1952.
MC: Ah.
PS: Yeah.
MC: So how old were you when you left school?
PS: Well, I went to the, I took the eleven plus when I was ten. And I was eleven during the [pause] during the holidays. So I just got in and you took an exam to go to school and you had to put down where you would like to go. And in those days there was an intermediate school or a Grammar School. And I put down for about a couple of each. And I was eventually notified that I’d got through to Grammar School. ‘Which one do you want to go to?’ I said, well I mean, the one was the other side of town but there was one in town which used to be in the old days a pupil teacher centre and had been turned into a High School. So, I went there for a couple of years. Then my father said, ‘Well, I don’t know what you’re going to do when you finish school. You know, you’ve got to get a job. You’d be better taking an engineering course,’ because there was there was also ran a technical engineering course which I went on. I had to do another exam for that. They were all about examinations. Passed that and went there, and they hadn’t got as much equipment as they wanted because it was difficult to get the stuff. But they had a stove, the thing to melt steel which they never got around to. They had a workshop and we got, I made a seagrass stool in there. And as well as that, as well as woodwork which they taught us with the lathes they had two engineering rooms. One was machine shops, lathes which were used during the war by ladies making shelves. You used to see them come walking out like they would on a tea trolley only with shelves on. And which, that was one of the places we went to.
MC: Is this the story about — we’ve been told the story about the cook and the frying pan and tracer bullets. Is that —
PS: I’m not with you.
SB: This is from Jackie.
PS: Anyway, the [pause] I went, I went to this school and they had experienced people, not just teachers to come and teach. And we had about eight big lathes all with belt driven from above, you know. And the teacher used to remind you if you’d forgot to take the chuck key out with you before you started it. So [set the lathe up] otherwise you’d go flying across the room. And you go across and get somebody. Thumped on them on the shoulder, ‘Don’t forget to take the chuck key out mate.’ The next room to that was the room where you did pattern making and, no. No. That was that side. There was the we had a hangar workshop where they made various things. I made a spanner centre punch, plug gauge and things like that. And a hacksaw.
MC: And this was all part of your training?
PS: All part of your training. Yeah. They had a forge in there so when you made your spanner.
MC: How old would you be then?
PS: I left school when I was, just before I was sixteen. So you put your hard steel coating on and some stuff called kasenit. Used to put it on it and then put it in the fire. We had exams at the end, you know. And you had, you had to turn a piece of metal of a certain size in various sizes.
MC: Was this in a factory or a training school? A technical school.
PS: That was in school in town.
MC: At a school. A technical school.
PS: It had been a pupil teacher centre.
MC: Oh right.
PS: I mean during the war you’d seen the ladies come out of the main doors pushing a trolley with shelves on that they’d made. You know. For the war effort. So it was well equipped. We had precision grinders. It was a teaching unit you know. Really expert. How to do metal work. Made a hacksaw. And on the other, the other side the pattern making, we made we made patterns with a vice handle for holding the vice. When we took the final exam the teacher came around and looked at the mould I’d made and he ummed and he ahhed and he said, ‘Well, I can’t give you a hundred percent for this because if I do that means nobody can make it any better,’ which they couldn’t anyway. So I got ninety nine.
MC: Very good.
PS: And in the final exams I think I got five, five each teachings, five credits and a pass because we used to do French as well. I went, I’d written to the GPO and asked them if they’d got any vacancies. And I got a reply and had to go for an interview which I did. And about a fortnight after that they said the report you know so I didn’t have much of a summer holiday. I had to go to, to Otley to a training school. And while I was at the training school I got a letter saying that I was top of the school for the handicraft, and there was a, could I have a book. And I didn’t know what sort of book I wanted, you know, I mean. We were from Otley, up in Yorkshire. So I said I’ll have the money which I got five bob which I went to the town hall and bought a driving licence [laughs] Which was useful because you didn’t have to have a test at that time. There were no tests. I mean you couldn’t spare people to training and tests. But by the time they started that I’d been driving for about two years I think with this motorbike I’d got and so I kept that. Until I got my call up.
MC: Ah, call up. Yes. So you did National Service, did you?
PS: National Service. Yeah. It was my birthday in July and I had to go to Pontefract Barracks for training. In December I think. And of course you did all what was —
MC: This was for the army, was it?
PS: Well, it was yeah it was the army but you didn’t know where you were going. It was, when I had the medical and they said, ‘Well, what would you like to go in?’ And I said I’d like to go in the Navy and so I had to go and have the interview with a sailor with all his doings on like and he were asking what I could do and what [pause] how far I could turn steel, you know. What were the distances you could do it in, you know. And I said oh [about a thou, a half thou.] And he said anyway he gave me a written test to do. Which I did that. He read through it. He said, ‘Well, yeah. We can take you on but you’ll have to sign on for three years instead of two.’ So I thought well I can’t do that because I don’t know whether I could get my job back. Because you were guaranteed your job back. So I had to turn that down. They sent me to Catterick where we all passed out. And Catterick was a Royal Signals really. They were all there. Not the Tank Corps like there is now. Nearly everybody was Post Office, telephone. And I did that and then they sent us to Dalton Airfield. An old, an old camp. Ready for, ready for, oh they asked if I wanted to go, they asked they wanted twelve people to go to Germany to learn to be A tradesman. There was A, B and C. And it was a December time, you know. And December time in Catterick is terrible. It’s bloody cold up there. So I volunteered and I was accepted so twelve of us went to this old RAF camp where there was just little tortoise stoves in the, in the huts. And we used to go, go around to the huts, other huts that weren’t in use and pull some timber off. Pulled a line up and tried to warm the place up. Went down to the dance in Thirsk. As we walked down the railway line to get there and they stamped, stamped your wrist when you went with your pass out. Mayor of Pontefract’s something they formed earlier on. And coming back from there there was some lads who were, I think they’d volunteered for the Air Force signals. And we were coming up this, like an alleyway and they were vaulting over these standards you know to stop the vehicles going down. One of them got hung up and down with his flies [laughs] ‘Get me off.’ So we had a bit of fun. Then we went up there and they then took us by train to Empire, Empire Parkstone dock. Down there. Not so far from London. Took us across to the continent in a troop ship. Then we were just poles inside. Your bed would drop down, you know where it was. Most of the lads were playing card games on the way there. And we got to the other side. And went to the toilets and talk about toilets on the dockside. They were just two rows of toilets facing each other. No doors and there was an earthenware trough which we went past them all you know. Some of the lads messing about lit some paper and it floated down you know and singed you.
MC: So where did you finish up in Germany?
PS: Well, I went to [pause] where did I finish up? I finished up at Herford. Eventually. First of all we went to the, an RAF camp which was the RAF regiment at Gütersloh.
MC: Oh, Gütersloh. Yeah.
PS: They weren’t as smart as us, you know. They didn’t, they had their caps to here. With us if you haven’t got your cap on that was it. But we went into Bielefeld one day and I heard this rattling. I turned around and had a look and there was a lady coming down the street. It were all cobbles, you know. Anyroad, at this time and she’d no tyres in this bicycle but she’d got coiled springs one in the front and one In the back which was you know going up and down as she rode. Rattled down the street in this push bike. So you can tell what a state they were in. We were paid in what they called BAFSV. British Armed Forces Service Vouchers. You weren’t, you didn’t get any German currency unless you withdrew it especially and you put it in your paybook. We got some though because we went to the barber’s one day. Three of us and sat down at a barber’s and there they had like a double wooden thing just like a couple of big rulers which clipped on the edge of the paper, you know, looking through this. A chap got up and went and sat in the, in the chair. The barber got his tackle and put the whole of his head, froth all over his head to give him a shave like. Then he gets the cut throat razor out I thought oh crikey. And he shaved the top of his, he hadn’t got much on and shaved the top of his head. And then we paid him in cigarettes. And we worked it out that five of us could have a haircut for one cigarette. Gave us all, you know. They’d got nothing.
MC: So did you see much of the results of the bombing in Germany when you were there?
PS: Yes. The buildings had been knocked down. They were starting to put them back up again. Well piled up, piled all the stuff up and they were starting to rebuild. And that’s when I understood more the term Jerry built. Because they just slapped some cement on a brick and pointed them all up afterwards. They didn’t point them it at the same time. And oh, on the way out at first we went by train. We went past a viaduct. What do you call that? I can’t remember just at the moment.
MC: Was it one we bombed?
PS: Hmmn?
MC: Was it one we bombed?
PS: Yes. That was the one the hit with the biggest bomb.
MC: Bielefeld.
PS: Bielefeld. Yes. That’s it. Bielefeld Viaduct. I got, took a photograph of that from long distance.
MC: So you did a bit of travelling around while you were there.
PS: Yeah. I got as far as the checkpoint at Berlin. Because we had a radio station working, an ordinary radio station and they wanted some supplies so we took them out. But we could only go so far. We went to the American checkpoint. A half a mile further on was a British checkpoint. They were half a mile back. The yanks. We took some stuff out because we had a radio set working to, to Berlin. The radio sets we used they couldn’t, they couldn’t use them for that because when I, when I finished my course, training course in Germany. This, the course in about five months before you passed out and they were teaching you to be either a line mechanic which was a [unclear] equipment and radio mechanics and there were three, there were three things. Line, radio and telegraph. So, so they give us this section of it. The airfield. There were WAAFs on the airfield. Surrounded by barbed wire. And we had, we had to spruce up our training. Of course we had to march to through the town with your rifles and everything. I think it was just say it’s a warning like. So they had us out every day in the cold. Going through various moves because they told us how to move your rifle from one shoulder to the other. I know when you’re trailing arms by your side they’re heavy them rifles and I, you changed it from one to the other, and went through the town. We led the Air Force because we were senior to them and it was, it was quite a decent barracks. It had got double glazing. They had double glazing when we go there. We took them down when we got there. They took them down. Because it got warm took the outside panels down because we had to clean the glass. So we did that. And every morning we had to go for a two mile run. You know shorts and [unclear] running around the camp.
MC: So eventually I believe you got to Möhne Dam as well.
PS: Yeah. There was a leave centre at the Möhne Dam and we got, we had the driver to, we had the driver for the trip. And he drove whatever he was supposed to drive and he got us permission to go to Möhne Dam which was, which was rebuilt.
MC: O. It was rebuilt was it?
PS: Oh they didn’t take long to get that put back.
MC: You walked around it did you?
PS: No. We went around, we went around on a push bike. We’d been posted the night before so we got our pushbikes and we went all the way around it.
MC: Where did you get your bikes from?
PS: From the leave centre.
MC: Oh, right. They did have them did they?
PS: They had them on there to use. I’ve a photograph somewhere of when we’re on the wall which had been replaced. A young couple on a boat. Little [pause] two feet I think.
MC: Rowing boat type thing.
PS: In front of the first one was a wind up gramophone playing records as we went down the Möhne Dam. But we went down there a couple of times.
MC: You got down to the Black Forest.
PS: Yeah. We went to [pause] I can’t remember what they called it now. Another leave centre we went to and you were just there couple of nights. But, and I fell asleep in the truck coming back. When I woke up everything was in darkness and I was laid on the floor on the back of this two ton bloody truck. So I had to get to, get to my barrack room without this sentry seeing me because we had a sentry at the gate and we had a prowler. The other one used to prowl around. And they said, ‘Who goes there?’ ‘It’s only me.’ You know. I just walked up to him. But we, you had a to do a guard every so often. Two on and four off.
MC: So in the Black Forest tell me about the, you were collecting stuff to put under the COs bed somebody tells me.
PS: Oh, that wasn’t, yeah but what we finished up with, you know when they trained us on the radio stuff they put us in a troop. And it was [pause] it was radio telephones. They call them a ten set and we had these mirrors, you know. These big mirrors where we used to pipe the, pipe the mesh out of whatever you’re doing from the inside of this trailer and they got ten, ten pulses so you can have running across all the time so you can have ten connections running. And we went out into no man’s land. I mean you had to get high enough up to get as far, as far as you could. I mean there were two about that big. And we went to one and as we were building this. There was a, as we were building this there was a hill that we went on called [unclear]. Which was a monument at the top of the hill which was some Germans lived in. A German family. And we, we come in, we got that room in there, put the generator in the garage place at the side because you get about you could light two lights and that was all the supply of electric. So we cut a hole in in the window frame, push a cable through and we had a petrol driven generator. Well, the old lady came up. All the snow in winter was going to come through that bloody hole. And one day one of the lads decided to repair one of his boots and he stuck it on the end of the bedpost and he’s hammering away, you know putting some studs in. And she came up ohhh well the plaster was going down in her old boy’s dinner. But we got through and put it in. But she said, I mean there were five of us living there and she’d do a, do a hotpot for us. You know. For the five. And apparently the Russians had been there before us and they could have one of these each. Like gannets. And one day she said she heard the banging upstairs and went up to have a look. One of these Russians was knocking a hole in the wall. She asked them what he was doing. He wanted water. Because he’d seen her turn the tap on downstairs he thought he could get water out of the wall and he was chopping a hole in the wall. This was the mentality of the Russians. I mean they hadn’t seen things like that.
MC: So where does the COs bed come into this?
PS: Oh, that was in the [pause] well while we were there the only transport we’d got was a fifteen hundred weight shell which you went up so far and then you went in a shell and up around it and away. In this shell hole, at the side of the shell was a small tank with shells around it. You know. Inside. And a shell hole full of rifles. Thrown the rifles in. Taken, taken the works out. And we was up and down in the truck. And we, I mean the toilet was already there when I got there because there had been some people before us and they’d got a wooden fish, wooden [pause] I don’t know what you call it. Case off some, off a sixty foot steel tower we’d got with the [unclear] guys on you know who you wouldn’t expect. And we used to, we made an oven out of a piece of tank. A flat piece of tank. And we got some cement from the Germans in a swap sort of thing, cut out a trough and we had a big burner like it was a blow lamp with about four inches diameter plate. Put that at one end and a piece of plate on the other end. We could cook on that. And we put some covers around it and a roof on it and we were nice and warm in there during the day. During the night of course while you were laying in bed your breath was freezing on the canvas so you had a nice white circle when you woke up. And we used to have to break, break the ice in this water bale, water container either before we went to bed or in the morning so we could have a cup of tea. The only place we could water from was the local village pub. No. The local village. It was a farmer’s, I think. We had a water carrier we dragged down there and filled it but it was always icy. You could always throw some petrol under it and set fire to it. But one of the lads, the driver actually he was a bit of a lad. We brought some of this ammunition, German ammunition into the tent which was forbidden you know and filled the German helmet and put it under the corporal’s bed. He didn’t know it were there until he would have gone crackers.
MC: So what was in it you put under the bed?
PS: Hmmn?
MC: What was in it you put under the bed?
PS: Sten gun.
MC: Oh.
PS: They were all, we were all armed. Some had got rifles and that and I had a sten gun and I just hung it underneath. I got a few rounds, you know. I think somebody let a few rounds off before that. But we used to put a canister on a on a branch with oil in and set fire to it have a nice flame on it. Shoot it down with a 303. I mean there were only five of us. You couldn’t put a guard up when you’ve only five people. I mean they’d never been off. You’d never have got an ounce of sleep. So we used to shove a rifle through the flap of the tent and let a couple of rounds off at night.
MC: So, what is the story about the chef and the frying pan catching bullets?
SB: On top of the tower.
MC: On top of the tower.
SB: Radio tower.
MC: You tell the story about —
SB: Firing rounds on the chef.
PS: We had a piece of tubing. Steel tubing which was blocked at one end and you know we’d got stacks of bullets from this corner where the tank got knocked out and the belts of ammunition. He took some up. He used to go up the tower. We had a sixty foot tower. Took the ladder vertical and then around and up again to the top to set it up. He used to sit up there and somebody would put, get the steel tube we’d got, get it hot and put a round in and, you know it would fire. Put them in backwards way around so that the bullet cases were going up to him and he were trying to catch him on top of a sixty foot tower. The other bloke wouldn’t go up it. ‘No. I’m not going up there, he says.’ When you got up there was railings about ten inches and steel rods across. You know, sixty foot up. And when we went to that place [unclear] where the Germans lived we had to put, haul this thing up to the railings that they got that went around the tower. It was called [unclear] and we had to haul this up there and site it which was difficult because you know you’d get your compass sideways and go across the front of the ditches. That was, that was nothing at either side. So we had to try and do it from down below. You know. Bob your head up and down but we got it through.
MC: So how long were you in Germany then?
PS: Well, from leaving.
MC: For all your National Service you were in Germany.
PS: All of it. Yeah.
MC: Yeah. Yeah.
PS: I went to [pause] Lüneburg was it? Yeah. On the north coast. I got ten days just before I came out. I got ten days leave. Local leave. And I’d been knocking about with a girl whose father had been posted to Germany. So they said, ‘Come up,’ like. So I applied for my holiday and I had my holiday when there was a big scheme on. All the British Army had arrived and was in it apart from me. I were waiting at the camp gates for control commission bus because there weren’t any German buses out that way. And this big staff car pulls up and a lady driving. This bloke with all this stuff on you know. All this gold. He said, ‘Where are you going soldier?’ I said, ‘Oh,’ I’m going to Bad Oeynhausen sir to catch a train.’ ‘Jump in,’ he said. He took me all the way to Bad Oeynhausen. Everybody else was at war, you know [laughs] playing soldiers. So we got there and got on the train, sat down and had lunch on the train and got a bottle of beer, you know. All on the house. I stopped there all week with this girl who lived not so far from [unclear] And when the week was over I got this train ticket to go back, catch it about 7 o’clock in the morning. I’m not going to get down to the station at 7 o’clock in the morning. So I found there was a later train. He took me down to the station and I got in a carriage. Only me in it. Took my belt off, you know and my jacket and my hat. Sat there next to the window. The door opens and the conductor comes. Apologises and shuts it. So I went all the way from Lubeck to Herford free of charge as they say. Went on another free of charge thing —
MC: So, tell me, as a British soldier in Germany how were you treated by the Germans? And how did you find them?
PS: Alright actually. Because at Christmas we went down to this local pub where we was getting water. A little village. We were down there one day and this girl came across like and we were social and we went down there. We down on New Year’s Eve. We went before that it were one of their birthdays the next weekend. ‘Can you come to our birthday?’ So I said, ‘Yeah. We can come to your birthday.’ And they’d got all sorts of pies that they’d made. You know. Cherry pies. And dancing with them you know. They thought it were great. So we went [pause] No. We went again at New Year. And I mean they were giving you a glass of schnapps, you know. We weren’t fit to get back to the camp. We had to ring somebody up to bring, bring the truck down to fetch us. But everybody were alright.
MC: So you got treated fairly well.
PS: Yeah. I mean the girls were very friendly. Very friendly.
MC: He says with a smile on his face.
PS: Yeah. What was I going to say?
MC: So, so that was your time in Germany. Thinking back a little bit I never asked you at the beginning about any brothers and sisters.
PS: Yeah I’ve got, I had a brother and one sister didn’t I? One brother. One sister. He was about ten years younger than me so I didn’t see much of him.
MC: And your sister? She, she was of a similar age to you?
PS: Yeah. She was about fifteen months older than me. She’s still alive. She’s in a care home at [pause]
SB: Blackpool.
PS: Near Blackpool anyway.
MC: Yeah.
PS: She can’t see anything.
MC: So did you spend a lot of time with her as a child at home?
PS: Not particularly. I used to be out with the lads you know playing football and —
MC: I’m working up to a story of snails and putting salt on them.
PS: Oh, that was when we were about so high. When she, when she walked up the garden path. The garden paths then were just slabs of stone and slabs at either side and two, three four houses in each block.
MC: Yeah.
PS: And a gate in the middle. Well, a door. A big heavy door that closed. My uncle had written on the back, “This door shuts. Try it.” Chokes it. My sister went around collecting snails, you know. To come out of the garden at the side. And I were only little. I didn’t know about it at the time but she was putting salt on them I started eating the bloody things ‘til they stopped me. So I have seen a bit of life.
MC: Certainly have. Certainly have. Yeah. So, coming back.
PS: Oh, and I —
MC: Sorry.
PS: Went to hospital once in Germany. I was fed up of going on parade so I thought I’d have a bit of time off. I had a couple of cysts behind my ear so I went and reported them to the medics. They said, ‘Oh, we’ll take them off. But we’ll get a truck to take you to RAF Rinteln they called it. Be down at the gates, barrack gates by 10 o’clock and we’ll run you up there. Or 9 o’clock or something like that. Anyway, I went down and this thing never turned up. So I went to guard room and told them. ‘Oh, they’ve forgotten.’ So they got this jeep and went up the autobahn like a bloody rocket. We were going up the autobahn and a bloke pulls alongside, he said, ‘Your back wheels are doing, going like this.’ We said, ‘We know.’ You know. I mean the speedometer wouldn’t go any faster. Open topped jeep. But I got about three or four days off of parades. We were on parade once we were doing, they decided that they were going to do a march through the town, you know. Just letting them know that we were here and we did our training. Even the RAF did the training. Had the caps on and that. We couldn’t go anywhere without a cap on you know. Had to have it on all the time. They taught us how to change, change arms. We’d got a trail from that and that. I recently went to the bomber places and, you know the one that don’t fly and one of my grandsons, my great grandson looking at these things, ‘Oh look. 303 rifle there,’ like. I’ll show you. I couldn’t pick the bloody thing up now. I used to chuck it about before. I was I was a captain of the shooting team for a while. Some of the officers were bloody terrible with a bren gun. So I was nominated.
MC: So you had your marksman’s badge.
PS: Yeah. Well, I didn’t get the badge but I had the satisfaction to know that I was the captain.
MC: So you came home from Germany. And then when did you meet your wife? You said you knew her before you went to Germany.
PS: No. I didn’t marry that one. I came home. I met this lady at the Speedway Club. Speedway Supporter’s Club. In fact, I think there were two or three were looking to see if they could get my attention. I used to play the records for dancing and got talking to this girl and I’d be going down on my motorbike so I took her home on my motorbike. Well, not quite home. ‘I’ll get off before we get there because I don’t want my dad see me on this.’ [laughs] And that blossomed and we got married.
MC: So you had quite a following.
PS: Oh yeah.
MC: Of ladies.
PS: I was popular with the ladies. But I mean when we went [pause] oh it’s, as well to be going to the Möhne Dam we went to another place and where they got dancing and everything. And of course we were dancing with them and kissing them and all that. And saw them again the next afternoon. We didn’t see them again after that. It’s all right for you laughing. We didn’t [unclear] it was in the Black Forest.
MC: Yeah.
PS: Yeah. It was, it was nice there.
MC: And these were German girls.
PS: Yeah. Oh yeah. Fish a bit of paper out and write their name and address on and trusted you to do yours. Expecting you to. I mean there was a shortage of men. We killed that many. So they, if they could get a bloke fair enough but, yeah. They were friendly.
MC: So when you came back from Germany you went back in to your old job.
PS: Yeah. Yeah. Went back. Well. I’d finished my two year training course before I went. They put me in electric light and power. So I did about six months on that installing and maintaining the, maintaining all the batteries and that for the, for the [trunk call lists] and keeping the batteries full up, full up with evaporated and each cell two volts would be about from there to other side of them plants. About that wide and about that deep. Two volts. Very high capacity and they’d got wooden boxes lead lined.
MC: So you’re talking about what? About two metres wide.
PS: Yeah.
MC: Two yards wide by about a foot deep. A yard deep.
PS: Oh, they were deep. I mean the contractors used to put them in and when they put them in they put a glass tubes between them as insulators and put them in plate by plate and then melted the lead frame on to the [unclear] I mean the water was so good that we could use it in batteries. You can’t here because there’s too much lime in it but in Sheffield you could use it for.
MC: [unclear]
PS: Yeah. Fill it up by hosepipe. We used to [pause] on maintenance we maintained stamp set milling machines that they had in the walls. Stamp cancelling machines. They put them through, the letters through and conveyers, lifts. Everything electrical we did. And we put at Rotherham we put new lighting in because it was a downstairs sorting office with ordinary, ordinary lights. We put the first lot of fluorescents in there when they got [unclear]. Right along these bays where you could see where you were going. When we switched them on it was just as we were taking the roof off.
MC: Yeah. That’s great, Peter. I just, I just want to talk about a couple of other things. You went through, you went through the war and obviously you experienced the, what the RAF were doing. What did you think of the job that Bomber Command did? Were you much, did you give much thought to that?
PS: I didn’t see much of them until nearly the end. I’m not quite sure whether it’s nearly the end of the war but I mean the planes were coming over. [unclear] planes it was that would come, and the sirens used to go off.
MC: Did you get much news of what they were during the war?
PS: No. Not a lot.
MC: I mean post-war you knew what they were doing. Or what they’d been doing.
PS: We were. I don’t know quite sure what, sure when it was we went to Bridlington. Stopped there and there were three airfields near there I think. One had got this FIDO with the paraffin in the pipes around to disperse the fog. One evening we saw, saw these flames going across. I’m not quite sure when it was. It might have been near the end of the war. But I don’t know whether it had finished then.
MC: Do you think Bomber Command did a good job?
PS: Oh, they did. I mean I went to Hamburg.
MC: Oh yeah.
PS: By train, you know on the way to Lubeck to see this young lady because her dad was a sergeant you see and that was on the, on the, on our border with the Germans.
MC: Yeah.
PS: And at Lubeck it’s like a port. And went via Hamburg. Coming back, oh I went and caught the train. I went and sat down. A chap came and asked us what we wanted for lunch, you know. There was a butler there. This was all on the, all on the forces. So fair enough. When it came time to come back the train was about half past seven in the morning. I thought well I’m not travelling at half past seven in the morning. So her dad took me down to the station later on from their home. And I got on the train. It wasn’t a troop train. It was just an ordinary German train. Got in this carriage. There was only me in. Took my jacket undid my jacket took my belt off and relaxed like. All of a sudden the carriage door opens and there was this German porter there you know and he apologised and shut the door.
MC: So you say you went to Hamburg. You saw Hamburg.
PS: Then I, that was I hadn’t got a ticket. So we saw what was left of Hamburg at the time. The other side of the train I was you just looked and it was all a mess. I’ll give the Germans their due a lot of, a lot of nearly everything well everything I saw that had been wrecked was put back exactly as it was. I mean Cologne Cathedral was bombed. That was brought back. I went to another one and —
[phone ringtone]
MC: Sorry, I thought I’d put that on silent.
PS: That wasn’t me. Where else did I go to?
MC: Yeah. You were talking about Hamburg and the bombings and the ruins and the Germans and how they repaired everything. You know.
PS: Yeah. Apparently, there was one town we went to afterwards you know as civilians. We were told that they said to the Yanks they would surrender this town if they didn’t bomb it. Because, before the Yanks went in anyway they just blasted away. That was it. We did a, we went in a train holiday through Germany and [pause] just a minute. Oh, I went to Nuremberg.
MC: Oh, you certainly got around in Germany.
PS: Yeah. This was after the war. After the war.
MC: Oh right, ok.
PS: Went to Nuremberg and Nuremberg didn’t exist after the British had bombed it. The city. The old walled city. But when we got there there was only one. Everything was put back as it was. A chap had made a model of it but they knew what was what. And I’ll give them their due the Germans everything they put back after the war unless you’d a place like Hamburg which was nothing left they built it back to what it was originally. I mean the church was you know high at one end and next to nothing at the other. You couldn’t tell it had been rebuilt. There was a lot of lovely architecture. We destroyed it and they put it back up. Not here. We get all these so called architects put up all sorts of rubbish don’t they? It’s a clean city. I went on an overhead tram. It’s the only place there is one. These girls who were, we had a couple of girls used to come up to the camp. They were the ones that we would dance with in the village. They took us down there and they’d got an overhead railway which hung and it went along over the river. It’s still there.
MC: Oh.
PS: Which was an experience. We didn’t pay. You just got on. They don’t queue either. The Germans don’t queue for anything. I mean you go to a bus stop and its who gets on can get on while somebody else is trying to get off. In fact, we went on holiday in [pause] was it Croatia, I think? And there were some Germans there and they called you into the restaurant and these Germans came and you know and the Yugoslavs said, ‘Out. Wait your turn. I’ll tell you where you’re going to sit. You’ve been allocated a seat.’ And they all went out but they were bloody gluttons. They had a lot of muscles. It was like that.
[recording paused]
MC: Pushbike. Going down the street on a pushbike.
PS: Yeah. Well, it was a lady actually. I heard this rattle. This was in the first place we went to and I turned around and looked and there was this lady coming down the street on her pushbike. No tyres. And she’d got coil springs. One in the back and one in the front and of course it’s bellying out as you, as you, centrifugal force but it rattled. That’s all they had. No tyres. No nothing.
MC: Nothing. No.
PS: I mean, coffee. Coffee was a good currency. Cigarettes was a good currency. Five haircuts for a [unclear]. The girls were very friendly as well. You know. They’d give you their name and address. I think they were short of blokes. They’d had so many killed.
MC: Yeah. You said that. Yeah.
PS: There was a lake up there.
MC: Finish off. We’ll just finish off, Peter. And the other thing I did, I was going to mention I believe you’ve got a bit of a musical talent as well.
PS: Well, I had.
MC: You had. Did you play? Did you enjoy music when you was a child or was that later life?
PS: No. They tried to get me to, to teach me piano but I never got around to it. I was a bugler in the Scouts.
MC: Oh, that would. Yeah. Anyway, thank you for your time, Peter.
PS: You’ll find something.
MC: That was very good. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Peter Swallow
Creator
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Mike Connock
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-09-14
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ASwallowRP180914, PSwallowRP1801
Format
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01:27:59 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Sheffield
Germany
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1952
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Swallow was born in Sheffield in 1929, one of three children. He recalls hearing Mr Chamberlain’s declaration of war broadcast as a schoolchild. His father, a plumber, volunteered as a member of the Local Defence Volunteers, eventually becoming a sergeant armourer. Peter remembers his father bringing home a Thompson sub-machine gun, a sticky bomb and grenades. War-time life in Sheffield is described including blackout arrangements, details of car lighting, firefighting water tanks and pipes, and rationing. Peter started at a grammar school after passing his 11+ exams, but then moved on to an engineering course. It was well equipped, and the lathes were used to manufacture shells by women workers. When not at school or being taught at home, Peter went fishing, playing football or as a Boy Scout, helping put up the blackout covers in the hospital. His father constructed an air raid shelter in the cellar of their house to protect them from the bombing, and Peter describes the aftermath of air attacks with details of fires and destroyed buildings in the city centre. He went out with a bucket and collected spent shrapnel and incendiaries after the attacks. After passing his engineering exams he got a job with the General Post Office. After the war he received his National Service call-up and served his two years in Germany with Royal Signals. He relates the camp he was based in, what they got up to in leisure time and his various travels around post-war Germany. On demobilisation he returned to his job with the GPO and married in 1952.
Contributor
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Nick Cornwell-Smith
Julie Williams
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
bombing
Chamberlain, Neville (1869-1940)
childhood in wartime
civil defence
firefighting
home front
Home Guard
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/770/9402/SDexterKI127249v10023.2.jpg
ce8be85244540be453b45ba46b5b4833
Dublin Core
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Title
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Dexter, Keith Inger. Album
Description
An account of the resource
24 items. Contains newspaper articles and information about Keith and Shelia Dexter while at school. Includes a number of photographs of Keith Dexter's mother's home in Stradishall and of a memorial to men of F Division of the Metropolitan Police lost during 1939-45. Followed by documents from Squadron Leader A N Banks concerning the collision between a Halifax and a Mosquito at RAF Foulsham in a April 1944 with photographs as well as information on Foulsham and 192 Squadron. Finally photographs of Keith Dexter's medals, an escape map and compass and a photograph of a model train built by Keith Dexter with a certificate from the Model Engineering Exhibition 1933.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Dexter, KI
Date
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2017-08-30
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Keith Dexter's decorations
Description
An account of the resource
Captioned 'Flying Officer Keith Dexter RAFVR 103 Squadron, flew Lancaster ED945 PM-R. Lost 17/6/43 Hal Holland'. Note 'Medals Dexter qualified for Defence M, served DCI Met Police 1939-42 until joined RAF April 1942'. Pilot's brevet above with medal bar containing 1939-1945 Star. Aircrew Europe Star, Defence Medal and War Medal 1939-1945.
Format
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Cloth wings, medals on bar, dymo tape note and post-it note
Type
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Physical object
Physical object. Decoration
Physical object
Identifier
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SDexterKI127249v10023
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Netherlands
Netherlands--'s-Hertogenbosch
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1942-04
1943-06-17
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
103 Squadron
killed in action
Lancaster
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/998/9671/PWardEM16010044.1.jpg
8d5d763bd011aead70cd64efc9260660
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Ward, Mary. Album
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-12-14
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Ward, EM
Description
An account of the resource
42 items. The album concerns the work of 517 Squadron Meteorological Flight at RAF Shawbury, RAF Chivenor and RAF Brawdy. It contains photographs of aircraft and staff at work and on leave.
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
Flying Officer Ron Ward
Description
An account of the resource
Formal photograph of 175740 Flying Officer Ron Ward, in uniform, with meteorological observer's half wing. Captioned 'Ron Ward', 'RAF Service August 1944 - 1946', 'Photo 1946, MORLEY'.
Page has hand written log of his flights at Empire Air navigation School in 1946, flying in Lancaster, Lancastrian 'Aries' and Halifax. Also a list of the RAF stations he was stationed at from 1939 to 1946.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PWardEM16010044
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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One b/w photograph on an album page
Language
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eng
Type
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Photograph
Text
Text. Personal research
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Devon
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Pembrokeshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
aircrew
ground personnel
Halifax
Lancaster
Lancastrian
meteorological officer
RAF Brawdy
RAF Chivenor
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Pocklington
RAF Shawbury
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/669/10073/AAn00086-150722.1.mp3
b69da3885a99576f6754191029cb4a7c
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
An00086
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with a flight engineer who completed a full tour of operations on Lancasters. The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by a donor who wishes to be anonymous 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
2015-06-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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An00086
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: My name is Adam Sutch and I’m conducting an oral interview for the International Bomber Command Centre Archive. It’s the 22nd of July 2015. The interviewee wishes to preserve his anonymity but I can record that he was a flight engineer on a Lancaster squadron from May 1944 carrying out a full tour of operations. Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. I’d like to set the scene by asking you to describe your life before joining the Air Force.
Anonymous: My life before joining the Air Force. Right. Well, I was one of three sons of a widowed mother and in 1939 I was fourteen years old, I think. Yes. Fourteen. Both my brothers, well one brother was already in the Royal Navy having joined when he was twenty one in 1936. So he was at sea when the war started and my second brother joined the Air Force a few months later. So I was left at home to comfort mother and because most of our school in Kent were disrupted by evacuation of children I left school and worked in Chatham Dockyard for a time in various jobs and took the apprentice’s exam there. And was about to sign indentures to become a bench carpenter or something similar but backed off that and my mother couldn’t persuade me from setting my sights on joining the Air Force when I was eighteen. But before that I attempted the aircrew selection board at seventeen and a quarter. I expect you know about that. When one went to London for a selection day and went home miserable because one had failed. But, and they told me to come back when I was eighteen. Ok. And so I went back to Chatham Dockyard and then I, as soon as I was approaching eighteen I volunteered for the Royal Air Force. For ground duties in fact because I’d failed the Aircrew Selection Board first time around. Then what happened? Yes. I was called up. Did the usual rooting through square bashing at Skegness for six weeks and did ability, multiple, multi-choice questionings to see what I was fit for. And they said, ‘Well, you would make a half decent flight mechanic.’ So I was then posted to Cosford for a six month flight mechanic’s course I sort of quite enjoyed. During the course the aircrew occupational flight engineer was introduced. And I think that was in ‘42/’43. Hang on a minute. Ok. Yes. So that was halfway through that flight mechanic’s course. They sent around recruiting sergeants to gather volunteers for aircrew you see. And, and I saw it as an opportunity to do what I’d wanted to do from the start. Aircrew selection board at Birmingham. And I passed that one. Some of the questions were the same ones as I’d answered earlier. But anyway, anyway I passed that one and then I had to complete the flight mechanic’s course before I could go down to St Athan. Anyway, I did that. I did quite well in the exam when I passed out. Then I had to wait for the, for the entries to be teamed up properly you know. In the right capacities and so on. So I did a period of maintenance work on Spitfires on 222 Squadron at Hornchurch. Then in [pause] when did I go? September ’43. Oh, that’s when, yes then I went to St Athan in ’43 as part of the entry of — oh we were all ex-flight mechanics in that particular entry because they based your training to be a flight engineer on your previous experience. So they had a good history of that you see. So that was that and that lasted until January ’44. Way into the spring of ’44. And the day of my final exam I was in hospital with the flu. But anyway, so I was delayed from my colleagues and that’s just a by the way. I lost track of them. But in due course, it was only about two or three months, two or three weeks later I went to Dishforth in Yorkshire to do something called a Heavy Conversion Unit. You’re familiar with those?
AS: Yes.
Anonymous: Yeah. Dishforth. And from there I joined, well I joined up with a crew of Canadians and an American pilot on 419 Squadron. They’d already done, they’d been up to, what do we call it? Operational Training Unit. You know, they were, they’d been through the first bit of being a crew. A six man crew. But they had no flight engineers. They didn’t train them in Canada apparently. So we were bolted on at the Heavy Conversion Unit stage using ancient Halifaxes to, to get familiar with four engines, you know. And for the pilots too because our pilots, you know they were astounded by the size of the four engine ones. And so it was, we were only there for about a fortnight. And then we went on to Middleton St George in, when was that? May, I think. May. Yeah. Just after. Yeah. Yeah. Just after that. May ’44. Went to Middleton St George. And I don’t know if you want any silly humorous things. Semi humorous things. The first thing we did when we got there all the flight engineers on our course concentrated on Halifaxes. This is a typical bit of service. So, I learned all about a Halifax. This will tell you all sorts of things about a Halifax in there. And when we got to Middleton they’d just converted to Lancs you know. Great. Great. Only two weeks previously. So we all had, I had to do a lot of re-learning and, and we did our customary getting used to flying the Lancaster thing. And we wrote off the first one we rode. There was a tyre creep that we weren’t familiar with and the bell blew off halfway down the runway on a very fine Sunday afternoon. So we spent two or three hours messing about over Stockton on Tees etcetera getting rid of petrol. And then we had to attempt a two wheel landing on one of the — I should have said that the, the portside tyre blew off or burst when we were half the way down the runway. We were empty fortunately. No bomb load. And so we stooged around and got rid of the petrol and then we were carrying on to the rear wheel and the good wheel and we were doing very well and holding it levelly until the speed diminished and the wing dropped. And the, where the tyre had burst it dug into the, into the edge of the runway and slewed the aircraft right around and broke its back. And by some quirk of fate it was the particular aircraft that the CO had selected to be his own [laughs] Such as [laughs] Yeah.
AS: Promising start.
Anonymous: So the next time he saw it it was at the end being towed away rather sadly to the end of the runway. The end of the airfield. And I don’t know what happened to it after that. Poor chap. But it was interesting being with Canadians and an American. You know, there was the cultural difference. I mean they eat like eating your first meat meal with jam on it which my pilot liked doing. American Joe this was. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Joe Hartshorn. He was, he was quite a distinguished American pilot and, well he did very well with us actually. But yeah he was a geologist by profession and a very interesting man. And I’ve got something here that he wrote. I don’t know if it, I wonder if it would be any help to you. He wrote his account of life in Bomber Command as an American and he called it, “Under Three Flags,” because he was an American. He went into the Canadian Air Force because he, before the war, before America was in the war and then he was flying under the Union Jack as well. So under three flags. Yeah. They were an immigrant family. His father was a miner in the North Country and they’d gone over there. Anyway, so where were we? On —
AS: You’d just written off the COs Lancaster.
Anonymous: Was it? We then embarked on our, on our operational tour. And I’ve got my logbook. It’s, it’s a very poor standard of paper in some of the logbooks. I suppose it didn’t get a lot of priority really at that time. Is this stuff I’m giving you any use to you?
AS: It is. If there is something beyond gold dust Ken this is it.
Anonymous: Oh right [laughs] Right. So where do we go first? We did our first one. Let’s have a look. That was number seven. [unclear] in, a French troop camp and rest centre. In Belgium it was. Four hours thirty minutes.
AS: Ken, this was just before D-Day you went on ops was it?
Anonymous: Yeah. Well, sadly, it was. Yeah. Because it wasn’t enough before D-Day for us to get the Aircrew Europe medal. Medal. We did, well I’ll tell you, you needn’t write this down early but we did, we completed a tour of thirty two sorties and collected three DFCs and a DFM but we didn’t get the Europe. Anyway —
AS: Because it stopped after the 6th of June didn’t it? it was the —
Anonymous: Yeah.
AS: Yeah.
Anonymous: Something like that. Yeah. I’ve long since ceased crying myself to sleep to do that. You know. So that was that. Now that was about the time that the only Canadian VC was earned. You know, the Polish chap.
AS: Mynarski.
Anonymous: That’s him. Yeah. He was on 419. I think, yeah there were two air, there was two squadrons on 419 but I’m sure he was 419. We didn’t know him because we’d only been there about a couple of weeks, you know. But reading accounts of how he earned his VC that’s where it places him. Yeah. So that was interesting. That was a revelation to us all. And of course Joe, the pilot, had done two earlier ones as spare pilot for experience with, with an experienced crew. Just, just went as second pilot on those but that didn’t affect the rest of us. So then we started here. When the first, I mean after the initial shock of seeing, they saw this illumination and explosion ahead of you that you’d got to go flying through we — I don’t know if you want to read that little bit. It came out of the local paper. The paper the Canadians produced. Lorne Vince. That’s it.
AS: It’s staggering that. You know.
Other: It’s great isn’t it?
AS: Yeah.
Other: It’s amazing what’s on there.
Anonymous: I think I’m the only survivor of these you know.
Other: Amazing.
Anonymous: Yeah. Yeah.
Other: But did you kept in good touch after the war?
Anonymous: Yes. I’ve got some photographs of meeting the two gunners and their wives in Toronto when it was our golden wedding anniversary.
Other: Oh brilliant.
Anonymous: We did Canada that year. Yeah.
Other: That would have been rather touching wasn’t it? Catching up after all that time.
Anonymous: Yes. I’ve kept in touch with Joe the pilot by correspondence as well.
Other: Yeah.
Anonymous: Yeah.
AS: That is amazing. Was this your first trip? When you went on to —
Anonymous: No. That was number — let’s see. It was up the Ruhr somewhere wasn’t it? Yeah. Let’s have a look.
AS: That sounds quite hairy. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about that.
Anonymous: It was. It was rotten. Yeah. June the — what was it? Number six I thought it was. Bad luck when you can’t read your own logbook isn’t it? Fighter cover. Oh, Sterkrade. That’s the one.
AS: Ok.
Anonymous: That’s the one. Number six.
AS: Ok. So, so that was a daylight op.
Anonymous: No, it was night.
AS: Ok
Anonymous: Does it, does it give a departure time or —
AS: It does. Yeah. 20:14 you’re right
Anonymous: On there. It doesn’t say that?
AS: 20:14. Yeah. You’re right.
Anonymous: Yeah.
AS: So obviously your gunners are heavily involved. What, what happened on that particular occasion? Can you tell us a little about that?
Anonymous: Well we were, there was a lot of, let me just refresh my memory on it. Then it was, “Shot up by a fighter.” Yeah. “Hammy injured.” Yeah. Ok. Yeah. What happened was the rear gunner shouted out. We were, we were within sight of the target in the Ruhr and Lorne Vince, the rear gunner, shouted, ‘Corkscrew.’ You know, ‘There’s a fighter coming in.’ Or whatever he said at the time. And he let off a burst and the chap came around again. He must have ducked under us and come up again and he raked us from the rear turret right up through the aircraft. The mid-upper turret had a hole, both sides of it, both sides of the globe, you know and poor old Jason was sat there with his head still on, you know. But he was alright. A bit shaken up. And then it came up through the, through the crew area. You know. Up at the front. And some of the flying shrapnel or whatever it was wounded the navigator in the arm and in the leg and he lost a good number of his instruments. And there was a certain amount of flapping going on up there as well. And anyway, Joe kept the aircraft under control and, and Lorne Vince, the gunner must have let off another burst because he got it credited to him as a probable you know. A bit stronger than a probable maybe. Anyway, they decorated him from it and, but we were like a colander by this time, you know, we’re — yeah. And it was very hairy alright but the bomb aimer was ok and we sort of pressed on and got rid of our bombs and got back home in a mess. As Joe, the pilot said, with less aircraft than we started with [laughs] Yes. And so that was our, that was our initiation into the real thing, you know. Yeah. So that was, but Hammy by the way, the navigator, he navigated us home by dead reckoning. You know. He’d lost so many of his instruments and, and so on. Anyway, so he was decorated as well for that account and repatriated so we didn’t see him again. He was the, he was older than the rest of us.
Other: Was he?
Anonymous: Yes. There he is. Hammy. The tall, the tall one second from the right. Left is it?
AS: Yeah.
Anonymous: Yeah. That’s it. That’s Hammy. Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, he died. He died quite a young man, I think. After the war. But, but he was two or three years older than us and it sort of showed when some of you were nineteen, you know and you’ve got a twenty six, a twenty six year old chap with you, you know.
AS: It’s taking your grandad along.
Anonymous: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. He was great. He was a great chap actually. Anyway, so yeah, so that’s our, then it, I mean I can’t tell you about the variations of the various trips. These were all — if these are in green they’re daylight and if they’re in red they’re night ones. So we, you know, by number eleven we were up the Ruhr again and I mean the typical report would be, “Heavy flak. No fighters.” You know. That was a rail one actually. “Heavy barrage over target,” at Kiel and so on. Stuttgart — flak over target. And so we went on until August time and we were now getting to be a, a sort of an experienced crew you know. And regarded as having a certain amount of luck. Then we had to go, on our twenty third trip we had to go to Stettin which is a long way north isn’t it? And very heavy flak there. I mean the trip took eight hours. It was the longest one we’d done actually. Eight hours and fifty minutes. That’s virtually nine hours isn’t it? And, but we got back unscathed from that. Then we all went on leave and when we got back the first one we were booked for was Stettin [laughs] again. Now this time, I’m speaking from memory now, we were carted around to the dispersals to get in the aircraft, which we did. And we started up and we started taxi-ing around to the, to the hut you know and the breaking and the steering on the ground is all controlled by the rudders. The rudders isn’t it? It was. And there was some fault in that and so we had to stop on the, on the, not on the runway but on the track around. Perimeter track. And they fixed that. Cost us about a half an hour. Three quarters of an hour I suppose. But it’s like going to the pick your own at the supermarket. You know. You get the benefit and then you’ve got to pay for it. By the time we got over the, over to Stettin the main stream had gone through. We’d lost the benefit of Window. You know. The strips. So we were virtually doing a solo act. Not quite of course. There must have been others around. But anyway we were coned by searchlights on the bomb run and, and there wasn’t serious damage but we did [pause] it did start a fire in the starboard inner engine. And we lost, we lost height and we [pause] sufficiently to say in the logbook that we bombed at eleven thousand feet which was quite low, you know. So, and the, I mean it’s quite frightening really when you see these flames going back over the fuselage on the main plane. And the poor old rear gunner in all the noise and shouting and searchlights and so on he [laughs] he came on, ‘What the hell’s happening up there?’ He said, ‘I can’t see a thing.’ You know. So we had to put him in the picture and fortunately we had this cockpit controlled, control for fire extinguishing on each engine. You’d got four, four buttons and you pressed one for each relative engine. And the fire went out. Yeah. It was between fuel tanks. You know, the engine. The starboard inner. And then there was the fuel tank and then another engine but the fuel tank in the middle. It hadn’t got across there and there were no leaks sufficiently to get a big fire going. And what happens with the, when you press that button the engine feathers as well, you know. The blades come around. Do you fly by the way?
AS: A little bit.
Anonymous: Yeah.
AS: A little bit. Yeah.
Anonymous: So you know what I’m talking about when I say feathering.
AS: Yeah.
Anonymous: Yeah. And, and the fire went out. So we all breathed a sigh of relief and set off home, you know. And the practice on our squadron was, half way home normally, if you were over the water you would open the bomb bay doors, give it a shake around a bit to make sure there were no hang-ups and then close the doors again and proceed. When we did that the aerodynamic effect was that it changed the setting of the damaged engine’s propeller and it started unfeathering. All the temperatures went up in there and the fire started again. We were, you know we were well over the North Sea now. Between Stettin and Darlington if you like. Yeah. And we pressed the button again and by some act of God the fire went out again. So we, well to cut the rest of it short we got back [laughs] but it was remarkable really. It was a dickens of a way to contemplate going. Yeah. I mean the Lanc was quite capable of flying on three engines with quite a load on but, yeah but that distance over water, very cold water. Yeah. Anyway, yes, whatever, which one I started. These are not here. But do you know it’s a funny frame of mind you’re in when you’re on these tours. There’s some sort of, oh I don’t know the word [pause] togetherness you know. And a lot of, a lot of genuine feeling is disguised by either bad language or drinking or, or too much bonhomie. You know. That sort of thing. But by and large there was very very few that you come across that were blighted with this wretched, what was it, LMF thing, wasn’t it? Yeah. Yes. That was dreadful. Yes. It’s the only service that punish people to that extent to make it so [pause] Yeah. Yes ok. So there we go. Then we got up to twenty and we began to get hopeful now. By this time, by the way we were going on a number of daylights. D-Day would pass and we were doing army support ones. And the only thing I mention that for is that here you might have seen this in oh that’s one little thing. That was, that was an unofficial photograph taken at the sergeant’s mess on the occasion of that.
AS: The Moose Men. 419 Squadron.
Anonymous: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s yours truly holding that end up.
[pause]
AS: No tie, Ken.
Anonymous: Hmmn?
AS: No tie.
Anonymous: [laughs] No. We were just come back. I don’t know. We used to say that the last thing the cook and butchers did in the kitchen when we were taking off, as soon as the sound died down they put our fried eggs on. They were like yellow rubber heels by the time we got back. So, no. No. This was, the reason I mentioned daylight ones was you might have seen this in, in journals of some sort.
AS: So this, taken from an another aircraft above.
Anonymous: Yeah.
AS: The Lancaster almost directly underneath. That must have been quite a scary position to be in.
Anonymous: Oh yes. For them it was. The thing is, it was at, we took the photograph.
AS: Oh right.
Anonymous: Yeah. And I’ve got the original. The photographic department broke all the rules and gave us the photograph. Yeah. So, it was us that took the photograph. And what it, it wasn’t somebody aiming a camera at it. It was the, you know at the end of the bomb run, the last exposure on the camera which was photographing the target would be the result if they could. And so that was what, that’s what got caught in the, in the last flash. And you’ll find that in many, many journals on it. Yeah.
AS: That’s extraordinary.
Anonymous: Yeah.
Other: Good framing isn’t it? Great.
Anonymous: Yeah. So, the only other thing we did we — D-Day the Canadian army I think it was, was held up in the Falaise Gap. You know. And we were doing a daylight on the 14th of August in ’44. And it was the one occasion when we earned one of those. Have you seen one of those before?
AS: I have not seen an original. I’ve actually seen a copy of this one.
Anonymous: Have you?
AS: On the internet. On the Moose Men website.
Anonymous: Oh yes.
AS: I have never seen the target token original. That’s just fantastic.
Anonymous: Yeah. That’s one you can take away, I think. If you wish.
AS: Absolutely. Thank you. That will, that will go in the archive.
Anonymous: Yeah.
AS: Absolutely go in the archive.
Anonymous: Yeah. Ok. And so that was, claimed to be a direct hit you see, on the target which did us all a lot of good, you know. And this — we’d, we got out of our aircraft coming back from a daylight. An early morning one, you know so about a 6 o’clock take-off when we were attacking the flying bomb sites. Ok. And I don’t know, one of the WAAFs I expect had a camera that she shouldn’t have had. And she was down at the dispersal and she took one of each of us as we got out. Apart from Joe. He stayed in.
AS: How did you feel about being photographed? A lot of crew have told me that, or some crew have told me that they felt it was, it was not good luck.
Anonymous: Oh really.
AS: I didn’t, obviously didn’t bother you.
Anonymous: No. No. I don’t think that. I don’t think we discussed that one. No. We were all too vain I expect. Yeah.
Other: How old was the oldest?
Anonymous: Hmmn?
Other: How old was the oldest crew member?
Anonymous: Hamilton. But he only did six with us so he was [pause] I suppose the next one might have been Joe but he was only two or three years older than us, you know.
Other: Yeah.
Anonymous: Yeah.
AS: Shall we, shall we have a pause there Ken?
Anonymous: Yeah. Why not.
[recording paused]
AS: Here we are back from, from our break. Ken, I’d like to go into your memories of the crew as individuals and then perhaps some of the reunions and the way you kept in touch after that war. If that would suit.
Anonymous: Yes. Right. Well from the top then. We had this maverick chap with us. An American lieutenant of the American Army Air Force who had originally gone up across the relevant parallel to join the RCAF, the Canadian Air Force, before America came into the war. And he did this at the risk of losing his American citizenship in those early days. This was later changed when — after Pearl Harbour. So Joe was a man of great flying ability and saw us through many tight, out of many tight corners. And we were pleased to say that at the end of his time with the Canadian Air Force he went back to the Americans and had quite a distinguished career. A career with them. And became one of the few people in the Air Forces who had a DFC from both of them. Who earned a DFC from both of them. I don’t know why he got it in the American one but I know he stayed in the reserve after the war but we’re thinking about wartime relative. W/O Keelan, Keelan, Bill Keelan was, now where did he live? Somewhere near the Rockies. And he, we acquired Bill when we lost our original navigator over the Ruhr on our sixth trip. Bill was a very quiet chap and kept into, kept at his desk. Rarely came out to view the bomb run or anything of that sort. But he was surprised on one occasion and a bit startled I think when he did pop his head out and saw three or four flamers going down not too far away from us during the bomb run. So he was, it didn’t affect him fortunately. So, and then there’s Tony Delaney was the bomb aimer who often, people who wanted to be pilots but lacked some characteristic that was required and often became bomb aimers. Did you come across that before?
AS: Yes. I think so. Yeah.
Anonymous: You know a lot of people going over from this country had the same sort of selection process I think. And then W/O Lyall. He was quite experienced. The wireless operator. Always anxious to be in the middle of things and, and when he, when he was involved in the shoot up over the Ruhr he was, he was very active in trying to get around and see what else he could do apart from wireless operating at the time. Fred. Fred Grumbly and Lorne Vince both had the same characters really in the sense that they were quite at home being alone for some of these long trips with nobody around them or close to them. You know. And I don’t know what else I can say about them really. So, about the, what we were saying about, yes, seeing them again. Yeah. That’s right. Seeing them again. Yes. For our, for our personal golden wedding my wife and I went to Canada and by arrangement we met both Fred Grumbly and Lorne Vince together with their wives at Toronto and had a marvellous day around the, what is it? The CN Tower or something?
AS: The CNN I think it is. They’re broadcasting towers, I think. Broadcasting.
Anonymous: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s — oh then in addition to that Joe Hartshorn and I kept in touch for most of the period. And he was coming over to Europe on one occasion and came and stayed in Modbury which is quite, that’s this little town here. And he’d expressed a wish to go to an old English pub and stay with his partner and we duly fitted him up with that. And he came over and we had some time together. Took him over on Dartmoor and showed him all the sites over there. And then when he saw me the day after they’d spent their first night in the pub I’d put them in. He said, ‘Marvellous, ‘he said, ‘Lovely flagstones floors.’ You know. He said, ‘It’s the first building I’ve seen in the whole world and I’ve been around a bit,’ he said, ‘That didn’t have a straight wall in it, [laughs] or a right angle in it.’ A right angle. The first building he’d found without a right angle. Yeah.
AS: As a crew. Not when you were operating. When you were down did you all live together?
Anonymous: Well, I mean we were, we were non-commissioned people. Joe, Joe and the navigator Bill, oh wait a minute. Joe was in the officer’s mess, Keelan wasn’t. Delaney was in the officer’s mess. So there were just two in the officer’s mess and the rest of us were in the sergeant’s mess, you know. NCO’s mess. Yeah. So, but socially some of us used to go to the dance hall in Stockton on Tees. The Maison de Dance I think it was called [laughs] with the pub right opposite the door. Yes. So that was our, that was our sort of, I don’t know, our respite I suppose. Swap one noise for another. Yes. But I shall forever remember the Glenn Miller record of “American Patrol,” because we used to think at times it was the only one the band knew. But it stayed with me you know. The American.
Other: The theme tune.
Anonymous: Yeah.
AS: Your tour seemed to pass relatively quickly. You got thirty two ops in in what, four months which is, is quite — did you feel that you were, it was all happening under pressure? Bang bang bang or did you get lots of time off?
Anonymous: I don’t, I can’t recall. I don’t think we were ever concerned about the frequency. Only if we’d had four in one week we might have done but it was sufficiently phased, I think, to avoid that. I mean during the, this isn’t for, for the narrative by the way, my narrative. My personal view is that the area or the timing of the, all the bravery and so on of Bomber Command doesn’t give enough attention to the early ones who would take off, six or eight of them. Blenheims would take off from Detling and if a couple came back, you know, they’d had a good day. Their navigation wasn’t as good and the equipment wasn’t, was it? You know. But some of those chaps were doing very very long deep European ones and coastal ones. Heavily defended. You know, around the dockyards and so on. I sometimes think that they almost deserve a separate recognition but I know that’s, that’s a vain hope. I do feel, you know, it’s quite right. I mean, if you lose fifty four thousand people and you’re the only command that ever, that was still going at the end of the war that started off then there’s going to be a lots of bravery. I mean there must have been thousands of acts of bravery that nobody will ever know about. Mustn’t there? Yeah.
AS: Someone has to come back to tell. Yeah.
Anonymous: That’s right. Yes. I mean if our, if our engines hadn’t reignited or if the one hadn’t come to life again we could have been in the bottom of the North Sea couldn’t we? In August 1944. No trace. That’s what Runnymede is largely about you know. People who, well they don’t know whether there’s any grave for them. Yeah. Ok. So what was the question?
AS: We were, we had been through your recollections of your crew and keeping in touch after the war. Perhaps we could, we could move on a bit to a different aspect of being a crew. I mean it’s often said that the, the successful and surviving crews were in large part very very disciplined and very skilled. Was your captain? Were you, as a crew practicing your drills, emergency drills religiously? How did you become such an efficient and surviving crew?
Anonymous: Yeah. [pause] I can’t say there was ever any dedicated. You’d have to be selective about what you put here because I don’t want, the last thing I want to do is ruffle, ruffle any feathers. We rarely had team cooperation lectures or practices. We used to do it in practical ways by doing cross country’s at night, you know. And bombing Hull at night. That sort of thing. Yeah. It was practical. Hands on building really. But the most thing, the best thing to build the morale and so on was to get involved in to our Ruhr experience and see what comes out. You know. See where the deficiencies are. Because I mean, talking in modern, modern terms we have this thing called the annual review in big business now don’t we?
AS: Yeah.
Anonymous: And there was a lot of suspicion about it when it first came in wasn’t there? Because they thought it was a way of getting rid of me but in fact it was the positive was you got many good qualities which we want to further and exploit and tidy them up or you’ve got several bad habits that are not acceptable. You know. There was a [pause] but I mean none of that, the services have got the basis, or the big advantage of having discipline haven’t they? You know. Ranking. If you come, I was asked to come and work in Plymouth for a time. You can’t say to a man in Civvy Street, ‘You’ll do this because,’ you know, ‘I’ve got three pips and you’ve got three stripes,’ you know. Yeah. You can’t do that. But the military and all the, all those people that have the big weapon of discipline haven’t we? Disciplinary procedures and so on. Anyway, I don’t know why I’m telling you all that but that’s what came more when I was I was doing, well involved in personnel work before I retired you see. So.
AS: I think there’s an element of doing a post mortem really after action. And you linked it to the Ruhr. Your Ruhr operations. So was that, was that a feature of your crew interaction that you discussed previous operations? Hairy experiences or —
Anonymous: I didn’t, I wasn’t party to any discussion on that.
AS: Yeah.
Anonymous: No. No. I mean there’s a certain amount of, of relief really that the survivors if you like come back. I don’t, I can’t recall any where they said well we knew there was a bit of a weak link there, you know. Or he ought to be off to Eastchurch. To the LMF camp. You know. Yeah. Yeah. So —
AS: Could we go down a slightly different track and this would be very familiar to you but perhaps not to many people who’ll listen to this interview. Could you, could you take me through a raid from, from basically getting up, going through the briefing. I know a lot of them are different but if you —
Anonymous: You’re asking a lot.
AS: Ok.
Anonymous: I mean I’m ninety one next month, you know. You’re doing very well. You’re dredging all that [laughs]
AS: Would you like me to stop?
Anonymous: Yeah. Go on. Stop it for a minute. Yeah.
[recording paused]
Anonymous: That was not dealt with. No. No. That’s, that’s not right. There wasn’t any so it didn’t need to be dealt with. Joe was a very good, very good captain and, yeah, he really was. He was, he was quite an impressive bloke. He was, he didn’t go, he didn’t socialise a lot. He would, he would never go to hear the, “American Patrol” in the dance hall, you know. You wouldn’t find him there. But, yeah, he was, he was a good man and he held the team together very well. Yeah. So no. I can’t, I can’t deal with that question very, very much I’m afraid from personal experience.
AS: That’s absolutely, absolutely fine.
Anonymous: Ok. But I mean as far as the sequence goes each, each aircrew category had their own building somewhere on the, you know, their hut. The flight engineer’s hut was down near the dispersals. So you’d go down there in the morning and on the wall there was a list like a league table and and it would say, “Flying tonight,” Or whatever, you know, “Engaged tonight.” And there would be the captain’s name all the way down. And then the last figure on it would, I think from memory, fuel load. You know. Which caused speculation then because they said fuel load, or bomb load, whichever. If the, if it was a lot of petrol and not so much bomb load you knew you were going a long way. That’s right. So, so there’d just be the captain’s name and then briefing would be about, well it would depend on the take-off time really. And you’d all go down to the, to the central building and be briefed. All the crew. 419, everybody went. You know. The whole crew. And you were briefed by the various people. The Met people and the navigational people and one or two others and yes I remember the day of Arnhem. Arnhem was it? Yeah. Arnhem. Joe was, Joe was labelled with the name of ‘fearless Hartshorn’[laughs] Yeah. He carried that label for some time. But they had this tape going across Europe you know. The end of the tape would be the target. And, and then there was one that finished on the, right on the coastline. And I remember the, the briefer saying, ‘Don’t get fooled by that one that finishes at the coastline. It’s not Fearless off on his own again,’ you know, or something like that. And [laughs] but in fact it was, it was the Arnhem flight that was being carried out by the airborne people. And they were just telling us this would be about. You know, there would be a lot of activity down there. And we were doing, we did a diversionary raid further south. I can’t remember when it was but if you know the date of Arnhem I could probably tell you when it was from here. But anyway, yeah so that would and then we’d all troop off and go and have our yellow rubber heel at the, you know [laughs] Or was that when we came back wasn’t it? When we came back. Yeah. That maligns the cooks and butchers of course but it was one of those things that happened in the service isn’t it? Yeah. So we’d then go back to our huts or whatever and get ready in our own ways, you know. Personal ways. Prepare. One thing I don’t know. We were in Nissen huts until we could get a room in the sergeant’s mess which was usually overbooked and you’d get about eight or ten of us in a Nissen hut. And you know what they are don’t you? Nissen huts.
AS: Yes.
Anonymous: I’m sure you do. Yeah. And there was only one. Replacement crews would come in. You know, the NCOs of replacement crews would come in to make up the numbers in the crew. And one of the bravest acts I saw within the service culture was a Roman Catholic Canadian. It might have been a French Canadian who came in with some replacements and came about, I don’t know, late evening. We’d all started settling down. And he kept his light on and he actually knelt by his bed and did his prayers. You know. And it took courage of a great sort I think, you know. He was laying himself open to a lot of leg pulling and so on. Yes. But they didn’t make it back from their first trip. Yes. Sad little story but —
Other: In a group of young men it was a pretty brave act wasn’t it?
Anonymous: Well in that, at that company yeah I think it was so unusual. Nobody, nobody made anything of it you know. Mind you we were a good lot. A decent lot in our hut you know. Yeah. The best hut to be in. Yeah. Ok. Alright. So, there we go. So where are we now Alan?
AS: We were preparing ourselves for, or you were preparing yourselves for, for the op.
Anonymous: Oh yes. Well then you’d gather your stuff. Any lucky omens you’d got you stuck in your top pocket, you know and all that sort of thing. And you’d go down and go to the equipment room and pick up your parachute and, and any other gear you’d got in your locker that you needed to take. And then get carted out in the in the wagons, you know to the dispersals. And there you would wait until you got the word to get in. To load up, so of speak. And that one, that one, this one here — that would have been that stage there. Some of them have got their Mae Wests on haven’t they? Yeah that’s right. So we were ready to that stage, you see. Got their Mae Wests and their parachute harness on. Joe, the pilot was quite different because he had to have a parachute he sat on didn’t he? But the others had them clipped on there. But yeah, so you’d then get the word to get on, load up and then you’d get your signal to join the queue going around the perimeter track and you’d be four or five back from the, what was it? Black or white hut was it? Where the starter was. Anyway —
AS: Runway control van.
Anonymous: Yeah. Run control. That’s right. So then you’d, in due course roll around to the start you know, when you got the signals and do your run up. And get the engines going nicely and when you got the green off you went. And at Middleton St George the main runway ended with quite a valley across it. If that was the runway, that was the runway, there was a valley and on the other side of the valley there was a very nice farmhouse. And during the summer, it was double British summertime don’t forget, you could be quite late and the farmer and his wife and family would all come out and we used to think well that was decent of them to come and see us off, you know. What they were scared of was that we weren’t going to make it off the end [laughs] you know and they were the first in line. Yeah. That was the cynical view of it, you know, but, yes, so that was the sort of thing you know. Then the flight engineer and the pilot or the bomb aimer, sometimes the bomb aimer assisted. Sometimes the flight engineer assisted on following up with the — because you’ve got the throttle and you have the revs you know, haven’t you? You know, so the person assisting the pilot would be the follow up hand on the quadrant that increased the power. You know all about that. And hopefully two thirds of the way down you’d feel the big lift, you know. Yeah. Then you’d stooge around for an hour over the coast. And then when the stream was formed off you’d go, you know. Yeah. And —
AS: Could I just pause you there about, I’m interested in the, in the forming up process.
Anonymous: Yeah.
AS: Some stations had an assembly point. It sounds like you did too. Over the coast where you climbed to height.
Anonymous: Yeah. I think it was often when there was more than one station. One more airfield you know, involved. Maybe four or five squadrons, you know. And I suppose it was a precautionary thing as much as anything. As strategic. Because what’s the position? You want, say five hundred aircraft bombing a target you know. That’s a lot of aircraft milling around isn’t it? So you’ve got to have some discipline about altitude and longitude and all positions, I think. Yeah. So that was I think functionally necessitated. A functional necessity. Yeah. Yes. And the Window cover as well. You know. The bomb aimer used to hate that job. They were like, you know these Christmas wrappers. Christmas crackers. No. Chains. Paper chains you used to make. Strips of paper about like that but about that size those Windows were and they were silver paper. A little more. And he had a little chute by the side of his position and he had bundles of these all the way up. But he thought it was a very menial job for him to be doing. He wanted me to do it. No [laughs] He never told me I should be doing it but I didn’t volunteer. So yeah. It’s all these little things that make life what it is you know.
AS: So on the way you’d be at least, you know a pair of eyes in the cockpit.
Anonymous: Oh yes.
AS: And also was it also fuel management? Was that your main responsibilities?
Anonymous: That was. Yes. Yes. Yes. I’ll show you a book. A dear friend of mine who died three or four weeks ago gave me and it’s the, it’s a book on the Lancaster and it’s got marvellous pictures of the panels of the — it’s got, it’s got the original requirement of contractors to build this. To build the Lancaster. Yeah. I don’t know where he got it from but he was, he was an enthusiast. A Lancaster enthusiast. And he used to ask me questions. He was a trained, a trained mechanical engineer and he used to ask me questions about the Lancaster that I couldn’t answer [laughs] Typical, you know. Yeah. Because he really examined them right down. Yeah. But I’ll show you that book.
AS: That would be great. And you must have been a Jack of all trades because it’s hydraulics, its pneumatics, it’s electrics. It’s —
Anonymous: Oh yes. What staggered me, I don’t want you to mark it for neatness or anything but that was the sort of thing. This was the, this was the pre — this was the learning about the internal combustion engine to start with. Which was a lesson to me. And then you moved on to a specific aircraft. Your last six or eight weeks of training and you learned everything about that aircraft. And this one was the Halifax Mark 3 with a radial engine with a sleeve valved engine. You know. A very, a very unusual engine and so this is, there’s the engineer’s panel look. Open.
AS: Was that standardised with the Lanc or is that too much to expect?
Anonymous: Oh no, they were. I should think they were in competition really but, for the work but I imagine the language was the same but the, the construction would have been you know the positioning and so on.
AS: So this is what you were saying earlier that suddenly when you go to 419 and you’re on Lancs you have to relearn.
Anonymous: Yes. Who’s that?
Other 2: It’s only me.
Anonymous: Oh is there —
[recording paused]
Anonymous: When the bandit was behind us, ‘Corkscrew. Corkscrew. Corkscrew left. Corkscrew left,’ you know. Get out of the way. You know. And this was to reduce the area that the fighter had to fire at but you all had an observation point for fighters anyway and mine was the [pause] where’s that, is there a — where’s that picture gone? Yeah. The, no, the flight engineer’s position was on the, that’s it on the starboard side. Level with the pilot. But well just a little bit behind that. Just there. And there was a sliding window there and that was with a, with a blip, an observation blip. You know. Bubble in the —
AS: A blister. Yeah.
Anonymous: In the window. Yeah. And that was my, so that I could see. So the flight engineer could see below.
Other 2: A small one for you.
AS: Ok.
Other 2: A slightly larger for you.
AS: Is mum home?
[recording paused]
Anonymous: Yeah. Well, my responsibility was to observe through this what would you call it? Bubble window I suppose, which just stuck out a bit from the fuselage and to see if any aircraft, any bandits as we called them were coming up that way. But why I was really telling you that was, when the, when the chap hit us with that spray from the rear turret up through and through the front the window, I was looking at, out of, disappeared. It disappeared [laughs] It just went. Now, I don’t know if there was a break in his bullet supply or whether it was afterwards. We thought it was the pressure really building up inside the fuselage that blew it out. But, you know, I might have come home without my head. But —
Other: So were you guys strapped in? I mean if the window disappears surely there was quite a high chance that you might too.
Anonymous: Yeah. Well it wasn’t that big a window. It was, well I suppose about that.
Other: Ok.
Anonymous: Like that. And it had this like a pregnant window. And it was to enable you to see under the aircraft. ‘Cause one of their wicked weapons afterwards was the upward firing cannon wasn’t it? Yeah. So there we are. So we lost that and Joe lost part of his window and so did the bomb aimer right down there. So that was a good rake from back to front. He must have thought he’d nailed us, you know. But I mustn’t concentrate just on that one but that was it but it’s the best one. I can’t remember many details. I’ve got so many of them. But, sorry Alan. You said you’d got me to where?
AS: You, you were airborne. That’s one of your hairiest moments. Was there any discussion about going on or going back or just the pilot decides off you go?
Anonymous: I think the [pause] I’ll tell you, I mean I can tell you something from memory which I wouldn’t want put in any, anything subsequently.
[recording paused]
Anonymous: Yeah. I suppose my most vivid recollection of flak and its potential was the raid — I might find it here. It’s towards the end of our lot. Calais. Duisburg. We, it was on the 29th 27th of September. Duisburg. It was a lovely day you know. Lovely autumn day I suppose. And we had, what was the target? Bombing results not observed. Let’s have a — right. There was this thing called the random, not the random flak but the flak they just put on with the searchlight on us, on it, you know. Using the same setting as the searchlights. But then they had, they’d put up, they would put up a thing that was radar controlled. They would produce this cone of [pause] not cone. I don’t mean a cone. A cube. A cube of flak. Bursting flak, you know. If you can imagine that and that was, once they’d sorted out your route and what the target might be then they put this rectangle but in fact it had another dimension and it was a cube of flak. And you knew you’d got to go through that. And the most striking time that personally I experienced was on this Duisburg raid. Predicted flak. That’s what it was called in those days. In target area. Obviously once they’d identified that they’re own explosions of their shells from the ack-ack batteries would be concentrated in the area above the target. Where the bombs were likely to be dropped. Yeah. But [pause] so what did we say? Ten ten I don’t know what that is. Not — results not observed. Ten stroke ten.
AS: Perhaps that’s ten tenths cloud was it?
Anonymous: Oh, you’ve got it actually. Yeah. There must have been a layer of cloud as we were coming out. I don’t remember the clouds. But that, I’m sure that’s what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, that was the cloud so it was sort of, it wasn’t an option. There were no options other than go through it, you know. Yeah. And so you’d go through and get rocked about a bit and I mean goodness knows where all their shrapnel went but, you know but it got some of them. I think it was operation number [pause] one of the early ones we were. We were in a stream. I forget where we were going now but anyway suffice it to say we hadn’t a a clue what was around us in the way of friendly aircraft, you know until we saw some flames on our starboard side. Starboard side. Port side. Anyway. Starboard side. And suddenly the flames became all-consuming and we saw it was a Halifax and he just fell away behind us and down. You know. We never knew what had happened to that. What happened to that. But then you get all this illumination. You lose your night vision yourself. So you can’t see anything. So you just hoped that the gunner’s guns aren’t going trail you now. But yeah I sometimes find it difficult to recapture one’s feelings. I mean what was 1944? Fifty six. Sixty one years ago isn’t it? Sixty one years ago. A long time isn’t it? To remember things.
AS: It’s entirely, entirely understandable.
Anonymous: Yeah.
AS: It is.
Anonymous: But I’m sure it’s all therapeutic. Yes.
Other: But I suspect if you knew you had another mission to do that you didn’t really indulge in too much thought about feelings did you? Because you knew you had to go back.
Anonymous: Well yes.
Other: So —
Anonymous: I think we used to put it on the back burner until we saw our name on the morning mist you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. But I [pause] it’s surprising really. You know, you hear stories about people not making it. Well, we’re all different, aren’t we? And there must have been thousands of reasons why people couldn’t cope with it. Yeah. Anyway, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t ever remember being actually frightened. Now, that’s, that’s in no way bragging at all. It doesn’t say anything about me that’s worthy you know. But it’s, I don’t know, I seemed to have some assurance that, well I didn’t think about it really. I mean that doesn’t just say I didn’t feel apprehension because I did. It would be difficult not to wouldn’t it? Yeah. And the actual operation six incident, you know it was all over so quickly. You suddenly come out of it you know. But then you’ve got to get back. I was reading the, some accounts of the dam busting the other day. I think it was Guy Gibson’s. Was it Gibson done that one?
AS: Yes.
Anonymous: It was wasn’t it? And some of the reports of his, of the aircraft that took on that you know. And you can see, well it sort of, it reawakens your sensations or speculations as you’re approaching it. But you try to keep occupied I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. I can’t say more than that Adam. I can’t say.
[recording paused]
Anonymous: Period.
AS: Ok.
Anonymous: And the first thing, I mean we had some army instructions there about map reading. You know, he had a dozen of us and we sat down on the grass. And he gave us a reference and he said, ‘Where’s this reference?’ You know. And of course obviously to the army mind it was where we had our backsides then. You know. ‘We’re sitting on it sergeant,’ you know. That sort of thing. We had to do the usual coupling up with another person and being carted away from the camp about, I don’t know, twenty miles. Something like that. Making your own way back to the camp. So we had that one. We had the good fortune to find a lorry with a friendly driver I think [laughs] Anyway, that was that. And then we had to do the underground bit where you had this, oh about that size had been dug to a depth. I don’t know how deep. I can’t remember now. And then a long, a long tunnel and then coming up the other end. We had to do that. There were no lights there. You just followed the smell in front of you, you know and looked for daylight. So that was about the sum of it. At the time things like going away in the lorry become a challenge of another sort don’t they? You had to outdo your own people [laughs] and do all the things they told you you weren’t allowed. So that was the, it didn’t take I mean the whole Heavy Conversion Unit didn’t take long. I don’t know how long. Maybe a fortnight at the most and we went from there to Middleton then. Yeah. So air to air firing, practice bombing. Yeah. Yeah.
AS: And did you see any escape training films or training films generally prepared for you?
Anonymous: We used to have talks on survival. Yeah. About cooking in the field and so on, you know. But if you, if you get an [unclear] if you catch a hedgehog and cover it with mud and get a good fire going. Bake it. You break the cake off it at the end and all the, all the needles will come out of the hedgehog and you can eat it then. You know. That’s desperation for you.
Other: Lighting a fire might be a bit dodgy.
Anonymous: I don’t think it would catch on here. No. So, yeah that sort of thing we had. Yeah. Quite a number of talks on that. Yeah. Because these are only I mean the logbook is is sort of a structure. That’s all isn’t it? You can’t [pause] flying, bombing an installation. Yeah. There were quite some interesting ones when you read through. It does me good to have to read through this again sometimes. Things we got up to. I’ll tell you one thing we saw when we were on a daylight doing air to air firing or something like that. We were up in the, up in Yorkshire somewhere. Flying over Yorkshire. It was lovely. Another lovely day. Hello dear.
[recording paused]
Anonymous: I can’t remember the purpose for our flight but this brand new looking Halifax suddenly appeared in our, our rear and he overtook us. You know. Overflew us. And I was saying the weather was beautiful. Lovely. And he got ahead of us and we could only assume that he was going to show this damned Lancaster pilot and his crew that the Halifax was just as good. And he flew on. And he started messing about and he stalled. And from about, it couldn’t have been more than two or three thousand pounds he, not pounds, feet, he just fell straight to the moors. No survivors at all. He just stalled, you know. He just tipped it up on its wing tip. Brand new. It looked brand new. So we had no more engagement other than to just mayday the event and fly on. Couldn’t do anything about it. But that, that was a bit of a dampener in our day. Yeah. See these little incidents that just, they’re still there but they’ve just got to be dug out. Yeah. So, so what was the next development now?
AS: Could we talk a little about the emergency landing grounds? What you knew of them. Whether you used them at all.
Anonymous: We knew of them. Yeah. I mean we were diverted twice I think but not for those reasons but because the weather had deteriorated or they’d got it wrong and the raid was off so we were diverted to places like Little Snoring in Lincolnshire. And another one somewhere over on the east coast. But I knew about — what’s the one on the east coast? That’s the big one. That’s the three miler.
AS: There’s Manston. And then Woodbridge in East Anglia.
Anonymous: Oh Woodbridge was the one we were most interested in to know where it was and what it was capable of because [pause] yeah. But we had it clear documented but not used. Yeah. And at Manston was, I’d forgotten about that one. The Battle of Britain must have been useful. I mean it must have been useful at that time, yeah because that’s pretty well on the coast isn’t it? Manston. It is. Yeah.
AS: Yeah. Yeah. I think —
Anonymous: Is Woodbridge still open?
AS: No. I grew up near Woodbridge actually. But it became an American fighter base after the war.
Anonymous: Oh, did it? Yeah.
AS: And it’s now open for the army engineers.
Anonymous: Oh, is it?
AS: It’s called Rock Barracks. The runway’s still there.
Anonymous: Oh is it?
AS: Yeah.
Anonymous: Yeah. Yeah. So I can’t, I can’t offer much comment on that other than we knew of them and were glad of them, you know. Glad of the resource being there but fortunately never having to use it. I suppose the only time was the second trip to Stettin that might have involved us going there. I can’t say now can I? Anyway, it was better to get back home. Yeah. I mean we did one, I can’t remember when where we were diverted. And then we did our next op to where we were diverted to. Yeah. You know. Little Snoring. You did that upside down [laughs]
[recording paused]
Anonymous: Look at that. “Cross country. Weather duff.” I don’t, I don’t know if we had to, we took three thousand and fifty minutes. I’m sure we did. “Very moonlight. Good bombing.” Oh dear. Sad isn’t it?
AS: But that was the task.
Anonymous: Middleton St George. “Very moonlit. Good bombing.” Oh dear. Six hours and fifteen minutes. What’s interesting, ops on daylight attack. Siracourt Oh that was a, what was the flying bomb site. Flying bomb sight. There was just a field. You just had a field to bomb and you know if you knocked that one out they moved to the next field. Yeah. Daylight attack on Cannes. Oh yeah. Just forward of Canadian. Oh, that’s the, that’s that one.
AS: Oh the one you got the aiming point photograph.
Anonymous: Yeah. Daylight attack. Was it this one? On Cannes. Just forward of Canadian beach head. “Light flak over target. Good result. Four thirty.” Well we would have. Yeah. They were quite rare you know those. So we were quite happy to get that. What else have we got here? Another one in. I didn’t realise we’d been to Ruhr as many times as this. “Great number of searchlights. Heavy flak. No fighters.” That was a big relief. Flying bomb. We did a number of these bomb installations here. Kiel. See this is supporting the army. And the heavy barrage. Flak over target. Kiel. You know these naval places. Hartshorn, engineer. Stuttgart. What was Stuttgart here? Crikey. Nine hours and ten. That was a long one. I’m grateful to you for making me read it. Read it again. You had your disappointments. Four hours and twenty minutes and we didn’t bomb because it was too cloudy. Yeah.
AS: That would still count as an op would it?
Anonymous: Well it was if you — yes it would. Yeah. The Canadians used the hundred and twenty point system. And they graded the targets as either three points or four points.
AS: I’ve not heard about that.
Anonymous: Yeah. Well that’s how we assumed it was. So if you did the daylight ones over the flying bomb sites would be three points, you know. And the Stettin would be four. I don’t think it ever went above four. And you had to accumulate a hundred and twenty. Or the pilot did if you were a crew. You know. Yeah. So, yeah, that’s what it was. If there was any doubt you used to write the number of points. Stettin. Very heavy flak. Yes. So there it is. I don’t like, I don’t ever, I don’t want to let this go out of my possession you know because I think the children wouldn’t forgive me for that.
AS: Indeed.
Anonymous: From what Gill was saying. Yeah. So, so what more can I answer? You’ve got a picture of him I expect?
AS: Yes. I’ve sat in his office.
Anonymous: Did you?
AS: Yeah.
Anonymous: So did the chap — that’s the chap who writes, who wrote books on the Lancaster and well Bomber Command generally I think. He isn’t.
AS: [unclear]
Anonymous: Yes. That one. And he wrote to me and wanted some information so I sent him copies of pretty well, I sent him everything that I’d got and he photocopied it all and he’s written books. I think he must have died because he suddenly stopped writing to me. The other interesting contact I made as a result of John — Joe. Joe Hartshorn was my pilot, you know. He was a great friend. Apparently he’d met him somewhere. One of the air artists. And he got to be very friendly with him and the artist got in touch with me to see if I’d got any photographs. And yes, he gave me a copy. An original copy of one of his big bombing ones. You know. Yeah.
AS: Yeah.
Anonymous: I think he’s now married a Polish girl and gone to Poland. So that was interesting.
[recording paused]
Anonymous: The attention that was paid to it until the monuments hit the headlines. You know. In Green Park. Yeah. And there’s been a sudden, the Bomber Command Association I think stirred it all up again. There must have been somebody who found the formula for getting it going. And I think that’s marvellous and I think it’s grown since then and they themselves have been largely responsible for the monument haven’t they? Which has been vandalised a few times I think but, yeah. So it was alright to complain, well not complain. I’m not complaining about what the government could do, or the Air Ministry could do in the early days of the war. They could only use what resources they had. What I’m saying is that the accounts we read of Bomber Command a lot in the war doesn’t always pay a lot of attention to them. It might say, you know eight Blenheims attacked Wilhelmshaven and, but but it doesn’t say a lot about them. But I mean you can’t. I was thinking of something else just now. I mean like the, I mean what about the clasp for Bomber Command on the — I’ve heard it called all sorts, you know. Like a Brownie knitting badge or something you know and that sort of thing. But does it really matter. What’s it for? I mean medals are. It’s alright isn’t it? I mean I think they’ve lost their impact actually because with all due respect to the people that have fought in Afghanistan and so on and Ireland and so on you see young soldiers of about twenty five to thirty and they’ve got about eight campaign medals, you know. But it depends what your take is on these things, you know. Yes. Yeah.
AS: So the, have you got your Bomber Command clasp?
Anonymous: Yes. I got it at Coningsby. The group captain there was a very delightful man and Gill, the one that, our daughter that you went to first she did all the paperwork for us there. Yeah. So I’ve been there and sorry what was the question?
AS: Had you got your clasp? Which you obviously have. Yeah.
Anonymous: Yeah. Well, he wrote and invited us up to come up for the lunch and hear the ladies choir sing and all that sort of thing, you know and I thought it was marvellous. So we, we went up, all five of us. Our two daughters and our son and Vera and me went up. And we had a couple of nights in Grantham. Yeah. And yeah. That was, that was very good. Yeah. And what else was I going to say about Coningsby? Yeah. He was, they were very good to us and I met two or three chaps from Middleton St George. Because it was a Canadian thing you know and there weren’t many of us there who had actually served in a Canadian squadron. So I didn’t notice [unclear] too much you because there were so many people there. I mean there were about eighty or ninety people who, who took the group captain’s offer of re-presenting them with their clasp if he wished them to. So I had already got mine and had it put on my — so I gave it to his person. His right hand. And then when the time came you know we were sitting in numbered rows and when my name was called I went and he pinned, he came around and pinned it on me, you know. That was a bit of service flannel really, you know. But it was rather nice. He was such a nice man the group captain. He made himself known all around the place to the seniors. Apparently the veterans have got quite a good reputation in service you know. Yeah. I mean we got our retired group captain in the village here. And another one who was a, he was a navigator I think so I think he must have come off navigating quite early to get into some other stream. Anyway, the other one was a, used to fly Canberras I think. He was a wingco. And yeah, you know, they always regard with respect anybody who was on Bomber Command. Because they’ve seen the other side haven’t they?
AS: Yeah.
Anonymous: They’ve seen. They’ve probably seen some pretty horrible sites. Crashing on to the home runway.
AS: I think that respect is universal and that underpins really some of what we’re doing at Lincoln really.
Anonymous: Yeah.
AS: Hopefully. Hopefully so.
Anonymous: Yes. How did you become?
AS: Ken, how did you actually become the flight engineer on Hartshorn’s crew?
Anonymous: Now, well it happened because I was the last member of a seven man crew. The six man crew having been formed earlier into one stage of operational proficiency but without a flight engineer. And so when it got to the Heavy Conversion Unit stage the six man crew would select a flight engineer. And whilst I was waiting at a bus stop in Ripon one evening an American brown uniformed flyer came up to me and invited me to be their flight engineer. Apparently he was an American who’d joined the RCAF originally but was now having to do a tour with the RCAF as a recompense presumably. Yeah. Something like that. Is that enough?
AS: That’s great. And did you instantly accept or did you think?
Anonymous: Oh, I said yes. Of course. I think it was getting a bit short because I think some of them already knew each other you know. But I couldn’t have made a better choice.
AS: Excellent.
Anonymous: Pure luck. Yeah.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with an Anonymous Interviewee (An00086)
Creator
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Adam Sutch
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-22
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AAn00086-150722
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:32:47 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
This interviewee was working at Chatham dockyard before he was accepted by the RAF as a mechanic. He then remustered as a flight engineer which fulfilled his hopes to be accepted as aircrew. While waiting for a place on the training course at St Athan he did maintenance work on Spitfires for 222 Squadron at RAF Hornchurch. At his Operational Training Unit the crew had the unfortunate of experience of crashing the command officer’s aircraft. The crew were posted to 419 Squadron at RAF Middleton St George. On one operation there was a fire in the engine which they managed to extinguish but while undertaking a manoeuvre on the flight home the engine again caught fire. Luckily they were again able to extinguish the fire. On another operation they were attacked by a night fighter and were raked from one end of the aircraft to the other but luckily were able to fly home despite the damage. However, the navigator was injured and was repatriated home. On a training flight over England a Halifax overtook them and apparently wanted to engage in a friendly way but tragically it stalled and the aircraft plunged to the earth with the loss of the lives of all on board.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--Durham (County)
Germany--Duisburg
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1944
222 Squadron
419 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
coping mechanism
crash
evacuation
faith
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Lancaster
memorial
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
RAF Hornchurch
RAF Middleton St George
RAF St Athan
searchlight
Spitfire
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/688/10096/ABaptisteDMM170504.2.mp3
1dc27df23af9a2bfa31f201bae8fd069
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
Baptiste, Daphne
D M M Baptiste
D Baptiste
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Daphne Baptiste (b. 1921) and a wedding album. She worked as a civil servant in the air Ministry.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Daphne Baptiste and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-05-04
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Baptiste, DMM
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Thursday the 4th of May 2017 and I’m in Epsom with Daphne Baptiste who experienced the war as a civilian and married an Army officer later on in the war. But Daphne, what are your earliest recollections of life?
DB: My earliest recollections are, date from when I was four years old and I can remember I hadn’t started school, my mother was on her knees in our little house in Becontree. She was washing the kitchen floor. She had the bucket and a mop there and was on her knees at the time and suddenly we heard two loud bangs and I rushed to her side, a four year old frightened of these two loud bangs. And I said to her, ‘What’s that? What’s that?’ And she said, ‘Shhh. Just be quiet and I will tell you in a moment.’ And that’s when I had my first history lesson and she told me about the First World War and how we now respected people who had given their lives in the First World War and remembered them on November the 11th each year to give them the respect that they deserved. That’s my earliest memory. My other earliest memory is being taken to hospital with diphtheria. Again, I was four years old and my mother had lost her own brother when he was two and a half years old with diphtheria. It was a serious illness and you can imagine how distraught the family were at the thought that I also might die from this children’s serious illness. I didn’t fortunately. Obviously. And, but I came out after seven weeks in hospital not having had any visitors other than my father standing outside the large ward window looking at me as he cycled from Becontree up to the City of London to join his fire station where he was on duty at that time. That would be 1925 I suppose and [pause] but I came out of hospital unable to walk. My parents had to hire a little old pushchair and took me away on holiday with the rest of the family and, and I soon regained the ability to walk but just for a while that was the result of diphtheria.
CB: So, what did your father do as a job?
DB: My father was a fireman. He had been in the Navy for two years at the start of the First World War. He’d been invalided out with an injury. He’d been crushed by some machinery I think in the engine room and invalided out. He wanted to marry my mother. They had met and he wanted to marry her and she wouldn’t marry him until he had a job so he joined the London Fire Brigade. She wouldn’t marry him still until her brother could come home from the Army. This was First World War. Her brother was on the Somme, fighting in the Somme and she used to tell us when we were children that she prayed every night of her life that her brother would get a blighty one which meant a slight wound. A small wound. Enough to bring him home. And he did. He was wounded in the arm and he came home and he was able to be, he was able to give her away at her wedding to my father. So, and my father stayed in the London Fire Brigade all through the war. The First World War. Rescued children from a burning building. We think probably set on fire by German Zeppelins. We’re not sure about that but they were certainly active at that time and he rescued six children one by one from this burning building. The adults and children on the ground floor were killed in that fire but he managed to get six children out from the first floor and was given the medal of the OBE after the First World War in recognition of bravery, gallantry which was a cause of pride in the family at the time.
CB: So then in the interwar years while you and your siblings were young what was happening then?
DB: With my father and his career? He stayed in the Fire Service and I can’t think which particular year that would be, nineteen, late 1920s possibly he was promoted to be in charge of a fire station. And because he had had even two years experience in the Navy they gave him the Fire Boat Station at Battersea Bridge. On the corner of Battersea Bridge, and so we the family all moved to Battersea. Lived on the bridge, on the corner of the bridge there and had opportunities to go on the fire boats and see what went on there. And then seven years after that he, a new Fire Brigade Headquarters was built just by Lambeth Bridge opposite Millbank and the Houses of Parliament and he was given command of the fire boats there and remained there until his retirement. Right through the war he was in charge of the fire boats from Westminster to Chiswick. Had a very lively war. They were not only trying to deal with fires along by the riverside, the docks and, and the oil fires but also they were often called out to relay water from the Thames even up to two miles because the engines couldn’t always get through the roads. The roads were too heavily bombed. And so that certainly happened when there were fires at Piccadilly. I think that was possibly one that a couple of miles of hose laying. I suppose a man could get through guiding the hoses through. I’m not sure how it happened but [pause] but it did happen. And he was allowed to retire, 1944 when the worst of the raids were over although we were still having V-1 and V-2 raids but not so frequently as during the war we had raids every night. And when we came up out of the shelters of the Fire Brigade Headquarters the shelters were simply bunk beds that were provided for us in the basement and we would see the firemen running through the basement to where ever their appliance was. Their, their engines or whatever. We thought that was quite exciting when we were teenagers I suppose, one has to admit. But, but it was, it was a very lively time. We understood that because the Fire Brigade Headquarters had been built on a raft, I think that’s a building term, right by the river every time bombs fell in the river and they did, they were dropped in the river. That was a guiding light for German bombers very often especially if there was a moon and bombs would be dropped in the river and the building, the whole building, nine floors would shake but we didn’t ever have one broken window because it just moved. The vibration.
CB: So, he was looking after the river between Westminster and Chiswick.
DB: Yes.
CB: A lot of the bombing was further east.
DB: Oh yes.
CB: To what extent was he drawn in to that?
DB: Oh yes. In fact, he, no this is going back through the war. He almost went to Dunkirk but the Fire Brigade Headquarters people decided that they would send over to Dunkirk the fire boats as far as Blackfriars or Cherry Garden. I’m not sure which was the final one. But that they must retain some fire boats in London in case bombing started there. It hadn’t started there then and so my father wasn’t sent there but, but certainly he was at the docks, he was at the oil fires and, and where ever they were called upon to go and they very often drew all the fire engines and fire boats to all over different parts of London. I can remember there was Raphael Tuck’s Christmas Greetings Cards building next to us. Next to the Fire Brigade Headquarters. That was burned to the ground and people could be quite rude about that and say it was next to the Fire Brigade Headquarters what were they doing when that building was on fire? But every engine was out, every fire boat was out dealing with fires at different places. They certainly were called upon to travel quite widely in, in and around London.
CB: So which floor were you on? Living.
DB: We lived on the sixth floor. Sixth floor. There were nine floors all together and the night of the very big City fire my sister and I went up on to the roof, that’s above the ninth floor and looked across to the city and we could see the whole of St Paul’s Cathedral surrounded by flames there. The city had suffered very much in that. In that raid. And the only firemen left in the headquarters were a few, no engines again but they were up on the roof with stirrup pumps and buckets and as incendiary bombs fell on the roof they would go and put them out from their stirrup pumps and buckets. Put the fires out before they could get a hold on the building.
CB: And as children what did you, how did you feel about this huge perspective of fire?
DB: This was before the war, you mean?
CB: No. In the war.
DB: In the war.
CB: So, you’re watching. You’re watching the fires burning.
DB: Well, children. You see I was seventeen, eighteen, upwards then.
CB: Yeah.
DB: My sister was two years younger. A year and eight months —
CB: Yeah.
DB: Younger than I was. And you didn’t enjoy it. I used to think to myself if we survive all this I’ll never grumble about anything ever again. Well, of course I did. I have [laughs] But, but that was how you felt at the time. You didn’t know whether you would survive the night. You didn’t know whether you might be surrounded by fire even where you lived. Certainly, when I worked in the Air Ministry in London and I did first aid duty for the Air Ministry and was called out to raids. We took shelter probably once every two weeks. Slept in the basement again with these huge pipes that supplied water I think to the whole building and I used to wonder and was frightened at the thought of it. What would happen if the building was bombed and those pipes burst and we would be down there? What would happen to us? Yes. You were quite frightened but nevertheless you just had to get on with whatever was needed. I can remember coming up in the mornings and walking across rubble from some of the bombed buildings. It wasn’t, it was a difficult time to live but somehow you were given the strength to get on and do what you had to do. And we were very relieved when the time came that the bombing started, when it stopped every night even if you had one night’s rest you were thankful. And then after a break of course when the V-1s started and that was another different experience.
CB: 1944. Yeah.
DB: And they were still coming over to our country even when my husband had taken part in the Normandy landings and was wounded and came home. That was still going on. And then later on I was working when the first rocket, the first V-2 fell. I think that was in Chancery Lane. I was working in High Holborn in another Air Ministry building and I think that fell in Chancery Lane not that far away. It didn’t do us any, it didn’t do our building any damage but we were quietly working and suddenly heard this tremendous bang. It was a loud bang when the first rockets came over and, because we didn’t know what it was. And then you gradually began to, the news percolated through that it was the Germans latest weapon of war and, and we had many of them after that. That was 1944/45, I suppose. Going towards the end of the war.
CB: Going back to your father and the early stages of the war Dunkirk was the end of May, early June 1940. Then the bombing started seriously in London in the autumn.
DB: Yes. September.
CB: So, to what extent did your father describe what he was doing fighting the fires?
DB: He didn’t really talk a lot about of it at home. He was very very tired because it was constant. It was every night. At the beginning of the bombing he was out for three days and nights without sleep and because he was the officer in charge all his men came and went, did their day duty or their night duty and then went home and had a break. But for those first three days and nights he was on the fire boat the whole time and I think he was going to be going out again and my mother was absolutely distraught about that and went to see the chief officer [laughs] and said, ‘You can’t send him out again.’ And he didn’t. He gave him a night’s leave to come home and sleep and I suppose a subordinate officer took over. But then it happened again. Every, every night but at least a break in between and I mean we did hear over the years different things that might happen but, but he didn’t ever go in to any detail. Whether he thought it would be distressing for us. We would hear the buildings that he’d been to like Piccadilly and relaying hoses. We would hear that sort of information but nothing, nothing of the suffering. We would hear if any of his men had been killed. One or two I think were sent overboard from the boat in to the river and were not always able to be rescued although they could all swim. But, but no. We didn’t hear a lot about the suffering from my father.
CB: But the loss rate of civilians and of fire crews was quite considerable.
DB: Certainly, all the land crews I think maybe the land crews did have a greater number of casualties than the Fire Boat crews because some who might have been knocked in to the river would have been able to swim to the shore and be rescued. However, that was. But land crews, yes my own brother was a fireman stationed in the East End of London and the East End suffered very heavily. And one night there was bombs were dropped and I think it was a laundry fire and he, I think all the generator boxes were blown up all down the street that he was in, helping to put out the fires and he was blown in to the middle of the road and he, every bone in his foot, in one foot was broken and he spent the next year in hospital. The Fire Brigade or the Ministry of Defence, whatever it was then were trying out a new type of treatment that they had discovered through the Spanish Civil War where they had discovered people injured by the roadside who not been able to be rescued for a long time and their wounds had healed in their own gangrene. And my brother’s foot went gangrenous and he was taken in to hospital at Ripley in Surrey and they tried this, this treatment on him putting plasters on, I think once a month. However long it was. Leaving it on. And those wounds were left in their own gangrene and he had to be moved in to his own ward because his wounds and what came from his wounds was affecting the throats of other patients and so he was put in a ward on his own. And, and those plasters were put on for a year and then at the end of the year the doctors said to my parents because he wasn’t married, my brother, he was still at home and they said, ‘Now, your son’s wounds have healed but if we leave things as they are he’s going to be more of a cripple with that foot than without it. So we want you to make the decision, you and your son whether he should have that foot removed.’ And my brother was engaged to be married at the time so the fiancé was brought in to that too and my brother did decide to have the foot just below the knee. His leg was taken off and, which was very sad. It left him disabled of course for the rest of his life but —
CB: So, just putting that in to context the Spanish Civil War was 1936 to ’39.
DB: Yes.
CB: Were there people from the civil war who were part of the medical staff?
DB: I wouldn’t know. I don’t know that. No. I’ve no idea. We just heard that it was a discovery that they were trying out for raid conditions in our own country.
CB: Yes.
DB: But instead of them just being left by the roadside these people who were injured he was in hospital and being supervised.
CB: Yeah.
DB: Looked at all the time. But it was a strange, well, it was a very strange experience. And my sister and I used to cycle from Lambeth Bridge to Ripley to go and visit him. And at one stage there were lads who had been injured as part of aircrew in the same hospital. I don’t know quite how that happened but they were put out in the open air in the summer weather. I think they had injuries where they felt fresh air was beneficial to them. But, but for my brother that was the end of his war.
CB: Yes. This is before McIndoe really got going.
DB: Yes. Yes. Well, that was later. That was penicillin, wasn’t it?
CB: Well —
DB: Yeah. Fleming and McIndoe.
CB: No. But this is to do with the burns really.
DB: Yes. Yes.
CB: So, going back to your father with the boats.
DB: Yeah.
CB: You talked about the sorts of fires including oil.
DB: Yes.
CB: So, what was the real problem with boats? Was oil the real danger that caused a lot of concern. Burning on the surface of the water.
DB: I think. Well, I think it was because they, possibly it was more relaying of hoses. I mean there were obviously fire engines around because this was Shell Haven. Thames Haven and Shell Haven.
CB: Right.
DB: But certainly, I don’t know how near they got to those. But it might have been in a hose laying capacity. I really don’t know all that.
CB: Okay. So, you were born in 1921.
DB: Yes.
CB: At the end of the year. You decided, at what age did you leave school?
DB: I left school when I was just seventeen.
CB: Right.
DB: I’d gone in to the sixth form. I’d done one term in the sixth form but decided it was an unsettled world. We hadn’t, hadn’t started the war but, but I didn’t want to carry on with education. I wanted to go out to work but and so I took the Civil Service exam. But I also started at St George’s College, Red Lion Square to get more qualifications and hoped to get in to the executive grade of the Civil Service and perhaps from then to the administrative. But I would have settled for the executive I think then. But of course, the war started and they closed all of those institutions for a while. They opened them later but at that time I was looking ahead to marriage and family and didn’t really, and wouldn’t have continued with education.
CB: But you said you joined in January ’39.
DB: Yes.
CB: The Civil Service.
DB: Yes.
CB: What made you choose A) the Civil Service and, B) the Air Ministry particularly?
DB: Well, you know in those days it wasn’t the affluent society that it became later and you always felt that security was the big thing and the Civil Service had a very good reputation. You reckoned that the Civil Service had slightly higher wages than other types of work. That it was interesting work. Administration. All of those things appealed to me. My parents were not affluent. We had security and the Civil Service was another, it was a secure future. You felt you were paving the way to a secure future for yourself and I liked administration. I wanted to do that. I had to put down if I had a preference for any department what would it be and I put down the Civil Service. I put down one other, I can’t think what that one was now because I thought the Civil Service Air Ministry would be a particularly interesting job. The, the Air Force was only really just growing at that time. And, and that I felt would be good and that I might have time, might have the opportunity of going abroad with the, with the Air Ministry. What I didn’t know was that in those days they didn’t send young women abroad with the, with the Air Ministry. So I wouldn’t have had those opportunities. But the war started anyway and that, that put an end to that. But yes, I felt that would be an interesting life.
CB: And how did they train you to begin with?
DB: Oh, you were put in to a department and under your superior officer. He gave you a sort of training but you, you started work. I mean it was quite a modest job. It was a clerical officer and as I say I hoped to get to be an executive officer quite soon because you could take the exams quite quickly. The internal exams. But, but everything changed with the onset of war. But, but you were working straightaway on, on your own work. I think as I stayed with them for a year or two I think my particular responsibility was examining negotiations and agreements for providing water supplies and sewerage disposal facilities for Air Force stations all over the country. That could be big airfields, it could be small premises and so you were dealing with, corresponding with supply authorities for those facilities and also for councils if the councils were involved. Borough councils, county councils, whatever. So, you were dealing with those authorities all the time. So, I got to know a lot about the different airfields. All the names of them. And even to this day when I hear the name of an Air Force station that still exists I immediately think of the size of the file. It might be like that. Bovingdon. All sorts of them all over the country or down to small premises like that.
CB: And the airfields themselves were, they were building them brand new.
DB: Some of them. But some of them were old Air Force stations from before the war. Yes. But a lot of them were new. The thick ones tended to be the older ones. And certainly, all of East Anglia was like one big airfield.
CB: Where was this run from?
DB: Where was —
CB: Where was this office of yours?
DB: The first year of the war I was in Harrogate. We were evacuated to Harrogate. To the Ladies’ College. We worked in Ladies’ College at Harrogate. They evacuated the Ladies’ College pupils to a safer place in the country they thought but they gave it to us, the Air Ministry. And really Harrogate was filled with civil servants and Air Force personnel and we had a social life up there. I was billeted with a railway family up there. And when I, when the raids started and we weren’t getting any news of how our families were faring back in London and I put in for the transfer back home the man of the house where I was billeted, who was a senior engine driver on the LNER railway, he said, ‘Would you like a ride on the footplate?’ I said, ‘Yes please.’ So he gave me a ride on the footplate from Harrogate to Knaresborough, a little local village up there which was exciting for me. And then I came back to London but, and in Harrogate they were very kind, the people we were billeted with. And one day the air raid sirens went. Well, so that must have been just at the start of the raids, I think. Well, nobody ever expected Harrogate to suffer any air raids but the lady of the house, well it must have been a weekend because the lady of the house grabbed hold of the three of us girls, seventeen year olds, and said, ‘Come under the stairs. Come under the stairs.’ And she dragged us under the stairs because she said that was the strongest part of the house. A very modest little house. And dragged us under there and I think there were three bombs dropped from one aircraft in the grounds of a hotel I think up in Harrogate. And I think that was, they were the only bombs that I think Harrogate had during the war but it certainly created excitement at the time.
CB: So, you got back to London but how? How did you convince them to send you back to London?
DB: Well, I just said my family were here and where they lived right by Lambeth Bridge and the centre of all the bombing. That it took five days for us to get letters or to be able to make a phone call. We couldn’t make a phone call home and I said that, you know I wanted to be back with the family. Hopefully to work in the Air Ministry in London. Of course, there was some of the Air Ministry in London you see. It was that the I went to [pause] now was it Ajax House? Victory House? One of the big houses in the Kingsway I went to first of all and travelled to work daily. Bus or tram or whatever it was. They didn’t question it.
CB: You were billeted with your parents when you were in London then. You lived at home.
DB: Living at home. They didn’t call that billeted [laughs]. But yes, and that was when we had all of the bunk beds in the basement of the Headquarters and [pause] and didn’t know what we would find when we got up in the morning. Whether it would be rubble as I say. We often did walk over rubble in different parts of London. We got to work. I mean I think probably the hours were a bit intermittent. It depended how long it took us to get to, to work. I think there was still a tramway that went underground up to the Kingsway. Near Bush House.
CB: Yeah.
DB: And —
CB: It’s still used. The tunnel.
DB: It’s still used.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. The roadway.
DB: Yes. Yes.
CB: So you didn’t use the tube because of the —
DB: No.
CB: The roadway and the bus was more convenient.
DB: Well, there wasn’t, the nearest tube to us was Westminster tube station which would have meant walking over the bridge and to the station which was right by the Houses of Parliament.
CB: Yeah.
DB: Big Ben. And that would have taken longer I suppose. We could get buses outside the Headquarters. Buses ran from Albert Embankment there right through to, to the West End. To the City.
CB: There’s a classic picture of the Blitz with a bus in a big crater. Did you see that sort of damage?
DB: I don’t know that I saw that. I remember hearing about it. We had friends. Now, this man was in the police force and he was, you know he had a reasonably responsible job in the police force and I think he lived in Balham and he was out overnight with the raids happening and got back home in the morning off duty to find that his wife and three daughters had been killed. Their house had been bombed and I think that was when Balham had quite a lot of bombing. That part of London. And I think the tube station at Balham, I think a bomb went down the shaft to it. I have a feeling.
CB: A ventilation shaft. Yes.
DB: Was that right?
CB: Yes.
DB: Yeah. And [pause] Yes. There were some horrific incidents. That must have been awful for him.
CB: When you were in Harrogate you were doing your airfield work but what did you do when you returned to London?
DB: Well, I was trying to work out [pause] yes, because it must have been a different branch. It might, it might even be that that part came because I’d been in the Air Ministry for a year before I came back when the raids started. And it may even be that I started with something smaller in Harrogate and took on the airfield work when I came back. I’m not, really not too sure about that now. No. I can’t think.
CB: What sort of people were working with you?
DB: What —?
CB: Sort of people were working with you?
DB: Oh, well, they were mainly young women and middle-aged women and men. But we also had, I remember there was one young man who was about twenty eight and he was a conscientious objector. So he was given leave to not be part of the armed services but I think he had to do nine months in prison for that. But I know there was quite strong feeling because people used to feel is this fair because he is showing what he can do in the civilian job and therefore he will have an advantage when the men in the services come back home. There were all sorts of feelings about conscientious objection, that sort of thing during the war. If there were people in reserved occupations. They would call them reserved occupations. He was a nice enough chap and if he was, if he was sincere in what he believed you know you couldn’t blame him but but the people there who had loved ones fighting in the active services did feel strongly about it.
CB: So, did this effectively be expressed as abuse?
DB: Oh, they would talk. I don’t know how much they expressed it to him but certainly they would talk about it to one another and say how they felt about their own loved ones being away, in danger, losing perhaps seniority for when they came back and that would affect their promotion. Yes. There were prejudices.
CB: Did he describe any experiences of his own of people?
DB: I think he was a bit of a loner.
CB: Criticising him.
DB: He was a bit of a loner, I think. For those reasons really.
CB: And did he do extra tasks like fire watching?
DB: Did he or did I?
CB: Did he?
DB: Did he? Not that I’m aware of. I did. I did fire watching in Harrogate and I did first aid of course in London. I did fire watching on the roof of the Air Ministry. The Ladies’ College when we were in Harrogate. I thought that was the thing to do because my father and my brother were in the Fire Service. But when we came back to London I wanted to do first aid and I did British Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance courses in order to help me to do that.
CB: And then to what extent did you put that into action?
DB: Well, I, I didn’t have to do any serious dressing of wounds or anything. I think bandaging and as I say I saw this one really nasty incident. But they drew more than one first aid party to them in case people couldn’t get through obstruction in the roads. And we were the second party to get there on this occasion and there were people just ahead of me already dealing with the wounded but that was where I was standing behind ready to take over. For instance, if those people had fainted or anything in their, you know treatment of the injured. And that was where I did see the open head wound. Very dark wounds of this one particular lady and I did hear afterwards that she had died and I wasn’t surprised. She looked, she was unconscious but I didn’t actually have to deal with it myself.
CB: What sort of wound was it?
DB: Open. The whole of the head was open.
CB: Blown the back of the head had it? Yeah. And how did you feel about that?
DB: How did I feel about it? I just felt at the time I wasn’t capable of thinking. I was waiting to see if I was going to be needed. But afterwards even during those days I thought how awful that young women like me or anybody had got to see that because it, it was pretty awful.
CB: The secondary shock caught up with you. We’ll pause just for a mo.
[recording paused]
DB: I was thinking just now when you said, you know, you’re doing alright I thought if I had been the age or near the age that I am now when those, some of those things happened I would have probably taken more in. Be able to interpret them in a different way. It very much relates to the age that you are at the time and the experiences you’ve had previously. So that you don’t quite know what to expect I should think when you are, you are doing all these interviews. But, and, and I don’t know whether I am, whether I am interpreting everything correctly. I’m, I’m trying to be totally honest.
CB: Well, it’s the recall that is important.
DB: Yes.
Other: Yes. Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CB: We want to know.
DB: Yes.
CB: How you felt about it.
DB: Yes, well that —
CB: As you remember feeling about it.
DB: That’s what I’m trying —
CB: Yeah.
DB: To do as I go.
CB: In today’s perspective.
DB: And it’s a long time.
CB: Yes.
DB: It’s a long time ago.
Other: It is a long time.
DB: But —
Other: I think it’s fantastic that you remember.
DB: Well —
Other: Absolutely fantastic. I can’t always remember last week.
DB: Well, no but that’s true. They say that don’t they? The short term memory.
Other: Yeah. Goes.
DB: I find now that I can lose a name. The name of a person, name of a place.
Other: Yes.
DB: I can’t just grab hold of it straightaway.
Other: Would you like another cup of tea now?
DB: No.
[recording paused]
CB: We’ve covered a lot of things but what I’d like to do is just to step back in a way because —
DB: Yes.
CB: I mentioned early on I’d like to know what your education was and how that worked and then how that impinged on your career so, what, what did you do when you got in to the more senior part of education?
DB: Well, I was never very senior because I went in as quite a lowly level of clerical officer intending to take the examinations.
CB: No, but at school.
DB: Yes. This was at school. But when I was at, it depends really where you want me to start.
CB: Okay.
DB: I went to a London Elementary School. From there I took the Junior County Examination. I passed at a high level but elected not to take up those top grammar Schools. Went to the normal London Grammar School. It was a grammar school in Clapham and and worked for matriculation examinations at sixteen, the equivalent of GCSEs now, I suppose and passed those. And went in to the sixth form intending to do what was called Higher Schools Examinations then but had decided whether it was anything to do with the world being very unsettled, it was the time of Munich and all of those things. I don’t really know. But I decided I didn’t want the lengthy education. That I would go out to work. Chose the Civil Service and, and would work my way up within the Civil Service. Now, when I was at school I was quite able at the academic studies and at sport so I could have gone either way at school. It was a good education. It was a good grammar school. Also, when I was at school I did have the opportunity of sitting for a scholarship. Just for a Saturday morning scholarship to Trinity College of Music and I passed that and I used to travel as a ten year old actually on the bus from Battersea Bridge to Hyde Park Corner, change the bus at Hyde Park Corner. Everybody worked Saturday mornings in those days so with all of the working population I would then get the bus and go up to Selfridges, walk down beside Selfridges to Trinity College of Music and did three years of music education there. It was mainly piano and theory. I didn’t do the singing there. I did that later on when I was older when I wanted to do singing tuition and did that and in my life have done quite a bit of singing. That was my interest. Coming back from Trinity College of Music, Saturday about 1 o’clock all of the crowds coming home from work in the morning it was a real scrum at Hyde Park Corner where I had to change buses. No queuing for buses in those days. That didn’t happen until the war. So, everybody was rushing for their bus at Hyde Park Corner. There was quite a lot of elbowing as I remember but, and do you know you’d hesitate these days to let your ten year old do that sort of journey in London on her own. There was one other little girl that, we were often together. But that’s the way it was. We did that journey on our own and got back for the rest of Saturday to my home by the bridge. My mother who had thought when my father got his own fire station command was going to have a nice country station like Streatham, she thought. That’s not so countrified now I believe, because we had Phillips Paper Mills one side of the road and Morgan Crucible Chemical Company the other side of the road. Down a side road. So we were really right in the heart of London and it was actually at, when I lived at Battersea Fire Station there that I met my husband in the church youth group. I was fourteen, he was fifteen and we weren’t boy and girlfriend then. In fact, I think we both had other eyes for other boys and girls but it was a good healthy start to to growing up and, and we kept in touch. We kept in touch when I was at Harrogate. He was at his OTC, Officer’s Training Corps at his school. He went to Sir Walter St John School in Battersea and and did his training for OTC and therefore he went into the Army when he finally left school and we got to the wartime years. And first of all they sent him to the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry. Then they picked him up for, for Sandhurst and he did his training at Sandhurst. Wasn’t the lengthy training they do now at Sandhurst but that’s where he met and it was while he was there that he came home on leave, asked if he could stay with my parents. His mother had already moved to the West Country with her husband. And my parents didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t in love with him at the time [laughs] And, but anyway they said, ‘Oh, yes. We can’t refuse him.’ And so he came and stayed with us for his leave and that was where our life story began. Our love story began if you like. My father sent one of his men to Victoria Station with me to pick up my husband. We went back to the Fire Brigade Headquarters and he stayed there with us and, and that was it. That was the future assured.
CB: So, then he, in his Army experiences he then landed at D-Day.
DB: Yes.
CB: What happened there?
DB: He was, he was drafted to the Lincolnshire Regiment. Really, he chose that because he was at Sandhurst with a Lincolnshire boy, man and they talked about what they would put down as their first choice when they left Sandhurst and my husband didn’t know. My husband was born in Canada of an American father and, and met the mother in the First World War. That, and that was how Don came, they went back to Canada and Don was born in Canada. But this young man that he trained at Sandhurst with said, ‘Well, why, if you don’t know what to choose why don’t you put down for Lincoln’s Regiment? He said, ‘I’m going to put that down because it’s my home county and we could stay together, you know, the rest of the war.’ So, Don said, ‘Yes. Alright. I’ll do that. That’s as good as any regiment.’ So, he put down for the Lincolnshire Regiment and they were drafted to different battalions and never met again the rest of the war. He didn’t even know if he survived the war. But of course, my husband made many friends in the Lincolnshire Regiment during the war. And in fact we went to most of the Lincolnshire Regiment reunions after the war which was why when we were talking I said to you we went to most of the reunions every September after and through the war and went to a number of reunions in Normandy. When he was drafted to the battalion, second battalion the Lincolnshire Regiment he did normal infantry training with his company and then he said to me that they wanted to send him on this intelligence course at the School of Military Intelligence at Matlock, I think it was. And so he went to Matlock. I was on holiday with my parents and my sister in Devonshire in 1943 and we had become engaged by then, Don and I and expected to be engaged for possibly three or four years. Wait for the war to finish. We didn’t even have the Second Front established then but we waited. We would wait for the war to finish. He would get established in civilian life and so we would have to be engaged a long time. Well, he started at the School of Military Intelligence and I received this letter when we were on holiday in Woolacombe and the letter said, ‘If I pass this course I will get my third pip, be a captain. And I’d like us to be married before I go abroad.’ And I thought what on earth am I going to say to my parents? They think we’re going to be engaged for four years. So, I spoke to my mother first. I thought she would be the easier one and she said, ‘I don’t know what your father will say.’ [laughs] Spoke to my father and he said, ‘Ridiculous.’ But they all rallied around, you saw the picture of the wedding and gave me coupons for my trousseau. And we had a wedding and a wedding reception and photographs. Everything as I say except for wedding bells which we couldn’t have. Then of course, within nine months of that marriage he had landed in Norway, err in Normandy. I’ve got to gather my thoughts. And so, and many experiences stem from that. But we survived. We survived the war. We were the lucky ones.
CB: How did he get wounded?
DB: Sorry?
CB: How did he get wounded?
DB: They were about half a mile inland, if that. A quiet road. That was where they established their Brigade Headquarters. As I say he was brigade intelligence officer and he was, he’d had to go with the brigadier inland to the village of Herouville [?] This was where they landed. Herouville.[?] But the village itself was about a mile inland and they’d established that, the regiment had got that far and they established a Divisional Headquarters in a big office there next to the church and Don had gone with the brigadier to sort out the next move because I think German Panzer divisions were moving up to where they were and they were going to have to change all their moves. Make a different strategy. He came, he went up in the scout car, they came back in the scout car. Don stayed with his little band of brigade IO people telling them the next plans. What they’d got to do next. And it was while they were sitting there in a little dip in the roadway that this either mortar fire or artillery fire there’s some question now about which it was. They, we, we always understood it was mortar fire three hundred and fifty yards away but now there’s some suggestion that it may have been artillery fire. Whichever it was it landed in the midst of them, this little band of I think a dozen of them, this brigade IO headquarters and half a dozen of them were killed and half a dozen were wounded. The brigadier was one of those who was wounded too. And we kept in touch with him after the war. We saw them every time we went to Scotland. He was in the Scottish part of the Third Division. This was the Third Infantry Division and [pause] but of course it meant Don was put in the assembly area for bringing back to England. Did I tell you that story about the medical officer? The medical officer came round, dressed his wounds which were all leg including the femur, fractured femur and he put him back with others who were also wounded and said to the medical orderly, ‘I want you to take this officer down to the beach tonight for embarkation in the morning back to England.’ And the medical orderly got it wrong and took the man next to my husband down to the beach that night. The medical officer came back and said, ‘You’ve taken the wrong man down. Never mind. Leave it now but get him down first thing in the morning. I want him on that.’ On the, on the ships. So in the night, that night the German bombers came over, strafed the beach and all of those including the man next to Don, all of those who were down on the beach were killed. But Don wasn’t killed so, but taken down the next morning. So, the next morning the small ships came in and took these officers and people who, including German prisoners who were there on to the small ships and the small ships were going out in to the bay, the bigger part of the bay to the big ships to get them back to England. While they were on the small ships German bombers came over, Stuka bombers this was, came over and started dive bombing the small ships to stop them getting out to the big ships. The big ships who already had their, you know thingummies to get them on board that was already down but they had to put up these big gates. And in the meantime, the small ships which were being piloted by men of the, of the Third Division, and it was a little corporal and Don said he was absolutely wonderful because he would watch these Stuka, Stuka bombers coming and getting to the top and when they got to the top they started dive bombing. And as soon as the little corporal saw that he put the tiller hard over and the bomb would fall one side of them. They would come around again, go up again and as soon as they got to the top they would start dive bombing and the little corporal put the wheel hard over the other side. It fell the other side of the ship. He said, ‘If he did that once he did it twenty times and saved our lives.’ Including the lives of the German prisoners. But then they went away. The dive bombers went away and they were able to get the little ships out to the big ships and get them back to England. But, so he had about three escapes all together. Once with the Canadian officer. Once with the assembly area.
CB: How long was his convalescence?
DB: Well, he was in hospital six months but he was given, his leg, it was on traction and subject to dive bombing by wasps he always said. Wasps which kept coming round and dive bombing. Picking up the scent of all that was going on with his leg. But anyway, after two months and he was having physiotherapy and the doctors came up and said, ‘Sir, you are not exercising your leg enough. It’s not healing quickly enough.’ And my husband said, ‘I’m doing as far as I can. I cannot bend it further.’ ‘Well, you’ll have to try it.’ And my husband finally convinced them that he was doing as much as he could. So they decided to give him x-rays again. They took him out to x-ray him and found that the spike of his broken femur was sticking in a muscle. That’s why he couldn’t move it.
CB: Jeez.
DB: So, convinced they took him to the operating theatre again and cut off that spike and of course he had to start healing all over again and that took another three to four months. That’s why he was in hospital so long. But that was the only, well sort of, I suppose it was a sort of a convalescence. And I can’t remember when he was actually posted to Nottingham but from there he was posted to Nottingham and, and we were living there. That was when I left work and went up to join him. He, he rented a house that was opposite one that his uncle and aunt lived in. They happened to live in Nottingham and they said, ‘People opposite us are moving. They want to let their house. Why don’t you get Daphne up here?’ Which we did. So that was the end of my career and I was what? Twenty three then. Whatever it was. He was twenty four. And we were up there when the atom bombs were dropped and that brought a very quick end to the war of course. And then in that October he was posted to Cairo to do this advisory job really. And, and it was the, that next year that our son was born.
CB: How long were you in Cairo?
DB: He was in Cairo.
CB: Oh, he was.
DB: Yes. Not I. No.
CB: Right.
DB: There was no normality yet.
CB: No.
DB: That wasn’t really civilian life. He was there from October. I think it was eleven, thirteen months, I think. He went in the October and I think he came back the following month and I think he was demobbed the following November. So a year and a month.
CB: Okay.
DB: And then we were up in Blackpool. Or just north of Blackpool. He in the Civil Service. Me with our small son. He managed to get two rooms up there for us so we lived there. We were making all sorts of plans about the next summer going to the Isle of Man to see the TT races. He was very keen on the TT races on the Isle of Man so [laughs] But it didn’t happen because he took the next exam and passed that and was moved back to London. And then we stayed with my parents until we got a little house in Epsom ourselves and where we lived for seven years and then moved here and have been here ever since.
CB: That’s very good. How did you parents come to Epsom anyway?
DB: That was through this officer of, of the Lincolnshire Regiment whose parents lived in Epsom and managed the building firm. Managed. Owned the building firm that built many streets in Epsom. And that officer, John Roll was killed in Normandy in the July. He survived the first month or so but he died in the fighting in, I think it was Chateau Beauregard Wood. The woods around there. And Don wanted to see the parents to give his condolences. Talk about him. He always said John Roll was the best Christian young man he ever knew. A lovely young man, and he was engaged and he died. So Don went to see him. And I think my parents were probably looking at estate agents then to see if they could find a house that they could move to when my father did finally leave the Headquarters which he was due to leave then. And that was when Mr Roll said, ‘I have a house in Epsom that has been leased to the Epsom Fire Service and if they will let, let it, release it back to me your parents can have it to rent.’ And that’s exactly what happened. They did release it to him. Mr Roll let my parents have it, next to the park in Epsom. We lived with them until we got our own house. And that established the pattern for the future. I’m still here.
CB: Very good. Right. We’ll stop there. Thank you very much indeed.
[recording paused]
CB: Yes.
Other: You mentioned something —
CB: So, you, a couple of things to pick up on. Your first child was your son.
DB: Yes.
CB: His name is —
DB: Anthony.
CB: And then you had a daughter.
DB: Avril.
CB: Avril who’s ably —
DB: We stopped there.
CB: Avril is —
DB: We thought we’d have four.
CB: Right.
DB: And we decided to stop.
CB: Ably assisted today by David.
DB: Absolutely. He’s a treasure.
CB: Yes.
DB: He’s a treasure.
Other 2: Is it worth, I don’t know whether it’s worth mentioning or not but, but mum’s father you know I think because of what went on in the war actually got a sort of creeping paralysis disease didn’t he? I mean, I don’t know whether that’s worth mentioning or not.
CB: Right. So, what were, what —
DB: No. I don’t think so David.
CB: No.
DB: Because we did discover an earlier, his father seemed to have something like that.
Other 2: Oh, right. Right. Okay.
Other 3: It’s probably genetic.
DB: I guess it was something genetic.
Other 2: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So, so, in summary what you’re saying is that your husband was finding it more difficult to get around in later years.
DB: Not my husband. No. My father.
CB: Your father, I meant to say. I meant to say your father.
Other 2: Yes. Yes.
DB: My father did find it —
Other 2: Yes.
DB: Very difficult to get around.
CB: Yes. Yes.
Other 3: From his early fifties.
DB: He was very badly disabled.
Other 3: Not later. From his early fifties.
CB: Early 50s.
Other 3: From about 1963.
DB: Not the 50s. It would be ‘60 Avril. ‘60s.
CB: 60s.
DB: Yeah.
CB: And then a story about what your husband was doing in the —
DB: Well, it was —
CB: With the D-Day plans.
DB: They did a lot of training in Normandy. A lot of the invasion training. He always said he got his feet wetter off the coast of Northern Scotland than he did when he landed on D-Day.
CB: Right.
DB: Because he jumped on the back of a Sherman tank to land on the beaches at Normandy. But anyway, from Scotland getting ready for the trip across the Channel they moved down to the south of England. Hambledon. Near Hambledon Somewhere near. That part of, of the south coast and because he knew he was within reach of Epsom he thought it would be a good idea to take the, if he, if he got the weekend off duty to come up to see me. So, he borrowed a motorbike from the unit down there and rang me. Asked me if I could meet him at the Anchor Hotel. Anchor Hotel. Royal Anchor Hotel, something like that, at Liphook, Hampshire. I took the train down there, met him there and he booked a room for us. First time I’d ever slept between coloured sheets [laughs] and I promised myself when we got our own home after the war I would have coloured sheets. Silly things you do really. Anyway, we spent the weekend there and then of course he had to go back south. He told his, and I had to come back home, I was working still with the Air Ministry he told his fellow officers about this lovely weekend and he’d achieved it. Hadn’t told any of them before he came away and so a number of them tried to do the same the next weekend and the military police got to hear about it and came up and arrested them all and took them back before they’d had the weekend there [laughs] And it wasn’t Don. It wasn’t dad that had told them. That was just the way it was. I think, yes so I think there were too many of them. And within, I think it was within a couple of weeks of that time he had a motorbike again down there. This time officially. Legally. And he came up to London. He was being sent with revised plans of the Normandy invasion in an old laundry box and he’d got to get them across to Tilbury to see the generals there about the revised plans there. And so he brought these plans up in this old laundry box and we slept in my mother’s spare bedroom up there of course with this revised plans of the Normandy invasion under the bed. I mean, I wasn’t allowed to see them of course. I mean he was totally honourable in that way but I don’t know that anybody else knew that and I don’t know that you ought to put that in really [coughs] sorry.
CB: I don’t think it will be too sensitive.
DB: Sorry?
CB: I don’t think it will be too sensitive.
DB: You don’t think it would.
CB: No.
DB: No. Probably wouldn’t.
CB: No.
DB: Well, there we are. I’ll have to leave that to you.
CB: What was the most memorable thing about your experiences in the war?
DB: Oh, well, I I think I would have to say [pause] because they went over on the Tuesday for the landings and I didn’t hear another word until the Saturday. I didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. And on the Saturday, because it took a couple of days to get him back to England, on the Saturday I, I was at work. Again, we still worked on Saturday mornings. My sister phoned me from the Headquarters and said, ‘You’ve got a telegram, Daph.’ And straightaway she said, ‘But it’s alright.’ Because you see being a wife I had the first telegram. ‘But it’s alright,’ she said and she was choked and I was choked hearing this. She said, ‘I’ll read it to you.’ And of course, I’ve never forgotten he just said, ‘Wounded. Now in hospital. Writing. Love Don.’ But it wasn’t the official telegram. That came later. The War Office telegram. He had got the sister of the hospital, Botleys Park, he had got her to send that telegram to me as a personal telegram from him. And of course, my boss at the office packed me off home straight away. ‘Go on. You go home. You’re going home.’ And so I went home because I would obviously want to go down and visit him. I knew it was in Botleys Park. Must have. I don’t know how that news got through but anyway I went down to see him Saturday and Sunday and —
CB: Finally —
DB: That was the most memorable news because I knew he was alive.
CB: Yes.
DB: I knew I’d got a future. And he never saw active service again you see. He was —
CB: No.
DB: That was the end of his active war. Other than that as far as my own experiences perhaps in some ways seeing the horrors of the war and feeling that I would never want to do that again.
CB: During the Blitz.
DB: Yes. Yeah. And, and this lady whose head was open. And I think all of these things influence your thinking for after the war.
CB: Yes.
DB: How you feel about war itself. Now, I’ve got a young grandson who quite thinks about going in to one of the services and I think I don’t know whether I want him to. But —
CB: You mentioned the V weapons earlier. V —
DB: Yes.
CB: What was people’s reaction, first of all to the V-1s?
DB: Well, we were puzzled. We were totally puzzled. We didn’t know what it could be. What is this thing? It’s something different. Then of course very quickly they did get news out. We didn’t know. And the barrage balloons were up of course and we were hoping that they would catch these sort of aeroplanes in them and bring them down and there was more a widespread dispersal of where these things were falling. It’s where a lot of them fell around Epsom you see. It was horrible. And my own experience of being caught in that locked air raid shelter opposite St Thomas’ Hospital. I didn’t know, you never knew where they were going to fall. They were just making this noise and, until it stopped and then you didn’t know whether it was going to fall on you when it stopped. You didn’t know that it would go on a bit further over the river like it did with me. It went over the river. Or you didn’t know whether it would fall before then. There were so many question marks with all of this which left a great insecurity about life generally. You didn’t [pause] you didn’t know whether any moment might be your last moment. Your last conscious moment. Despite all that somehow you had an optimism that you would survive like I did when I saw the people lined up on the railway station saying good bye to their loved ones. I amongst them. Dispersed all along the railway station platforms. As the as the chaps went off to wherever they were stationed and you didn’t know whether that was the last time you would see them. So there was so, there was so much insecurity and yet you hoped. You carried on hoping. You believed. I believed we would come through. I believed we would win the war. Even in Harrogate where Harry Schofield the chap I was billeted with he got very depressed and I would go around singing, “It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow.” [laughs] and I’d say ‘It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright. You’ll find out. It’ll be alright.’ But you got, you did get depressed at times when it went on, dragged on so much and you knew that the war could not finish until we had gone in to Europe. So we knew that was still ahead of us. Nothing could happen. We couldn’t plan the future until that happened and we’d retaken Europe.
CB: The V-1 you got some warning because the engine stopped. It wasn’t supposed to but that’s another matter.
DB: Yes.
CB: But the V-2 you couldn’t hear it arrive.
DB: No.
CB: Until after it had arrived.
DB: That’s right. Until the bang happened.
CB: What was the reaction to that?
DB: Well, that first one happened, as I say I was in High Holborn and it fell in Chancery Lane. And again, to begin with because it was the first you didn’t know what it was. This terrible explosion. You didn’t know whether it was an unexploded bomb suddenly going off. One that had been dropped a year before perhaps because this happened too. Bombs would suddenly explode. And so you waited for news and, and I think we again they got the news through quite quickly that it was another V weapon that the Germans had, had invented. And, and we didn’t know what, whether there would be many. Whether it was a one-off thing. We guessed there would be more. Of course, if they’d been successful in getting it that far then it must be possible for them to get more that far. They came from certain fields in, on the continent and we were told that the RAF were bombing those places and of course but they were well fortified. I think some were at, no. it was the submarines that were at la Rochelle. They were more Northern Europe —
CB: Yeah.
DB: These V weapons. You probably know but certainly we were doing our best to bomb where they were being made and, and fired from. A lot of time you spent waiting to know more. And then when you knew more waiting to hear the next development or to feel or to suffer the next development yourselves. Hoping that it wouldn’t be your loved ones. You knew it could happen where they lived or where they worked. There was, there was so much uncertainty all the time.
CB: The V-1 by nature of its arrival created more blast at surface level. The V-2 descending vertically had high penetration and had less blast. From a public point of view which one was more terrifying?
[pause]
DB: That’s difficult to answer because there seemed to be more of the V-1s. There probably were.
CB: There were.
DB: The V-2s I think were over more quickly. Therefore, they haven’t left as big an impression on me as the V-1s did. But on the other hand you shook probably with belated fear when the V-2s happened. But then you said to yourself it happened, it’s done. For that one it’s done. There may be more. But with the V-1s you went through a longer process of hearing it. Not knowing how near it was or where it would stop or where it would fall when it did stop. So, in that way I would think the V-1s were more frightening for me. It wouldn’t be the same perhaps for others.
CB: Okay. Good. I think we must stop there. Thank you very much indeed. Absolutely fascinating.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Daphne Baptiste
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-04
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABaptisteDMM170504
Format
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01:22:45 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Daphne joined the Air Ministry at 17. She initially joined the Civil Service as she believed it would be a safe job with high wages. Throughout the war, she was stationed at Ladies College in Harrogate and was in charge of supplying water to many RAF stations. Daphne recalls her experience of the war as a civilian, as her father was a firefighter in London, she recalls a large amount of the Blitz. She mentions working with a young man who was a conscientious objector and describes how he was viewed at the time. During the Blitz, she was both a fire watcher and a first-aider. She also gives information regarding her family's experience during the First World War, including Zeppelin bombing. She recounts her memories of seeing St. Paul’s cathedral is surrounded by fire, seeing firefighters running to put out fires and the anxiety of not knowing if she would wake up in the morning. She recounts one or two deaths and many injuries in the fire service, including her brother, another fire-fighter, who was injured one night, and left disabled. She ends the interview by remembering marrying her husband, a Canadian born army officer, just before the D-Day landings, in which he was injured. She went a long-time without any communication, wondering if he would return.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Harrogate
England--London
Contributor
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Sam Harper-Coulson
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1943
1944
1945
bombing
fear
firefighting
home front
love and romance
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/871/10147/MHobbsFJ1262633-160404-06.1.pdf
eb4449a418e3dc4b345a43ff78f1dc4f
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
Hobbs, Frank
Frank James Hobbs
F J Hobbs
Description
An account of the resource
69 items. The collection concerns 1262633 Flight Sergeant Frank James Hobbs a wireless operator with 630 Squadron, RAF East Kirkby, who was killed while on operations in a Lancaster on 16 March 1944. The collection contains his log book, official and family correspondence, official and personal documents, photographs of aircrew, family and his grave and some items of memorabilia. It also includes correspondence from a French gentleman who was witness to his aircraft crash and who returns recovered personal items belonging to Frank Hobbs. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Barbara Storer and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /><br />Additional information on Frank Hobbs is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/110858/">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
2016-06-04
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Hobbs, FJ
Dublin Core
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Title
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Frank Hobbs driving licence
Description
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London County Council driving licence for Frank Hobbs address Tooting. Valid 1 December 1937 to 30 November 1938 with extension sticker to 9 December 1940. One conviction stamp for minor offence 20 November 1939
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London County Council
Format
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One booklet
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eng
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Text
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Civilian
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Great Britain
Temporal Coverage
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1937
1938
1939
1940
1939-10-20
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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MHobbsFJ1262633-160404-06
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/746/10747/AColemanTE170914.2.mp3
98c259c76f1de8123bd63c1d8a07a448
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Coleman, Thea
Theadora Erna Coleman
T E Coleman
Theadore Tielrooy
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Theadora Coleman (b. 1933) and a memoir. She grew up in The Hague and was a recipient of Operation Manna.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-09-14
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Coleman, TE
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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TC: To be awkward.
CB: That’s ok.
TC: Because I’m going to start with that one.
CB: Ok. That’s fine.
TC: I’ve already —
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 14th of September 2017 and I’m in Rugby with Thea Coleman. And she was in Holland during the war because she’s Dutch and she’s going to tell us her story. So, what are your earliest recollections of life, Thea?
TC: Very very happy childhood with a fantastic family around me. And we were so close it was really super. I had already a brother and a sister. They were already born. One was born in ’22 and the other in ’24. So they were quite a bit older. So that was for me rather nice. But to them I was a pest [laughs] you know. I pinched their roller skates and their things but when I was a bit older. But we had a very happy family. Yeah.
CB: And what did your father do?
TC: He was an accountant. Eventually.
CB: And where did you live? Where did the family live?
TC: In the Hague.
CB: Yes. Ok. And what sort of house was that?
TC: Well, first of all there was this house and then before long when I was a bit older, about four maybe we moved to the place that I’ve just shown you here with the beautiful view.
CB: That was on the outskirts was it?
TC: That was on the edge. Well, it was overlooking the park. As far as you could see it was a park and eventually when Rotterdam was bombed we could see it burn at the horizon. So, yeah. It was quite, quite a place.
CB: So moving house meant moving school, did it?
TC: Well, I didn’t go to school before.
CB: At all.
TC: No. Because I had to go from this place. Find school. Now and again I got a lift on a bike because it was quite a way to walk but for the rest that was.
CB: And you enjoyed your schooldays.
TC: Yes. I think I, from what I can remember but there was so much going around or going on around me that, well school was just taken as a matter of whatever.
CB: So, you were born in 1933.
TC: Yeah.
CB: The war started in 1939.
TC: ’40 in Holland.
CB: Yeah. Ok.
TC: That was, that has a story actually.
CB: Ok.
TC: That is very interesting because that is, if I may I would like to start with the story about a Peace Palace that was Alexander the 2nd’s, Czar Alexander. He was so fed up with all the money waste on the wars that took place in the beginning of the century that he wanted to do something about it and had the idea of building a palace. A Peace Palace. And Carnegie, this started I think in 1907. His idea. And Carnegie said, ‘Right. I’ll, I’ll finance it.’ He chose Holland because Holland was a peaceful country. And the, all the countries contributed something towards it. Like Britain contributed the gardens. Switzerland. Italy, I think it was the marble. And so every country got together with bits and pieces. Then eventually then it was opened exactly the date it says there. What was it? The —
Other: Here you are.
TC: Yeah. August the 28th 1913 the Palace was opened. International Court of Justice. Everything was in there. And what happens? Within a year we had the Second World War. Wasn’t that ironic? So, this is really not a very good start for the peace. But nevertheless, then let me get my story back.
CB: I’ll just stop for a mo.
TC: Yeah.
[recording paused]
TC: Now, then we get in 1933 we get Hitler. So that is, he was very war minded and of course in those days you had better weapons. There were aircraft and what have you. So then there was war coming up on, in 1940. But Holland, and I forgot to just mention that before during the First World War Holland was neutral. And they didn’t want anything to do with the war. So the second time Holland said no. We want to be neutral again. Not in the German’s point of view because they said that they wanted Holland to capitulate and Holland refused. So that went on and on and on. And then you get here fortunately later on document of my sister where she describes the time between the two wars. How socially it was hard work although Holland was, had been neutral they had a difficult time of making ends meet. There were no social services or anything like that. So what we had that is very important. We had to have a lodger. And this lodger eventually appeared to be Nazi minded. Because that was another thing that was happening all around. You see the Dutch were a bit afraid from, you know, what is Hitler up to? And we better be on the winning side than on the losing side. So, therefore this fellow who happened to be a lodger that was Nazi minded also we had neighbours who were. It was called NSP. You know. National Socialists. So we were already from knee high told, ‘Keep your mouth shut. Don’t say anything and be very very careful. And be aware. Never tell them anything.’ Because you couldn’t trust them. So that was the situation that happened in the beginning of 1940 when Germany said, ‘Right. We want you to capitulate.’ And the Dutch said no. So what they did was they threatened with bombing Rotterdam. And they flattened Rotterdam, you know. Pretty severely. You can see here [pause] you see. And then the Germans said, ‘Ok. We’ll give you two hours. You capitulate or else all the other cities in Holland will go like this.’ So they were, unfortunately they were blackmailed and they had to capitulate. There was no way out. So that was a rather a shame because in the meantime they were also very busy. You know, like we had them on the coast a beautiful pier where you could visit. That was an obstacle. So that had to go. They built bunkers. Well, they were absolutely amazing you know. And then on also outside. No. There’s not a picture here. Where they had mines. Oh, it was so, although we always went lovely you know to the beaches and we had the super youth it was all gone for a burton because it was all mined. And as I say there was Rotterdam was here. We could see it burn. This was rather nice because this is a park where kids could have a plot of land where they could grow vegetables. It was rather nice. But as I say, but oh gosh and that was really my first reaction. My first memory. Looking out on the balcony and then these aircrafts. German aircrafts. Because it was still not officially capitulated. Capitulated. They would dive bomb and drop parachutes. It was really a frightening situation where people were getting frightened to such an extent that some thought that we had better be on their side. Which was not very favourable was it? So, there you are. Then, as I say I had Willie’s memories how she then describes. It’s in Dutch unfortunately. I think I will go and translate it. Where she describes the situation of fear. Short of money. You didn’t really know what was going to happen. You saw all these aircrafts. So that was really physically the frightening bit but also as fun because if there was a bomb thrown then the windows would shatter. So we taped them with Sellotape or whatever and it was quite an exercise because it was artistic. You know, to try and preserve the windows that you wouldn’t sit in the cold. Yeah. Now, let me just —
CB: What you might call practical artistic solutions.
TC: That was definitely it. Yeah.
CB: We’ll pause for a moment.
[recording paused]
CB: Ok. Fire away.
TC: Hitler.
CB: The invasion. Yeah.
TC: Yeah. Hitler, in ’33 he was very war minded. And then you get the invasion in 1940. Incidents with mines. Complaints. Spies. And then in April, oh God the fear. You know. You were so scared. And then on the 10th of May Germany attacked Rotterdam. That was on the 10th of May. Without a warning. Nobody knew about it. And then they were given two hours to give in but the problem was when they sent the letter they didn’t just accept it. They said, ‘Hey, hang on. Who wrote this letter? Where does come from?’ So that was delay. And although the two hours were given they didn’t give the two hours. They took less to just flatten Rotterdam completely. Yeah. So, Rotterdam destroyed and Holland had to capitulate. In other words, other words the other cities would have the same fate. Not very nice. So, life goes on. My brother goes to school. He is ten years older than I am so he had a job given when he was about seventeen eighteen. And then of course they said, the Germans said, ‘Hang on. We want you in the army.’ So he had to be signed up. So he did go to have the interview and he came back in a uniform. One of these little [unclear] things with a little tassel I thought was wonderful. And then of course he would be called up and go to Germany which of course was the last thing he wanted. And that petrified my mother. Willie, she was two years younger than he was. She studied hard at school, you know. She went to the Grammar School and eventually she got a job at the factory that belonged to the Jews but then was taken over by the Germans and, so she worked there as a secretary which was useful. Not Germans because later on as the war goes on my father finds there a place to hide. So that was useful. My brother meantime, well, you know he had his uniform and he was called up. We took him to the tram and he said goodbye. My mother cried her eyes out and off he went. And nobody knew he didn’t go. He went into hiding. Nobody knew except my father and Willie. Willie knew as well. I didn’t. So later on, during as time goes on they said, ‘Well, we have a surprise for you,’ and I saw him [laughs] He was hiding not so very far from where I, where I then was living. Yeah. So that was — I’m sorry. I’m getting a little bit of a muddled story I reckon.
CB: That’s alright.
TC: Can you select?
CB: We will stop just a mo.
TC: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: What was your brother doing do you think? Or do you remember? When he was in hiding.
TC: I can’t remember. He had, he was with a family with two other chaps of his age. And maybe they did some farming or whatever. But I know that at one stage the house was encircled by Germans and he escaped through a toilet window. Fortunately there was a cornfield so he disappeared in the corn field. But the two other chaps they were arrested. Whether they survived I don’t know. You see that was another thing that you had to get used to. Sometimes you would go on a walk. One day we went on a walk near the prison and suddenly we were stopped and five young chaps came out. And they were executed. And we had to watch it. I mean those sort of things is unimaginable. What you had to as a kid had to absorb really.
CB: This is an important point. And could you just describe how that happened? So, you were stopped. Then what? How did they do this execution?
TC: They just set them against the wall and shot them. And we had to watch. We had to stand there and watch. There was no way of hiding or running away. No. Otherwise you would be the next.
CB: So after they shot them then what happened?
TC: I don’t know whether I can remember that one because you were so absolutely numbed by the occasion. That they were just picked up and taken inside.
CB: And when you got home what did you do?
TC: Cry. And try to forget. And my parents were very good because they were trying to, you know distract your attention and, with other things. Play a game or whatever. Yeah. And, and this was all physical. This had nothing to do with food yet. Because there was another thing. The Dutch are very very careful because they were always thinking well, you never know. You never know. So they started to preserve food. Bottle it and what have you. We were always trying to save the food for, for whenever. And the same with clothing and so on. And even in the, from the government point of view you know they were trying to store. It was really store. And then of course the Germans said you are not allowed to store any more. So it had to be done secretly. So, you know then this ideal if you need it that it is there. But we had to hide so you know we lost all the stuff that we had preserved. Somebody else ate it [laughs] Yeah. So, I don’t know.
CB: We’ll stop there for a mo.
TC: Yeah. Yeah.
[recording paused]
TC: Do you want food or what?
CB: Yeah. No. We’ll just carry on more with the living at the time.
TC: Ok.
CB: Once you —
[recording paused]
TC: When this particularly pro-Nazi lodger left the house was open for people come and go. So we always had visitors. The beauty of it was that people didn’t think it was unusual that we had lodgers and that was a fantastic cover. So now, this particular time we are getting Willie she has been very busy getting, because we have rations to supply these people with rations. To find accommodation for them or you know really generally looking after them and finding places for them to stay. And so we were virtually called a through house. Well, then also people above us, you know, going up the stairs. The flat above they, he was a policeman and they also got involved. So it was our family and those two and we had just coming and goings. Comings and goings. And then one day we got a family with three boys. One was about my age. One was my brother’s age. Three boys. They were Jews. Because then suddenly the whole war started to change because it became anti-Jew. And that was one of the worst decisions that ever could have made. Been made. Anyway, Willie was very very busy with, you know trying to find them. Anyway, this particular couple came with their three boys. Fred, the eldest, was my age. He stayed with us permanently. The middle brother he went to my aunt. And the youngest went to my grandfather. Unfortunately, and Willie was always on the, on her bike and finding things and she has an awful lot of information. And one day she heard that the younger boy, Fritz with my grandfather that the Germans were after him or whatever. You know, they, they had the German attention was on that house. So Willie went to my grandfather and said get him in to cloister. He said, ‘Ok. Tomorrow.’ But that was too late because at lunchtime this four year old, he was kidnapped out of my grandfather’s garden. Taken to Auschwitz. Never came back. So you can imagine that was what my grandfather must have felt. Absolutely horrendous. So, yeah. That, that went on and as we say the other boys, you know. That is Fred. He is with us. He went on a holiday in a cow’s stables. The cows were outside and we got fresh straw. So that was rather quiet and, and a treat. And then here somewhere we have [pause] Oh, there’s my father with, I’ve got that there. His false passport. Oh, and here’s Wim. My brother. We didn’t know and I was told, ‘You’re going to see a visitor today.’ Somehow. And that was him. The first time after all those years that I actually met him when he was hiding there. Then he told the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. I can still remember that one. And this, I have to go to a Children’s Home. This is coming later. First, see if I can find the boys. Sorry about that [pause – pages turning] There’s Wim. Oh, yeah. Here we are. Here is the middle boy on the lap of a German. Fancy that. That was, but that is again. I hope you stay another week.
CB: It’s interesting that these pictures were taken in the war.
TC: Yeah.
CB: So there was no restriction on picture taking at that time if the German is in that picture.
TC: No. No. That is very true. No. Because, well this is [pause] yeah. Now, I I think I’m now going to skip to — is it a bit higgledy piggledy or not?
CB: I’ll just stop for a mo.
TC: This is —
CB: At the back we’ve got a drawing.
TC: Yeah.
CB: Right.
TC: That is the bug tug. The tug bug that is the German. And where you look at his picture his arms and legs are like a swastika.
CB: Oh right.
TC: And he is emptying Holland of all the goodies that Holland, that the Dutch had tried to preserve and hide for just in case for a rainy day.
CB: So in this cartoon he’s got hanging on him all sorts of things that he has requisitioned.
TC: Yeah. Exactly.
CB: Yes. Right.
TC: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Ok. Stopping again.
TC: Right.
[recording paused]
CB: We’re just looking at a candlestick.
TC: Yeah. That was from one of the Jews who hide, hid in to our, in our house as well.
CB: Yes.
TC: And she said to my father, ‘Look, you know I have hidden the Menorah in the garden. I’ll show you where it is. If anything happens can you dig it up?’ She never came back from Auschwitz. So my father dug it up and I’ve got it. So —
CB: An amazing bit of history.
TC: Yeah. And very [pause] and you look at it and you think not everybody was as lucky as I was. That is the thought that goes behind it, isn’t it? Yeah. Now, and then of course we get the [pause] Yeah. Before anything else can I just have quickly then we can put this one away.
CB: Ok. We’re looking at a photo album.
TC: Yeah.
CB: Yes.
TC: And then just to show, this was the house I was born and this was just to show the love that comes out of the photos and the absolute fantastic childhood I had with a lot of fun.
CB: Yes.
TC: My father put me in a waste paper basket and things, you know [laughs] But yeah, I, when you look back this is so important that you see how happy. This is an uncle of mine. He was a fantastic piano player. And this is just to reminisce of a happy childhood. This is again the balcony with that house there. Here I go to school. Very happy at school.
CB: This is the green album we’re looking at.
TC: Yeah. That is me getting a bit —
CB: Dressed up.
TC: Dressed. I’m a bit older. Going out on a holiday camp. That was possible.
CB: Where were the holiday camps?
TC: That was central Holland.
CB: Right.
TC: Yeah. Yeah. And then my brother is born in 1939. And then we are getting here a series of photos of the war. Here is my mother. You can see how old she looks. Attacks from the Germans. There again. The pier. You’ve just seen that one and the other one. And going on holiday in, at the farm. But still —
CB: And where was the farm that you went on holiday?
TC: Barneveld.
CB: How far is that?
TC: That is near Arnhem.
CB: Right.
TC: Yeah. And then you see we had beach walks. We could go and walk on the beaches.
CB: Yeah. This is all before the war.
TC: All before, well at the beginning of the war.
CB: Yeah.
TC: Because now we are getting to, that’s why I wanted to get rid of this album.
CB: Yes.
TC: To [pause] Oh, this is me a bit.
CB: I think, just to clarify the point Holland was neutral when the war started. In the early stages. And it wasn’t until the Germans invaded it in May 1940 that it became, that the war started in Holland.
TC: Yeah.
CB: Although in other, in Britain it had started in September 1939.
TC: Oh yeah. No. No. This was the 10th of May wasn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
TC: That I said.
CB: Yeah.
TC: The 10th of May.
CB: Yeah. So, we’ll stop there for a mo.
TC: Yeah.
[recording paused]
TC: The government. You know, once Holland had capitulated the Queen went to England. Her family went to Canada. So this. And then you get the Atlantic Wall. That was in 1942. Now, that was completely haywire because you could hear the story. We had already people hiding and then we get here the family. He was a Jew. I forgot to say that. Wait a minute. She was a Jew and that were a couple visiting and then there’s my father. It was just a family gathering. Because what had happened with the Atlantic Wall. All the people within this [pause] where is it? Yellow line.
CB: Yes.
TC: They had to vacate their houses. The yellow line was about two or three miles wide.
CB: This is a map of Scandinavia and the continent showing the yellow line being the Atlantic Wall.
TC: That’s it. Yeah. That was the Atlantic Wall. The Germans hadn’t done that. Spain was neutral so that didn’t have to have a wall. But now you can see why Germany was so extremely keen for Holland to capitulate.
CB: Yeah.
TC: Because when they were neutral there was a gap. And the British and the Americans could enter.
CB: Yeah.
TC: And that was the one thing that Hitler was against. He wanted it hermetically closed.
CB: Yeah.
TC: So therefore it was essential that Holland had to be conquered. So that the line was continued. Now, within these two lines I had my grandfather and my aunt who lived near the coast in a beautiful place. And what happens? They had to get out of their house.
CB: Because of the exclusion zone that was the Berlin wall err the Atlantic Wall.
TC: The Atlantic Wall.
CB: Yes.
TC: Everybody had to be out.
CB: Yes.
TC: All the civilians —
CB: Right.
TC: Were not allowed to live there anymore. So you had your house and you had to go. Leave everything behind or, well what would you do with it? You know. It’s very difficult. Now, my aunt was very lucky. That’s another story. My aunt, and there’s my aunt and my grandfather. That’s not the best place.
CB: I’ll just stop a mo.
TC: Yeah.
[recording paused]
TC: We were so lucky. Is that the word? She was so lucky. To the west of Amsterdam, in the middle of nowhere she found this place.
CB: A house.
TC: The house, built in about 1934. Empty. So, obviously in you go. There was, there was nothing there. Later on we get a little bridge to get there over the ditch and so on. And yeah, that was fantastic. So then the Germans thought now that is nice. Let us have a few rooms in this house for us. And they said, ‘You must be bloody joking,’ [laughs] You see, eventually they get a little bridge there and they, they wanted in the house. And they said, ‘No. We have a shed. Listen. If you want accommodation you go stay in the shed and leave us alone.’ And we had a little terrace built and it was great. So, what did the Germans do? On this tree they hung a steel bar and that steel bar was an indication that if there was a raid they say, ‘Don’t worry about here. We are here. Nothing there. So you can carry on.’ So, we were safe in the lion’s den weren’t we?
CB: Yeah.
TC: So, yeah. That was, that was great. And the boys, my brothers amongst them this is middle boy of these three boys that —
CB: This is a picture with a German soldier.
TC: Yeah.
CB: With his arm around him.
TC: Yeah. Ironic. And the boys were, you know, given the helmet to play with and what have you. Yeah. But as I say they were in the shed and the shed was full of rats so it was just the right place for them. Yeah. This is just the by the by one.
CB: Right.
TC: That this, where you had the bicycle. Don’t have tyres on your bicycle because if you have the Germans confiscate it. Any bike with a tyre was a loss. So for miles and miles and miles even my mother had to travel by bike without tyres. That was [unclear] Yeah. So anyway that’s [ ] I thought I had a picture. If you give me one second. Can you manage?
CB: Now, one of the ways as I read it the Germans kept control was to have raids.
TC: Oh yeah.
CB: So, how did that work?
TC: Well, they would close the road. Nobody was to go in or out of their houses. They would enter your houses with the guns and they would go through every room. I can remember having to spend a couple of hours in between floorboards and being as quiet as possible because the Germans were walking on the, on the floor above you. So, do you see what I mean? The fright that was almost second nature. So eventually when I felt that I needed to write it down I wanted to get it off my chest really.
CB: So, just putting this in to context of your age. You were born in 1933. So by ’42, you were talking about earlier you were nine.
TC: Yeah.
CB: So in ’43 you were ten. So when the —
TC: Very aware of what went on. Yeah. Sorry.
CB: That’s ok. Yeah.
TC: Yeah.
CB: So, what was the reaction of families to these German raids?
TC: Fear. [laughs] And they would march through the streets. And then they would you know sing. They had songs. And one of the song was “Und wir fahren gegen Engeland.” “And we sail to England.” And then the people on the pavements watching them, they said, ‘Glug. Glug. Glug. Glug,’ in answer to that. In other words, ‘If you are going to England, drown.’
CB: Oh, I see. Right.
TC: And they were furious when people said that. You know, ‘Glug. Glug. Glug. Glug.’ You know, when they were singing that they were going to England. Marching up to England.
CB: And did they have a threatening approach to the public? The public in general?
TC: No. Not that I can —
CB: Or were they trying to be friendly?
TC: No. No. They were not friendly. It was just a different race. You know, this — we were told to stay away. Not say anything. We had to really be so careful, you know not to upset them because that was life threatening. So we were under very very high discipline not to say anything. Not to do anything. So, well, you had to abide by that.
CB: And when they did the searches of the houses did they confiscate people belongings? Or did they just —
TC: Themselves. People themselves. Oh, they would be marched out of the house if they thought you know were not you were of the wrong age or — oh yeah. People would. And that was also a sign. You saw these vans outside in the streets. And then I can still visualise it now where people were dragged into those vehicles and never be, in many cases never heard of again.
CB: What sort of people were they arresting?
TC: Anybody.
CB: And taking away.
TC: The wrong age.
CB: The wrong age being what?
TC: Military age, you know.
CB: Right.
TC: Old people they were not interested in. Unless you had an association with their enemy if you like. Or if you were a Jew. Oh, you were, then you were definitely out. Yeah. And, and that was very very difficult for me to to absorb really until I went to to Lincoln and I was teaching in Dogdyke. No. Tattershall. Was it Tattershall? Well, where ever it was and somebody said he was a veteran. They had a meeting with somebody who was going to give a talk and unfortunate they were let down. He heard my accent and he said, ‘Do you think you have a story to tell?’ I said, ‘By Jove, have I got a story to tell.’ And I was invited and it was a thundering success. And after that they wanted more and more and more. ‘Can you come to us?’ ‘Can you come to us?’ [unclear] You know how that goes. And then somebody said, ‘Do you know what? Why don’t you write it down?’ So when I moved here I thought, ‘Yeah. I’ll do that. I don’t know anybody so this is the ideal opportunity. I’ll start writing it down.’ That is, you know this one. And then a colleague of mine read it and he said, ‘Thea, that’s far too good. That has to be published.’ And they published it literally the same as this. So that’s how it came about.
CB: That’s what the book is.
TC: That’s what the book is.
CB: And what’s the title of the book?
TC: “Evading the Gestapo in Holland.” But here I just called it, “My story.”
CB: Yes.
TC: But it’s the same one.
CB: What was the — going back to your comment about people being carted out of houses. What was the reaction of the population to the Germans arresting and deporting people?
TC: Very little because they were so scared that if they would say anything they would go and join them. So you couldn’t say anything. But there must be so many people with still those memories in the back of their minds. Because there’s nothing worse than seeing somebody thrown in a van for [pause] well you couldn’t ask for law or rights could you? That was it. And often they were Jews. Yeah.
CB: You mentioned that up in the upstairs flat was a policeman. How did he manage his life working with Germans?
TC: Very carefully. Yeah. Very carefully. Yeah.
CB: Now, all occupied countries had their collaborators. In Norway they were called quislings. What was the title given to Dutch collaborators?
TC: I can’t think at the moment. That will come back.
CB: Ok.
TC: NSPer’s. Well, NSPer’s I suppose. National Socialists.
CB: Yes.
TC: He is an NSPer. Yeah. NSPer.
CB: Right. And did they have something distinctive that they wore so that the Germans didn’t worry them?
TC: Well, that was with one of the lodgers we had. He suddenly came with an NSP pin thing on his, so we knew that he was from the wrong side. Can you just stop it a minute?
CB: Yes.
TC: Because —
[recording paused]
TC: Do you want to read it? No. Do you want —
CB: So, now we’re —
TC: You —
CB: You tell us what we’ve got there.
TC: What the Hunger Winter —
CB: Yes.
TC: Was like.
CB: So when was that? When was the Hunger Winter? In 1944.
TC: Yeah. 1944.
CB: The end of ’44 was it?
TC: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
TC: Well, there was [pause] yeah ’44. Here we are.
CB: Ok.
TC: What we didn’t have. No radio.
CB: Right.
TC: No electricity. No more gas. The first hunger fatalities. Twenty thousand people died.
CB: Of?
TC: Of hunger.
CB: Right.
TC: And ninety eight thousand were starvations. Or was it that? Yeah. Then what is to say?
CB: The bread.
TC: The bread rations. Yeah. No bread. Oh God, it was just gloop. No electricity at all. No gas.
CB: So, there were beggars on the streets.
TC: Oh yeah. I can remember when I was in a Children’s Home there was a dog. It had the dog bowl. And I had to look after the dining area. That was when I was in the Children’s Home. And the dog had better food than me. So I licked his food as if it was a dog. So they couldn’t see that I had eaten it. Can you imagine?
CB: Extraordinary.
TC: Yeah.
CB: And the dog belonged to who? The Germans or to the owner?
TC: No. No. That was from the house. But they were pro Germans anyway so.
CB: Right.
TC: Well, they had the German religion.
CB: So what type of Children’s Home was that? What sort of [pause] Were they orphans or what were they?
TC: Usually of parents who were missionaries in Africa and the kids couldn’t go with them. So they stayed in that home. So that was eventually where my brother found me a place. Ah, because now you can really get to the story about my father’s —
CB: Right.
TC: Go back to —
CB: Keep going.
TC: Yeah. Go back to the lodgers. We had a lodger and his name was Mr Somners. And Mr Somners was fantastic. We used to call him Mr Ringaling. He had gold rimmed glasses. And he had a secretary. She was a beauty. And she stayed with that policeman upstairs. And then suddenly they decided they loved one another and they would like to live together. So they decided then that he would move with the girl but the Germans got hold of that and they arrested her mother. And they said to her, ‘If you play,’ Mr Ringaling, ‘Mr Somners, into our hands we’ll free your mother.’ So they made an appointment, these two at the Square in the Hague. And she said, ‘Well, the one I kiss is the man, and — ’ Because she had to choose between her mother and her lover. So she, the moment that she kissed him he got arrested there and then. And so did she. And then they were taken to the Gestapo headquarters and then Mr Somners walked in. They got a fright because amongst the Germans were Resistance workers undercover. They jumped on their bike and they went to all the houses they could remember and when it was 9 o’clock in the morning there was my mother. I was at school and she said, they said to my mother, ‘You get that child and out of the house now. You haven’t got time to pack or anything like that. Five minutes. Out.’ So she did. When I came back from school at lunchtime, because in Holland you don’t stay at school you always go home, there was nobody in. The house was already then confiscated. And then what I found out from Willie here what Mr Somners did and also consequently my father. They were involved in smuggling Jews to Spain. Or for that matter to Norway. I think. Yeah. Those two. So, and they recognised him by his teeth afterwards and she was [unclear] to death. And her mother never heard of any more. Also died. So you can imagine that was for us suddenly the end. You know. I come from school. Then what do you do with a girl of my age? So Willie took me by the hand and she had just been confirmed by a vicar so she went to him and she said, ‘I’m stuck with her. What do I do?’ So he said, ‘Well, leave her with us for a fortnight and then we’ll see what we can do.’ But the problem was when we went to church people would say, ‘Who’s that kid?’ And then I overheard somebody saying, ‘This is a child of a family on the run.’ Well, I was adult there and then. I matured. There was no childhood for me anymore. That was it. So I, and then I went from the vicar. He had two girls who ran a farm so he took me to them. One was a teacher and one was a nurse so at least I got eventually a little bit of education. And then of course they had the mill next door with seven kids but I was not allowed to play with them. Then they got diphtheria so that was danger. Out. So then I went to an egg farmer and I’ve never seen so many eggs being processed. Processed. And I didn’t stay there for very long either and then eventually I, Wim, my brother he was then discovered as being about and he said, ‘Well, I am here. Very close to a Children’s Home. Try it.’ So that is where I went. And thanks to my brother, you know. As I say, you know he just carried on. And I went to the Children’s Home. But then of course my brother, my father was then also being spotted, you know through this arrest of this Mr Somners. So he had to find [pause] Can you just switch it off a minute?
[recording paused]
CB: We’re talking about your father.
TC: Talk about my father. My father had then been given a new name. [unclear] . My brother, my little brother lived with my mother. Sometimes they met with my father as well. Not very often. And then Hans had to say, ‘I’m not Hans Tielrooy. I’m Hans [unclear].’ He said, ‘That’s not my name.’ So he became a danger and had to go. So, but then my father had a new passport. Where again the RAF came in useful with the Peace Palace because behind the Peace Palace was a huge villa with all the ins and outs of the population of Holland. You know. Register Centre. And they were asked to flatten it and they did. And that is where people like my father finally had now a chance to have a new passport. And that’s it. And the beauty of it is you see he puts a pair of specs on. His hair is slightly different. And then he, yeah he was well you can see he was really very scared but the beauty is his date of birth could not be traced because they made him a false passport with his birth on. Birthplace Surabaya in Indonesia. Because we were at war with Japan and they couldn’t check it. So at least he had a little bit of freedom of moving about. Very precious this. Yeah.
CB: We’ll just stop there a mo.
[recording paused]
TC: Heavily involved.
CB: So your sister Willie was ten years older than you.
TC: Yes.
CB: So her perspective was quite different and she was more mature. So what was her position?
TC: She was very very heavily involved in the Resistance. Together with my father as well. I didn’t know. Neither did anybody else in the house know that in this Mr Somner’s room was a German uniform. Yeah. But it has, but Willie has used it and she got somebody out of prison in that uniform. So a young chap that otherwise would have probably been executed or whatever. But in the end, as I say she was so heavily involved that Queen Wilhelmina invited her with about twenty other Resistance youngsters and she was invited to stay in her palace for about nine months to recuperate. And I can remember going through the gardens saying, ‘Oh, Willie, that’s your room.’ [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. That was quite a crown on the [pause] jewel on the crown or whatever you call it and, yeah.
CB: How did she come to be in a position where the Queen invited her to do this?
TC: Oh, that’s a difficult question actually. I haven’t thought about that. That must have been from the group that she was working with for the Resistance that they recommended her. Or that there must have been something like that.
CB: So, what sort of recuperation? She would have been short of food but mentally was she exhausted?
TC: I think that that was the case. Yeah. Yeah. She was a very intensive person. Yeah. And Queen Wilhelmina obviously. Even though she lived in England she decided with the Arnhem business to go on to make sure that the Dutch went on strike with the railway. And that made the Germans so angry that they’d made the worse, the war worse. But they weren’t. Oh, here it is. Look. Here. They, she invited and strike and they said, ‘If you strike it will only bring horror to yourselves.’ But they carried on because again with this army lot, Arnhem lot, she because there was so much Resistance that the Germans didn’t get through to drop the food because they said, ‘Is it really food you’re going to drop or is it bombs and people?’ And then eventually, very late in the day did they get permission. I think it is the 29th of April. Well, you can imagine.
CB: Let me just stop you a mo. Just to put this in to context we’re now talking about later. At the end of the war.
TC: Yeah.
CB: What is termed over here Operation Manna.
TC: Yeah.
CB: And so the RAF and the Americans dropping food. And that’s what you’re talking about now.
TC: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So —
TC: And there was also —
CB: What was the date it started? 28th of April 1945.
TC: It could be. Yeah.
CB: Right.
TC: I don’t know. I have —
CB: But you were saying about the German’s reaction.
TC: Yeah. Because they were dead against the RAF flying over to drop food and they said we will give you a channel and this is the channel that they were allowed. If they were slightly out they would be shot dead. Shot down. And here are the areas where the food drops would take place. The red is from America and the other ones are with the RAF.
CB: So what were they dropping? What sort of things were they dropping?
TC: Gee whizz. This you saw. You sort it out. Look.
CB: Yeah.
TC: This is one drop.
CB: Right. So that. This is a photograph of a field.
TC: Yeah. Near Rotterdam.
CB: And it’s bags. And so the challenge with the bags was whether they would burst.
TC: Some did.
CB: On landing.
TC: Some didn’t. And then of course they needed so many people to collect it all. And do you know nobody stole. Everybody was starving hungry. Nobody. It was all centred at the place where then it was properly distributed. Which I think is admirable because if you were starving hungry well — you eat. Well, like me eating the dog food.
CB: How was the food distributed after it was collected? Was your father involved with that?
TC: I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t think so but it was all done from a central area. You had to queue. Oh God. When, for the Swedish bread the Germans stopped that. We sometimes queued for two and a half hours. Two or three hours for one loaf of bread.
Other: God.
TC: And it was worth it because you were so, so hungry. And as I say I was so underfed that they had to spoon feed me with a teaspoon. Hans, when we came out of the Children’s Home, Hans, my brother, he had frozen feet. And I was, well near death really. So as I said then and that was [unclear] where Willie had her first job. But originally it was from a Jewish barrel maker and that is where my father then found refuge when he needed it after, obviously he was looked for. When he was more or less after this incident of the [pause] Yeah.
CB: So what we’re talking about here is the western part of Holland.
TC: Yeah.
CB: Which had been bypassed by the allies as they moved — North Holland and into Germany and the population was starving. At what stage did they shortage food really start to bite?
TC: That started already quite early. Here, you see this is the last bit that was still being occupied that because this of Holland was already liberated.
CB: Yes. The eastern side and the south.
TC: And then of course you get Arnhem.
CB: Yeah.
TC: The big battle of Arnhem with the disasters of that one. And then. Yeah.
CB: As they pushed past that.
TC: Twenty two. Twenty two thousand people died. And nine hundred and eighty thousand were classed as malnutrition and I was one of them.
CB: Yeah.
[pause]
CB: So this is September 1944 that the Arnhem experience took place. But this drop of food is six months after that in April.
TC: Yeah. Indeed. Yeah. There’s the battle of Arnhem. Twenty two thousand dead. Back to [pause] why did I? Oh, I don’t know what that is. Obviously, you read that too.
CB: So my question really is that the distribution of food had already become difficult.
TC: Oh yeah.
CB: But when did it become extremely serious? Do you remember?
TC: That must have been, oh [pause] the year before, I reckon. Yeah. Because when did I leave the Children’s Home? [pause] September ’44. Yeah. That is when it really started to bite.
CB: As the west of Holland was isolated by the allied forces pressing on past the western part of Holland.
TC: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: We’ll stop there just for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: The cooking.
TC: On this tin.
CB: Doing the cooking.
TC: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So what’s the tin?
TC: The home-made tin. A plaster tin. You know, the plaster was inside. You just —
CB: Yes. But what did you put in it to cook to create the heat?
TC: A bit of wood.
CB: Yes. But where did you get the wood from?
TC: Find it everywhere. Tiny little bits of wood in [pause] well anywhere. Maybe in the shed or — but they were no bigger than so.
CB: Yeah. And did you increasingly then have to forage around for wood to burn because it must have run out in the local area?
TC: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So what did you do then?
TC: We looked for it. Go for walks.
CB: Did you go out in parties of walking?
TC: Yeah. Or look in the sheds. Anything that would burn you made to size and then burned it in that.
CB: Yes.
TC: I wish that I had bought one. A cousin of mine has got a real one.
CB: Oh right.
TC: Yeah.
CB: And then no electricity so how did you see in the night?
TC: You didn’t.
CB: In the evenings.
TC: You didn’t. No radio. Nothing.
CB: No candles.
TC: No. No. No. Candles were very scarce. Begging for food.
CB: So, tell us about the food. How did you get hold of food?
TC: You didn’t. You, you queued for hours if there was any in the shops. But there were no more potatoes. The only one was stinging nettles, tulip bulbs and sugar beets.
CB: So, how did you cook those stinging nettles?
TC: Well, they were mostly raw. You know. You put it in hot water and then it softened it a bit.
CB: Yes.
TC: And, and then in the end well you just didn’t eat. Nothing to eat.
CB: You mentioned begging. So how did that work?
TC: Knock on the door. ‘I’m hungry.’
CB: So children did the begging or did —
TC: No.
CB: Adults did it as well.
TC: Adults did. Children didn’t come in to this at all. No. Yeah. Even first food aid from Sweden. That was white bread.
CB: So this was the beginning of 1945.
TC: That was February. Yeah. Yeah. Because that bread, I’ve never seen white bread like the Swedish bread. It was whiter than white. Amazing. And then of course the Germans stopped that one.
CB: So where did that come in from? How did that come to Holland? Did it —
TC: By train or —
CB: Somehow through the German lines did it? Or did it —
TC: It must be —
CB: Come in by sea.
TC: No. No. Certainly not by sea. No. First aid from Sweden must have come by road.
CB: Through Germany.
TC: Through Germany. Yeah.
CB: Right.
TC: Because the Germans had to agree to that and they did.
CB: Right.
TC: And then the Germans were food dropped because they were afraid that they could be combined with bombs. Which is logical.
CB: This is the RAF.
TC: Yeah.
CB: Supplying. Yeah.
TC: And the Operation Manna starts there. Oh God, that was — I can still see them. Oh, you could see the, they flew that low you could see the pilot’s face. Oh, that was a miracle. Absolutely fantastic. Yeah. And that was so interesting when we met last year or the year before when you could say, ‘Well, this was our reaction what was your reaction?’ And they all cried.
CB: This was in Lincoln when some of the aircrew were there.
TC: Yeah. Yeah. They were so impressed and like we didn’t know in how far they would, the Holland has so many flat roofs so we could spread the flag. And the flag was forbidden but we put flag on. Thank you, Tommies. Or we just waved. Oh gosh. Yeah.
CB: The man I interviewed the other day said how the Germans were shaking their fists at his aircraft flying at a hundred and fifty feet.
TC: I can well imagine. But we were kissing.
CB: Exactly. And he then went on to the Dutch people waving. Yes.
TC: Really? Oh yeah. And sometimes you really took a risk. Yeah. And that was the same when we had the Liberation in Amsterdam. I’m going a bit —
CB: That’s alright.
TC: Higgledy piggledy. And so when the war was declared finished they thought hooray. So the heart of Holland is the Dam in Amsterdam. But everybody gathered together and they were all standing there, you know, pale and hungry and very tightly together because the air force err now the allies were coming in their tanks. And when they came around the corner full of flowers and girls and what have you and the whole of the mass of people went berserk with hooray. We had all dyed some pieces of material in orange or whatever. But the big buildings around this square there were still German soldiers on there.
CB: On the roof.
TC: On the roof. And what did they buggers do? They shot on the main, on the people. Absolutely. When we asked, ‘What did you do? Why did you do it?’ And they said, ‘Well, why didn’t you cheer like this when we arrived?’ Can you imagine? The nerve. And the tanks were immediately closed and, oh that was horrendous and we all had to fled, flee down side roads. And there were nineteen people killed. Yeah. And that was Liberation. ‘Why didn’t you cheer like this for when we arrived?’ How big headed can you get? You never learn do you?
CB: What happened to them? So clearly they survived. So they weren’t killed by the Dutch.
TC: I wouldn’t be surprised if that didn’t happened on the quiet. Yeah. Because they, they, well they couldn’t stay there could they?
CB: No.
TC: They were still the enemy. And we had the liberators coming in. Oh, I can still remember this. That was frightening. And we were standing all like this because it was packed. Absolutely overpacked. Amazing how little flares of —
CB: Memory.
TC: Memories come back.
CB: So you were still starving effectively.
TC: Oh yes. Yeah.
CB: How did the food get distributed then? At the time of the celebration was there, were there food trucks with the tanks or did you get the food later?
TC: Later. Yeah. It was, it was a slow coming of food. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And that was distributed by the local authorities.
TC: Shops. Yeah. Shops.
CB: Through the shops.
TC: Through the shops. And you all had issues. You know. What do you call them?
Other 2: Ration.
CB: Ration cards.
TC: Ration cards. Yeah. Yeah. And with, and then you stand there queuing. Not just for ten minutes. Hours. Yeah.
CB: And how did society return to normal after that? If ever.
TC: With great difficulty. Yeah. But you know then once it was done and over with you know you all got together and put your shoulders on it and made the best of it.
CB: So, your family returned to your house.
TC: No.
CB: Right.
TC: No. Because our house there, that house there that was completely occupied because you very rarely owned a house. So it was always rented. So when we came back to the Hague my father was allocated this house through the Resistance. And that was a whacking big house. Fantastic. Until about six months after. There was a ring of the bell and she said, ‘This is my house. I’ve survived and I want my house back. So, we want you out.’ So that was another problem. So then the Resistance was still very very much active in that work and they found us this house that we lived in where you have been. And yeah, that was in [pause] that had been in an area that was evacuated for a long long time so there were no roads. No pavements. You know. That was all very, well pre-historic as it were.
CB: In the countryside this was.
TC: No. That was a part of the Hague.
CB: Oh, it was.
TC: Yeah. And that is of course where I went to school and so on. And that’s another thing. Talk about going to school. When we lived in that nice house there and this was still pre, after I had just been about five or six years of age.
CB: Before the war started.
TC: Yeah. Well, no. Yeah. But there was an awful lot of water. You know that house with the beautiful view? There was a lot of water about and Hans my brother he almost drowned in it. So, and Willie and Wim, my brother they had to take me before school to the park where there was a swimming pool because I had to learn to swim. And that was their task. To take me to the swimming pool regularly during the week. Every other day or so. To teach me how to swim. And I can still remember the lady who had ginger hair and her body was purple with cold because it was an open air one and but I learned to swim and once I could swim that was it. That was them finished. That’s another flare of —
CB: That’s alright. We’ll just stop for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So, thinking of the drops in Operation Manna. The dropping of the food and what was it? What — did you see that or did you just hear about it in other ways?
TC: Maybe in the distance but that was a, that is a little bit vague memory at the moment.
Other: Yeah.
TC: But I can remember once it was put to the central areas where it was distributed. There was the egg powder. Oh God the egg powder. Milk powder. Bread. All sorts of vegetables and, yeah stuff really to go into the larder. That is the stuff that was generally in the bags.
CB: So it was flour but was there baked bread as well?
TC: There was also baked bread. Yeah.
CB: Right.
TC: But very rare.
CB: Yes. Because it’s very bulky.
TC: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And how did the population hear about the deliveries of these?
TC: Well, they either saw it or they knew where the Centres were and then you could go to the Centres. On your bike of course.
CB: Yes.
TC: Or walking. To collect your goodies.
CB: Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.
TC: And as I say sometimes there were little parcels, but from the pilots themselves who had wrapped it up for the kids.
CB: Really? Yeah.
TC: You know. Chocolate or sweets.
CB: So the delivery was in bags or was it in other items as well?
TC: All sorts. All sorts. It was in containers and bags and —
CB: Containers so it wouldn’t break.
TC: Yeah.
CB: Large.
TC: Yeah. Large. About that size. Yeah.
CB: Good. I think we’ll stop there for a mo. Thank you very much.
[recording paused]
TC: Even that’s true, and how much is still to think about. To remember.
CB: Yes. It’s an extra.
TC: At that time you just took it, well as a surprise. You couldn’t get over it. I mean, if you look at this you can see what sort of baggage.
CB: This is the picture of the dropping area.
Other: This is the drops. Yeah.
TC: That’s near Rotterdam. And they needed hundreds of people to collect it all. And they didn’t leave a scrap. They picked it all up. Nothing was wasted.
CB: And the Germans didn’t come and confiscate any of it.
TC: No. I don’t think they dared. Because by that time they knew that the game was up.
CB: Yeah. We’ll stop there. Thank you very much.
[recording paused]
CB: We can —
Other: We still want to record this don’t we?
CB: Now, we talked about a lot of things to do with the Operation Manna drops. We then went on to how the food was distributed.
TC: Yeah.
CB: We haven’t really talked about how it was consumed. Because people are not just undernourished. They’re actually starving. So there’s a danger in that. So how did you start eating when the food came?
TC: Because usually there was somebody in charge of a person who is that underfed that they, like for instance myself. When I came out of the Children’s Home they sent me to this place where my father originally hid and where Willie originally had her job where they made these barrels. You know, the Jewish firm that was taken over. Anyway, so they sent me there for about a fortnight before I was then joining the rest of the family in Amsterdam and she, the farmer’s wife next door she said, ‘Thea, come in the morning. I’ll feed you up.’ And then she would feed me on cream and things. And I stayed there a fortnight and was fine. So that was ok. And then we went to Amsterdam where of course again we were at a loss because you saw how busy that house of my aunt was in, outside Amsterdam. Willie, in the meantime hired a room in the middle of Amsterdam South with a Jewish family. And she hired a room because sometimes there was an opportunity, no a necessity for getting your breath back. So, and that was of course also in the Hunger Winter when you were outside trying to collect little bits of wood and things like that. So that is where we were then. In that room. And that was very very nice indeed because it was peaceful. We all got away from each other for a while because otherwise you were getting on each other’s nerves. Especially with my aunt falling ill. She could be course in her legs and in her neck and so on. It was just tubercular disease. So we were a little bit in the way then. And so now and again as I say we needed a breather. And Willie had particularly access to that. To that room. And yeah. I, that was, that was very nice and the people downstairs were fantastic, you know. She was a Jewish. And we had yeah happy times there. From there, well, then of course the Liberation that we went to the dam with all these people. Squashed together. There was no other way to call it but squashed together. Yeah.
CB: And how were the people feeling at that time?
TC: What did the people we hired from?
CB: No. The people that went together to Amsterdam. What did they actually feel about what was going on?
TC: They wanted to celebrate. There was liberty you know. And they, they wanted to well share the condemnation for the Germans. And then of course these. I can still them on the rooftop you know. With their guns still. That they didn’t prevent this by getting to them and saying, ‘Hey, give me your gun.’ That they just opened fire on them. Must have been a mad moment in their lives. Of frustration, or what I know, whatever. But it was and then of course as I say Liberation. Freedom. Yeah.
CB: You talked about some families being half Jewish. So, how were they handled during the war?
TC: They kept it quiet. You know. Not — and that was another thing. You see in the beginning they wanted everything up in the open. So the Jews were persuaded to wear a star with the word Jew on it. And they said, ‘If you wear that you’re safe from prosecution.’ That is an indication. Forget me. Isn’t it? Stupid. And people fell for things like that. Anything for easy going, you know. Getting out of awkward situations. And it was —
CB: It was the beginning of the learning curve about the German reaction to Jews.
TC: Yeah. And why would the Germans be so anti-Jewish? Maybe because of business because the Jews were better off than they were. You don’t know what’s behind it all because nobody would open up. But that, that’s the only thing you can do. That is to speculate as it were.
CB: You mentioned earlier about right at the end there were people eating. But there were some Jewish people there. How had they survived all that time?
TC: Just like everybody else.
CB: In hiding.
TC: Yeah. And hungry. Because there was nothing else. All you wanted to do was not to be arrested. Not to be shot. You know. Save your life.
CB: On a lighter note you were cycling without tyres. So —
TC: Oh, my numb bum [laughs] Oh God. At the end sometimes they had a little pillow to sit on but that, Oh God, I can still feel it [laughs]
CB: What did you carry on the bikes? Was it adults and children with shopping or clothes? Or what did you carry on bikes?
TC: Usually it was just to go from A to B. You know, to get somewhere because that was the only transport. There were no trams or buses or anything, trains. So the only way was a bike and if it had tyres you knew that would be confiscated and for the rest you didn’t go anywhere. And if you had to do some shopping I presume you would go walking because you wouldn’t dare. Well, like my mother you know she was laden and then the Germans said, ‘Thanks very much. Now you can go. We’ve got your stuff.’ It is unbelievable isn’t it? That they got away with it. Yeah.
CB: You mentioned school.
TC: Yeah.
CB: So how, how long did school continue?
TC: Oh God. Not very long because then there were days that they didn’t open. There were maybe one or two hours. And in the end, and then of course was the heating. So they had to close the schools. Oh, and that was another thing. You had staff. Suddenly some members of the staff disappeared. Why? Some of the kids disappeared. Why? Because they were hiding. You know they were obviously [pause] and then school was a dangerous place.
CB: So it wasn’t that the authorities had closed down the school.
TC: They did in the end.
CB: They did.
TC: They did in the end. They said, ‘Look. This can’t go on. We haven’t got the amenities. The money.’ And so then the schools closed and that is why the people in America admired me so for having worked the hours available. That I took so much advantage and courage out of them that they thought I needed a treat. And that was my husband.
CB: So you, you went to America to stay with friends.
TC: Yeah.
CB: How long did you stay there?
TC: About nine months.
CB: That’s in Texas.
TC: Yeah. Dallas —
CB: And then you went to Washington. Was it?
TC: Washington and New York. Because that lady amongst that lot living she had a nephew living there. So she went there. So she was there and I could visit her.
CB: What made you return to Holland from America?
TC: Well, because I needed a future for a job and I was not there for a permanent holiday. It was just a holiday and nothing else. And I was very grateful. Especially because they loved me so much for my courage.
CB: Indeed.
TC: Yeah.
CB: So you travelled back by ship.
TC: Yeah. The Nieuw Amsterdam.
CB: Right. And where did that go from and to?
TC: New York to Amsterdam.
CB: And who was on the ship? What? What —
TC: There was a contingent of RAF chaps who had just been to a course and they were dropped in England somewhere. The south.
CB: Which year are we talking about now?
TC: ’59. Thereabouts.
CB: Right.
TC: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
TC: And then I came to England. Got married in Hull in ’61. So that was about high speed I suppose.
CB: What was the significance of Hull?
TC: It was the only place where I could travel to easily from Holland.
CB: To see your boyfriend, then fiancé.
TC: Yeah. He was then in Lincolnshire somewhere. So, and then I taught in Hull and that is where we got married. And oh, I lived on the top floor somewhere in a — downstairs was the doctor’s surgery. And I lived upstairs in, in the room above.
CB: Yes.
TC: And, yeah.
CB: Then when you were married, where? Then when you were married where was your husband stationed?
TC: Driffield.
CB: Right.
TC: Yeah.
CB: And what accommodation did you have there?
TC: Quarters. Yeah. And then eventually, you know we moved and put a deposit on a house and so on. So —
CB: What other places did you get posted? Did he get posted to.
TC: St Athan. Oh God.
CB: You were in Coningsby or a while.
TC: Coningsby. St Athan. Where have I got that little envelope with all the ins and outs?
CB: I’ll just stop for a mo.
TC: Yeah.
[recording paused]
TC: Heathcote Road.
CB: Where? Where’s that?
TC: That is in [pause] oh God.
CB: Where? Where did you buy the house?
TC: The first house we bought. Fortescue Close in ’68. And we left there ’78.
CB: But was that in Lincolnshire?
TC: Yeah. It’s all Lincolnshire.
CB: Oh. It is. Right. And did you get, did he get a posting abroad?
TC: Yeah. Germany of all places. That is where she came from.
CB: What was that like?
TC: To start with a little apprehensive to say the least. But I spoke the language because obviously in Holland you learn French and German and English. So I could communicate. And we lived amongst the Germans and that was actually a very good therapy for realising they were not all bad. That was, that was usually —
CB: What was their reaction to the British? Because we’re talking about the 60s now are we? Or 70s?
TC: Well, as long as they paid. They were after money. It didn’t matter what they did. And they were not particularly so anti-British. Hey. Would you like this?
CB: Yes please. Thank you.
[pause]
CB: And so, when you were in Germany how long were you there and what did you do?
TC: Three years.
CB: Yes.
TC: And I also taught there.
CB: You did.
TC: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: On the school in the station.
TC: Yeah.
CB: Which station? Where were you stationed?
TC: Gütersloh.
CB: Right
TC: Yeah. That was a nice place. Yeah.
CB: And from there —
TC: England. Wales.
CB: Oh, St Athan.
TC: Speak Welsh.
CB: Yeah. That’s really well done, I thought. Yeah. And then your husband retired. What age did he retire from the RAF?
TC: Normal age.
CB: Yeah.
TC: Yeah.
CB: And then what job did he do after that?
TC: Then we got divorced.
CB: Oh.
TC: Yeah.
CB: Right.
TC: In fact, in between I married him twice.
CB: Right.
TC: [laughs] I’m an idiot. My sense of humour is wicked.
CB: It is but it’s good. Entertaining and generally admirable.
TC: Yeah. But it didn’t work.
CB: No.
TC: No. So —
CB: But you kept on teaching.
TC: Yeah. Right until ’94.
CB: So when you were divorced you were at Coningsby, were you? And then you —
TC: Yeah.
CB: Did you carry on teaching there?
TC: Yes. I have got here. That is the headmaster who said the school has rules.
CB: Oh yes.
TC: And I said, ‘Yes Nigel. I believe you.’
CB: But?
TC: I had my own way [laughs] But when you hear. When you read this I’m in seventh heaven. They couldn’t have praised me higher than this. This is the [pause] he says —
CB: This is the headmaster’s report.
TC: Yeah. I was a headmistress as well for a while [pause] Oh here. “I want you to picture a scene. A dark cold stormy night. The fierce wind was lashing the waves over the top of the dyke. The sails on the windmill were rushing around at a tremendous speed. Suddenly a piercing cry was heard and all went quiet. In England, across the water explosions and bright lights shot into the night to celebrate. Thea Coleman had been born [laughs] Ever since, in England fireworks have been lit off to celebrate her birthday on November the 5th. Little is known about Thea before she went to school but we do know she had a happy childhood.” Can’t have better than that can you? Yeah. So it goes on and on. And even the kids now they are still talking to me. They still phone me.
CB: Is that right?
TC: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Even after all these years.
TC: Yeah.
CB: Where did you become your own headteacher?
TC: Just before he left. Before he came. I was replaced by him. And then in between I had [pause] it was only in here we were standing as it were.
CB: Yeah.
TC: And then there was this one. There’s Jim. Now, he took it from a different point. First, I thought I should begin in true Coleman’s style by side tracking because that’s what I like to do. A friend of mine is a jeweller. When buying an old item, discussing gem stones with him he explained the reason for cutting stones in the ways that they do. One reason is to make a stone catch the light and sparkle. Another reason, rather more subtle is to reflect light into the stone. Anyway, so he compares my person with a gemstone.
CB: Right.
TC: And then he sees me as a friend. And then as a teacher. And then as a colleague. Which is rather nice way of describing me.
CB: Yeah.
TC: And then —
CB: And this is your school report as a teacher.
TC: Yeah. As a pupil.
CB: Appreciation.
TC: Yeah. Which is, which I appreciate.
CB: Where was your last teaching post?
TC: Gee whizz. That was in [pause] Hell’s bells, that was here [pause] Because this one was written of my retirement. Where the hell was it? See, now that’s sometimes my memory goes a bit. How come [pause] gee whizz.
CB: I’ll stop just for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So your last post in teaching was at Coningsby.
TC: Yeah.
CB: And you retired at what age?
TC: ’94. ’33. What was it? Work it out.
CB: Yeah. Quite a few years. Sixty.
TC: Sixty.
CB: One.
TC: Sixty one.
CB: Yeah.
TC: That’s just about right.
CB: Yeah.
TC: Yeah.
CB: That’s very good. And you’ve got a couple of anecdotes there have you?
TC: Well, this is just a postscript out of my book.
CB: Yes.
TC: You know, afterwards you think like one memory that has been suppressed all this time is now ready to be put into words and to add to my story. On one of my many walks in Amsterdam with my father all pedestrians were stopped by soldiers. We were near a, near a prison. In retaliation of an assassinated German five young men came out and were lined up and executed and we had to watch. A vicar who looked at it from his window and praying for them was killed by a stray bullet. So that is one of the [pause] And then there is another one. I should have elaborated on a train journey to Hellouw, that’s where my grandfather lived, with my father. Fancy my fear when he told me, ‘Look, when soldiers enter the train and if I get arrested pretend you don’t know me. But make sure you take that suitcase with you.’ So those were, you know you were only little. Nine. Whatever. And then there is Fritz. I’ve told you about Fritz. The four year old taken by the Gestapo from my grandfather’s house. Devastated. The parents were so grateful for their safety for the other two boys and so that they planted a tree for my family in Jerusalem near the Holocaust Museum. And when I mentioned the crowd on the Dam with the Germans opening fire. Twenty nine people were killed. One soldier was asked, ‘Why did you do it?’ His answer was, ‘Why didn’t you cheer like this when we arrived?’ And then the house we were allocated that had been confiscated by the Germans from a Jewish family had been used as a prison. That’s the first house we came back to after the war. And when we lived in it a man came to the door to ask if his shoes were still there. He had escaped out of the window with the help of a sheet. There’s are just a couple of thoughts that I thought needed remembering.
CB: Yes. Thea —
TC: Especially with my memory going.
CB: Thea Coleman, thank you for a fascinating conversation.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Thea Coleman
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-14
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:47:23 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AColemanRE170914
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Netherlands
Netherlands--Amsterdam
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1940
1942
1944
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Thea Coleman was born in 1933 in Holland. She experienced the invasion of her country and the increasing restrictions. When walking once with her father they were forced to stand and wait while prisoners were brought out of prison and executed while they were forced to watch. Thea’s family were involved with the Resistance and she was forced to go into hiding with various people until she finally went to live in a Children’s Home. The RAF bombed the Registry in the town and so her father and others were able to change their identities and obtain new documents. The family hid Jewish people. One Jewish woman who was hidden by the family told them she had hidden the Menorah in her garden and to please dig it up if she did not return. She did not return and Thea still has this in her possession as a reminder of horrors of that time. Thea was so hungry that she ate the food from the dog’s bowl in the Children’s Home where she was living. Operation Manna saved her life because she was severely malnourished. When the people thought that Liberation had arrived they gathered at the Dam Square in Amsterdam. German soldiers were hiding on the rooftops and opened fire on the crowd killing and injuring a large number of civilians.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
anti-Semitism
childhood in wartime
faith
fear
heirloom
Holocaust
home front
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Resistance
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/765/10766/PDakinF1701.2.jpg
da150b71850375ee4ba3691ca719be94
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/765/10766/ADakinF170918.2.mp3
308c81c30f60ff9f605a4bb4dd4d242e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Dakin, Freda
F Dakin
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Freda Dakin nee Palin (b. 1926). She lived in Manchester during the war and was evacuated.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-18
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Dakin, F
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CH: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Cathie Hewitt. The interviewee is Freda Dakin. Also present is Rosita [Meladay]. We are at Mrs Dakin’s home at [Buzz] Washingborough and the date is the 18th of September 2017. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed, Freda.
FD: You’re welcome.
CH: You could start by telling me something about your childhood, where you were about and about your parent’s please.
FD: Well, as you know my name’s Freda Dakin nee Freda Palin. P A L I N. I was one of five girls. I was the fourth of the family. Unfortunately, I’ve lost all my sisters. My Edna was the first one to go. She was only fifty four but she died. And then there was, Francis was my eldest and then Helen who was just twenty months older than me and then she died and I lost my baby sister last Christmas. So, I’m the only one remaining. I was born in Salford which was next door to Manchester and my father was a milkman and in those days they had a milk cart. They didn’t have any cover and he used to go out in all sorts of weather. It was hail, rain or snow. And he was a wonderful father. He wasn’t, how can I explain it? He wasn’t a [pause] he didn’t have the teaching he should have had. He could have been a clever man I think. But he was, as I say always out in all sorts of weather and he always kept a roof over our heads. We always had a good table, a good fire but he was a little bit strict and he never swore. Never swore. But he was strict. And I can remember when we used to be going out and he used to say, ‘You come back to this house, lady, as you went out.’ And I said to my eldest sister, ‘What does he mean?’ She said, ‘You come back a virgin.’ [laughs] And yes, he was very strict you know. We had, and we had to be in at 11 o’clock at night. No matter if we were in our teens, even if we were courting, ‘No lady would be out at this time of the night. No decent lady.’ But as I say he was a good man and I had a good mother. My mother was Irish. She was from Belfast and, but as I say I’ve we had our arguments as sisters usually do. I was evacuated to Accrington, Accrington Stanley and the couple there had no children. They wanted to adopt me and my mother said no. ‘No, I don’t care how many children I’ve got you’re not having her.’ I don’t know why because I was the mug of the family. But yes, I had a good childhood really. Mum and dad were pretty strict but when I think about it it was good. It was a good thing. In those days it was, you know. And as I say then, well during the war when the war started as I say I was evacuated just before the war started. I was evacuated in August and then the war started on September the 3rd as you know. I was evacuated with a friend of mine, Evelyn and I remember it was a Sunday, September the 3rd and Margaret and Norman that had taken us in and said, ‘Now, be very quiet. This is Chamberlain coming on the radio.’ We sat there you see. ‘Now, war has been declared.’ And Evelyn and I looked at each other and Margaret said, ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘That means we can’t keep you, dear.’ So, we said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘I’m having a baby.’ Well, in those days when you were eleven year or twelve year old and you used to, we were grinning and nudging each other. ‘She’s having a baby. What’s that?’ So that’s when they found us this couple around the corner at Hyndburn Road, Accrington. Auntie Annie and Uncle Jack. They had no children. So I went to them and Evelyn went next door to the Barnes family and I had a wonderful life. As I say they wanted to adopt me. And I wouldn’t have minded really because I would have had everything [laughs] and then I just went back after the Christmas. My mum wanted me back. She said, ‘I can’t do without her.’ And as I said I went to Grecian Street School and there was quite a lot of Jewish girls there and quite a few from Austria. But they wouldn’t talk and they’ve been smuggled out you know just before the war. They knew it was coming. They were very nice. I’ve got photographs of them. They were very nice people as I say. And then I just started work. Well, you did start work at fourteen in those days. And then of course when the air raid came the site, the bombs were dropping before the sirens came because we said, ‘Oh my God what’s that?’ And then the sirens. So, how they got through the network I do not know. It was horrendous. Mum, ‘Freda, upstairs. Get the blankets and the cushions.’ And I got to the top of the stairs, coming down with the blankets and the cushions fortunately it saved me because a bomb dropped quite near us and it threw me down the stairs and with the blankets and that it saved me. And my dad too. We had what was called an Anderson shelter. They had the Anderson shelter which everybody thought was wonderful because you had a back garden you could do that. There was the Morrison shelter. Now, those were, if you had a back yard or a big dining room they put it in the dining room and you used it as a table and then at night you got under it. That was the Morrison one. And then there was those that had little houses. We had some little houses. They were two up two down and there was no room for either a Morrison shelter or an Anderson shelter so they built a little shelter at the bottom of each street. There might only be a good, a little dozen houses in this streets and then when the sirens went the neighbours all came out and went in these shelters. And of course then with the all clear they all went home. And there was one time and it was near St Andrew’s School and the all clear went and they all come out. They were just coming out and a bomb hit it and it was a flying bomb. They had the Doodlebugs but these were a flying bomb what they did, on parachutes and the planes went out so the all clear went. But these bombs were still dropping and it hit this shelter. They were all killed. It was very sad. Well, as I say we were lucky. We had this shelter and the Blitz as I say it threw me down the stairs which I’m lucky. I’m still lucky. I don’t know why I’ve reached ninety because I was the oddball from the family. I’ve told you before haven’t I? And my dad, bless him he’d made a bucket as a helmet [laughs] and he used to take us down to this shelter one at a time with a piece of metal over our heads from the kitchen down to the bottom of the garden. Make sure we were in the shelter. And then one at a time we went down and he, bless him and of course we all had to sit there and wait. Well, one of my sisters Edna, bless her she’d been to a friends for tea as they called it and of course she was coming home on the bus and the driver got out. Well, we were right near the race course, Manchester Race Course and he stopped there and he said, ‘Right. Not going any further. Can’t go any further. Everybody out. We’re going to the shelter.’ And Edna said, ‘Well, I’m not. I’m going home.’ And he tried to grab her. He said, ‘You’re not in this.’ And she ran for about a mile and of course the back entry and we were all sat there and my mum said, ‘Listen.’ And it was Edna shouting, ‘Dad. Dad.’ And she said, ‘That’s Edna.’ And he got the back gate open and managed to get her in and she collapsed and we thought she’d died. My mum, she said, ‘She’s gone, Jim.’ It’s very sad. She [unclear] she said, ‘Oh, thank God. She’s breathing.’ And she, she ran all the way. She said, the wardens kept saying, trying to grab her. The air raid wardens. Anyway, fortunately she lived. And the next day oh it was horrendous. And my mum I don’t know why but in those days well you couldn’t get toys the same you see and she had a doll and it was broken and she sent it to the Doll’s Hospital in Manchester Piccadilly. And she said, ‘If you want that doll for Christmas you’d better go.’ It was the next day after the air raid [laughs] and we went into Manchester, that was my younger sister and I went. And I can see it now. The rubble in Piccadilly. And it was red more Stretford way and I thought Mr and Mrs Bibby said, ‘Why has your mother sent you out in this?’ Everybody had come for a look and it was still glowing in the, in the distance, and the smoke and the rubble. We were picking our way out and [laughs] the Doll’s Hospital was closed. I couldn’t get it [laughs] I went home but as I say there was a lot worse off than us. A lot worse off. Of course, we had a cellar as well so that we were lucky that way. But me I’m a happy go lucky person really because I used to be out when the sirens were going and my dad used to say to me, ‘I’m going in.’ We called it the Monkey Run. It was the main street. The main road. And we were after the boys you see. And we said, ‘Nah. There’s nothing dropping yet. When they start to drop then we’ll go home.’ But as I say I can see that now I was nearly down the stairs. I remember it. The cushions and falling down the stairs. In a way we can laugh at it now but it was horrendous. But there again hearing the bombs dropping before the sirens were going because we didn’t know what hit us. We never got a window broken. Yeah. And the bombs were dropping right near us and not one of our windows in the house had broken. And I remember once [laughs] the sirens went. There again, we make, ‘Have you got this?’ or ‘Have you got that?’ You know. Of course, when you imagine five girls and a man and woman, you know, yes we’ve got this, got that. My dad taking us down one at a time and we got on the shelter. We said, ‘Oh, it’s quiet.’ My dad opened what little bit of a door we had. No. No. And then he heard the air raid wardens walking down the back yard and he said, me dad shouts, ‘Anything doing yet, mate?’ They says, ‘Where are you?’ He says, ‘We’re in the air raid shelter.’ He said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘The all clear went soon after.’ He said. It was over [laughs] We were there two hours. And another time we had this little case with all the policies and what have you and my sister came and her boyfriend was at the side of her and she says, ‘What are you doing down there, Jim?’ He said, ‘Well, what are you doing down there?’ She was sat on the case. So we had some good laughs, you know. And so there again my dad used to say, ‘I’ll go and get a drink.’ We’d say, ‘Well, be careful out there.’ A piece of metal over his head going up the back yard. The back garden. But as I say I can laugh at some things but when we realise how serious it was and I can still feel going down those stairs. I really can. But as I say I’m still here to tell the tale and I’m a lot luckier than a lot of people. A lot luckier. As I say now I’m the only one out of my sisters that’s living and I can tell a tale can’t I, Zita?
RM: Oh, you can tell a tale. Yeah.
FD: But as I say it’s different these days. I suppose nowadays they would just put one bomb on and everybody would go. It’s so different because as I say we could have our laughs and what, you know but there again, ‘You pinched my cushion.’ [laughs] Can you imagine? My dad with six girls. But he was so good with us. I can see him now. ‘Next one.’ [laughs] Going down the back garden, as I say. We were lucky being a family of seven that with our rations we could get a joint of meat at the weekends. You see if you were on your own you’d only get a chop. But if you had all these coupons you could get a roast. So, in a way being a big family helped. That you could get bigger rations and you could share out more. But as I say I remember Gladys, bless her and she was on her own and she said, ‘Oh, I am annoyed.’ We said, ‘Why? What’s the matter?’ Just been in to the Co-op and it was my ration day, she said, ‘For my piece of cheese and she weighed it on the, on the scales and she cut some off.’ She cut, it would be about a quarter of a pound or something, ‘And what she cut off she put in her mouth and eat it and —’ she said, ‘I could have made a sandwich of that.’ [laughs] I said, ‘Oh Gladys, what a shame.’ So it you know we had laughter but can you imagine anybody doing that? I mean if it had been me I’d have said, ‘Oh, go on love. It’s a bit over but it’s for you.’ But she said, I can see it now so as I say being a bigger family we were better off. We could get bigger pieces of this and bigger [pause] and my dad being a milkman he served a lot of Jews in Manchester. The big warehouses. And they used to help him out. And as I say and he used to go to this shop himself, ‘A bit extra for you today Jimmy.’ And he’d say, ‘Thanks very much.’ And as I say we did very well for rations. We never went without a good meal. I felt sorry for those that were on their own, bless them. You know, because they got no extra and as I say I’m a very lucky lady and I thank God that he was there for me and all those who went before me. But I don’t whether I could live through it now. I doubt it. But there again at my age who wants me? [laughs] I’ve got, I’m lucky that I’ve got very good friends and helpers. As I’ve said, I’ve told you before I’m a really lucky lady. I really am. And what health I’ve got for my age I do alright. It’s some memories I can laugh at because my friend and I go down the Monkey Run for the lads even though the bombs were dropping. I’d say, ‘We’d better go in now, hadn’t we?’ And I remember the sirens went and I said to my friend , Grace, ‘Are we going home?’ So, she said, ‘Is there any — ’ ‘No. They’ve not dropped them yet.’ So I went home and my mum as soon as she heard the sirens she was out first down the back garden and I thought, oh, I’ve not heard anything. And we used to have a little Kelly lamp in the kitchen. My dad went out to get some coal and he left the door open a bit and I’m like this with my coat shielding it. He said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘You never know, that could be, that could be a German up there going over.’ ‘Oh, don’t be silly. The sirens would have gone.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘They went half an hour ago.’ I was on the Monkey Run you see. My mother [unclear] ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ I said, ‘Well, I thought you’d all hear it.’ They were chattering that much that they didn’t hear the sirens. But they didn’t worry me. If I have to go I have to go which that was my attitude and I’m still here to tell the tale aren’t I? And I thank you very much for you coming.
CH: How old were you when the war started?
FD: Sorry?
CH: How old were you when the war started?
FD: I’ve got to think. Twelve.
CH: So you were still at school.
FD: Oh yes.
CH: So what would have been a typical day for you during the war?
FD: What would be what love?
CH: A typical day for you as a school child in the war. When you got up in the morning and go to school.
FD: Yes. Well, when I was evacuated their school they used to go in the mornings and our school would go in the afternoons. And the week after we’d go in the mornings and they’d go in the afternoons. And those, and then when we were at school we would either go to the museum. The teacher would take us to a museum and I remember —
[doorbell — recording paused]
CH: Ok. Freda, we’ll restart again.
FD: Right love. Well, as I say we used to go either to museum or churches and they went to the police station once and I always remember it was a Wednesday. And so I can always say I’ve been locked up because I was in a, I went in a, which the cells were different in those days and he said that’s where, so if we have to sleep in there we had to sleep in there and he locked the door. So, I can honestly say I’ve been locked up [laughs] And then I remember this sergeant and we used to have the gas masks and they were in cardboard boxes and we used to put a piece of string and carry it around your shoulder or you could buy cases for them. Leather cases or cotton cases. Make them posh. And there was this, he said, ‘Now then, something new’s come out. It’s a special powder to take finger prints.’ So, I always remember that’s when this powder came out. It was 1939. No. Yes, it was. 1939. And he said, ‘You see this?’ And it was a plain piece of cardboard and he put this stuff on and you could, you leant in to it. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘That’s your fingerprints.’ So, I said, ‘So if I pinch that you’d find me out?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ ‘And if I could pinch this?’ And it was a gas mask case but it was like in a crocodile skin. He said, ‘No. We can’t do that yet, love.’ He says, ‘It’s only got to be plain stuff where your fingerprints are. But — ’ he said, ‘We’re working on it.’ So, I know 1939 that’s when that powder came out for fingerprints. And it’s little things like that I remember. And as I say, I was in the church choir for Christmas as an angel [laughs] Nearest thing I’ll ever get to it I think, Zita.
RM: Yeah. I think it is.
FD: But Auntie Annie and Uncle Jack were fantastic with me. As I say they wanted to adopt me because they had no children and then Auntie Annie died and then Uncle Jack died and he left me a little bit of money in his will. So I bought, with part of it I bought a ring and when I look at it I think of them and I’ve got a little photograph of them. And they treated me, oh it was fantastic. Of course, being in, during, before the war we all used cups and saucers, you know. But when I went to Auntie Annie and Uncle Jack’s it was a mug. And the first time she gave me a mug I said, ‘Where’s the saucer?’ [laughs] She said, ‘You don’t have saucers. Only on a Sunday.’ So, yeah she was, oh they did, they treated me rotten and on Friday we used to go to the market. ‘What do you fancy for your tea, lass?’ It was always lass, you see and so she said, ‘Do you like this?’ ‘Do you like that?’ I said, ‘Oh, I like those prawns.’ And she used to make her own ham, her own balm cakes. Warm balm cakes and they was for prawns for me. Oh, it was lovely as I say. And an outdoor toilet. No. No. As I say with a piece of wood with a hole in it and oh God I used to [pause] and I dropped the torch down it once. I said, ‘Uncle Jack. I’ve dropped the torch down.’ [laughs] ‘Eeh lass. What are we going to do with you?’ And Auntie Annie taught me how to darn properly because we used to have to wear long black stockings for the school, you see. Your uniform. And I had a hole and I didn’t bother. I just more or less [laughs]. I was getting my coat on and he said, ‘Ay lass, you’ve got a lump on your leg. What is it? Hey, Annie come and have a look at this. The lass has got a lump on her leg.’ And I said, ‘It’s not. It’s my darn.’ He said, ‘Your what?’ I said, ‘I darned it.’ He said, ‘Oh Annie, show her how to darn.’ And from there I used to weave. She taught me how to weave. Yeah. So, as I say I fell in lucky in a way. Because the couple we had at first, they put us in these houses, because she was having this baby you see. But [unclear] having a baby. I never found out what she had anyway. And he, Norman worked for her father and he was a chauffeur and so on Sundays he could take us out and we used to go out for a drive. Before we found that she had a baby.
RM: So, were you not frightened, Freda?
FD: Sorry?
RM: Were you not frightened?
FD: Me? No.
RM: At that age?
FD: No.
RM: When you were going to school and things.
FD: Nothing would frighten me now, Zita
RM: I know you don’t get frightened about many things but that as a child you weren’t.
FD: No. No.
RM: You and your friends
FD: No. No. It never frightened me. Because as I say you used to walk on the Monkey Run and they’d say, ‘The sirens have gone.’ ‘Oh well, if they drop a bomb we’ll go in.’
RM: And they say children don’t feel fear don’t they as much?
FD: Well, no. I never felt it, you know. Most likely would have done had I, if I’d been out in the Blitz.
RM: Yeah.
FD: But I wasn’t. I was inside you see. But as I say the bombs were dropping before the air raid sirens had finished.
RM: But you saw a lot of the damage that had been done.
FD: Oh yes.
RM: So did that not frighten you?
FD: No.
RM: Once you realised what these bombs could do?
FD: No.
RM: No.
FD: No. No, I’m just in, I don’t know. If I went tomorrow it’s God’s will. I go to church, you see. But no. I think what has to be has to be and like I had four sisters. Edna, bless her the one that we thought she’d, she was only fifty four when she died and a bigger Christian you couldn’t wish to meet. But somebody said, ‘Well, God’s taken her to spend her spirit down to somebody else.’ No, it doesn’t. No. When I saw all the smoke and the redness and I thought it was a shock in a way.
RM: More of a shock than anything.
FD: Yes. It’s horrible. I mean you could, as I say it was still smouldering.
RM: Yeah.
FD: When I was walking in the Deansgate, in Piccadilly. And of course I was being more nosy than anything.
RM: Curiosity more than anything.
FD: It was. I was thinking what had happened. It wasn’t as though I was thinking oh that’s [unclear] You see, you know me. Take it or leave it. But no I can see it now and Mr and Mrs Bibby and I can, and as I say stood in Piccadilly and I thought oh God and the fires are still burning. So it was horrendous really because it was not just a couple of bombs. It was bomb after bomb after bomb. And what it was, where we lived we lived by the River Irwell and it was the Broughton Foundry. It was where they made the ammunitions and my sister worked there. Edna. Instead of going in the Forces she was called up, see. Francis had a baby. So I think they were after that. Broughton Copper Works it was called and that’s where the munitions, some of the munitions were being made. Ammunitions. And the river, they used to always go for a river because that’s where they knew where they were making them and that’s where they were trying to drop them. They were getting them in Manchester itself you see. And the night before the Blitz Bernard my husband where he worked had the Christmas dinner at Victoria Hotel on the corner and that went completely. Fortunately, it was the night before. Had they been there because it started at 6 o’clock at night they would have been all killed.
CH: It was just before Christmas.
FD: Yes.
CH: Yeah.
FD: Yes. It was just before Christmas. And by the way I’ve got a book. I don’t know if you’d like it or not it’s on the Blitz.
CH: We’ll just pause for a moment there.
[recording paused]
CH: Ok. Thank you, Freda.
FD: I was happy go lucky. Nothing worried me. And my mum said, ‘You can’t go out in this. What if the sirens go?’ I said, ‘Well, if they go they go don’t they?’ You see, and she, ‘Don’t be so cheeky.’ Oh, I could give cheek like that you see. And I said, ‘Alright. I’ll come in when the sirens go.’ But then of course I tell lies. I’d say, ‘Well, I didn’t hear them go.’ And Grace my friend she was the same. She said, ‘What are we going home for?’ She says. ‘To sit with them?’ You see. No. I was such a, it wasn’t, nothing worries me now because what has to be has to be and I thought, I said, ‘Well, if we get some we’ll go in if the bomb drops.’ And that’s us you see. We went out every night and occasionally there was a couple of lads worked and they were supposed to be looking after their so called Works and they’d say, ‘Go on. We’ve got a shelter.’ But nothing bad happened believe you me. We used to just go. We used to have a laugh and a joke but in those days there was nothing like that with sex or anything. And then we used to say, mum would say, ‘Where have you been sheltering?’ I’d say, ‘Well, we went in the shop doorway.’ And as I say we told lies. But we didn’t, we were in this shelter with the lads. But do you blame me? I mean to me I might have only had a couple of days left. I thought I might as well have a bit of fun while life lasts.
RM: Was there no cinemas or anywhere to go for a drink or —
FD: Oh, yes.
RM: Anything like that Freda?
FD: You could have. There were cinemas going but in those days you see they closed at a certain time. There was no evening. Nothing like today.
RM: No evening matinees or anything.
FD: Oh ,yeah. Yeah. But I mean money was tight as well.
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: I mean, I know it was only a couple of pence to go in or fourpence, the old fourpence but if you’ve spends when I was working. When I started work I think my wages was eight shillings or nine shillings a week and my mam, and then my mother gave me my tram fare out of it and my spends was a shilling. Five pence a week. And that I had to, well my mum kept, as you called kept me. She looked after you until you were twenty one and when I was twenty one I gave her just so much for keeping me so the rest was mine. So I used to get about a shilling. Two and six. Twelve and a half pence. And that was my spends for a week. And I had to buy different things with all make up and stuff but she kept me in dresses and clothes.
CH: How old were you when you started work?
FD: Fourteen.
CH: Could you tell me something about that?
FD: About work? Well, I worked for a place called John Noble’s which was one of these clubs. You know, the what do you call them. Like —
RM: Like a catalogue type.
FD: Catalogue. And it was horrendous. I used to, I was just the one who had to go to each department with the orders and it used to be every half hour I was up and down the stairs and the flights of stairs. They wanted one department then I’d come back. They’d say, ‘Here’s another one.’ And I’d go up and down the stairs. It was about eight shillings a week I got. Mum paid for my bus fare err tram fares. A shilling a week. Five pence a week was my spends. So then when I finished there I didn’t like that because it was two tram cars. And I went to work at Abel Heywood’s, and I got I think it was a bit more. I got about ten shillings a week on that and I stayed there for about four or five years. I disobeyed the rules because you weren’t supposed to go on holidays without permission and one girl was going off on holidays with her parents so I thought well if she can go so can I. So I took a week off work and got the sack.
RM: So did the, did the war not affect your job, Freda? Did you have to come home during the day or —
FD: No. No. Oh no. I had to go work.
RM: The trams never stopped or anything like that.
FD: No. But so you —
RM: You could always get to work.
FD: Well, we were so close to Manchester we could walk in to —
RM: You were walking distance.
FD: Yes. But, no and then of course I got the sack from that. And then I got to work with the electrical place. It was quite nice but I didn’t like that. But I worked at Abel Heywood’s for quite a while which I liked. It was newspapers and stuff. I liked that very much and I had nice friends there but as I say there was Hilda. Hilda [Beavis] she, she was a thief and a liar because I left. They gave me, they used to come around, it was an old fashioned firm. They used to come around with your wages in a little tin on a tray and you’d say, ‘That’s mine.’ Freda Palin you see. Take your spends out. Your wages out. Look at it. ‘That’s right.’ Put your tin back again. They didn’t give you a wage packet. And I remember leaving, it was three pounds something in the, in my drawer because I used to be a typist, and I got home. Mum said, ‘Where’s my — ’, ‘Oh, I’ve left it at work.’ So my friend and I were going out. The dance clubs were still open, you know. If the sirens went you had to go.
RM: You met quite a few Forces men though didn’t you at the dances? You told me.
FD: You what, darling?
RM: You met quite a few of the Forces men at the dances you told me.
FD: Oh, I did. Yes. I met Ron. Yes. We used to go to the YWCA. It was, there was the YMCA men only. YWCA ladies only. But when the war was on you could go in either. Both of them. And of course we volunteered to help on the counters to serve tea and that so I met quite a lot of Forces. Ron Crawford, Crawford Biscuits, he was one of the heirs for that. Yes. My dad when we used to go out we had to clean. I had to clean the floor before I went out. We’d take it in turns and my dad said, ‘Don’t forget the corners,’ because we had no fitted carpets in those days. And I said, ‘I’ve got a date at 8 o’clock.’ He said, ‘If he thinks anything of you he’ll wait for you won’t he?’ And of course when I got there the girls would say, ‘Ron’s getting upset,’ they said. And I’d say, ‘My dad made me clean the floor.’ And they says, ‘Oh, he was worried over you.’ I said, anyway he went. I wrote to him for a while and that was it. The one I really loved was, he was called Robert. Oh, he was lovely. Robert [Souter] Swinton. So, I met quite a few men there and I used to wait on the counter and serve. So, in a way I had a happy life.
RM: Is it like they show on the television then Freda? In the films that you see with the Forces people and and you ladies all dancing and having a good time?
FD: Oh yeah.
RM: It was just very much like that.
FD: Yes. Yeah. And I went out with an American as well. Oh, my friend Grace she was a daredevil really. Like me. And two Americans came up to us and they said, ‘Will you come? Would you like to join us? We’re going up for a meal.’ So, we said, ‘No, thank you.’ So they said, ‘We’re harmless. Honestly.’ They said, ‘We booked this café for the Americans.’ He said, ‘We provided the food but we can’t go in unless we have a lady friend with us.’ And it was next to the Odeon Theatre. I can see it now. And we looked and said ok. And they said, ‘You’ll definitely be safe with us.’ So we went in and of course in those days they had ham and everything you could imagine. A piece of ham and tinned fruit. Oh, it was fantastic. We were looking at these cakes and they did because I remember getting to the door and they said such a squadron or something. So, she said, ‘Have you got partners?’ And they said, ‘Yes,’ and we had to show our faces. They said, ‘Well, you can come in.’ So we had, oh it was fantastic. When I got home, when I was telling my mum so I said , ‘And they had peaches.’ She said, ‘Where had they get those from?’ I said, ‘They’re out of a tin. What do you think?’ She said, ‘Don’t be so cheeky.’ Yeah, so I, oh I’ve met all sorts and everybody. To me I had a wonderful time. I wasn’t frightened. I enjoyed. Grace, my friend though she used to go a bit too far and I said, ‘No. No. That’s, that’s too much for me.’ She was too much of a daredevil really but and of course my dad. I don’t know whether I said to you, ‘You go out of this house the same way as you come in. A virgin.’ Oh, I daren’t. I daren’t. But yes. I I think about it my first work as I say John Nobles. I think they’ve gone now though. Two tram cars. Then Abel Heywood’s which I liked very much. And then there was this electrical place. And then I went to [unclear] which I liked that very much. It was one of these big typings, typings out and they had these whacking big machines. But I was there for about nine years. No. It wasn’t to be nine years. No. I was there the longest anyway because I got married from there and then I had Robert. But in those days they wouldn’t take you back after you’d had a baby. It’s not like now they’ll keep your job open for so long you see but I didn’t mind. I had my son. And, and then we lived with my mum and dad for a couple of years. Then we got a rented house. When, I think about it an old man had it, this house and he used to live and eat and sleep in one room and my sister when she was looking at it, she said, ‘Fancy having a black ceiling.’ I said, ‘That’s soot.’ [laughs] The gas man [unclear] out to here when he walked in. We spent about three hundred pound doing it up and she said, ‘You stupid fool.’ I said, ‘Why?’ It’s around the corner room from my mum’s.’ Rented. She said, ‘Yes, but you could have put that down as a deposit for a brand new house.’ Which you could have done in those days because I mean the house I bought in Stockport wasn’t quite two thousand. And I mean, that would have helped us through but I never bothered but, and then had my son there and then we moved to Stockport.
CH: If I could just go back to the war. What were you doing for celebrations on VE day?
FD: Not a lot really. No. Was it Francis had the television? No. No. I didn’t do a lot really. You went in to Manchester but they were all kissing and cuddling. I couldn’t be doing with that. No. No. I didn’t. I can’t remember much about that. It was just a quiet day for me.
RM: It sounds like a daft questions Freda but what happened to all the gas masks? Did you have to hand them all in? All the gas masks.
FD: I think we did. I think we did. Yeah.
RM: You had to hand them all in.
FD: We all had a special box for them.
RM: And the you see it on the television. With all these boxes and everybody had to carry them everywhere.
FD: Oh, they did.
RM: And all this but and such like as these programmes on the telly. The Antiques Roadshow and such like and they all get you know this is a gas mask from so and so but what happened to all the stuff? They couldn’t hand it all in.
FD: Must have done. Must have done because we didn’t have any left. We didn’t have.
RM: And you carried it to work and everywhere.
FD: Oh yeah. You had to carry them to work. Oh yeah. They were in a cardboard box with a piece of string on.
RM: Yeah. I’ve seen them but, yeah.
FD: And then you could buy these lovely covers.
RM: Did you ever have to use yours?
FD: No.
RM: No.
FD: No.
RM: No.
FD: No. Never had to use it [unclear] but there again by the time you got them out of the box and that you could have been gassed.
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
FD: If they’d have dropped the gas bombs.
RM: Yeah.
FD: But I don’t, I can’t remember any, anything where they were dropped. I don’t think they dropped —
RM: No.
FD: Much in England.
RM: Well, they show you sometimes where people have them on. You see it. But I just wondered if you’d ever had to use it.
FD: I don’t think they wanted to kill. It was more the munitions they were going after because of this Broughton Copper Works that were making them and as I say it was nearly all the rivers they were going for. They knew there was factories down by the river. And there was other places as well you see. So we were right near the River Irwell and as I say they could have[pause] and that’s where we, the windows did rattle. I’m not saying that. But why we never got one window broken. Some did. But I don’t know what it was but it was and we used to just sit there. And my dad, one at a time down in the [pause] Edna, how she got through it I don’t know at all because she worked at the Broughton Copper Works as well. You see with Francis with being married because they didn’t take them into the Forces or anything then because I said, of course in a way I was dying to be eighteen to go in the forces. I said, ‘Oh, I’m going in the forces when I’m, when I’m eighteen,’ I said, ‘I’ll go in the Air Force.’ My cousin said, ‘No. You’re not.’ I said, ‘Why not?’ He said, ‘You know if you go in the Forces you’re there just for the officer’s ground sheet.’ I says, ‘No.’ He says, ‘You are,’ he says, ‘You’re there for the officer’s ground sheet, you youngsters.’ That’s what he said. So I never went but then again it was over and done with by the time I was —
RM: My [unclear] never said that.
FD: Oh, well maybe she was [laughs] My friend. She was in the Forces.
RM: She was Scottish. She was in the WAAF wasn’t she?
FD: And she was in the WAAF and she met, that’s where she met Jack. Her husband and of course I said to her once. She said, ‘No.’ But there again there were a lot going in. I don’t know. So, my mum said, ‘She’s not going in. She’s not going in.’ But I wanted to go in actually. I think I’d have enjoyed it better. I don’t know. But then I became very plump. I was thirteen stone at one time wasn’t I? You saw my plump. No, but I’ve lost a lot of weight. But anyway I can’t say it was horrible because I enjoyed it with my friend, you know. As I say, on the Monkey Run we used to have fun.
RM: I suppose your age. I suppose you found it exciting in a way.
FD: Well, I did because my parents were a little bit strict you see. And as I say my dad and mum were strict and to be out on my own and I felt, oh they won’t come out looking for me. Not in this. So, I was obviously a dare devil. And my friend especially, she was, oh and it was during the war they had the tram cars running and we’d been in the YWCA and we’d met, well this one met my friend she said, ‘I’m going to the railway station with him.’ They were, they were based at Heaton Park all the RAF men, and they all had little white flashes on their caps. You knew they were aircrew. So, she said, ‘I’m going. His train’s at ten to eleven.’ She said, ‘Wait on the bridge for me,’ she said, ‘I’ll make sure he’s on that train.’ And our tram car was at 11 o’clock. I’m stood there and this man sidles up to me. ‘How about it, darling?’ So, I said, ‘Clear off.’ And he’s sidling up and he says, ‘Go on, darling. It won’t take long.’ And I didn’t know, as true as I’m sat here I didn’t know what he was meaning. And he says, ‘I’ll pay you more tonight then your boss does in a week.’ And I thought what the hell does he mean? What can I do? I hadn’t the foggiest idea and he kept on and when my friend came you see the tram came. I said, ‘Don’t leave me on my one again,’ I said, he was this [pause] ‘Surely you know what he wanted don’t you?’ I said, ‘No. What did he want?’ And she told me. I went berserk. ‘Don’t leave me again.’ He must have thought I was a prostitute [laughs] I got the shock of my life when I found out what he wanted.
RM: Was he an Air Force man? Was he in —
FD: No. He was just an ordinary civvy.
RM: Oh, he weren’t a Forces man.
FD: You see Grace had gone to see her friend, her boyfriend off at the airport err at the railway station and I’m stood there just queuing up with all the others and he’s sidling up to me and pushing my shoulder. And I was, ‘Leave me alone. Leave me alone.’ I didn’t know. I didn’t know what prostitutes were. And she was a daredevil because there was Lewis’s Arcade and the prostitutes used to wait in there and they all had their certain spot you see and going through the Arcade with Grace she said, ‘Oh aye, she’s got one.’ I said, ‘What?’ She said, ‘Look. A fella has just picked her up. I’m going to follow them.’ I said, ‘You’re not.’ She said, ‘I did. I went and followed them down this back entry,’ she said, ‘It wasn’t very nice.’[laughs] I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ She was very broad. She did things I would never dream of. No. No. And I said, ‘Oh Grace.’ She said, ‘Well,’ she said, ‘It’s their own fault.’ And no one, Lewis’s Arcade as I say was open and we went, Bernard went through there once and there was these prostitutes and he was meeting me at the Palace Theatre and he said, ‘Oh, I’ve just been offered a nice job.’ I said, ‘What?’ he said this prostitute come and with the gloves under his chin, ‘Hello sweetheart. I’ll make you very comfortable for tonight.’ He said, ‘Oh, I’ve got a wife waiting for me. She can do that.’ I said, ‘You cheeky monkey.’
CH: How did you meet your husband?
FD: Sorry?
CH: How did you meet your husband?
FD: Through my brother in law. My eldest sister. Jim. They worked there. Jim and Bernard worked together and my brother in law came home, he said, ‘Bernard’s been asking about you.’ I said, ‘Who’s Bernard?’ He said, ‘ [unclear] So I said, ‘I don’t know Bernard.’ And a couple of times, ‘Bernard’s been asking about you.’ I said, ‘I don’t know Bernard.’ And he said, anyway they had a very old fashioned workplace. It was an optical place and you had to go up these creaking stairs, just like Dickens. And a little window. You had to knock on it and it was slid away. And I had to go and give a message to my brother in law and I knocked on this window and he said, ‘Yes?’ I said, ‘Can I speak to Mr Bateson, please.’ And when he’d gone Jim says, ‘That’s Bernard.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I didn’t know. I never met him before.’ He said, ‘You have.’ ‘I haven’t actually.’ So they invited me to a church dance. We had a church dance, and he was a very quiet man, wasn’t he?
RM: He really was. Yeah.
FD: Very quiet. He was daft as a brush. He was useless, hopeless and helpless. He couldn’t knock a nail in straight and he couldn’t boil an egg. It’s true. Honestly, he couldn’t as I say, but he was a very good husband. He thought the world of me didn’t he?
RM: Yeah.
FD: He did. He just worshipped me. And I remember when we were living with mum and dad and we went, were going to church it was only around the corner and he said, ‘I don’t feel so —’ [pause] I said, ‘oh, don’t bother coming, sweetie.’ I said, ‘I’ve left you a couple of eggs there.’ When I come home he said, ‘You didn’t tell me how to cook them.’ [laughs] I said, ‘You stupid fella. I said, ‘I cooked them before you came down.’ He was. He was useless but as I say a very good husband. He would never, he would never have a chequebook because he said it’s too easy and it had to be paid with cash every time. He said, ‘If you have a chequebook it’s too easy, Freda.’ So we were never in debt. We always had good food on the table. A roof over our heads. We used to have little holidays, big holidays when Robert left home. So, and then he was, he was eighty four when he died. He had a very bad heart. I remember him at the table when there was just the two of us he says, ‘Ooh, what have you put in that dinner?’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Indigestion.’ I said, ‘My cooking’s not that bad. You’ve had it for how many years?’ And, and then when we were, of course I used to do all the decorating and he was sat on the stairs and he said, ‘Oh. Indigestion.’ And then I was at work [laughs] he never knew how to say words because I was, I used to work in a Post Office and they said, Bernard. And he said, ‘They’re keeping me in, love.’ I said, ‘Why? Where are you? At the police station?’ He said, ‘No. At the hospital.’ he said, ‘I’ve had another.’ He said, ‘I’ve had three heart attacks.’ And he had about twelve altogether. He had a pacemaker and that. He died. It’s twelve years this year.
CH: Did you court for very long when you first got together?
FD: Yes. Well, we, I got, we got engaged when I was twenty one and I got married at twenty three and I had Robert when I was twenty eight. I was married five years before I had Robert. Unfortunately, my son took his own life.
CH: I’m sorry.
FD: But as I say we got through. And I’ve got very good friends. I’m very fortunate with that. I’ve got a lot of friends haven’t I? This is, this is my helper. She’s cheeky. Very very cheeky. Could knock her head off sometimes.
RM: Just look, this lady’s taping you so be careful.
FD: Oh, sorry [laughs] Well, it’s the truth. She wanted the truth. She’s getting it. I mean you’ve turned up for me today haven’t you sweetheart.
RM: Of course I have.
[recording paused]
FD: No. There was none dropped right outside in the church or anything. It was more the vibrations we got because we could hear them rattling. And there was a little bit in the middle of Salford and Manchester which [unclear] used to go up around over the bridge into Manchester. It was the same. You could walk it. So it was nearly all there that got it because they were after this, the Broughton Copper Works. So, as I say we just got the rattling of it and the vibrations. We’d say, ‘God, that was a near one wasn’t it? That was a miss.’ But no. And as I say with being in that shelter they were the safest of the lot. The Anderson shelter, Morrison shelter and then the little shelters outside. It was that, it was to me actually when they say little shelter it was I don’t know why, I can’t understand it because they were only like a little brick shelter. They weren’t dug into the ground. They were just like a little house where a lot of people could go. So you might as well have stayed in your own house. I mean that was at least two floors high. I mean, so unfortunately this flying bomb, whatever it was called dropped on to the shelter itself that wiped them all out. But I know people say you were lucky with the Anderson. Some had put them in themselves and did it themselves they got flooded out with water. We were lucky, the corporation came and did mine. Ours. Because my dad couldn’t do it. So they did it and it was the way it was faced. It was a blessing really. I can see it now but it started to smell musty and we used to put carpets down and oh God that smelled.
RM: It must have been very cold and dark.
FD: Well, when there’s a few of you, Zita there’s, you’re all, when you’re all breathing it’s not too bad.
RM: Not too cold.
FD: But if there’s only two of you.
RM: It would be cold.
FD: You know. But we used to take travelling rugs with us and cushions. We never, we didn’t leave those in the shelter. We took those out with us. But the bit of carpet, we were always changing that. And newspapers used to be in as well. They used to, you’d wrap those. It was amazing how you could keep warm. But my dad bless him he used to go up and say, ‘I’ll go and get a drink.’ ‘Be careful dad. Do be careful.’ You know. ‘Oh dad, don’t go. Don’t go.’ But yes he used to go and make us drinks. And did I tell you when my mum was petrified. She was, bless her. And as I say air raid sirens had gone and I came in and they were all there. I thought, oh my God she’s braving it. And she was chatting away to them all and the little Kelly lamp I was trying to shield. ‘Oh, the sirens would have gone,’ they said, ‘If there was anything,’ because a plane was going over and I’m shielding this little Kelly lamp and I said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘The sirens went half an hour ago.’ ‘Oh, why didn’t you tell us,’ they said. They were gabbing that much they couldn’t hear them.
RM: Would you have during, during the day or during the night?
FD: Oh, the evenings.
RM: Evening.
FD: It was in the evenings when it started going and that’s what we couldn’t understand about the Blitz because the bombs had dropped before the siren had finished so they must have got through somehow. I don’t know how they did it.
RM: Did you see the planes? Did you ever see them?
FD: Oh no. You could hear them.
RM: You could hear them but you couldn’t actually see them.
FD: Because to us the German planes they had a beat in them [humming] Ours seemed to [humming] ours seemed to be a smoother hum or drum than the Americans err the Germans. They seemed to have a bit of a pause [humming] We’d say, ‘That’s a German.’ The next thing we knew a bomb had gone off. So how they got through, those bombs had come down after they’d gone I don’t know but I know they said they put them on, there was a Doodlebug and these other bugs they put a little parachute on them. Well, little, it must have been a whacking big parachute but they must have been slowed down because when I think, I thought well, how do they do it? Because when you see an airman jump out of a plane they come down, seem to come down a lot faster before the plane can go in. I thought, well I know they come down a bit slower in the end so there must have had special reasons. They must have made a special bomb to come down that bit slower. And the, and the parachutes must have, I know they must have helped them. But I mean as I say the all clear has gone. You think you’re alright. The next thing there’s a big thud. It must have been horrendous. But there again it hits you wouldn’t know anything would you?
RM: Did you lose any friends?
FD: No. No. Not that way. Oh yes. Yes. There was somebody down, down Earl Street but they were away at the time. But none, no. None.
RM: None of your —
FD: Not directly.
RM: Friends.
FD: No. We didn’t see they’d gone during, the only thing is I would say not friends but we just knew them. The locals.
RM: Yeah.
FD: That this bomb had dropped on the outside on the shelter. To me as I say it was just like a brick shelter. Well, you’d be better in your own home. It’s unfortunate unless it was strengthened but there again of course if you’d got a two floor building that top building, the top floor would save you from the other one but this was right on it. It’s just a pity that they were all coming, well they’re, even if they’re inside they would have. Another two or three minutes they’d have been in their own home. But it was just unfortunate. But how I can explain it? I do worry sometimes Zita but I was a happy go lucky. What happened happened to me. I’m one of these now. If it happens it happens. It’s, you know it’s not as though you can control it. What’s got to be has got to be. I’m a fatalist. But as I was saying I was happy go lucky then. And of course when you were a teenager in those day it was all boys, boys, boys. I didn’t mind but my mum used to worry as much, well worry me more and think, oh God, she’s at it again. She couldn’t do anything. She used to say, oh you know, and hush, hush. I’d say, ‘What are you hushing for?’ But yeah, it’s I think I could go through it again in a way but there again I don’t know. Of course these days it would be a lot worse. I mean one bomb would kill the lot of us, wouldn’t it?
CH: You were talking about your mum and you were saying that you never went hungry. What sort of food did your mum prepare considering it was rationed?
FD: Well, that’s it. With being a big family she could get a joint of meat.
RM: But what else did you get during the week. I mean —
FD: Well, we had —
RM: I mean meals during the week.
FD: That’s what I was saying. With dad being this milkman he was lucky. He used to serve this shop. What was it called? Anyway, it’ll come to me. And they used to, ‘Alright, Jimmy,’ and they used to put a bit of extra butter in for him. But there again if you think if you were on your own you’d most likely get a pack of butter it would last you about a fortnight. But if we, there were seven of you got a lot more for a week. You’d get more for a week and my mother used to say, ‘If you have butter you don’t have jam and if you have jam you don’t have butter.’ And my sister used to say, ‘I’ll tell you what mum. Butter that side, jam that side and then put them together.’ [laughs] That’s how we lived. And of course I didn’t like, ‘Oh, she doesn’t like that. Can I have you share.’ ‘Can I have your share.’
RM: So what would you, came home, say if you’d been at school twelve thirteen year old what would, what meal would you come home to in the week?
FD: A proper meal.
RM: What would you have for your breakfast say? Your lunch or tea.
FD: Well, well then we didn’t bother with breakfast. Used to have a piece of toast or bread and jam. Even then. Even now I don’t. But then for dinner my mum would make a little dinner. For tea anyway for us all because as I was saying we were lucky and also I think Mr Parkes liked my dad because he used to wink when he was wrapping something up you see.
RM: What about vegetables? I mean we hear that you couldn’t get vegetables and things.
FD: Oh no. Well, a lot of people used to grow their own.
RM: They did? Even in Manchester?
FD: Yes. Oh, yeah.
RM: Yeah.
FD: They had their own little back. I mean we could have done. My dad started something in the back garden but he never finished it. Oh, an apple tree. But he tried to grow an apple tree and then Edna, bless her she said, ‘It wants pruning.’ He said, ‘It does not.’ And he always, his chest used to always come out and he’d say, ‘I’ve told you girls it does not. Nature takes its own course.’ We’d say, ‘Right, dad.’ And Edna winked at us once. A couple of weeks later she got some crabapples and tied them on. She said, ‘Watch it, girls.’ We were all there. I can see it now. ‘Dad. Dad you’re right. Nature’s taken its own course.’ And he went out and he said and his hand went on his hips, ‘I told you girls nature takes its own course. Now, look at that for instance.’ And we said, ‘Wait for it.’ And we were all ready. And he went up and he said, ‘Oh hallup,’ because oh hallup. They’re crabapples. And they were hung with cotton [laughs] We flew out the back garden. He said, ‘I’ll give it you girls.’ But he took it all in good fun afterwards. He was such a gentle man. He was. But he was very strict as I say. As I say he made me clean the floor before I went out and you had to have your manners. Oh yes. I remember once saying to him at the table, ‘Can you let me have the salt?’ He said, ‘Pardon?’ I said, ‘I want the salt.’ He said, ‘Pardon?’ I said, ‘I want the salt.’ ‘Pardon?’ And he put, he says, ‘I can’t hear you. What are you saying?’ I said, ‘Can I have the salt, please?’ He said, ‘Now, I can hear you.’ And I felt like that. He made us have our manners and you had to say thank you, goodbye, goodnight, God bless and take us up. Oh, and being a terraced house and the open fire, had a little fireplace upstairs in the house in the bedroom. Used to take a shovel full of red hot coal up the stairs. It was a good job it didn’t fall off and it’s winter and we all had a bath and he used to go down with the nit comb ever week. Oh, he used to make sure we were all cleaned. ‘Are you ready?’ And we were stood in line. Winter. A spoonful of hot water, whisky and sugar. A spoonful each. We used to all go upstairs. Kneel at the bottom of the it was a giant bedstead. It was a king size and we all dashed for the middle of this bed because our feet were near the fire. Hands together. Keep your eyes closed. ‘Now then. Are you ready? Our father — ’ And we all had to say the prayers and I always remember saying, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take.’ And I always remember when I was saying that when it says if I die before I wake does it mean I’m going to die tonight. And he said, ‘Right. Bed.’ And then we all used to have our bed. He was, he was a good father. Strict but very good to us. Very good.
CB: I imagine he’d have to be strict having five girls.
FD: Yes. Yes. Well, actually he there was six girls but the first one was still born. It was, they got married in 1918 and my father had double pneumonia in 1919. And of course in those days neighbours went and helped you and it wasn’t Fredas and Marys and Jeans it was Mrs so and so, Miss Jones, Mrs Middleton you see, all came and helped. And my father was dying of double pneumonia and the doctor was there and he said, ‘I’m afraid he’s died.’ And he said, ‘I’ll go up to the surgery to get the certificate.’ And of course my mother was eight months pregnant and the neighbour’s there and he’d just got to the corner of the street and then the neighbour went around. He said, ‘He’s breathing.’ So he came back and he was breathing and he said, ‘I’ve just been to heaven and it’s absolutely beautiful. Let me go.’ And they said, ‘Well, think about your new baby coming.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Heaven’s absolutely gorgeous. Don’t be frightened, girls,’ he used to say to us. And then the next day he said, ‘How’s our baby?’ And his father was dying of cancer in the parlour and that was cancer of the bowel. My mum had to see to that. She was four foot eleven and a tea leaf. She was only small. She had my father dying. Well, he died. He always swore he died. And then she was eight months pregnant and the day after he said, ‘How’s our daughter Fanny?’ They said, ‘Oh, the baby’s not born yet.’ So, he said, ‘Yes, it is. She’s got golden curls like you Fanny.’ She had gorgeous hair. ‘It’s got all curls around its head.’ So he said, ‘Oh, she’s beautiful.’ ‘No.’ He says, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘She’s in my father’s arms.’ And they thought it’s an illusion. The next day she fell from the top of the stairs to the bottom. The baby was born with golden curls around its head. My grandad died and she was buried in my grandad’s arms. That’s what my father saw.
CH: Wow.
FD: And he used to say, ‘Don’t be frightened of dying. It’s wonderful.’ And he used to say that. ‘Don’t be frighted girls. It’s wonderful.’ Yeah. And of course he managed to come around then. Francis was born the year after and then Edna and then Helen. Well, she was christened Nelly actually but she was a bit of a toff. She liked to be called Helen [laughs] That’s true. And then there was me and then there was Margaret. And I lost Margaret last Christmas. But I had a good life in one way. I was the odd sheep. The black sheep of the family. The odd one out. Why I do not know. I’ve told you before haven’t I? And Margaret, Margaret hardly, you know says I can’t understand it. And when my sister died at Christmas I said, ‘I’m still the odd one out.’ She said, ‘How do you make that out?’ I said, ‘They’re all up there laughing at me. I’m the last one.’ But yeah. I don’t know. I’ve enjoyed life. I don’t worry much do I?
The interview has been edited here as the interviewee spoke about personal, post war matters.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Freda Dakin
Creator
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Cathie Hewitt
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-09-18
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ADakinF170918, PDakinF1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Format
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01:02:48 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Manchester
England--Lancashire
Description
An account of the resource
Born in Salford, just outside of Manchester, Freda was a teenager during the Second World War. She recalls her family's culture, school life, meal requirements and how she reacted to the war being declared. She also recounts her experiences of near-misses during bombing, and her understanding of the Anderson shelters. Despite being a family of seven, she believed she had a good diet during the war, because of her father being a milkman and getting the family extra food. She claims that during the war she was not afraid of the bombs, having quite a fatalistic attitude, she also enjoyed the freedom it brought and how it was like an adventure. She claims she could differentiate between American, British and German aircraft through the sounds of their engines, but also believes that the sirens were always sounded after the plane had arrived.
Contributor
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Sam Harper-Coulson
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
bombing
childhood in wartime
evacuation
home front
shelter