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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/250/3398/AEllisMW170703.1.mp3
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Title
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Ellis, Mary Wilkins
Mary Wilkins Ellis
Mary W Ellis
Mary Ellis
M W Ellis
M Ellis
Description
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One oral history interview with Mary Wilkins Ellis (1917 - 2018). Mary Ellis was an Air Transport Auxiliary pilot.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-07-03
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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.
Identifier
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Ellis, MW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 3rd of July 2017 and I’m in Sandown with Mary Wilkins Ellis who was a delivery pilot during the war and has a variety of tales associated with that. So, starting off then Mary what were your earliest recollections of life.
ME: Well I come from a farm in Oxfordshire. My father was a farmer and I had three brothers. And I can remember looking at aeroplanes when I was eight, six, eight and thinking how lovely. And then Alan Cobham came along with one of his circus planes to Witney Airfield which is in Oxfordshire. Which is quite close to Brize Norton actually. And so, I had the urge to be more interested in aeroplanes more and more. And then I went for a flight with Alan Cobham’s Circus and this set me off even more. And then I talked with my Pa who also liked flying and he thought it was a good idea that I was interested in flying. And when I was at school in Burford I wasn’t very good at playing hockey so, I was allowed that hockey time to go to Witney Airfield and have a flight and that’s how I started flying aeroplanes.
CB: What age are we talking about here?
ME: We’re talking about [pause] I suppose twelve when I started flying. Well, I don’t know but it was very early on.
CB: What was the reaction of the school to your giving up hockey and going to flying?
ME: Each one was allowed to do their own thing so it didn’t register that I was flying. Other girls were doing probably far more important things but we didn’t talk about it. We just went on with our lessons during the other time.
CB: What did the other girls think about your flying? What did the other girls think about your flying?
ME: We didn’t talk about it. So I don’t know.
CB: No. Interesting. Yeah.
ME: But I learned to fly at Witney and, as I’ve just said and I was flying and I got my licence just in 1938. And then the war came and so all civil flying was stopped and I thought that’s the end of my flying life. So, I went home and I was at home doing precious little [laughs] as girls do, you know. Play tennis and all that sort of thing. And then one day I heard on the radio that girls who had licence, flight licence and were able to fly aeroplanes would they please contact the Air Transport Auxiliary because girls were badly needed to fly aeroplanes. So, I applied and I was taken on almost immediately. And I joined Air Transport Auxiliary on the 1st of October. Now, there’s another car coming. I think this is —
CB: We’ll stop there a mo.
[recording paused]
ME: To fly aeroplanes you have to be trained.
CB: Yes. So, when the radio announcement came looking for girls who had got flying experience then there was a process you went through. So you said you joined the 1st of October 1941. Then what happened?
ME: I went to Hatfield. And I was at Hatfield with three other girls who also joined at the same time and we had to — none of us had very much experience so we had to learn to be able to fly aeroplanes without any radio or any help whatsoever. And so, we were, each day we went off on cross country’s from Hatfield to learn the countryside as it was. You know. Woods here, rivers there, churches there. Something else. Like that. And then I was posted to, I was posted to cross country flight at White Waltham in December.
[pause]
CB: Yeah.
ME: And that was at White Waltham which was — White Waltham was the HQ. Did you know that?
CB: Of the ATA. Yes.
ME: And so there I had to go through all the procedures of finding out how an aeroplane works. How the undercarriages works. And what to do in emergencies. It went on and on and I had to learn about the weather conditions. Had to learn Morse code. And it really was fantastic — the amount of learning that one had to do before starting ferrying. And I was flying in the flying training. All the single aeroplanes and I was ferrying these around. And [pause] what happened next?
CB: So, at White Waltham they had a number of different aeroplanes to fly.
ME: Yes. They had a Harvard something or other. And I flew all these light aeroplanes including Hurricanes and I flew fifteen Hurricanes. And then one day I had a little chitty which said I must fly a Spitfire. Just like that. And I thought, ‘Oh my goodness. How can I do that?’ I haven’t been near one because they didn’t have any spare Spitfires at White Waltham for one to look at. And so, I was taken by taxi aircraft to Swindon. South Marston. And there —
CB: The factory.
ME: Yes. And there I — a Spitfire was, came out of the hangar and it was the one that was on my little chitty. So this, I had to fly this aeroplane. The first ferry Spitfire I’d ever flown. And in uniform, you know, when you’re very young one can look quite attractive [laughs] which is rather different today. And so, the hangar doors were opened and out came this Spitfire and I eventually climbed in. Someone put my parachute in because we always wore parachutes and then I got in myself and I thought, ‘Oh gracious me. How lovely.’ And then a chappy that was fastening my parachute and all the other things inside, he said, ‘How many of these have you flown? You look like a schoolgirl.’ And I said, ‘I haven’t flown one before. This is the very first one.’ And he simply could not believe it. And the people around, they were staggered to see this schoolgirl about to fly a Spitfire. However, I managed very well and I taxied out and took off and I got up in the air and I thought I must play with this aeroplane just a little to find out how it flies. What it can do. What I can do with it. And so I did. I flew around for quite some time and I was only going to Lyneham but it took me a long time because I was flying around in this beautiful Spitfire. I landed it at Lyneham. All was well. My taxi aeroplane was waiting for me so I got out of this Spitfire into the taxi aeroplane which took me straight back to Swindon for the second Spitfire in the same day. And they couldn’t believe it when I got there and they said, ‘Oh you’re back again.’ [laughs] I went through all this paraphernalia you do. As one does. At this time I had to do some cross country to fly to Little Rissington — which I did. And I was almost killed at that time because they were flying Oxfords and as I was going in to land I just landed and an Oxford came and landed just in front of me. I still have the letter of apology [laughs] It nearly killed me.
LS: That’s incredible.
ME: But I’m still here. So, that was the beginning of the Spitfire. As you know I flew four hundred and one Spitfires on ferry flights. So —
CB: Were they consecutive or they tended to be interspersed with others?
ME: Interspersed. I’ll show you if you want to know.
CB: Yes. I’d be interested.
ME: Are you a pilot?
CB: Yes.
[Pause. Packet rustling]
ME: These are very precious so I have to keep them.
CB: Of course.
ME: This is D-day. If you’d like to look at my book.
CB: Thank you. Just while I’m just looking at this, going back to your comment about going to South Marston, the factory, to pick up the Spitfire you then did a handling trial. How much would you throw the aeroplane around?
ME: For ten minutes I was, probably, yes, getting used to it. Marvellous.
CB: So you were doing aerobatics in it.
ME: No. We were told never to do aerobatics or fly at night.
CB: Steep turns. Were you, to what extent were you able to —
ME: Everything else.
CB: Yeah.
ME: Well you can see there were all sorts of different aeroplanes in the same day. I could fly a bomber or a Spitfire. All on the same day.
CB: I’ll stop this for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: We’re talking about the variety of planes you flew, Mary, but in the early training —
ME: No.
CB: At White Waltham they had Hurricanes there. Did you deliver many Hurricanes later?
ME: Well, it’s all in the logbook.
CB: You’ve got a variety here but the Hurricanes aren’t a major item. I’m just curious to know whether you —
ME: Well, if you give me I’ll tell you.
CB: Yeah. Because you’ve got Albacores, you’ve got Spitfire, you’ve got Wellingtons. All sorts of things in there.
ME: There you are.
CB: Oh, there we are.
ME: Those are the ones I flew.
CB: Yeah. At the back. Thank you. So, you’ve got a Tiger Moth as a starter. How did you like the Tiger Moth after what you’d been training on?
ME: I didn’t fly Tiger Moths after I’d been doing my training.
CB: Right.
ME: Silly questions.
CB: Yeah. So, we’ll stop there just for a mo.
[recording paused]
ME: Different types in fourteen days.
CB: Right.
ME: It’s all down there.
CB: Yes. So, did you end up with a preference for certain aircraft and ones that you’d like to avoid. If you had the choice.
ME: We were not given a choice.
CB: No.
ME: We were told each day which aeroplane to fly and where from and to.
CB: Yes.
ME: We had no choice.
CB: No.
ME: But we had a choice as to whether we were flying or not. We had no radio. If we chose not to fly because the weather wasn’t what we wanted then we didn’t. I didn’t. And another thing is there are two or three different aeroplanes all in the same day, different places.
CB: Yes. And what’s it like switching from one plane to another when they are different in the way they handle?
ME: [laughs] Well I don’t know. We had a little book with ferrying pilot’s notes. Read the book. Get in the aeroplane and fly.
CB: And what are the most significant points in the ferry pilot’s notes that they’re making you aware of? Some of them had flaps and some didn’t I presume for instance. Did they?
ME: Oh, I don’t want to go into the technical pieces of —
CB: Ok. Doesn’t matter. I’ll stop just for a mo.
[recording paused]
ME: Garlands or whatever it was.
CB: Right. So I suppose —
ME: It was all, it was all different.
CB: Yes.
ME: But you had to know this.
CB: Yes. That’s what I was getting at really because —
ME: Have you seen the ferry pilot’s notes?
CB: I haven’t. No.
ME: You haven’t.
CB: No.
[recording paused]
CB: So, what you have there is a book of pilot’s notes. Ferry pilot’s notes. Could you just do what you did just then? Tell me what variety have you got in there of planes because it’s just significant in terms of how you had to handle this extraordinary change of aeroplane.
ME: It wasn’t, it wasn’t only the aeroplanes. We had no radio whatsoever. We had nothing except our own thing. And to go from one place to another and when one gets to an airfield that is flying Oxfords and then you have to go around and sit in somewhere. Or another place. I’d go to Shawbury and take a Wellington. And I go around and I have to fit in with all the others because they are talking with the RAF. But I have no radio and they don’t know really I’m there except by looking and I have to choose when to go in and land. And it wasn’t easy.
CB: So, you’re talking about fitting into the circuit.
ME: I’m flying a Wellington all by myself, with nobody else there. So I couldn’t ask. They’re all there.
CB: Yeah. So a huge range in there and the number, the notes are simply on a single sheet. Yeah. So, in here we’ve got Catalina. Buckmaster. Blenheim. Huge variety. Albacore. Tutor.
ME: They’re in alphabetical order.
CB: Yes. And Firefly. Did you do any four engine bombers?
ME: Yes. As a second pilot.
CB: What was that?
ME: In a Stirling. And a Halifax. And a Lancaster.
CB: Right. So, in those four-engined planes were there just the two of you or would there be another person as well.
ME: No. There was also an engineer.
CB: Right. Right. And the engineer was there because of them being multi-engined. Right.
ME: That’s right.
CB: So, in the circumstances of this navigation challenge it’s amazing that you managed to find places. What was the way that you planned a route to get there with no radio.
ME: We just had a map.
CB: Yeah.
ME: And don’t forget all these places were — what’s the word?
Other: Camouflaged.
ME: Camouflaged. And they were not easy to find.
CB: No.
ME: And some of them were secret and so they were very difficult to find but we did it. Didn’t we?
CB: Extraordinary. Yeah. What about the night flying? You said you weren’t normally going to do that.
ME: No.
CB: Were some people —
ME: The whole idea of the Air Transport Auxiliary was to get the aeroplane safely from the factory to where they were needed in the RAF and the RNAS. It was no good breaking them because the country at one time was almost without aeroplanes. And so we had to be very careful.
CB: Yeah.
ME: But we were very much on our own. We could fly or if we didn’t like the weather or we didn’t like the aeroplane then we were not pressurised at all.
CB: Which sort of aeroplane would you not like, really?
ME: Which what?
CB: Which sort of aeroplane would you not like?
ME: I didn’t like the Walrus. I know it was a very useful aeroplane.
CB: Seaplane.
ME: But it had a mind of its own and once it clattered about like a lot of bags of old things and something and it made a terrible noise on the ground [laughs] and in the air it just did what it wanted to do no matter what. It was terrible [laughs] but I flew quite a lot of them.
CB: Did you land them all on land? Or did you land some on water?
ME: Yes. They were made at Cowes and I took them from Cowes and landed them wherever I had to.
CB: Yeah. If the weather deteriorated what would you do while you were flying?
ME: Either put down at some aerodrome. It didn’t matter where. Or turn around and go back. Just depended on what weather was coming.
CB: And the people on the [pause] your destination were all expecting you.
ME: No. They didn’t know.
CB: Sounds interestingly challenging.
ME: Very challenging.
CB: Yeah. So, when you landed in your Wellington and got out — what happened next?
ME: Well [laughs] I can tell you the story which everybody already knows. You can tell the story couldn’t you Frank?
CB: Well it’s just we can’t hear it on there. Yes. Could you tell it please?
ME: This, yes, this Wellington I delivered. I can’t remember where it was but I delivered it to some station and I taxied to dispersal and switched off and then opened the door and let the ladder down. I went down with my parachute and the crowd of people on the ground who were there they were amazed. This schoolgirl, you know, flying these big aeroplanes. And they just stood there. And I said, ‘Can we go to control. I must have my chitty signed.’ And they said, ‘We’re waiting for the pilot.’ I said, ‘I am the pilot.’ There I was, you know, young and lovely uniform and they wouldn’t believe me so two men went inside to search the aeroplane to find the pilot. And they came out and they said, ‘No.’ There was no sign of anybody else so they accepted that I was the pilot. And I was. But I was unusual for one small girl to be flying these bombers. Hampdens and things like that.
CB: The fact a girl was doing it or just on her own?
ME: Without any radio. Without anything else at all.
CB: So was there a rule that if it was a bomber there would normally be two pilots?
ME: In the RAF they would have five.
CB: Yes, but —
ME: I think.
CB: In delivery. On delivery, when you were doing, delivering bombers was there a rule that normally there would be two for bombers or just one pilot.
ME: No. There was only two when they were four-engined ones.
CB: Yeah.
ME: Or if I flew an aeroplane like a Mitchell, I think, if you couldn’t get to the emergency you had to carry an engineer but not another pilot.
CB: You mentioned uniform. So how did you feel about your uniform?
ME: Well we were so used to having a uniform we were so pleased when we had two days off because we worked for two weeks and then had two days off and it was nice to get into civilian clothes and rush off all around one’s friends and go home.
CB: Were you based, yourself, always at White Waltham or did you move elsewhere?
ME: I wasn’t based at White Waltham. I was based at Ferrypool 15 which is Hamble.
CB: Right. And what sort of accommodation did you get there?
ME: It was very good. Everywhere I went was very very good because the ATA sorted it all out and we were just taken from one place to another to another. And I was stationed at Basildon and lived with a family in this big, big house, you know, and they looked after me frightfully well. And each girl had some other place. So, we were all well looked after. We had to be ‘cause we were flying each day and all day.
CB: So, when you got to your destination for the delivery you were picked up by the taxi were you?
ME: Usually. But sometimes I had to fly an aeroplane up to Prestwick and maybe it took two or three days to get there depending on the weather and something. And then I had to come back by night train to London. Back to White Waltham and there they would give me another aeroplane to fly back to Hamble.
CB: Right.
ME: A delivery flight. So, very complicated but it was marvellously operated.
CB: Well, very well organised. What were the taxi planes? Predominantly.
ME: The Anson or the Fairchild.
CB: And they went to various places. They picked up pilots from various places did they? On the way back.
ME: Yes. It’s usually a junior would fly the empty aeroplane and whoever got in the other aeroplane the senior pilot would take over.
CB: On the way back.
ME: So if someone went to pick me up then I would have to fly the aeroplane back or wherever it was going. Probably to another delivery place.
CB: We talked about your initial training at White Waltham which was single-engine. Was it? Where did you do your twin engine training?
ME: Pardon?
CB: Where did you do your twin engine training?
ME: I went to Thame for two hours. And that was on light twins. I flew an Oxford for several hours. And when I’d flown lots and lots of different aeroplanes like twins I then went back to White Waltham and I was given a few hours training on a Wellington which put me in the league of all these bombers. And so it was. And from having training on five different aeroplanes I was able to fly a hundred and seventy six aeroplanes.
CB: Right. What was the most daunting thing about switching to a thing like the Wellington because it’s quite a big aeroplane.
ME: I know but [laughs] you don’t need strength really to fly the big aeroplanes, do you?
Other: Not these days you don’t.
CB: No.
Other: It was a bit more difficult in those days.
ME: I’ll tell you one thing that happened in the Spitfire. Two of us girls were going from Southampton one morning. Quite short. And it was quite hazy. Very thick hazy. You couldn’t see. You could see straight down like that and my friend went off in her aeroplane and I thought yes, I’ll go off in mine and took off and it was, I went above the haze as much as I could and I never saw another aeroplane. But we were both going to Wroughton which is Swindon and the thick haze was so great that I managed to look down because I’d judged on the time and what have you that it was — Wroughton was there. And I looked down and it was there. And I didn’t see any other aeroplane. I couldn’t see anyway. Only straight down. So, I did a circuit and came in to land and she must have done exactly the same. I don’t know. But she did a circuit the other way and we actually passed on the runway. We were actually wheels on the runway. She was going one way and I was going the other. We must have missed by inches [pause] and we didn’t see each other. Not even, not even at the end, coming in to land.
CB: Amazing.
ME: We only saw each other as she was going that way or I was going that way and suddenly there was another aeroplane and then I discovered later it was her and she discovered it was me. So we decided we mustn’t tell anybody.
CB: What conversation did you have about that?
ME: Oh, it frightens me. Lots of lovely stories like that.
CB: Yes.
ME: But we can’t go on forever.
CB: Well. Finding the airfields, I thought, was an interesting point because your navigation clearly was very good but in certain circumstances it must be difficult. So how did you? When you got near to an airfield that you weren’t right on course how did you deal with that? You weren’t quite sure where it was. Did you do a square search or what would you do?
ME: Well we just had the maps.
CB: Yes.
ME: And hoped to get there. Whether we went straight or went that way and like that but we got there and then the map said this is the one. So then you had to operate in between the other aeroplanes which were being driven, piloted by the RAF. And the RAF didn’t know that we were coming.
CB: So, what was the technique? Would you fly overhead and then they would communicate with you by —
ME: How could they? We had no radio.
CB: By — no, no. By lamp. They would signal.
ME: No.
CB: They wouldn’t do anything.
ME: They were doing what they had to do and I would —
CB: You just joined the circuit.
ME: Well I couldn’t really join it because probably it was a different sort of aeroplane. Mine might be a Spitfire and somebody else’s might be an Anson or something.
CB: As time went on the planes became more powerful and sophisticated. How did you feel about that? Did you enjoy that?
ME: I loved the fast and furious ones [laughs]
CB: Tempest.
ME: The Tempest. The Typhoon. What was it? All those fast ones. The American one. What’s that?
Other: Mustang.
CB: Mustang.
ME: Pardon?
CB: The Mustang.
ME: Mustang. That was it. I did, I loved those. But then if you’re flying every day then it’s not as difficult as if you’re flying once a week.
CB: No.
ME: But it is difficult when you have three or four different types.
CB: In a day.
ME: In a day.
CB: Let alone in a week.
ME: And then being taken to somewhere else. [pause] Here you are. A Hudson. A Barracuda. A Boston. A Fairchild and a Spitfire.
CB: Three twins and two singles. Yeah.
ME: [laughs] I find it’s, it’s difficult to talk to anyone unless they are a pilot because they don’t appreciate the dangers we were in all the time. It’s amazing really that we did so well.
CB: Yes. What did you regard as your biggest danger when you were doing deliveries?
ME: Weather. Because the weather could clamp down at any time and the amount of meteorology that we knew was very little. It’s not much better today anyway [laughs]
CB: No. So you talked about going above the haze but would you sometimes put them really low in order to be able to see where you were going?
ME: Would I what?
CB: Would you fly really low sometimes in order to —
ME: Yes.
CB: Under the cloud.
ME: I liked to fly in a fast machine. I liked to fly so that I could see the church steeples and go from one to the other and I knew the country so well that I could do that on a flight. That was lovely [laughs]
CB: So where —
ME: I was still working of course.
CB: So, you did a bit of beating up occasionally.
ME: Yes.
CB: Airfields as well?
ME: Not, not airfields but if you were on track and you thought, ‘Oh my friend lives down there,’ I’d go [whoop] you know. Why not? As long as we kept the aeroplanes safe that was the thing.
CB: Yeah.
ME: Because a broken aeroplane was no good to anybody.
CB: No. How did you feel about when you were picked up by the taxies? How did you feel about being flown up by somebody else?
ME: In the Anson. There were sometimes five of us in the Anson. That was perfectly alright because we would go — whose duty it was that day to pick up. The Anson would go around and pick up until there were five or six of us in the aeroplane and then back to base probably.
CB: If the weather was bad you would have to stay at an airfield I presume. Would you?
ME: We did. Yes. We were well looked after if we had to stay.
CB: Because you had effectively an officer rank so they put you in the officer’s mess did they?
ME: Oh yes, we were. Yes. We were.
CB: And what happened in the social side of the officer’s mess activities? Off duty.
ME: Off duty. I wouldn’t know. If we stayed overnight we would have an evening meal and then obviously one was tired and I used to go to bed in the officer’s — wherever it was. I don’t know. They allowed us a very special officer’s place. What do you call them? In the officer’s mess or somewhere.
Other: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
ME: Anyway, we were well looked after.
CB: Well looked after.
ME: I was well looked after. Yes.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
ME: But what I didn’t like. I landed somewhere, I remember, and I had to stay the night and I stayed and ate in the evening with a lot of these RAF officers and then went to bed. And the next morning I got up and went to have breakfast and there were only one or two officers there. So, I said to one of them, ‘What has happened to everybody this morning?’ And they said, ‘They didn’t come back last night.’ And that really hurt. That was terrible. I couldn’t bear that. But I had to get in my aeroplane and go off.
CB: Are we talking about a bomber delivery here?
ME: So [pause] it wasn’t all fun.
CB: No. And did —
ME: Because I lost several friends, you know. The girls. They were there and then the next day at Hamble, when we went, they weren’t there. And we had to carry on. There was a war on.
CB: And what sort of things would cause the girls not to be there?
ME: Because they’d been killed.
CB: But flying in bad weather would it be, or aircraft breaking down?
ME: It was usually bad weather. As ATA.
CB: Yeah.
ME: Yes. It wasn’t, that wasn’t very nice.
CB: Did you strike up some really strong friendships with other ATA people?
ME: Yes. We were all fifteen, twenty girls together. We were all great pals. Some were high rank and some were low but it didn’t make any difference socially. We were quite happy to be together.
CB: And what rank did you start at?
ME: I started as a cadet. And then I skipped third officer and I became a second officer and I was a second officer for about a year and then I became a first officer. And after that, if one went higher, it meant you had to have a job on a desk as well as flying. I didn’t particularly want that.
CB: No.
ME: So, I tried to keep as a first officer.
CB: So that’s equivalent to flight lieutenant.
ME: No. It’s equivalent to squadron leader.
CB: Right.
ME: Isn’t that right?
Other: [unclear]
ME: Well I was told it was.
CB: So your real interest was to fly all the time. Were you marking?
ME: Rather than sit.
CB: Yes. Were you marking up your score of the number of different planes.
ME: No. No.
CB: Or was it just coincidence that it —?
ME: No. Each day one had to put in the log book.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
ME: Because they all had numbers and so you had to put them in the logbook.
CB: Yeah. Apart from the meeting on the runway in opposite directions what other scary moments did you have?
ME: [Laughs] Too numerous to say.
CB: Give us a sample.
ME: I — no I’m not going to say that. [pause] Yes. There were always little incidents rather. Especially with Spitfires when the tail wheel wouldn’t either go up or go down. I can’t remember. Do you remember?
Other: You’re probably thinking about the main wheels because the tail wheel, first, the very early ones had a skid and then they got the tail wheel very early on but it was not retractable. I think they did have some on the PR aeroplanes that were retractable. I’m not sure.
ME: I’ve got a lot of things in one or two of my books.
CB: Was the Spitfire rather temperamental or was it just you needed to drive with caution?
ME: Here’s a Headquarters, Finding Accidents Committee. “The aircraft landed at its destination with the tail wheel retracted.”
CB: Right. The later model.
ME: “The pilot is held not responsible for this incident.”
CB: Right. Right.
ME: Or accident.
CB: Right. So, which aircraft was that?
ME: This? What?
CB: Which aircraft was that?
ME: It was a Spitfire.
CB: Right.
Other: Interesting.
ME: I don’t know where it was. I’ve got [unclear] [pause] yes, I had [laughs] I was flying over the New Forest one day. I was going to pick someone up from Stoney Cross. I was flying a taxi aeroplane and the engine clipped so, as you know, you can’t stay up there too long when you’ve got no engine. Fortunately, I found a space and I managed to get down in this space which was very very small and I didn’t damage the aeroplane. But there I was. Stranded. And from out of all the trees and bushes came a herd of cows and I’m terrified of cows. And so I had to be rescued [laughs] myself. Somebody passing by or doing something saw an aeroplane and so they came and rescued me from these cows which is extraordinary. To land an aeroplane quite safely and then have to be rescued from the cows [laughs]
CB: And as a farming girl that was quite interesting.
ME: [laughs] yes. There was a reason why I was not very [laughs] intimate with the cows.
CB: In the early days of farming was it?
ME: [laughs]
CB: So, what was that plane you were flying that day? A single engine was it?
ME: There you are. Eleven types in fourteen days. Did I tell you that?
CB: No. That’s good.
ME: I did.
CB: You did.
ME: That was that one. Well, there was ten types in fifteen days.
CB: Right. What’s the predominant one there?
ME: On July the 6th I flew a Wellington.
CB: Yeah.
ME: A Defiant, a Wellington, a Spitfire and a Swordfish. All in the same day.
CB: Quite a bit of variety. What was the Swordfish like to fly?
ME: It was lovely.
CB: Draughty.
ME: I liked being out in the open for a change. It was. It really was lovely. It was like a ginormous Tiger Moth.
Other: It was big.
CB: Apart from the Walrus which you didn’t like what other plane would you rather have avoided?
ME: I think I told you. The Walrus.
CB: No. Apart from the Walrus.
ME: There isn’t one I disliked but several I found rather more difficult to handle than others.
CB: Would that be twin engines more difficult to handle or some of the very fast?
ME: Some of the bigger ones.
CB: Yes.
ME: Like a Hampden. And you know when you fly a Hampden you have to put a special thing on to get the undercarriage down. If you forget to press this little knob —
CB: Pneumatic.
ME: Then the undercarriage won’t go down and so you circle around and think why can’t I get the undercarriage down? Eventually you just remember to poke this thing [laughs]
Other: Yeah.
CB: Did you ever have a wheels-up landing?
ME: Yes. I did [laughs] I hesitate because I don’t really like answering it but Chattis Hill was a secret place for making Spitfires.
CB: Oh.
ME: And it was in [pause] what’s it near? Chattis Hill. What’s it near?
Other: [unclear]
CB: I don’t know where that is.
ME: Anyway, it was a secret and it was on a side of a hill. And I took this Spitfire off down to where they’d been training horses. So I went down to get a good look and I took off quite happily and one day I forgot that it was a different engine and [laughs] I hadn’t changed the trim the right way and I took off and I went zoom. Like that [laughs] and missed the trees by that much. ‘Cause you know there’s a Merlin engine and a Griffon engine. Now, I forgot so that was my fault. But shortly before or after that I took off from Chattis Hill, this secret place and I went up and I couldn’t get my green lights. In fact, I couldn’t get any lights at all and so I didn’t know what was happening with this Spitfire. And then it started getting warm and I thought I can’t stay up here so I flew around this place and these people in this secret place, I saw them bring out the fire engine and I saw them bring out the ambulance and I thought, oh. And I then went back around and I knew I had to land somehow and so I did. I came in to land and I switched an engine off as I crossed into the field.
CB: On the boundary.
ME: And then sat it down without any, without the undercarriage, without more ado.
Other: [unclear]
ME: It, because I’d switched off everything I could it wasn’t too bad. I got a few bruises myself. But they soon mended the aeroplane I think. A couple of weeks afterwards.
CB: Yeah.
ME: It was flying again.
CB: So, did you come in at a lower speed in order to make sure that you stuck well or how did you do it?
ME: When?
CB: When you were on finals did you actually come in slower than you would have done with the undercarriage down?
ME: What do you mean finals?
CB: Final approach.
ME: Are you talking about this aeroplane?
CB: Yes. As you came in.
ME: It wasn’t [laughs] There was no case of finals. It was just a racecourse.
CB: Right.
ME: [laughs] And I knew if something — obviously I would come in as slowly and safely as I could.
CB: Yeah.
ME: All my learnings came into my head in a fraction of a second and that’s why I didn’t break it very much.
CB: Just bent the propeller.
ME: So all my learning was very good [laughs]
CB: You clearly had a huge number of experiences. What would you say was your proudest event?
ME: Oh, I don’t know [laughs]
CB: I should think that was one of them. Getting it down undamaged.
ME: Pardon?
CB: I should think that was one. Getting it down undamaged.
ME: Ahum.
[pause]
CB: Now, there were men in the ATA as pilots as well as women. So how did that fit?
ME: We were all girls at Hamble.
CB: Right.
ME: We didn’t have any men.
CB: Right.
ME: Just one engineer man. That’s right.
CB: So, at Hamble you were picking up brand new aeroplanes.
ME: We were not always picking up brand new aeroplanes. Quite often we were picking up aeroplanes that had been damaged that had to be flown to the MUs to be fixed again to carry on flying. Quite often we did that. It wasn’t always new ones.
CB: So were you delivering the damaged ones as well as picking up the ones that had been mended?
ME: Yes.
CB: Right. And when you landed at the airfields there was a simple — they weren’t expecting you but there was a simple procedure that you went through was there? To hand over the aircraft.
ME: No. We went and put the aeroplane where they asked us to put it. And then we had this little chitty which we took back with us to Hamble and put it in so they knew that we had delivered that particular aeroplane safely.
CB: Yeah. I’m going to stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
ME: Meteor flight.
CB: No. So tell us. The first jet.
[pause]
ME: This —
CB: So, this was —
ME: That’s what you wanted.
CB: Thank you.
[pause]
CB: This is a letter from November 1945 saying, “Dear Miss Wilkins, I’d like to add to the expressions conveyed to you by my commanding officer my own appreciation of your good work you’ve done for the Air Transport Auxiliary as a ferry pilot. I wish you every happiness in the future and success in any work you may undertake. Yours sincerely, Senior Commander, Director of Women Personnel, Air Transport Association.” Amazing.
ME: Thank you.
CB: So, the Meteor. Where was that being collected from?
ME: Yes. When ATA really closed in ’45 I was seconded with a few other men to fly in 41 Group. The RAF.
CB: Yes.
ME: So, I was posted to White Waltham and during that time I was asked — given a Meteor to fly. [pause] And so I flew it [laughs]
CB: So where did you take off from?
ME: I was flown to Gloucester. Where we were the other day.
CB: Yeah. Staverton.
ME: I flew it from Gloucester to Exeter. I’d never seen one before and I remember saying to the pilot, ‘I can’t fly it because it doesn’t have any propellers.’ [laughs] And so, I said, ‘Can you tell me any of its characteristics or something.’ And he said, ‘All I can tell you is that you must watch the fuel gauges because they go from full to empty in thirty,’ something, ‘Minutes so you’d better be on the ground in that. Before that.’ And that’s all the instructions I had on a Meteor [laughs]
CB: So, what did they explain about the engines and how they operated?
ME: I’ve no idea.
[pause]
CB: Extraordinary. Because one of the interesting —
ME: I just had to fly it and I had my book.
CB: Yeah.
ME: I looked in the book.
CB: Pilot’s handbook.
ME: What it said.
CB: Yeah.
ME: This, that and the other and I just flew it.
CB: Did it tell you you had to keep the revs above a certain level?
ME: No. It didn’t [laughs]
CB: ‘Cause one of the interesting —
ME: How would I know? Because it was entirely different from an ordinary aeroplane.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
ME: So, I just looked in the book and there it told me and so I did what it said.
CB: What height did you fly on that?
ME: Oh. I can’t remember but I remember going off and I thought oh I’m up here. Where am I? I’m lost [laughs] but I soon found myself. Oh and the pilot had told me it would drop like a stone when I took the power off but I didn’t find that at all. I did, it could be a perfect landing and all the people at Exeter were there to greet it and they couldn’t believe this female [laughs] this young female driving this. And the CO said, ‘Oh that’s wonderful. We’ll have a party,’ [laughs] and he said he would keep it for his own because they were changing from Spitfires to Meteors or the other way around. I don’t know which. Anyway, that was my experience which was fantastic. I thought it was wonderful.
CB: And how did you feel the acceleration and speed on that compared with a Spitfire?
ME: Well it was nothing like a Spitfire. A Meteor’s got two engines. A Spitfire’s only got one. So [laughs]
Other: Very fast.
ME: Oh, dear.
CB: Yes.
ME: I’ll tell you what.
CB: Yeah.
ME: Someone said you wanted to know how many Wellingtons I’d flown.
CB: Yes.
ME: And so, I put it out at one, two, three, four to be continued. I got tired of doing it so I —
CB: Right. That’s very good.
ME: And there it is. I copied from my logbook.
CB: That’s lots of Wellingtons. Yeah.
ME: Hard work that was.
CB: Thank you.
ME: Four engines were Lancaster, Lancaster, Liberator, Stirling and Halifax.
CB: Did you fly as first pilot in any of those?
ME: Not the four engine ones.
CB: Right.
ME: No.
CB: And were they also flown by women?
ME: There were secret places.
CB: Yeah. Were they flown by women?
ME: Yes.
CB: As well. They were.
ME: Yes. Of course. Women did everything.
CB: They did. Marvellous. Yeah. So was it only one Meteor you flew or did you go on to fly others?
ME: Pardon?
CB: Did you fly other Meteors?
ME: No. Because I was only there for three months.
CB: Right.
ME: And they were just making these Meteors then. No other girl alive has flown a Meteor.
CB: No. I can imagine. So, then the war ends. Well, what happened at the end of the war?
ME: Well, flying ceased so I went home. I went home. Played tennis with my mother.
Other: [unclear]
CB: And when did you meet your husband to be?
ME: I met him, oh I don’t know. I was running the airfield up here for about ten years before I met him. And then suddenly he appeared and he was a commercial pilot then. So. He was very handsome and so I thought [pause] he talked me into it. I may as well agree [laughs]
CB: So, after the war then you went home and played tennis but after that you went back in to flying.
ME: Well, I just said I came to the Isle of Wight as a, I was a personal pilot to a man that had an aeroplane but no pilot.
CB: Oh. Who was based in the Isle of Wight. Right.
ME: That’s why I’m on the Isle of Wight.
CB: And how often did he use his plane? Well you flew it but —
ME: Very often because he went to various places in, he had to go to committee meetings every so often to here, there and all over the country. So, it was rather fun.
CB: What plane did he use?
ME: A Gemini.
CB: But it had a radio [laughs]
ME: Pardon?
CB: But it had a radio now.
ME: No.
CB: Oh. it didn’t.
ME: No.
CB: Oh right.
ME: No. It didn’t.
CB: What about going abroad? Did he go abroad in it?
ME: I can’t hear now because my hearing aid has just run out.
CB: Ok. I’ll stop.
[recording paused]
ME: I became a personal pilot to this farmer man.
CB: Yeah.
ME: Then he bought a small airfield.
CB: Oh.
ME: And he had several managers which he wasn’t happy with and then one day he suggested that I could manage it for him. And I thought, well it’s a challenge and I like a challenge. So after a while instead of going home I decided to become an airport airfield manager so I was made manager and a few weeks afterwards when I started to build it up and I built the place up and up and I became airport commandant [laughs] because I’d now fixed in a CRDF and all sorts of things which had to be in order for the airline to come in and I did so desperately want the airlines to come in to the Isle of Wight. And so, I had to have all this CRDF and everything else. So, I did that.
CB: This is at Sandown.
ME: And the airlines came in. In the summer it brought people from Leeds and Manchester and Birmingham and Exeter and London. Every day in the summer. Which was — people can’t remember here that this ever happened but it did and it was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. And then of course I was married by this time and my husband was working for the — what was it?
Other: The Hovercraft.
ME: Hovercraft
LS: Yes. Yes.
Other: Hovercraft.
ME: Yes. The British Hovercraft. Whatever it was called.
CB: The British Hovercraft Association. At Cowes. Yes
ME: And he was posted out to various places around the world and then he didn’t like that very much so he came back. And he was asked again, please would he go to various places and he said he wouldn’t go unless I went with him. So it was a case of he giving up his job or me giving up mine. And unfortunately for me I had to give up. So, I said I can’t stay here any longer and so I went abroad with my husband but because I left the field gradually went downhill and it closed shortly afterwards and went for sale. And I didn’t know anything about it then because I was abroad. Had I stayed I would have gone on. Without my husband [laughs]
CB: Yes. We’re talking about Sandown aren’t we? Yes. Which still has a grass runway. So, you went around the world with him. Then eventually he returned to the UK. You did. Together.
ME: Yes.
CB: Then what?
ME: But that, that would take, that took about four or five years because I was in the airfield here from ‘50 to ‘70. ‘70 I took off with my husband. So that was twenty years.
Other: Mary. You did the pleasure flying. Mary. Pleasure flying.
ME: Pleasure flights.
Other: Yeah.
CB: You did pleasure flights.
ME: Donald did afterwards.
Other: Yeah.
ME: But — yes because Donald bought an aeroplane. My husband. And together we did pleasure flights. Yes. That’s right. Which was very interesting because quite a lot of people that went for a pleasure flight decided that they would learn to fly afterwards because they enjoyed it. It was going around the Isle of Wight. So that was some good. And then, for some reason, Donald left and said, ‘I don’t want to do that anymore.’ So he didn’t. And I just went. We sold the aeroplane and I more or less went with the aeroplane just selling tickets. And that’s how people know me. Selling pleasure flight tickets. They don’t know anything about my previous life.
CB: Extraordinary. Yeah.
ME: It’s extraordinary.
CB: Yes. Eventually you gave up selling the tickets.
ME: [laughs] Yes.
CB: And settled down to a bit of retirement.
ME: I’m trying to grow old gracefully with my great help.
CB: Yes. Lorraine.
ME: My great friend.
LS: We try to inspire each other. You’re still inspiring me anyway, Mary.
CB: And finally as far as the air, the association was concerned, the organisation continued.
ME: Which?
CB: In the background. Your [pause] your girl, the girls who were in the —
ME: That stopped at the end of the war.
CB: Right.
ME: That finished in ‘45 and so I had three months in’ 46 when I was with 41 Group.
CB: Right.
ME: Which is part of the RAF isn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
Other: I’m not sure, Mary. I don’t know.
CB: Yeah. But the Air Transport Auxiliary had an Association afterwards did it? Where people kept together and so you kept in touch with the girls you’d flown with for all those years. Did you? At annual events?
ME: There weren’t very many because most of the girls had been married and so they stayed at home.
CB: Right.
ME: But we did have one reunion. Yes. And that was all. And gradually they have all gone to heaven. Or somewhere.
CB: Yeah. Well Mary Wilkins Ellis thank you very much for a most interesting conversation and we wish you many more years.
ME: You can’t do that because I’m a hundred and a half already.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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AEllisMW170703
PEllisMW1701
Title
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Interview with Mary Ellis
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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:17:14 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2017-07-03
Description
An account of the resource
Mary Wilkins Ellis was born in Oxfordshire and became interested in aviation at a very early age. She experienced her first flight with Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus. Mary learned to fly while still at school and obtained her licence in 1938. When the war began all civil flying was stopped and she thought her flying life was over until she heard a request on the radio for ladies who had a flying licence to join the Air Transport Auxiliary. She applied and was accepted immediately. She began her training at Hatfield and then at White Waltham, where she learnt the rudiments of flying various different kinds of aircraft as well as emergency training, meteorology and morse code. As with all ATA pilots, she began ferrying planes to airfields without the benefit of a radio and landing without any assistance. This led to a number of close calls. One day she ferried two Wellingtons, a Spitfire, a Defiant and a Swordfish. Towards the end of the war she also flew a Meteor.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Air Transport Auxiliary
aircrew
Anson
B-25
Blenheim
Catalina
Defiant
Halifax
Hampden
Hudson
Hurricane
Lancaster
Meteor
Oxford
P-51
pilot
RAF Hatfield
Spitfire
Stirling
Swordfish
Tiger Moth
Typhoon
Walrus
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/251/3399/PEppelJW1702.2.jpg
676ab85feb086f60ab5bb03591b7fcd3
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/251/3399/AEppelJ170419.1.mp3
fab97d40c50ec49de2b2caad2fad9464
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
Eppel, John
John Eppel
J Eppel
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with John Eppel (b. 1923, 433156 Royal Australian Air Force), his log book, documents and photographs. He flew a tour of operations as a navigator with 550 Squadron.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Eppel and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Eppel, JW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jean MacCartney and the interviewee is John Eppel. The interview is taking place at Mr Eppel’s home in Eastwood, New South Wales, on the 19th of April 2017. Now, John, I said that we would just have a bit of an informal chat and we’ll start way back in, um, when you were born in 1923 in, I believe, in Marrickville ?
JE: Marrickville.
JM: Does that mean you were born at home or —
JE: No. It was a,a local health centre, private hospital.
JM: Right OK. And was your family there all living around Marrickville?
JE: We were living in just one street right from grandma Blake who is as you see just up there by the fire place. She bought property in just one street in Marrickville right from the man who first settled there, or one of the early settlers was a Frenchmen, Du Ponte [?], so of course it was ang— anglicised to Despointe, later to D E S P O I N T E S. Anyway, grandma Blake took, er, took, er, bought the first property in 1902 and from then, er, well, her son and her grandson extended the prop— the other properties. So, I was then grew up in number 56 Despointes Street which she bequeathed to my father and it stayed in the family until my mother died. My father died, er, just after we married in 1949 and then my mother was there until she died in 1972 or thereabouts and the property — she moved up to her sisters at Earlwood — and the property was then sold so we had landholdings in Marrickville for a long time.
JM: Over fifty years. Well over fifty years. Yes, that is a long time for — very — I believe so and, er, obviously in that case you did your schooling around Marrickville. So primary school —
JE: Primary school was in Despointes Street at one time. This was a British school. The Good Samaritan nuns ran that, and from there we went up to the Duracel [?] brothers up on Livingstone Road [background noise] and finished up there, in a secondary school up there.
JM: And what sort of things were you doing in your youth around Marrickville. Were you playing in sporting teams, in, um, in clubs or —
JE: I played football, I played football at school, you know, for the school teams. Never much good at cricket but, er, football I was, I was reasonable at and my father — well, when I was young I was joining the cubs, a local scout group, and just about that time the loc— scoutmaster that had been there by name of Catch [?] he retired and my father, being an ex-navy man so he took it on. He became the scoutmaster for a while. So, he did the, er, the scoutmaster’s course at Bennet [?] Hill, Bennet Hills and so he took that on for a while. Then finally he retired from that also and the time he retired from it, well, I gave up too, but —
JM: You gave up too. Did you go through and do your King’s Scout badge or didn’t you go as high as that?
JE: No, I got one or two badges I think at the time but I didn’t go in the scouts. I just stayed in the cubs.
JM: Oh, OK. Right. Right.
JE: But, er, one of my sons, my son Peter later in the piece he went right through the Sea Scouts at Lewis Point.
JM: OK. OK. And, of course in, in your sort of — about twelve or so, um, would have been the start of about the Depression years so how, how did that impact on your immediate area?
JE: A great deal. I remember the, the difficult situation in the early ‘30s when Governments were falling and so on. Jack [unclear] was, er, taken out as State Governor and all that sort of thing. I had a small bank account in the New South Wales which was taken over by the Cobalt and my little bank account became a Cobalt bank account which I’ve been with ever since, since 1932, so that’s just by the way. But, er, my father, he’d been something of a motorbike enthusiast. He got himself a brand new Harley Davidson, right, in ‘29, which was his pride and joy. But come the Depression had to sell it and he was out of work for two years and he got a little, little Douglas that ran on the smell of an oil rag. He put his tools on the back, back of the bike and went for looking for work. But he was still basically out of work for two years. So the Depression affected us all. We all knew what was going on. We had patches in our pants and so on and even at school we, we knew we were poor little boys and our fathers were out of work and, you know, it was a bad time and I feel that’s influenced our attitudes for the rest of our lives. My attitude to investments these days is still influenced by what happened then.
JC: That’s right. That’s’ exactly right. And did — when you went through schooling did — sorry I meant to just check — and so what sort of — you mentioned your father had tools — what sort of — was he sort of —
JE: He was a carpenter, carpenter in general —
JM: Carpenter in general but probably turning his hand to anything.
JE: Carpenter and joiner. He had been in the Navy and that was his basic trade. He worked on many of the major cities and the theatres of Sydney city. He, you know, in fact he’s part of the building of Sydney city. On the Regent, the Capital and all, and State theatre. All those theatres he worked on.
JM: That would, that would give you a very interesting insight when you would have gone and visited them in later years to be able to hear about the work what he did so —
JE: Being and ex-Navy man, he was very proud of that, and he had his ex-Navy friends and we went to inter-State gatherings and so that First World War background I was very much aware of it.
JM: Very much part, very much part of your DNA, so yes. And you went — you mentioned the schools you went through. Did you finish school at the end of the intermediate certificate or, er did you go through the —
JE: No, I finished but I didn’t do particularly well but [unclear] improved at Tech after I left school at the beginning of ’39 and I was trying to get in — I had been interested in drawing and interesting building model aeroplanes and making drawings of model aeroplanes out of a magazine I used to buy. So I was buying Flying Aitchison [?] and popular aviation magazines with my little pocket money I managed to get from 1934,’35 onwards. And then about 1937, er, my schoolteacher at the time, a Duracel [?] brother, he encouraged me to re-join the Sydney Municipal Library and I have been in, in, a library member for, oh, ever since. So, primarily it was for geography and a lot of other school subjects but I started to read aeroplane books and a bit about aircraft because I was still interested, and I started to build little balsa model aeroplanes and finally went into Berstex [?] but so I‘ve been building aeroplanes for many, many years so that was — I was interested in the aeronautics so that’s how I got then to where I finally ended up.
JM: You didn’t join the Air Training Corps?
JE: No. No. I don’t think there was an Air Training Corps then. I’m not certain now whether they were they in existence then, the ATC?
JM: But, er, but nevertheless you developed this interest in, in planes and —
JE: So, so I was interested and, of course, I wanted to get, being interested in drawing, I wanted to do engineering drawing and, of course, and while about August of 1940, 1940 I managed to work a couple of — through my mother’s brother I was introduced to Wormald Brothers, which became Wormald International finally, finally an international, before becoming an Australian international company, and I stayed with Wormald International for, then, for forty-eight years, from 1940 until I retired in 1948 [?].
JM: Goodness me.
JE: So — but starting, er, in that industry, in August 1940, the war had started, jobs were still difficult to get and there might be about a hundred kids lining up trying to get a job in a drawing office. I was lucky I got sort of assistance from my mother’s brother so that helped. So, I got in and I was there 1941,’42. I was still in the drawing office but then, in those years, fire certificate passed in the fire protection of Australia’s liquid fuel storage. I’d been there for twelve months in, by 1941, and I took my first annual leave and I went up to Katoomba for a holiday and while I was away the company contacted my father and said, ‘We want your permission to send him to New Guinea,’ and my father agreed. We had the contract for the naval fuel oil depot in Port Moresby. We also had contracts for fuel depots in, naval fuel depots, in [unclear] Sydney and Brisbane so August 1941 I was sent to New Guinea to Port Moresby. I got to the, of course, we were bound by contract to get site details. That’s why they picked me to go and get it and I went up there and at that time did one of the silliest things I’ve ever done. I was the only one made to go the site sentry at the gate, with my arrival ticket to explain it, and, er, I was up on top a hundred and eighty foot diameter, about forty foot high navy fuel tank, about three quarters full, and I wanted to check some fittings see if we could work with them. They were already installed fittings. And I opened the roof and climbed down the ladder inside and with the fumes of the fuel oil and the tropics I could have slipped on that ladder and ended up in fuel oil and drowned and never been found. But anyway I got out of that, overcome that. But also I remember at Port Moresby, while I was in Port Moresby, the flight of the US flying fortress came from the United States, er, across via New, via New Guinea, up to the Solomon Islands and they landed in Port Moresby for the day and I met two members of the crew of the USA Air Force and had a chat with them so that was interesting.
JM: So did you get to look at the planes themselves or just chat to the servicemen?
JE: That’s in here, the record of that flight and I didn’t close to the aeroplanes but I talked to two of the crewmen and that was interesting. So, of course, from then on I had this important information in my brain and by September 1941 I was called up for military service [unclear] 53a and of course the company gave me a letter to take with me and I slipped into in my birthday suit for a medical examination and I hear the area officer’s voice raised, ‘Where is this fella? Let’s have a look at him,’ after he’d read the letter. So I was exempted from military service on account of my information, the fact that I was working on a naval oil tanks, I was working on other, other work for all these oil companies and improving their, their fire protection and so on. So, we were doing important work, and came the start of 1942 the company was declared a protected industry so that made me even more stuck. So, I was, by that time I was going into the Air Force depots that were being built for the Air Force Empire Training Scheme but their, their fuel storages, we were doing fire protection for them also. So I was getting into a uniformed environment in [unclear] Isle, places like the [unclear] Air Force depots and so on, as an apparently physically fit civilian, in this uniformed environment. And knowing my father being in the Navy and the fact that my grandfather had been an Army man in two wars I was getting a bit sensitive about my position so at the start ‘42 I applied to join the Air Force. After I applied to join the Air Force I went to, er, what are they called? The, er, Women’s Emergency Signals Services, for learning, how to learn Morse code. So I was learning Morse code as a civilian on the side. So, all of ’42 I was fighting the company, ‘Are you going to release me?’ They said, ‘No, no, no.’ They sent one other executive sent to the Air Force and said, you know, ‘Can he be released?’ They said, ‘No, no, no.’ So, anyway after that the Air Force made me release the reservist badges, the books rather, the books I had for study. They said, ‘You have to give them back because you haven’t been released.’ So, I had to give them back so I wrote four letters to the manpower authorities at Kingston, Kensington and ended up at state power director in New South Wales in Martin’s Place and the upshot was I was released for the Air Force in 1943 and at that time I was finally released from the company and became an AC2 and I started as an Air Force Courier so the Air Force correspondence with the, with the manpower authorities is appended to this.
JM: Right. OK. We’ll —
JE: At the back of this is my correspondence, correspondence with them.
JM: OK. So, John’s documented a lot of his, um, experiences in a — which also incorporates his family’s military experiences in a, in a book called “Footprints on the Sands” and, um, it’s a very thick document and very well augmented by lots of photographs and other subsidiary documents so it’s a very interesting compilation that he’s created. So, um, so you finally, as you say, got your release to go and enlist and so you, um, did your ITS at Kingaroy I see from your log book?
JE: Kingaroy. Yes, so I enlisted at Woolloomooloo and then on the day we had to turn, turn up we all had to line up at Central Station and the man who had been sent by Wormald Brothers who had been sent down to get me out he saw me that night and didn’t admit to it until many years later [laugh] that he had seen me there. So we were posted off to Kingaroy. There was about thirty of us and on a troop train with a lot of RAF and other people on it was waylaid on the way because an RAF man had an argument with an American and broke a window on the train and the train was stopped and so it was late getting to Brisbane. We get to Brisbane and there we are in civilian clothes and we were late. We lost, missed the train to go to Kingaroy so we bunked up at an army camp on boards overnight with a blanket between four. That’s all they could find for us and the Air Force came and got us the next day, took us to an Air Force base at Sandgate and then we got our selves cleaned up from our trip on the train and had a shave and so on and the next day we got posted off to Kingaroy. So we ended up in Kingaroy. So that was ITS and, of course, we were then stripped of our civilian clothes and we got our Air Force issue and so on, and then we were now in the semi tropics, and we started off in shirts and shorts but they were somewhat ill-fitting so the CO said, ‘No. That’s no good. You look terrible.’ So he made us wear the [unclear] skins, the blue winter overalls, and they were better so we got to wear them. So again we went through the RAAF course then of course, learning all about the new regime. We had to be certain we had read the daily regiment orders and all that sort of thing otherwise we’d be on a charge and swing our arms up, up there otherwise our names would be taken and, oh, all the things that happened to us and [emphasis] got our first flight in a service aircraft. 5 Squadron were there at Kingaroy at the time, flying Wirraways, and they were practicing dive-bombing the tanks of the [unclear] Division out on the [unclear] so they gave us aircrew trainees a flight in a Wirraway, and that was the first service aircraft. Then they converted to Boomerangs and they went to New Guinea. So that was the start.
JM: So, that was the first time you’d actually been in a plane so —
JE: Oh no, I’d flown to, um, Port Moresby.
JM: Oh yes, yes. Of course.
JE: That was Delta Airlines. They were flying Lockheed 14s, which became the Hudsons. Up in Port Moresby was the base for the Lockheed 14s, which became Hudsons. So that was the first flight I had, up to Port Moresby.
JM: But — so that those two planes would be slightly different though, a very different experience. So from Kingaroy, um, you then went to Cootamundra.
JE: Cootamundra. Yes. We were stuck in Kingaroy for a while. We finished our basic ITS course. Anyway, we were in a pool, going out digging in the roads and doing all sorts of silly things and it was just filling time but it was still useful things. But Cootamundra for navigation skills were being flooded by sub pilots and Cootamundra was being killed with sub pilots from Temora and Bundaberg and other places like that. They were, weren’t not good enough to be pilots so became navigators so we had to wait until they were processed through so we were delayed. We were 38 Course at Kingaroy then became 39 Course at, er, at Cootamundra. So, er, that was the situation.
JM: Right. So that’s when you started your navigator training? And so that was —
JE: So by the time we got to Cootamundra it was getting the middle of winter. It was quite cold.
JM: Oh yes, that’s right. It would have been quite cold in June, June and July and August —
JE: You’d put your feet on the ground and they would ring, you know?
JM: Yes. Yes. So hopefully you had slightly heavier clothing by that stage?
JE: Oh, yes. The only time you were warm was when you’d got your flying gear on.
JM: So what, um, flying — did you do flying down in Cootamundra at all?
JE: Yeah we flew mostly over the towns of, er, southern New South Wales and learning all the basic things we had to do, with square searches and, er, taking pictures [background noise] of, er, of silos and railway stations and things like that. It, er, was introducing us to, to basic navigation at that stage.
JM: Well. We’ll come back to the book later a bit later on so that —
JE: We’ll come back to it later. Yeah. Yeah. Righto.
JM: Yeah. If that’s OK. And, um, so that, that’s all good sort of introduction stuff to, for you, and so —
JE: Yes. It was. We did one long cross country to Adelaide and stayed over. The pilot was on instructions ‘Don’t stay over and don’t be delayed.’ Unfortunately during the [unclear] drop on the way across [unclear] like watching a weather balloon going up and I just missed a few readings and so he called me then everything. Anyway, things that happened [slight laugh].
JM: Yes, that’s right. So from there was off to Evans Head for your gunnery training I would assume?
JE: Oh, from Cootamundra we got a little bit of leave in Sydney on the way back to then and I was posted to bombing and gunnery at Evans Head. One of our mates who’d been with us Cootamundra — he was from Queensland, named Alf Dess [?] — he wrote a little poem and — which I’ve got in there about the — and, er, about the, the mistreated men, clock watching, mugs of foaming ale, we got various little bits. There was our sorry little flight at Cootamundra. And, er, he didn’t turn up at bombing and gunnery school at Evans Head. So anyway, ‘What’s happened to Alf Dess?’ Anyway Alf turned up a week or two later and told us his tale. He was a little bit older than the rest of us and he was a man, red faced, reddish faced man, and he liked the strong, strong liquors and he’d been imbibing his latest favourite tipple in Sydney and, er, unfortunately that affected him internally and he had to go to the hospital, hospital at Bankstown, and at that time was a VD hospital. And he turned up there and of course they said, ‘Where did you get it?’ He said, ‘I haven’t got it.’ They wouldn’t believe him. So, anyway, that was his trouble, you know, the strong alcohol affected him down, down below and, er, so he was telling us his tale and had us in fits about the situation, you know, about what could happen, you know [laugh]. And out at Evans head, you know, while we’re on the subject, the huts at Evans Head they were full of lurid places [?] and other things about the more sordid parts of service life, you know, warning us what could happen. In later times, when we went to Britain, we found that Scunthorpe at one time was out of bounds by Bomber Command because it was called the red light of the north for the same reason. So we were warned.
JM: You were warned. That’s right. So any particular, um, memories from that bombing and gunnery training at Evans Head? Any near misses or —
JE: The main thing was we had contend with as bombers and navigators we, we had to fly in the back cockpit of the Fairey Battle and these were Fairey Battles that had been given to Australia. There were hundreds of them sent to Australia and Canada and other places because they were, they were obsolete and they’d been shot down, well, dozens over France in the early days of 1940 and, of course, they were vulnerable in that way but for training they were quite good. But they had Merlin engines [background noise of drilling] and they were glycol cooled and for us as well, and for me particularly, we had to lie down and drop bombs through the hatch under, under the aircraft, and we got the fumes, the glycol fumes from the engine, from the radiator sometimes back to us. It was a sickening thing, you know, when you were trying to concentrate on dropping a bomb.
JM: Yes. Not, not easy.
JE: Breathing glycol fumes wasn’t very good. Then the staff pilots of course were getting, were bored with this job they had and after they’d finished the job they’d go down the beach and fly along the beach at North Victor [?]. They’d go and have fun and games, yeah, yeah. Well, the pilots at Cootamundra used to do the same thing in Ansons at Cootamundra, they used to get fun and games too. They’d get to North Victor [?] farmers’ fences [laugh]. The things that happened.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. So then you went to Parkes for —
JE: Well, Parkes was more pleasant. That was our final astro navigation. We were basically trained as general navigators at Cootamundra and astro navigators at Parkes and that, that was reasonable. My main memories there was, again a staff pilot, who was so short he had a cushion on his seat to, apart from his parachute, to see up over the cockpit cone to fly the aircraft. And then one night we were up because of course we were flying mostly at night to Esso [?] and there had been a dust storm and the ground was consumed but the stars were quite bright so we managed, we managed to do what we had to do. That’s my memories of Parkes. That was reasonable but by that time, um, we had the final sort of send-off after each place, Cootamundra and Parkes and so on. My colleagues had, we all got to know each other, our foibles and so on, given each other nicknames and so on, so I was given the nickname of “Keeper of the Good Guts Book” because right from the beginning from Kingaroy onwards we were given ordinary exercise books to make notes in. That was alright. It was a reasonable thing it was to do for us but I thought I had a better idea. I’ll use the foolscap size spring-back binder they used to use as a text book. My father sent it to me. So, from there on, I used this spring-back binder, foolscap size [unclear] binder and with loose leafs my father sent me and I started putting all my notes in that. So the other fellas said, “The Good Guts Book” so at the bottom there the name now is “The Good Guts Book” as it I today. It finally broke the back of the spring-back binder after I’d got my Bomber Command and Transport Command notes in it but it’s still alive.
JM: Still alive. Goodness me. All these, all these years, ninety-odd years later. Yes. Amazing. And so then off to embarkation and, um, so December ’43 you were on a boat to —
JE: Now that was interesting also because, er, there were eighty, eighty-nine navigators now were being posted to Britain. Some of them were coming from where we’d been, at Cootamundra, Evans Head and Parkes. Some were coming from Nhill in Victoria, and we were all gathering at 2 ED [?] at that little park in Sydney but we were to sail from Brisbane. So, the eighty-nine of us were again put on a train and sent to Brisbane to join the American Army transport, The President Grant. The President Grant at that time, er, had been a peace-time liner and the US Army had taken over and it had become US transport, The President Grant, and it was taking wounded from the battles and so on back to the United States. So it was crewed by the US Navy of course and with some Army nurses to look after the wounded. We were, of course, the eighty-nine of us were the main able people otherwise on board and so we were given a job. We had to man the gun tops, gun tubs, on a rostered basis and watch for submarines and be hypnotised by flying fish and things like that, using our imaginations. Er, we never, never met any submarines but flying down the, going down the Brisbane river on that day (it was a week day when we joined the ship) we were floating down the Brisbane river, the PA system on the ship was playing “California, here I come”. There were submarines off the coast, for goodness sake. We thought, you know, where’s security? So, anyway, eventually we got to sea and it was a little bit rough for a start and — but we got our sea legs and that was good for the time we crossed the Atlantic. So, anyway, we crossed the Pacific, we crossed the date line, the equator over the Marianas and of course [unclear] for that, and they fired the rear gun one time and that shook the ship a bit but they didn’t do it anymore. But we were in steel bunks in the hold and sort of thing and I got one all to myself, to sleep there and put my gear in. We had to shave of course and we only got one bottle of cold water every day to sue to drink and to shave and everything else you needed it for. So the alternative was shaving in cold water, cold sea water. That wasn’t very nice. So, eventually some of us woke up to the bright idea, if we go up to the forward winch, to the forward deck, we can drain the winches. There’s hot condensed steam in the winches, nice hot water to shave with. That was good, so use your head.
JM: Use your head. Well, it was what was needed.
JE: Also on the forward deck were the gamblers that played poker and games like that and took the money from the others that were not so good. Oh, the things that happened on that ship. Then, of course, the mess was in the forward hold and going down on the companion way into the forward hold was very tight, you know, and stuff like that and not our cup of tea but still we put up with it. So, eventually we got to San Francisco and, of course, sailing under Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco. That was delightful for the wounded men and of course on the way over they were old school. While we were doing our duty in the gun tubs and if we got bored and started to sing or whistle the [unclear] officer would come down on us. And we had to ignore the American Naval officers and the Army nurses on the deck down below, sort of doing what comes naturally, and we had to ignore all that sort of thing [laugh]. Still that was [unclear]. So at San Francisco we were taken to Angel Island, a US Army base of course, and lectured and my US Army officer he said that, ‘I know you fellas don’t bother about saluting your own officers,’ because some of our officers were pilot officers even then and the rest were sergeants, and of course we didn’t salute each other, and he said, ‘Would you please salute the fella with the eagle on his shoulder. He’s the commander of this post.’ [laugh] So we had to salute the colonel. Anyway that was alright. So anyway, a day and a half in San Francisco, another, Ted Cook and I went, went to the movies, sat all night through a movie, and one of the favourite movies of at that time — no, its name won’t come at the moment. Anyway that was enjoyable.
JM: Yeah. So then on to the troop train?
JE: Onto a troop train across the United States. There was a little bit of snow there on the ground at that time. But the trains were so hot we wore our socks, our shirts and shorts, you know, as the trains were hot. And that shocked the Americans a little bit. And then they got a porter of course came around that we used to tip every so often and the flying officer in charge of us said, ‘Now cut this out.’ He said, ‘You’re only getting five dollars just to keep you going so you can’t afford to give a tip to somebody.’ So we had to stop doing that. We got into, er, middle of the United States and stopped there somewhere in Carolina, er, Carolina. Anyway, somewhere in the middle of the United States and got off the train for a milk shake and so on, and looking around, and a couple of us went and asked the girl for a milk shake and she said, ‘Oh, I can’t understand you.’ Typical southern accent, so anyway [unclear] we got by but the same was in Chicago. You know, the usual interest in Chicago, the stories of the — Al Capone and all the things that had happened in those days we’d seen in the movies and so on. That was our interest in Chicago. Then, of course, eventually we arrived in New York and, er, to another camp and that — we weren’t there long. That, that was alright. So we got into New York as soon as we could and a few of us went to Jack Dempsey’s Bar and did various other things, went to Sonia Heeney’s ice show and so on. So then me [emphasis] since my mother was a soprano and I’d been brought up on operatic arias and all sort of things, since she used to take me to the concert parties, to Long May gaol and veterans home at Upper [unclear] and various old peoples’ homes, I’d grown up with a singing background. I’d grown up on operatic arias, so I took myself to the Metropolitan Opera. I went to the Magnifica [?] and Metropolitan Opera and stayed and sat, stayed for supper on that for ever afterwards and sent, sent the programme back to my mother and made her green with envy [laugh]. Anyway, I got to the Metropolitan Opera. So that was good.
JM: Very good.
JE: So then one cold night we were loaded on to trucks with motorbikes with screaming sirens and so on, and we were taken to the side of a great ship and into the side of a great ship. We didn’t know what it was until we got inside and we found the names of the RAF carved into the railings and all over the place. It was the Queen Elizabeth. And she’d been taking the RAF from the city to the Middle East and now she was taking us to Britain and some thousand American troops bound for what became D Day finally, and they were with us, and again we were one of the smaller groups. There were some French Canadian girls that some of us got pally with and the purser on the ship was telling us what we would need in Britain, like lipsticks to give to the girls. We found we didn’t need lipsticks anyway. He was doing a deal. So, things came. On the Queen Elizabeth there were so many people on it, so many thousands of troops with their arms, and with the ship itself being armed and the gouting [?] cables around the ship and, with so many people using the water that was normally used for so many number of passengers laid down, the ship was unstable. So it was sailing across the Atlantic unescorted, on its own, and depending on the speed to beat the submarines and, as the captain said later, we ended up with a roll, with a high speed roll, and at one stage of the game, they had ropes across all the big open areas, and people had to give up going for meals. There was two meals a day and the PA system was going all day, ‘This is the second call for the third sitting in the sergeants’ mess. Fall in for chow.’ And this would go on all day. So we only got two meals but when this high speed roll was on a lot of people didn’t turn up for meals so that helped us to.
JM: It was impossible.
JE: And of course we were all given a big disk with a number, a coloured disk, with a number and it would say, ‘Stay in our part of the ship. Don’t go wandering about.’ If you wander out of your own area the MPs will be after you so you were under control.
JM: Yes, so you then get to Glasgow?
JE: So we ended up in Glasgow, in Gallowgate, in, up in, oh, in Finch [?] in Greenock, and
JM: On the train down to Brighton?
JE: We were let loose in there for, oh, half a day. And that was in Gallowgate and so we went strolling round the town and we encountered groups of girls. That was a cultural shock. These groups of girls singing, ‘Roll me over in the clover, roll me over in the da da da.’ So, I spoke to the MPO, I said, ‘Are all the girls like that? Do you know that song or what?’ But that was our next cultural shock. When we got back to the RAF base we were based at that time I went for the train and told the NCO about it and he said, ‘You were lucky you didn’t meet some of the fellas with razor blades in the backs of their caps.’ So that was no go, no go at that time. Had no idea.
JM: That’s right. So on the train down to Brighton?
JE: On the train down to Brighton and we met some of the French girls we’d met on the ship. And Don Patten was bloody, ‘Oh, fancy seeing you again.’ Oh yeah, Don Patten was loud [?]. Oh yeah, so down to Brighton and — via London of course — and transferring through London and a quick, quick view of some of the sights, and then down to Brighton and the two hotels in Brighton, The Metropole and The Grand. We were NCOs in the Grand. The officers were in The Metropole and, er, near the famous pier. We were out on the pier for lectures and things like that and sighting new and newer aircraft that used to go over the [background noise] and some others that we’d never heard of before. They were flying over Brighton.
JM: OK, John. Hold on a minute. I think we have a bit of competition here. So — OK, we’ve shut the door now so we won’t have that tree mulcher, the mulching and, er, chain saw going on. So, sorry we were just talking about Brighton and —
JE: We had lectures on the pier and so on and I found out looking after us at that time was our local post man. He was now a warrant officer disciplinary in Brighton and, of course, I knew him and he warned us that there’s six hundred pubs in Brighton but there’s one you shall not go into. Of course, there’s been a fight between the Canadian, Canadian soldiers and Australian airmen so this pub you shall not go into. Of course we all wanted to know the name of it. So, anyway that was that. But we went dancing at the Dome, you know, the famous Dome, the Prince Regent’s house in Brighton. And that was nice. You could ask a girl for a dance and, of course, you’d be favoured. They were nice girls. So that was nice, dancing at the Dome.
JM: And from there you moved on to your advanced flying?
JE: All the way back to Scotland again.
JM: Back to Scotland.
JE: Back to West Freugh on the Mull of Galloway. Well, that again was a nice place to be and we met new friends and a group of us there, there hadn’t been Australians, Australians there for some time so we were, we were welcomed nicely. And we got buddy buddy with the photographic WAAF, Joan Shaw, and she leant us an iron to iron our shirts and I had some starch with me and I offered the starch to starch our collars and so we got a good relationship with Joan. Later in the piece she got friendly with one of my mates, Kevin Curtin. He became an architect in the city. He — and his twin brother Pat was finally lost on ops but, er, she asked me later what had occurred to Pat and Kevin Curtin and she got some of my ops photos but she was to fly from West Freugh to the RAF Interpretation Centre, Interpretation Centre at Metheringham. So I met her later, some years later, sometime later in London. So that was our first friend in there. As I say, we flew up and down in Scotland, over Northern Island and up and down the Irish Sea and got to know about RAF procedures and local weather and so on and leant that they, if the enemy happens to be around they’ll shoot at you and don’t fly over any Royal Navy ships either. They’ll shoot at you. So things, things we had to learn.
JM: Kind of useful buy anyway, yes —
JE: Useful, yes.
JM: Yes, yes, yes. So, and being in March, basically most of March, early April, the weather was just early spring, should have been reasonable. Although, up in that part of Scotland was a little bit cool still at that stage but —
JE: Still a bit cool still but we used to wander around during our time off and even at one time we were down at, er, Oban and a couple of fellas said, ‘Oh, it’s time we had a pin-up.’ So we go past a ladies’ wear shop and there in the window is a hosiery advertisement with a blonde with the long socks on of the time and he said, ‘Oh we’ve got to have that as our pin-up.’ That became our pin-up.
JM: Well, there you go. So all you had to do was ask. So from there down, back, down to Finningley and then after Finningley, Worksop. Of course 18 OTU, um, started off at Finningley and then —
JE: Well, Finningley was the basic OTU, the permanent station, and Worksop was the satellite for it. Finningley was very much a spit and polish type of station and we had to behave ourselves there but the beauty of being now at Finningley was we crewed-up.
JM: That’s right, that what I was going to say. That was where you would have crewed-up.
JE: They got us all in the sergeant’s mess there one day and, er, some words from the CO and from the site padre about aspects of this marriage, which basically was what it was, and so we — they let us loose to crew ourselves up. So John Conway, er, he was also a navigator bomb aimer. He’d, he’d done, been trained in Canada and he’d done a coastal command course in Canada so I got to know him. I’d met him somewhere on a run and so John Conway as bomb aimer, he teamed up with me as navigator, and we looked around. We picked on a fair haired RAF pilot from Liverpool, John Harris, so there was now three of us. So the three of us approached Bob Bickford from Canberra as a wireless operator.
JM: Sorry, Big— Bigfoot?
JE: Bob Bickford.
JM: Bickford.
JE: He was from Canberra and so we picked on him so there were four of us. So we looked around again and here were two gunners, two RAF gunners, er, Jock, Bill Waddell from Dunfermline and Bryan Barby from Birmingham. They’d already got themselves together so we approached them to join us. And here we were in fairly a short space of time, there was six of as the enemy of the few [?].
JM: And so that was the way you came together. So how long had you known John Conway? Sort of —
JE: Oh, a little time. I can’t remember where I met him now. Whether I’d met him on a train somewhere or on leave somewhere but I, I had known him, had a fair acquaintance with him but I can’t recall now where I met him.
JM: Right but was it only in England or —
JE: Oh, no. In Britain. I knew him, met him in Britain.
JM: Only in Britain. Yep. OK. And, um, and you liked the cut of the cloth of the pilot but —
JE: Yes. We all got on well. That was the point then. We were all NCOs still and were bunked in together. We had to get to know each other and we got on well together. So when we, when we finally flew there was no nonsense about pilot and skipper and all this sort, sort of nonsense. It was, we had three Johns: John Harris, John Eppel, John Conway so the pilot became Johnny, I became Jack and John Conway, since he was John Cornelius, he became JC, so that became our terminology throughout. Bob being, er, being, being Robert, Bob, he became Bob. He was the wireless operator. The other gunner Bill, Bill Waddell from Dunfermline had a Scottish accent so he became known as Jock and Bryan in the rear turret he was just Bryan. So we called ourselves by our first names or by nicknames as appropriate and we got on well together from that day.
JM: That right. So then you —
JE: We went to Worksop. Well, Worksop we didn’t do any flying at that time. We were there for a few lectures, and, er, did some training lectures, and training, plotting, navigation plots and that sort of thing but no flying. We didn’t go to Worksop to fly. That was a pleasant place. It was near Retford in, in geography and the beauty of Worksop was we now got into Bomber Command rations and not only more in food and things like eggs and oranges and things that the others could enjoy. I was never an egg person. I couldn’t eat my eggs but the chocolate ration improved. We now got Mars Bars. Mars Bars were nice. So as that, that was England and the chocolate ration was Mars Bars. So Worksop was quite good but what happened at Worksop, of course, was the eve of D-Day. We were, we were there on the eve of D-Day and we had all been flying that day and that night and we were told to be down before midnight because the colours of the day were going to change. And when we got down we realised when we were going to bed and having a hot [unclear], well we couldn’t, mostly it was lukewarm, but flying overhead were the aircraft of the Eighth Air Force who were taking off from East Anglia, formatting overhead, on their way to Normandy. So we knew why the colours of the day were changing so we saw Normandy, saw Normandy starting. So that was that.
JM: And so, and you were flying —
JE: Flying Wellingtons at that time.
JM: At OTU, yes.
JE: And of course we had Wellingtons. We’d flown on Ansons before and Wellingtons were new and bigger aircraft and different things about them and, of course, things we had to be wary of then, things we had to learn, that the Wellingtons had their fuel tanks in the wings and also smaller fuel tanks in the engine themselves and the drill, the drill was that after we’d been out for some hours the pilot, prior to landing, would switch from wing tanks to the cell tanks so he would still have a half hours flying to land himself. He didn’t, wasn’t uncertain about how much he had left, what he had in the wing tanks. So the drill was that me as navigator and Bob Allsop as wireless operator, we were down in the middle of the aircraft and we had to reach past us, had to pull a toggle and pull the toggle for the port and starboard engines, turn the cell tanks on. That was alright. However, the stage where I was told to put the cell tanks on I reached the outer one, pulled it on. Bob puts, pulled it on. Each of us pulled that one. The engines going splutter, splutter, splutter. It was the same one. ‘Get your act together fellas.’ We were switching the engines on and off. One man one job. A very a good thing to learn. Whoever was going to turn the engine on, switch those tanks on, one fella does it and he does it in the correct sequence. You don’t get yourself [unclear] so we nearly got ourselves into trouble but anyway we got out of it alright. It’s just the engines started to splutter and Harris was very upset [laugh] anyway we survived that.
JM: You did. So that and that was —
JE: And of course the other thing we had there was the start of, er, corkscrews. You know about corkscrews do you? Yeah. Well, we learnt about corkscrews there and, you know, this sort of thing. Oh yes. Again the pilots were learning their trade also and they had to do various, various things.
JM: Well, of course, they were in a totally different train again and so they had to learn, adjust to a different plane and learn these manoeuvres at the same time so it was hard for them as well. But hard for everyone adjusting. So, so then having done that you went through and you then ended up with your heavy conversion at Blyton.
JE: Blyton. Well there we met our flight engineer. He didn’t chose him. He was appointed to us. Charles Simpkins was older than the rest of us. He was about twenty-nine and, er, he was basic, his basic training as a sheet metal working. He had been trained by Avro, apart from being ground staff man, he’d been trained for Avro at the Avro, Avro works and, er, so he came to us and, of course, being a married man and twenty-nine he was a steadying force for all of us. John Con— Conway, he smoked a great deal, and drank a, drank a reasonable amount. He’d often say, ‘Remind me to have a beer tonight.’ He didn’t need reminding really but it was one of his favourite statements. So he was a bit disap— disappointed with Charlie but Charlie wasn’t, wasn’t that sort of a fella but anyway Charlie blended in well with us. We all got along together and of course in our name calling he was Charlie.
JM: Yes. So you each had your own names and were able to continue on with that.
JE: Yes, that was just it.
JM: Yeah and so, um, so now you have got new experiences because by at this point you were on Lancasters —
JE: We moved on to Halifaxes.
JM: Oh, Halifaxes.
JE: It was nice from my point of view when I went on the Halifax as a navigator I’d fly right up in the nose. I could look out the clear nose and see where I was going. And John Conway, he used to always — he was born and bred in, er, Western Australia and he was there and he used to drool about the green fields of England so John Conway used to like to look out at such things. So we got on, on reasonably well on the Halifaxes and there were no real problems. The — he and I got buddy buddy with a couple of WAAFs, Nora and — Nora and — Nora and Vera, I think it was, a couple of WAAFs. And at that time it was high summer and long nights and twilight and the local hostelry near Blyton was very much favoured, and it was nice to sit and quaff the mugs of foaming ale in the, in the long twilights. That was a very pleasant place.
JM: Yes, I’d say, because his was late July, early August, so it was a very good time of the year, very pleasant time of the year and, um, yes, I could — well if it were not for the circumstances otherwise —
JE: Yes D-Day was coming up but you know —
JM: But, yeah, it certainly provided some sort of minor diversion or distraction from the other things at hand. So from, after then, um, so you went to Lancaster Flying School —
JE: Lancaster Finishing school.
JM: Finishing School.
JE: That was only a week or so at Hemswell.
JE: Hemswell.
JE: Oh, at Hemswell we weren’t exactly welcome because we, as NCOs (we weren’t sergeants or flight sergeants at that time), the sergeants’ at mess was largely inhabited by the local inhabitants of course and they seemed to resent our presence in their [emphasis] mess so we weren’t exactly welcomed. We didn’t feel happy exactly at Hemswell. We were there just to learn something about Lancasters and about flying them and the fixtures and fittings of them and so on. So we survived Hemswell. There was no real hassles there.
JM: No unsettling experiences with converting to the Lancasters having —
JE: Not really no, no, no.
JM: The adjustments was OK converting from Halifaxes to —
JE: No problems with converting to Lancasters at that stage.
JM: And then you got the news that you were going to be posted to 550 Squadron.
JE: 550 Squadron. So, from Hemswell we were put on a train of course with all our gear up to Market Harborough up towards Grimsby and, er, eventually we unloaded onto a truck and the railway truck was approaching towards North Killingholme and the first thing we were interested in, or all I was interested in, was all these Lancasters. Have they got a bump underneath them? Have they got H2S? H2S was still being fitted to the main force squadrons and did North Killingholme have H2S? Yes. Most of the aircraft did. Oh, good. So I was happy with that. Of course, at that time, from Worksop onwards, I’d been using GEE. GEE was a very accurate navigation system in Britain but as we approached over the continent it was jammed. All the little pusles on the ray tube disappeared into the grass so you couldn’t read them. So, in, in Britain it was very good but over the continent, of course, we was doing this sort of thing, diversions over the continent, astro just wasn’t a proposition. Apart from the clouds, there was more clouds, it was difficult to pick up a star, and changing course all the time astro was more difficult. So, er, with H2S, as a self-contained ground observation radar, which gave us a picture of the ground, a picture of coastline, a picture of the towns and such like, er, it was far better when GEE was jammed, GEE was unusable. So, I was happy that H2S was on the aircraft. Now approaching North Killingholme it was the feeling of exhilaration, apprehension if you like, but here we were, we were approaching the front line at last, after two years, one and a half years after I joined the Air Force in Woolloomooloo, eighteen months later here I am at the front line. That was the feeling.
JM: And so that’s when the operations started?
JE: That’s when the operations started. Well, as part of the operations, it’s something that comes into here that I’ll tell you about and show you about. We were, we were posted from, er, Hemswell, the Lancaster Finishing School, I think around about the end of August, and in early September we were at, we reached North Killingholme, and of course the pilots had to do a second — that was the routine — they had to do a second dickie, second dickie trip with another crew, with a more experienced crew, before they took their own crew out. So the pilots arrived, arrived from Hemswell, and they had to do this second dickie so the day Harris and others had to do it, er, Bob Allsop and Bryan Barby were down at the runway with the members of this other crew and some of the flight commanders and they were waving the aircraft off and it was photographed. The scene was photographed and it, the photograph came to be finally used falsely on a number of other occasions. The aircraft that has been shown that was taking off was BQ-F Fox, a well-known aircraft, which finally flew over a hundred operations, and the crew that normally flew that was a Scotsman, named ‘Jock’ Shaw, David Shaw, er, who made a name for himself in Normandy. It flew its hundredth operation later, about November, but this was now early September and the photographer of the station’s photography section took this photograph of part of our crew and part of another crew seeing our pilot off on their first trip to Le Havre, their first second dickie trip, and the photograph was finally used falsely to illustrate the supposed take-off of BQ-F Fox on its one hundredth operation in November. And it went into the 550 Squadron history. It went into RAF history. It’s an official Air Ministry photograph which I have and it went into other publications which I have down there, “Lancasters at War” and so on. It was used again, again and again, and it was only until last year that my bomb aimer’s, er, daughter in Uxbridge, whom I’ve been communication with for the last three years now, namely Bryan Barby’s daughter. She saw — I sent her a copy, a copy of this which has that photo in it and she said, ‘Oh, look at this photo. Is that, is that you in this photo?’ It was Bob Bickford. She thought it might have been me. She said, ‘That looks like my father, Bryan.’ So, anyway, she start asking questions so I replied. I said, ‘Yes, I had the same questions when I saw that photograph purporting show the hundredth take-off of BQ-F Fox on its hundredth operation.’ It wasn’t. It wasn’t taken in November. It was taken in September. So I got the Squadron records changed and Peter Kildare [?] who looks after Squadron records these days he acknowledged the errors I gave and he changed Squadron records there but that was what happened. The station photographer cheated. He used that photograph he’d taken in, er, September for a purported take-off in November because he had the photographs. The light in November was too dark to take a reasonable photograph so he said, ‘Oh look I’ve got this photograph. I’ll use it.’ So he cheated and so that photograph was then changed. So that was, that was early in our career at North Killingholme.
JM: Quite early in your career, um, on 16th of September by the looks of it. Yeah, so, um, yes, so then this, that and then your career stretched for the full tour, right through then —
JE: Into January.
JM: Into January. But —
JE: Including the period of Battle of the Bulge. It was Christmas and there was an icy fog right across Europe and, er, the Tactical Air Force just couldn’t operate. We operated to, er, the marshalling, marshalling yards of Cologne and we couldn’t get back to Killingholme. We were diverted to an American Air Force base down in East Anglia and remarkably it was one of the stations, er, basing the aircraft that we’d seen from Worksop so that’s how it turned out. We were stuck with them for four days, helped them to drink their whisky, eat their Christmas dinner and so on. They gave us Christmas dinner then we came back to North Killingholme and had a New Year dinner and, of course, in the meantime North Killingholme people had been drinking to absent friends and, er, so at North Killingholme we had a New Year dance and I brought my Ulceby girlfriend to the dance and we won the spot waltz and the spot waltz but, er, apart from that dance at North Killingholme I went to a village dance at nearby Ulceby and met the girl, a Lincolnshire girl, who became my girlfriend for the next five months and she was a tower of strength for my morale during that time.
JM: Did — they often were. They provide the understanding.
JE: That is the point. The women of Britain stood by us. Our girlfriends, the others that we met, appended to other things here, er nostalgic memories of the, of her, a WAAF girlfriend that I had (that was a more, became a more serious affair), to ATS girls I celebrated VE day with in London, er, a girl on Transport Command who was a secretary to one of the directors of Dunbolts [?] and others that we met. There was the feeling of the times that — what was happening at Worksop that I hadn’t mentioned was a movie was being made at Carnforth at that time, er, we didn’t know about it. It was ninety miles north of us at the time. It became an iconic movie based on, based on Noel Coward’s play, er, what’s its name? “Brief Encounters” “Brief Encounter” and so all, all these meetings with our girlfriends and others, they were brief encounters, but no less memorable for being brief. We still remember them [clears throat].
JM: Absolutely and [clears throat] with, um, the flying and with the various ops that you did right through. I mean, I can see just very quickly scanning through your log book here that, that you’d —
JE: Well, being navigator I gave the full — lots of people just wrote duty so and so, op so and so [unclear] — but I wrote the full details of the route.
JM: I can see that and it’s very, very interesting that you had done that because —
JE: I gave the full details of what I did as navigator.
JM: Yes, yes. And, and — but also I can see, you know, obviously part of all the raids that I’ve seen before in terms of, you know, the destination of Essen and Stuttgart and, er, Dusseldorf and, and all the rest of it, it’s, um, yes, what of all of these ops, which ones perhaps stand out for you? I mean, I know they are all significant in various ways but which ones do you think? What, what sort of —
JE: The main point was, I mean, the fact is today that we survived. We had a safe tour and, as the now secretary of 550 Squadron Association, the wing commander, said the navigator had a great responsibility in this. The navigator had to keep everybody safe and twice during our tours all our logs and charts were collected and taken away, where they were analysed and plotted and the plot was put up in the library of the Squadron and there was BQ-D of 550 Squadron on track, on time, in the middle of a crowd, in the middle of the bomber stream. That was the safest place to be. If you were out there the night fighters could pick you off. That’s what happened. But twice during, during our tour that was done and my crew were, er, impressed. They said, ‘We’ve got a [unclear] navigator.’ It was good for their morale, good for my confidence and finally good for our survival. Our gunners Bob, Bob and, er, Bryan and Jock never had to fire in anger. They reported seeing fighters and so on. They reported other aircraft around us but they did not shoot at them. The basic principal was you don’t shoot they wouldn’t shoot at you. You know, don’t draw attention to yourself. That was, that was their instruction. So they didn’t draw attention so we stayed safe. But the only time we nearly got in trouble — we got flak holes, we got flak holes continually and they were patched up and so on and the ground crew were happy that we brought back their aircraft intact, time after time. We flew, we flew twenty-three operations on BQ-D. We flew on, briefly on Fox I’d mentioned. We flew on that and we flew on a few other aircraft —
JM: Fox and V for Victor a couple of times. Victor as well.
JE: While BQ-D was being serviced, but that was, basically BQ-D was our aircraft when we got it and it was our aircraft from there onwards. But when the British Army were, were crossing the Rhine, um, Montgomery tells in his, in his book “Normandy to the Baltic” that the Germans thought there might be an airborne operation for crossing the Rhine and the area around Emmerich, that area, and other towns in that area were heavily fortified with anti-aircraft to counter an airborne operation. So we were sent to — Bomber Command was sent — to three towns around there and we were went to Emmerich at eleven thousand feet, on a bright Sunday morning. Mostly we flew up around the nineteen or twenty thousand, even higher sometimes if we had to get over a front, but on this day we were at eleven thousand feet, and one of the few times — most of my time I spent under my black curtain. Of course there I can use the light and of course outside no lights are supposed to be visible. So I stayed under that curtain most of the time. I took it to be my duty to tell John Harris what the next course was and so on. But it was far more, far better for me to stay cool, calm and collected under there and not get out and gawk at what was going on and what the others can see. I depended on what, what was happening outside by John Conway’s reaction. He was the bomb aimer. He can see exactly what was going on. Yes, as we were approaching a target if he said, ‘Shit.’ It was just average. If he said, ‘Shit!’ It was a little bit worse and if he said, ‘Shit!’ [more emphasis] it was really going to be difficult. So, I knew from that reaction what things were like outside. So that was good enough for me. So anyway, on this particular day, at eleven thousand feet, Conway had already got himself an aiming point photo at, at Calais earlier in the piece, and an hour later he was thinking this was a nice fine bright day and no cloud for an aiming point so he said, ‘Can we go round again Johnny. I wasn’t aiming for it.’ Meanwhile up in the turret when he looked round a quarter of a mile behind us the Lancaster behind us went poof and disappeared in a pall of black smoke. The flak had probably hit it, the enemy bomb aimer hit the, hit the “cookie” the four thousand pound bomb and blown the thing apart. Bryan in the rear turret inside, had warned us, ‘The flak’s following us.’ And we all heard bang, bang, bang up our tail. We all heard it and here’s Conway saying, ‘Oh, let’s go. I want to go round again.’ We all said, ‘Drop them, JC and let’s get out of here.’ So he dropped them, Harris put the throttle through the gate, he changed course and changed altitude and got us out of there. Now, that was our closest incident. The flak could have got us that day. So anyway, that was the worst. But otherwise, as I say, we had a safe tour. So, this I feel is sort of another side of what Bomber Command experience was about. We know that many fellas, like the Bomber Command losses over there and [unclear] over there, many fellas had far worse confrontation with the enemy. We didn’t have a close confrontation with the enemy apart from that day but this is my story, our story, we survived.
JM: But that’s it. Every, every story is different.
JE: Every story puts another face onto what service with Bomber Command was about. The very fact of serving in Bomber Command was a risk to be borne I feel. The fact that you took it on was a risk and the fact that I was exempted from military service so I didn’t end up on the Kokoda like the other fellas did who’d been called up at the same time as me. They ended up on the Kokoda. I could have been on the Kokoda but I ended up in Bomber Command. Which was more dangerous? Anyway, survived that.
JM: Well, I mean, I guess the point is though that the statistics are there to show that the Bomber Command was —
JE: Was very dangerous, yeah, fifty-five thousand or so lost out of hundred and fifty thousand as we know. We know it wasn’t exactly a picnic.
JM: No. That’s exactly right and so it’s —
JE: Well, you know, all of the fellas, of the eighty-nine of us that left Australia together, they are all listed here. I know exactly — now in that little black book over there records their names, ranks and serial numbers and what happened to them. The eighteen of the eighty-nine who didn’t come back, exactly what happened to them. Two particular mates, Pat, Kevin and Pat Curtin from Canberra, who were particular friends of mine. I went on leave with Pat Curtin from Brighton, from Brighton, on one of the [unclear] schemes and we went up to one of the farms, on leave, and Kevin Curtin went somewhere else. But Pat unfortunately, he was, they were both flying from Elsham Wolds (they were twins flying in the same squadron) and they, they, he was delayed, he and his crew were delayed due to some sickness and February 1945, since ‘44-‘45 had been a bad winter, the training stations like Finningley and Worksop at that time weren’t bringing on more crews because there’d been delays in training so the command came down, those that were on the squadrons were to stay there. If you’d done thirty ops you now got to do thirty-five ops. So, unfortunately Pat Curtin was caught on that. He was shot down, shot down over Pforzhiem, on that thirty-fourth op. Nasty. I meant he survived till that time. Only their wireless operator parachuted out. I met him, I used to meet him in later the years and Kevin on Anzac Day. He was the only one that survived. So, that was the way it was. And even, even later, even you see there, I went — after Bomber Command — I went to Transport Command.
JM: That’s right.
JE: I chose that because after Bomber Command I was posted to Catterick which was the Aircrew Allocation Centre to decide what are they going to do with you now? Are you going to training ATU to train for Bomber Command or do you become [unclear] dresser, all sorts of things? ‘You were a draughtsman. You can be a draughtsman again?’ Well, hang that for a lark. So, I was interested in India. My father in the Navy in the First War he’d spent two and half years on the HMS [unclear] sailing down the Bay of Bengal and he used to tell lots of tales. He used to — I’ve got the photos out here — he used to turn over these photos and telling tales and from that and from that. I regret having a tape recorder in those days. You know, I couldn’t record he used to tell, some of the tales he used to tell. From all these photos and from that and from that. And I thought India would be nice so I asked for Transport Command and I went to India with Transport Command OTU, which finally gave me civil navigator’s qualifications, er, but, while we were at Bitteswell, we did training at Ramsgate for basic intensive lectures and learning about civil navigation. Then flying from Bitteswell VE Day came. We knew VE Day was coming up and we were due to fly that night and we were standing around Flying Control, ‘Do we fly or don’t fly?’ The chatter of the [unclear]. Anyway, it came over the tele printer AFCAN [?], all flying’s cancelled. Back to the mess. There was an almighty mess party of course that night up with some of us up at the mess. We ate and drank everything that was available and sang all the songs we ever knew, all the rival’s songs and that kind of thing, and some of the officers came down to the sergeants’ mess from the officers’ mess and joined us. And somebody, somebody had got on the steam roller and started to drive the steamroller around the perimeter track and the CO says, ‘Tell the steamroller to come back to base.’ So all things, all sorts of nonsense went on that night. I, I went down to London. London was going mad of course. There were thousands in the streets and all sorts of people and I went into, into the Nuffield Centre. I managed to get to, into a Services Club to put my gear and, er, I went to the Nuffield Centre, which was near the town centre, for anything going on there and I started dancing with a Scots girl, Scots ATS girl, so I was dancing with her and going to her and so on, so eventually I asked if she wanted to go out to see what was going on. So she came along with her friend Mary and tagging along with her friend Mary was a sailor. So anyway, we started going down the round and I was turning to Mary, er, Ann, and anyhow Mary said, ‘Oh, I want to go back to camp.’ They were based in Chislehurst in Kent, Army Pay Corps. So, Ann wasn’t keen on that idea but Mary was insisting, ‘Oh, I’m fed up with this. I want to go back to camp.’ So right, we get to Charing Cross Station, so get into Charing Cross and the train was waiting for us there and Ann stood, stands, stands at the door of the train waving to me and Mary sits down in the train and ignores the sailor. The sailor stands by and he gets fed up after ten minutes and wandered away. As soon as he wandered away Mary’s out of the train, ‘Right, come on. What are we going to do now?’ So here I am stuck with two ATS girls for VE Day and so we had a whale of a time. So the other thing’s that’s in here now, as you can see, the famous movie that came about in recent times of the Queen and us, we were in — oh, never mind — [unclear]. We sang and we danced, danced the coca cola [?], the rhumba and oops-a-daisy, all those silly things, silly things all day, then finally at midnight we were down in front, in front of Buckingham Palace with all the crowd ‘We want the King. We want the King.’ So, eventually the King and the Queen came out on the balcony and waved to us. So that signed off that day. So, we were all so happy. There were bonfires in Green Park and so on. We wandered back to, er, to Trafalgar Square and we were all a bit tired so we sat down somewhere and the two girls, I had a girl on each shoulder, and curled up together we had a snooze. There were still lights and nonsense going on while we had a snooze. So anyhow the next morning we said we’d better get something to eat because all the pubs and things were closed. So, we wandered back up town all the way through to Fleet Street and we finally ran into a policeman and he said, ‘Oh, some of these places around Fleet Street might open in the morning.’ Oh, well, we said, ‘We don’t want to wait here. Let’s go back.’ So the girls then said they wanted to go back to town then, back to camp, so back to Charing Cross and, er, they went back to town and round the station there were inert bodies all over the place. There was dead tired people all over the place. So they got their train and they went back, back to camp, and I went back to Australia House and had a clean-up at Australia House and I went back to Bitteswell but the next morning Transport Commands, ‘You’ve had your holiday. Now you’ve got to do your flying again.’ So, I was on flying again. I didn’t fly that night, woke up the next morning and there’s the service police collecting the gear of the other three RAF fellas who were bunked in with us. Into Wellingtons again, into — it had failed on take-off. They crashed and everybody was dog tired. And the fact that they were dog tired wouldn’t have helped. Three of them were killed. They’d just come back from being with their families and they were killed. So it wasn’t only Bomber Command that had losses. So did Transport Command. So that was a sad end to VE Day really but apart from that VE Day was enjoyable and Ann, the Scots girl I was buddy buddy with and I was dancing with, I wrote to her later in Edinburgh and, er, she stayed in the ATS until after the war and so did Mary. She was a London girl and I don’t know what happened to her.
JM: And when — OK that was a very different experience because everyone was in such a celebratory mood but when you were in, um, during your ops, period of ops with 550, what leave did you have? What did you do in any of the leave that you had then?
JE: Basically, we had six days leave every six weeks. And I used to go down to London and at one stage of the game, albeit I think it was, might have been from Worksop, my first cousin, Len Froy [?] was on leave. He was a mid-upper gunner with 467 Squadron at Lincoln and I rode my bike (I had a bike at that time) I rode my bike down to Lincoln, saw him. He’d been, he’d been to Berlin and he was asleep in bed. I hadn’t seen him for two years and he looked terrible. As mid-upper gunner of course he saw everything and one particular night, the night of the strong winds, which he learnt about from his navigator. He looked terrible and, you know, I thought, ‘Geez, this is what Bomber Command does for you.’ You know, so you know anyway I met him at that time and, as I say, one of the things I did learn at that time again when I met him and met his navigator, and his navigator told me about the night of the strong winds, which from a navigator’s point of view was interesting information. The — what had Bomber Command been doing? Earlier in the piece when, as you probably know, they weren’t getting close to the targets for various reasons. Air— Aircraft were operating more or less individually, they weren’t operating as squadrons or in bomber streams. They were allowed to operate individually and not always finding their, the right place. So Command got the bright idea at one stage there, let’s get the skilled navigators to find the winds over the continent, broadcast them back, the Metrological Office Command will assess the situation and they’ll broadcast a wind for everybody to use and theoret— theoretically everybody using the same wind, they’ll all end up in the same place and everything will be lovely. It was a lovely idea in theory but it didn’t always work out in practice. This part night the jet stream wind came out of Sweden which was not forecast. Nobody knew about it. The Metrological Office didn’t know about it because, of course, they got most of their information out of Britain and they weren’t ready and didn’t know about this jet stream and the navigators, they detected it. They were detecting winds of about hundred and hundred and twenty miles an hour. They didn’t believe it. Can’t believe this so they were coming back, they were coming back with about a hundred or so. They broadcast back to Command and the Command’s Metrology Office didn’t believe it either, ‘That can’t be right. Let’s make it ninety something.’ The upshot was the stream went to Berlin. Instead of bombing the city of Berlin they bombed the southern suburbs and on their way back they went over the Ruhr, which they were not supposed to go over, and got a pasting. And my bomb aimer, he was in another aircraft, they lost an engine over the Ruhr, they got coned by the searchlights over the Ruhr and they lost one engine through flak over the Ruhr. So, it was a disastrous night, the night of the strong winds, and Len Froy’s [?] navigator, a Welshman, he told me about this and I thought that’s worth knowing, so — but after that disaster they got the [unclear] they didn’t do it anymore and, of course, H2S came into, into greater use and of course gave us all the facility to find our own winds with a bit more confidence and not depend on the broadcast winds, so the broadcast winds idea was scrubbed. Unfortunately not a good idea, no good at all. [cough]
JM: Yes, so —
JE: So, as I was saying, you were talking about leave from North Killingholme, well apart from, as I say, going down to London. I used to go down to the shows and I met another ATS girl at that time named Pam. I don’t know what — I lost her surname. I took her to three shows while I just met her occasionally and she introduced me to drinking gin which gave me a headache which I didn’t drink it any more [slight laugh]. Terrible stuff. So anyway, er, she was another nice girl but, as I say, I liked going to the shows, going the ballet and all that sort of thing. And, er, also I went to Edinburgh and the Victoria League. I used to stay at the Victoria League and they used to run parties and at one of the parties they had us named, all named after fish, and I was offered hake or something like that, and hake turned out to be Hazel. Hazel was a little, a little Edinburgh girl, and I got friendly with her. Every time I went back to Edinburgh several times I took Hazel to the movies, I took her to dances and all sort of things. She became my girlfriend in Edinburgh every time I went up there on leave and she got my watch repaired at one time. So she was another good friend. So, you know, as I say, the women of Britain stood by us.
JM: Yes, yes, and when you went to, er, Transport Command did the rest of the crew go with you or is that — you were all split up? You were all —
JE: No, we were all individuals. We were all individuals, ex, ex operational, and one of the other fellas John Lewis [unclear] he was another one who nearly died. He joined us at Ramsgate and Bitteswell. He was the only one I knew there but they were all ex operational people. There was an RAF fella who walked out of Germany. He’d been, er, parachuted down and walked back from Germany into Switzerland and eventually got home, got back. He still had worn boots and he’d walked out of Germany and now he’s on Transport Command. So, you know, an interesting group of people.
JM: And did you, was it possible to stay in touch with the rest of the, your other former crew at that point or you didn’t worry about that. You were too busy —
JE: Well, I tried to keep in touch with them. But, I learnt that — and all of us went to Catterick first on re-allocation. Conway and Bickford they were both posted home. They came home earlier than I did. I learnt the others, er, the other four RAF fellas, they were posted to things like Air Traffic Control and so on. I learnt where they went to. And Bryan, Bryan Barby, particularly (his daughter I’ve now been in contact with the last three years) he came back to my civilian life after he was finally discharged but he found that wasn’t very good so he went back to the RAF for the next thirty years. He stayed in the RAF for thirty years, in, er, in Egypt and Germany and then Singapore and such like. So, I know all about — I’ve got the complete history of — I’ve been in contact with her for the last three years now and he’s completed a history for the first thirty-odd years. So, you know, and as far as the others were concerned, finally back here in Australia — well before we get to that — John Conway, John Harris [emphasis] our pilot, er, I finally learnt in a letter from his mother, that, er, after he left us he went on fighter affiliation. He wanted to fly Spitfires so he was flying a Spitfire, on training bomber crews, on fighter affiliation. And he was flying from Hemswell to another place up in Yorkshire somewhere and he didn’t have his navigator [unclear] to help him anymore and so the story goes is that he got lost. He shouldn’t have got lost in South Yorkshire, after all it was a County we all knew well. He tried to do a forced landing in a Spitfire, he was in line with some power lines, turned the Spitfire over and killed himself. That was in January 1946. He was newly married. He’d only been married a few weeks. He married a Liverpool girl and here he was killed. His mother wrote to me later in great distress. That girl took all his entitlements, his pension and everything else and refused to contribute to his grave. I’ve got a photo of his grave in there and I’ve told all the others this what happened. You know, a horrible situation. So, anyway, then the others of course, back home Western Australia, John Conway, er, he became a leading light in the public service. He had been in the public service in Western Australia. He came to Canberra where he got an OBE, OBE and the higher [unclear] for public service in Canberra. And he was instrumental in Charles Simpkins’, sponsoring Charles Simpkins’ migrate, migrating to Perth and Charles Simpkins was set up in Perth. As far as Bryan Waddell, er, Bill Waddell was concerned, the Scotsman, he was another ten pound Brit. He migrated to South Australia. He had been an electrician in the mines in Dunfermline back home. He got onto, er, the work on the rocket range but being a Scotsman and very fair he got skin cancer on the rocket range and finally he got kidney trouble. He had ulcers there for a while and finally he died at a very young age. And Bob Bickford, er, he had a hobby farm. He was in the post office there for a while and he became an army, army reservist. He was a captain in the army reserve but, er, he had a hobby farm just out of Adelaide and we visited him there at one time. Of course I had a company car with Wormald and I used to work late at one time and I visited them all and, er, he had this hobby farm and we all had a great time there and all met in Adelaide. All our wives met together and they got on well together so, you know, we all kept in touch but I didn’t, er, I didn’t, I didn’t meet Charles Simpkins until many years later. I was doing fire protection work for the [unclear] gas wells which is now a controversy off the Western Australian coast and I had to go to Perth in connection with this so I looked up Charles and went to visited him at [unclear] so I met Charles later in the piece so, you know, we kept in touch. So it was good.
JM: And so when, er, you were discharged from — well, the official documentation says you were discharged in December ’45 — but I see it said from 105 but, I mean, December ’45 you were back at, you’d returned, you’d returned to, you were in Bradfield Park, back to Australia and Bradfield Park at that point so —
JE: The situation was I was on indefinite leave so after finishing the Transport Command course and getting the civil navigator’s certification I was loose. So I was, I had indicated I had friends and I had my various girlfriends, yes I had girlfriends, so I wasn’t interested on an early permanent posting back home so I was on indefinite leave. So I was based really at Cranfield which was some sort of, became a training base, a permanent base for test pilots at one time. Anyhow I left my gear there with a WAAF black woman and, er, the only time I had a black woman because, of course, at Bitteswell I got my commission. When I finished my tour at North Killingholme I applied for my commission and Group Captain MacIntyre, an RAF stuffed shirt type (I shouldn’t be saying that I suppose perhaps) he said, ‘You’re supposed to be going home. I don’t see why you should get a commission.’ So he wiped it. So I didn’t get my commission at North Killingholme but when I got to Transport Command six months later I applied again. Transport Command were kinder people, they gave me a commission. I thought I was possibly going to fly to the Far East and being a pukka sahib out there and I got my commission so anyway that was alright, that was nice. So, by that time I had a commission, so when I went, I went on indefinite leave and left my girl at Cranfield (a WAAF black lady to look after my gear) so I went on indefinite leave and went to London and did various things, and one night I was wandering around and I wandered into a pub in Convent Garden, “The Lamb and Flag”, and there were two WAAFs doing the Evening Standard crossword so I offered to help. So, anyway when we finished the crossword and I had to stand at the door of the convenience and — while the girls went to spend a penny and that sort of thing that happened in a small pub. Anyway we left and went outside and Ann was a Scots girls and the other girl was a Welsh girl called Rianne. Anyway, Rianne wandered off, knowing that I was attracted to Ann, the Scots girl, and I said to Ann when we got outside, ‘Have you ever been kissed under a lamp post?’ So, from that became an affair for the next four or five months. So she was — I had asked them while we were in the pub doing the crossword, ‘What do you girls do?’ ‘Oh, we’re in filter.’ I said, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ ‘We can’t tell you. It’s secret.’ They were the girls of filter in a fighter command filter room. They’d signed the Official Secret Act and they weren’t supposed, still in 1945, they weren’t supposed to tell me about what they did. So, of course, they’d signed the Official Secrets Act so it wasn’t until later that I really found out what it was all about. The story of filter was, er, was broadcast, was publicised, and knowing that those girls in filter were known as the ‘beauty chorus’ so I became, one of the beauty chorus became my girlfriend. She, she, er, then got posted from Fighter Command Headquarters to RAF Halton at Wendover, forty miles out of London, which was a pay training station. She was supposed to deliver pay accounts. So, I helped her move her gear and on that posting and so on and so we carried, carried on dating. So then came VE Day, VJ Day came. I was in London and she was out at Halton. She started to come to London and I started to go to Halton. We met near the clock tower in Wendover and flew into each other’s arms like a scene from a Hollywood movie. It was a romantic night. So we went to Halton and danced the night away at Halton. That was VE Day. So we celebrated VE Day. So that was that. That was an interesting time. So she came down, down to Brighton to see me off at the time I was finally posted on the Stir— when I came home on The Stirling Castle, and she came down to Brighton to see me off. I’d given her a ka— kangaroo badge which she wore on her tie but inside her coat, against her heart, were the wings of a New Zealand pilot, who was in Second Tactical Air Force. He was still serving on The Portsmouth [?]. So, after I came home and thinking I was more or less engaged, I told my mother and she wasn’t very happy, wasn’t too happy about the situation anyway. Then I get a ‘Dear John’ letter. Well, Leon [?] had come back from a conference and had come back to New Zealand. She met him, well, before he came home of course, and him feeling lonely he wrote from New Zealand and proposed to her. She went to New Zealand and married him and finally the letter I got from them, they’d left New Zealand. He got, he got a short term commission in the RAF, went back to the RAF, and they had a son by that time. And they went back to Britain via Panama so I never saw her again. So, another facet of life. Another facet of life. The things that happened to us all. So anyway, anyway —
JM: That’s right. So you get back home, come back on The Stirling Castle and you —
JE: Came back on The Stirling Castle —
JM: When you were discharged.
JE: There was a group of Dutch troops who were bound for the East Indies to re-establish the Dutch presence in the East Indies and we got on well with them. But when we arrived in Sydney the wharf labourers in Sydney put on a demonstration against the Dutchmen because, of course, they were seen as continuing colonialism in the Pacific so the wharf labourers gave them a poor reception. Of course we got a good reception but they didn’t. So, anyway that was an unfortunate incident that happened there. Then I got leave, disembarkation leave and I got home and so on. Then called up for discharge four days before I was would become a flying officer [thumping noise] which I’ve been unhappy about ever since. I’d got a commission at Bitteswell. Four days later and I would have been a flying officer. Such is life. Such is life. Ah well, never mind. Never mind.
JM: So then you went back into Wormald?
JE: That was now January 1946. Of course, as part of discharge procedure we were given instructions that our former employer was obliged to take us back. I’d entered the Air Force from Wormald Brothers and so they were obliged to take me back. So, I went back and my boss Frank Brook who had been the man who had been to the RAF in, RAAF in 1943 to try and get me out of the Air Force and take me, he finally took me back and was sympathetic and said to me, ‘If you like go out in the street and have a beer, look at the aeroplanes flying over and get it out of the system.’ So I said, ‘Yeah alright.’ So, I gradually melted into the, into the fire protection industry again. And in — the Queen’s Birthday weekend in 1946 I went on a holiday to, er, up at Katoomba. Stayed in Craglea [?] Guest House. There were three girls there, public service girls, and another ex-army man and I sort of acquired these girls, took them on a tour of the sights of Katoomba and I took a fancy to one of them, Eileen Dickson, and things started to get serious then, so in 1946 to ‘49 we courted, and married in ’49, January ‘49 but in the course of courting she said to me she wanted a husband who stayed at home. Of course, I was still, although I went back to Wormald, I thought that I maybe I’d like to go flying again. I put in for Pacific, into Pac— an application to Pacific Airlines to be a navigator to fly across the Pacific. Of course, another one of the Wormald fellas, he joined up before me, just before me in 1942, ‘43, Ray Clark [?], he was released and went to the Air Force. He became a pilot on, on Sunderlands in 10 Squadron in Britain and came back and became a Qantas captain on 747s and things like that. So, he had quite — he lived down, down here in Marrickville [?] so he and his wife Mary we knew him well in later years and he borrowed my navigation notes bring himself up on navigation when he was with Qantas so, you know, these associations carried on. But the fact that I met Eileen in ’46 and she said she wanted me to stay at home. So I stayed with Wormald and stayed with them for forty-eight years. And that, that, in due course, brought its benefits because, er, we were married in, as I say ’49. 1950 I was looking to buy a plot of land at Marraville where my grandfather lived. I was interested in that district. She was interested in this district. She saw this plot of land advertised in the Wednesday paper and well our elder daughter, Elizabeth, came up and had a look at it and said, ‘Oh yes. Looks good.’ I came up and had a look at it. It was a Wednesday and bought it by Saturday we owned it for three hundred pounds. The plot was seventy feet by a hundred, for three hundred pounds in 1950, and then I started to plan and build this house. So, in the 1950s so it about 1955 before we finally moved in. In the, in the meantime, initially, trying to get accommodation in those times was still difficult after the war. We stayed with her parents’ home at Russell Lea for a while and then a friend offered us a flat South Coogee so we lived in South Coogee for a while overlooking the sea at South Coogee. That’s where Peter arrived. So we had Peter and Elizabeth at South Coogee and taking them down to the rocks and that sort of thing and walking down the botanical garden and that was where that was taken. So that was our life in those years and then we got our first car at that time, a little 1932 Morris Minor Roadster which we drove from South Coogee to here and parked it outside here while we built here and, er, I planned this house and built it and I plied a trade, built it as a builder, and my wife wanted cupboards and we’ve got cupboards galore as you can see. There’s cupboards up the hallway there and I said at one stage I said, ‘Here we’ll have a power point for a TV.’ ‘We’ll never have TV,’ she says. And, of course, at the time we’d been living with her parents. It was the early days of TV and the people opposite had TV and we used to go across there and watch, hypnotised by this new thing and watch it till the kangaroo went to bed as we used to do in those days. So, anyway that was Wormald, staying there for forty-eight years, and the places we went to and the benefits we got, long service there, annual leave and long service leave, we started to travel. Eileen had always wanted to travel. Some of her friends used to travel so she wanted to travel to. So we did our first travel and we still had three children now. In 1967 we went on a [unclear] cruise to Japan on the holidays [?] and that was our first travel and that was good. We went to Japan and stayed in Hong Kong and Guam. We visited, we met the Wormald representative in Hong Kong and he showed us around. That was nice. So, from there on we did a lot of travelling. We travelled to Europe, three times on Euro rail. We went to China. We went to Japan twice. We went to India, to Greece, Israel, Egypt and finally to South America. Finally it was a company posting to [unclear] in San Paulo. We stayed in San Paulo, for the company’s association then in San Paulo. We crossed the pacific through, er, to Tahiti, Easter Island, [clears throat] Santiago, Chile into San Paulo. We were there for six weeks. It was fine living but bored with Portuguese TV. But once you finally got, got brave enough to down town. One of the Brits had warned us about how dangerous San Paulo can be down town but it was — they gave me a VW there to drive. But here I had a Holden [?] as a company car but when I got to San Paulo they gave me a VW. I’d never driven a VW, never driven on the other side of the street so here I am living in San Paulo, traffic on the other side of the street in the VW, which was exciting. So I survived that. Did that, reported to the company what I thought about the company’s association in San Paulo then to Wisconsin. There for eighteen months in the North American winter, wife all wrapped up to the nines in -27 Fahrenheit. That was another climate shock. Anyhow she got on well with the local people, the, er, wife of the one of the other engineers, went to shows there and she joined the local YMCA and went and joined their, er, aqua aerobics in the pool and so on so she, she enjoyed being there, and I generally enjoyed there. But the basic project there was to design and build hydraulics for fuel storage for the American companies, Anson Oil [?] and Baronet [?] in Wisconsin. Their exp— expertise was dry chemical and they had a training ground there for the local representatives and on the training ground the company decided we’ll getting into high pressure and long range water hydraulics, which I was an expert in, to get into the oil rigs and so on around the world. So, over and above my salary and the cost of getting me there I was five hundred dollars US to design and build this facility so I took that in ‘83 ‘84 but there again working the American winter, you know, was different. The fact of building there ,as the winter came on getting, getting straw put over what was to be the foundations to stop the ground being deeply frozen where we were going to build on and that sort of thing. Oh, you were learning new things and you got the ground water into Lake Michigan and sort of thing. There were various, various building operations, building regulations. That was a new sphere and, er, of course, as I say, as you saw out there, come Christmas ’84 we said, ‘We’re not sitting here at Christmas on our own. We’ve got to go somewhere. Let’s go on a Caribbean cruise.’ So we went to the Caribbean and got on another boat. So that was interesting too.
JM: That’s right.
JE: Went on another boat.
JM: Well that, as you say, afforded you lots of new opportunities right through and then I presume once you retired in the eighties, at the end of the eighties, you did some more travelling in your retirement or did you settle about after that?
JE: What did we do in the ’80s? [background noise]
JM: I just roughly, just interested in a couple of things but —
JE: [background noise] It might be here.
JM: You, you — you’ve obviously written down, got a time line of your various activities which is an interesting thing for your family to have further down the track.
JE: Yes, yes. [pause]
JM: So, that’s, um, so as I say I was just interested in a brief comment in terms of —
JE: After that, retirement.
JM: After your retirement.
JE: Retired ’88. I’d been in Brisbane for Exo ’88. I went to Brisbane for that. We went over to Canberra for the, er, dedication of the Bomber Command memorial down there. ’89 we did, went to, er, Europe again. Singapore, Switzerland, West Germany, Italy, Austria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia. That was 1990. 1991 we went to New Zealand. ’92, er, we went to Victoria. We went to Victoria, and also went up the Skylon. ’93 [unclear] went to North Western New South wales, up to the corner there, up to Cameron’s Corner. ’94, well, ’94 we went to Singleton [?] was up there and then we went to one of the Eileen’s cousins called Oakland [?] who was marrying a girl in Norway and we were invited to the wedding so we decided to go and, in going to Norway for the wedding, we flew with Lufthansa and as one of the side benefits there we could have a side trip somewhere so we chose to fly to Malta. So we flew to, er, to Frankfurt and then down to Malta, toured Malta and up to, up to Norway, went to the wedding, toured Norway and across into Sweden, from Sweden across to Denmark, to Legoland and down from there, of course, all through and eventually home from there.
JM: So that was a big trip then and so obviously though you in these years you’ve obviously been able to get around so that’s, that’s really good and one other, I was going to say just to say one other thing, just by, I don’t know why because it’s not what we were talking about, but back to your squadron days the bombs you were using were they different to, um, the ones the other units, squadrons we using? No?
JE: No. I think generally we were had cookies and cans. Well, they were four thousand pound cookie and cans were incendiaries.
JM: Yes. So was everyone was using the — they weren’t using incendiaries though were they?
JE: Yes. We were using much the same thing. Yes. We were incendiaries.
JM: I know you [emphasis] were but I’m saying I don’t think, I’m not sure other squadrons were using incendiaries though. That’s what I meant.
JE: Oh, I’m certain others were using them on occasions but they varied at times. The only time we had a real humiliation was a delayed action from one of our armour piercing bombs. One occasion we went to, er, Urft Dam. The Urft was one of the dams in the Ruhr — you know about the three famous dams: the Eder, the Sorpe and the Möhne that were bombed by the famous dam busters and they had great success. At the time the American Army was heading into eastern France and trying to enter Germany, southern Germany and they were held up in that area in the Hürtgenwald Forest and the Urft Dam was threatening to be released and drown them so the Americans asked for that dam to be breached before they got there. So we were part of a small force of about seven or eight aircraft to attack the Urft, Urft Dam. We were, we were loaded with these delayed action armour, armour piercing bombs and we elected ourselves to do it and the code word was “Abandon” and “Home James” and we got, we got “Home James” because when we got there it was covered in cloud, the — what’s the name of it? Charles, the master bomber said, ‘You can’t bomb. Take it home.’ So we had to take our bombs home. We never, didn’t get to be bomb, dam busters, unfortunately, but we couldn’t take those bombs home. Surprise, surprise, surprise they diverted us back to Finningley, where we’d been originally, and Finningley didn’t like that. Here’s an, our Lancaster loaded up with a full load of delayed action armour piercing bombs. ‘Go over to the other side of the airport. Go and practice that over there.’ So we got out of their way over there, we stayed overnight and then we had to take home the next day. But now we had to take off with this full bomb load on the Finningley runway and Harris said to put the throttles through the gate, the emergency alarm on the Merlins that was supposed only to go for a minute, but full, full throttles through the gate to get it off this runway at Finningley to get out bomb load home again. So that was unfortunate but finally 617 Squadron had a go at it, they had a go at the Urft, knocked a few feet of it but it was never breached. So, finally the Americans gave up but at that time, around about that time, the Battle of the Bulge occurred. The Americans came out of the Ardennes heading for Antwerp and the Americans had to pay attention to that and instead of trying to get through the Hürtgenwald forest and gave up on the Urft Dam and went the other way. So the Urft was left alone for a while and eventually bypassed. So that was another adventure. [slight laugh]
JM: Well, you had quite a few and your recollections are incredibly detailed and I think it’s been very, er, amazing to hear, to hear so many instances given such great clarity. So, I think probably at that, at this point we might, um, wrap the interview up and —
JE: Have some morning tea.
JM: We shall have a quick look at some of the documents. So are you, you happy with that are you John?
JE: Reasonable. That’s reasonable enough.
JM: Nothing in particular that strikes you —
JE: There are just a few points I’d like to make about the support we had from the women of Britain and things like that and the people we met and things like that, you know, I’d like to point out, you know.
JM: Yes. No.
JE: But as you know, as you detected, I’d been interested in aeroplanes from way back. I mean, all these aeroplanes are beautiful things and a joy forever. I used to make model aeroplanes out of my mother’s clothes pegs even before I made them in balsa. And now I’ve got over a hundred made in plastic, books over there galore about Bomber Command, books out there about aeronautics generally and other references galore. I’m still interested and, you know, so —
JM: Yes. Oh, your collection of model aeroplanes is stunning and to think you’ve made all of them is just remarkable —
JE: This of course are our travels.
JM: These are all your travels which is a double A3 page, it’s a world map and on the other side.
JE: All my travels from 1941 at Port Moresby to Brisbane. And they’re the references to my other world war books.
JM: Yes, absolutely. Incredible detail. You’re obviously a very organised person and the attention to detail, it’s no wonder you stayed on track —
JE: On track and on time and survived.
JM: On track, on time and survived due to that attention to detail. So, I thank you very much John for that information and, er, so we’ll finish it there.
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AEppelJ170419
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Interview with John Eppel
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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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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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02:02:26 audio recording
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Pending review
Creator
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Jean Macartney
Date
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2017-04-19
Description
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John Eppel grew up in Australia and joined the Royal Australian Air Force. After training, he completed 30 operations as a navigator with 550 Squadron. He describes initial training in Australia and the journey by sea via the United States, then further training in Britain before his posting as a navigator with 550 Squadron. He says he was fortunate in having a ‘safe tour’ and describes only one incident, at Emmerich, when the aircraft had a close confrontation with the enemy. He describes the crewing-up process at RAF Finningley and also provides details about H2S and GEE. He also describes many of his leisure-time activities, the personalities me met, the friendships he formed with his crew members and others he met during his years in Britain. He also gives an account of how he spent VE Day and VJ Day. After the war he returned to the same company where he’d worked before the war and retired after forty-eight years.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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Australia
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany
Germany--Urft Dam
Contributor
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Christine Kavanagh
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
18 OTU
550 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
crash
crewing up
forced landing
Gee
H2S
Halifax
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
love and romance
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perimeter track
RAF Finningley
RAF Hemswell
RAF North Killingholme
RAF West Freugh
RAF Worksop
searchlight
Spitfire
training
Wellington
-
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6fb1840bce686f93c05487b2d52af5e7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/258/3405/AGanneyK170301.2.mp3
36f95d68dd3df62895cef4b33b9aef33
Dublin Core
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Title
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Ganney, Keith
Keith Ganney
K Ganney
Description
An account of the resource
23 items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Keith Ganney (b. 1922, 1324929 Royal Air Force), his log books, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 57 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Keith Ganney and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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
2017-03-01
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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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Ganney, K
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: This is an interview with Keith Ganney, flying officer with 57 squadron whose date of birth is 10th of November 1922. His service number was 1324929. Interview is taking place at ****. Interviewer is Harry Bartlett, a volunteer with the International Bomber Command Centre. Good morning Mr Ganney.
KG: Good morning.
HB: Perhaps you could just give us an idea of what you were doing prior to the war starting.
KG: Yes, well, are we recording now?
HB: Yes. Yes. We are on recording.
KG: Do what Max Bygraves used to say, ‘I’m going to tell you a story.’
HB: You carry on.
KG: I’m going to start at the beginning. I met my wife when she was not quite seventeen in 19, early 1942. Her birthday is the 6th of February 1942 and I’d met her through going on a fairly regular basis to a bank on behalf of the company I worked for and I then decided I ought to take her out to lunch because I really fancied her. Is this all right?
HB: Yeah. This is your interview.
KG: I really fancied her so I took her out to lunch and it cost me a small fortune in so far as she said she wasn’t hungry and she had a bowl of soup which would cost about one and a half pence in today’s money. I don’t know what I had. And then a week or so after that I took her to the pictures and we saw a film called, “Ships with Wings,” and she was most impressed with me because I had been given a nice wallet by my parents when I was nineteen in the previous November, November 1941 and I pulled out a shiny, five, a pound note and that seemed to impress her. So obviously at that time she was after my money.
HB: [laughs] A man of substance.
KG: Yeah. Anyhow, we dated then for a few weeks until I joined and I’d already enlisted in the December 1941, the RAF and I was called up in, I think it was February ’42 and we went to St John ’s Wood and crossed Abbey Road long before the Beatles were even born. So we we went there for kitting out and whatever. Make sure we were still alive I guess. From there we went down to Brighton for marching and learning how to salute which is obviously a pre-requisite if you’re flying on Lancasters. So we stayed at Brighton for about a few weeks at the Metropole Hotel in Brighton and from there we moved to Scarborough and at Scarborough, in Scarborough one afternoon I was called out with about four others, my name was first on the list, to be guard commander for the officer, officer inspecting because we were guarding the Grand Hotel in Scarborough which is a grand hotel or was and I said, ‘Well I know nothing about rifles or anything like that,’ and this sergeant, I should think he was the 1914/18 sergeant, he said, ‘Weren’t you in the ATC?’ So I said, ‘No.’ ‘Or the air training corps or cadet corps?’ So I said, ‘No. I don’t even know which side of the shoulder you put your rifle on.’ So he said, ‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘Well in that case, number two you’d better be guard commander. You’d better be guard commander until the inspection and then you can take over as guard commander,’ which is what we did. I think there were about four or five of us. There wasn’t a bullet amongst us. If a German had come up we would have surrendered Scarborough plus the Grand Hotel without any trouble at all. So that was a little escapade in Scarborough. From Scarborough we moved to Brough just outside Hull for initial training on flying Tiger Moths and I qualified for flying Tiger Moths after, I think about ten hours and from then on we got shuttled off to Canada. We went out on the Queen Mary, the old Queen Mary and eventually when we came back we came back on the old Queen Elizabeth. And then we went to New York. From New York we went by train to New Brunswick to a town called Moncton where, I don’t know what we did there, we just festered around I think until such time as we were allotted to various places around Canada. It so happened that myself together with I think three or four other blokes were sent to Saskatchewan. A little place called Davidson of about five hundred people right in the middle of the prairies. Nice flat area for flying in and it was lovely going from Moncton out to Saskatchewan by train, one of these big Canadian type trains. I think it took us about two or three nights to get there. Am I doing to much?
HB: Absolutely spot on.
KG: Is it?
HB: Yeah. Absolutely super.
KG: We then went, got to Davidson. There were only about five hundred people, as far as I can remember, in this town, inverted commas and the girls there had never seen an English person because it was way out in the, in the sticks. The thing was, ‘Say something. We think you’re cute.’ So we, I started to fly Cornells there. A two seater aeroplane. A little bit up from a Tiger Moth. A single, single plane and during one of those escapades I was sitting in the parachute room and an instructor came in, I didn’t know who he was, and he said, ‘Where’s your instructor?’ I said, ‘He’s got the day off.’ So he said, ‘Have you, have you done aerobatics?’ So I said, ‘No.’ ‘Well get your chute on. We’ll do some aerobatics.’ Well it so happened that I’d been gorging myself on peanuts so you can imagine what happened when I, when we were doing loops and God knows what and he said when I coughed up, he said ‘Tastes better the first time doesn’t it?’ So anyhow I spent Christmas of 1942 it would be because at this time of year it was around about December and the Christmas 1942 with some people who had asked to take on a couple of RAF people and eventually I went solo on Cornells and did quite a lot of trips on them as my logbook will show you. From there we went to a place called Dauphin, D A U P H I N. Dauphin in Manitoba to fly on Cessna Cranes, twin engines Cessna Cranes. Like a downmarket version of an Anson. So I flew those and, sorry, my train of thought’s going. So after, after that they tested me after I’d done a lot of flying. My log book will tell you how many hours I did there but did a lot of flying, they tested me and found me wanting.
HB: Oh dear.
KG: Which I was, on hindsight I was very, very pleased about. I was kicked off the pilot’s course and because they didn’t think I’d make a very good pilot although I’d done a lot of cross countries by myself and if if they hadn’t had kicked me, if they had kept me going it’s almost certain I would be dead because I would have entered flying a lot earlier than I ultimately did. So I then had to re-muster and I decided well the quickest way to get back home was a short course as opposed to navigation which was a bit of a longer course, I enrolled as a bomb aimer and I went to a place called Paulsen I think it was. Paulsen. And qualified as a bomb aimer there in about 19, early 1943. Perhaps you can tell.
HB: I’ve just come to, in your Canadian logbook.
KG: Yeah.
HB: April 1943 you’re flying a Crane and it’s a progress check.
KG: Yeah.
HB: And then this -
KG: That was in April.
HB: Yeah. And this, this logbook then finishes. I’m sure. Yes. There’s no other entries in there and we move to your smaller A5 size Canadian logbook and that starts May 29th 1943 and you’re on an Anson.
KG: Yes, that’s right.
HB: 8603
KG: We -
HB: With Sergeant Sagar.
KG: We came, we came back, as I say on the Queen Elizabeth and we were posted to Penrhos in North Wales where we did further training at AFU, Advanced Flying Unit practicing bomb aiming with twenty two pound smoke bombs and things like that and the pilots were also practicing. From there we went, from there where did we go?
HB: Well that was, that was, the AFU was number 9 AFU at Penrhos.
KG: Penrhos that’s right.
HB: Penrhos. And so you then went to the 17 OTU at Silverstone.
KG: OTU.
HB: March.
KG: Operational Training Unit and we -
HB: March 1944.
KG: I think it was before that. We flew on, we got allocated to the various crews and there again your life depended on who chose you. It was just like picking up a football team in the playground when you were about ten years old. I’ll have him, I’ll have him and there was no question of what were your abilities or anything. It was just by chance.
HB: Where did you do that Keith? Was that in a sort of like a big hangar or -
KG: I can’t remember where we actually did the selection but it was just a very much of a random selection of a whole swarm of people saying, ‘Well I’ll have him and I’ll have him,’ until you’ve got the seven bods that you need. Then we flew there. I think it, wasn’t it the Advanced Flying Unit? AFU, as I say.
HB: I’m just looking at your logbook here and it’s got you, you’re at the AFU until mid-February
KG: Yeah.
HB: ‘43, sorry ’44.
KG: Yeah on the AFU we, we were flying Wellingtons, this was for the pilot’s benefit, Wellingtons and Stirlings.
HB: Oh right.
KG: Until we, from there we graduated on flying the bigger stuff until we went to the OTU and Operational Training Unit and eventually we went on to what they called the LFS. Lancaster Finishing School.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So by that time I think we were in 1944, early 1944 maybe the end of ‘43.
HB: I’ve got, I’ve got in your logbook here if it helps June the 16th 1944. Conversion Unit Wigsley.
KG: Wigsley yeah.
HB: And it starts, that starts off with Stirlings.
KG: Yeah. That was June ’44 was it?
HB: That was in June ’44.
KG: Then you go on to the LFS I think.
HB: Yeah and then we’ve the LFS up the road at Nottingham at Syerston there.
KG: Syerston, yeah.
HB: July 28th
KG: So that’s where we went first on to Lancasters. Then we got posted. Then we got posted to East Kirkby, to the squadron.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And the skipper was a Geordie lad from around the Houghton le Spring area of Durham and he seemed very keen to get on to operations. I wasn’t all that keen ’cause I thought you could be killed.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So eventually he kept on going to the squadron leader and the squadron leader, ‘No. You can’t go on this one. You haven’t done any daylight trips yet. You can’t go on that one because it’s too far. And it was typical RAF one of the first two trips that we went on Konigsberg.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Which was about eleven.
HB: Eleven hours.
KG: Eleven hours, eleven and a quarter hours and we got caught in the searchlights there. We weaved our way out of them and we had to divert when we got back to the UK. I think we landed somewhere up in Scotland somewhere and had to stay there the night because of bad weather and the next day which was a Sunday we took off to go back to our own base and he was determined to fly over his house because he was more or less enroute so he flew over his house and revved up these four Lancaster engines vroom vroom so you can imagine the noise.
HB: Yeah.
KG: They make and eventually of course his family came out and he did some sneak turns and he could see his family house and his parents apparently. So that was Konigsberg. First trip. Then the following Saturday we went to Konigsberg again.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
KG: We obviously hadn’t done a very good job.
HB: Oh dear.
KG: Not done a very good job. So that was two very long trips.
HB: Can I just ask you something Keith? I’m just looking at your logbook here and you’ve got two night time operations 16th and 18th of August. One is called bullseye.
KG: Oh well those are -
HB: The Hague.
KG: Yeah.
HB: And bullseye. What were the bullseye operations?
KG: Bullseye was a sort of a training flight.
HB: Right.
KG: A pseudo operation. And sometimes when you went on a bullseye you’d, you know, a crowd of you, various aircraft from other squadrons or other parts of 5 group would go out in to the North Sea and whatever as if it was going to be a raid so that was a bullseye.
HB: Right.
KG: But it wasn’t an operation as such.
HB: Yeah.
KG: I think, I think after that what have we got as the next one?
HB: Yeah. You’ve done the two Konigsberg and then you do a daytime raid.
KG: Yeah. That’s right.
HB: To Burgainsville.
KG: Yeah. That was for, that was for these flying bomb sites.
HB: Oh right. Yeah.
KG: All the night flights are in red.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And the green flights are day flights. We then carried on. I don’t think there was anything particularly exciting.
HB: Well you did, well you did Boulogne. That, that could be a bit hairy I think.
KG: Yeah.
HB: I’ve been told.
KG: Boulogne. I don’t remember -
HB: Bremerhaven.
KG: Bremerhaven. Yeah, we went to Bremerhaven. I mean we got shot at obviously and, just turn off the tape a minute will you.
HB: Yeah. No problem.
KG: Please. Just a second.
[machine paused]
HB: Interview recommenced just while Mr Ganney had a little cough. Well you had number 6 operation was Bremerhaven.
KG: Yeah.
HB: But then number twelve which would make you fairly experienced then because you’d done quite a few daytime ops, that was Bremen.
KG: I think it was probably Bremen.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Anyhow, when, shall I repeat - ?
HB: Yes. Yes please. Yeah.
KG: We were instructed bomb Bremen docks I suppose and the town and we were told to run up on a single marker on the ground laid by the master bomber and each aircraft was given a different angle to come in at and a different time delay. So the thing was that you do saturate the bombing and because we were an experienced crew at that time we had, I think it was a twenty eight seconds delay and as bomb aimer I lined everything up and I had to shout out, ‘Now,’ when we got exactly on the marker and the navigator was supposed to count twenty eight seconds and tell me when effectively to release the bombs. So after flying through loads of flak and God knows what, the fighters as well I suppose he, I said, ‘Isn’t it that time?’ ‘Oh my God,’ he said, ‘I’ve forgotten to count.’ So immediately I let the bombs go. Where they finished up I don’t know and the, when I went for a commission this matter was raised with the commanding officer as to why my picture, ‘cause you always took photographs, why my picture was so far away from the centre so I had to tell him what had happened. So that was a silly situation. So -
HB: It obviously didn’t affect the, the inevitable promotion.
KG: Well no. I mean getting a commission in those days was like going up for a NAAFI ration.
HB: Oh
KG: You know.
HB: Yeah.
KG: If your face fitted you’d be in.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So that was Bremen I think.
HB: You’ve got an entry in here for November. November the 1st, daytime operation against Homberg which was oil.
KG: That was oil.
HB: And all you’ve written in your log, this is what amazes me about these log books, you’ve just written flak hold and then brackets sixteen.
KG: I can’t remember that.
HB: Yeah.
KG: I can’t remember.
HB: But the next one was a night one at Dusseldorf.
KG: Dusseldorf is, is a story in itself.
HB: Yeah.
KG: We went out to bomb Dusseldorf on an absolutely perfect moonlight night. Not a cloud in the sky. We bombed Dusseldorf as an experienced crew for a fairly low level. That was thirteen thousand feet if I remember rightly and we went through the target area, bombed and immediately we came out of the target area we were attacked by an ME109 and with his first burst he wounded, severely wounded the rear gunner so we hadn’t got him firing back and then the mid-upper gunner’s guns weren’t operating correctly and all we had was the mid-upper gunner on the top of the aircraft telling us where this fighter was. Now when you are being attacked by a fighter the thing is to do is what they call corkscrews and it’s up to the mid-upper gunner to tell the pilot when to corkscrew because you know he comes in the rear and you turn and he turns and he’s got to turn a lot more and then you roll and then he comes back in again and this went on. I think it’s somewhere in the archives it was about fifteen minutes ‘cause this bloke obviously knew he wasn’t going to get anybody firing back at him and I couldn’t fire anything from the front turret because I never even saw the chap ‘cause he came in, dived away, came around again and eventually this, according to the mid-upper gunner and I’ve got no support for this thing, he said the ME109 came in quite close, he said, ‘I could see the bloke and he waggled his wings and dived away.’ That was the end of the attack. Possibly he was out of range for operations or he’d run out of ammunition. I don’t know. So we flew on and I think by this time we were down to about five thousand feet and the mid-upper gunner called out, ‘Somebody had better come back and see if Vic’s alright because we can’t get him on the intercom.’ So being the most useless person in the aircraft I was told to go back and climb over everything, over the main spar and whatever. Go back and see what was happening and the mid-upper gunner also gave me great confidence because he said, ‘You’d better put your parachute on because there’s a bloody great hole in the side of this aircraft somewhere,’ and so I said, ‘Well perhaps somebody had better come with me.’ So the flight engineer, all he does really is sit alongside the pilot and look at the instruments so he came with me and he was a nineteen year old lad and he came back with me ‘cause I was, what shall we say, a coward. Right. I didn’t want to go back by myself in case anything happened and when we got back over the main spar there was the rear gunner lying in what I thought was a load of blood. It turned out it was sort of a pinky oil but you know, in the light there you can’t tell which was which. So we tried to give him some morphia which I don’t think we succeeded in doing because I don’t think we did it properly and we actually gave him a cigarette and I was told to stay with him all the way back to base so I sat there and of course when I’m sitting there you could look out the side of the aircraft. There was a big big hole. You could practically walk through it.
HB: Right.
KG: And you could see the tail fins waving a bit in the breeze and so we flew back. We flew back to Woodbridge. American. Do you know Woodbridge?
HB: I’ve heard of Woodbridge. Yeah.
KG: Well Woodbridge was an American base basically and just had one very long runway and all these flying fortress and it they had trouble they just came in depended which way the wind was blown they just came in and landed so we came in to Woodbridge and we’d obviously radioed ahead and the, my memory’s going, so when we landed, just were running down the runway the starboard tyre burst and we tipped over a bit on to one wing. Anyhow, the blood wagon and the fire engine and the doctor and God knows who came out and took us into the medical bay and gave us tots of rum. Well I don’t drink and I can’t stand the taste of rum and I just took one sip of this rum and I said, ‘Oh God I can’t drink that,’ and the wireless operator was a nineteen, twenty year old, again a Geordie who liked his booze. He said, ‘Wahay man,’ he said, ‘I’ll have it.’ So he he took this thing and we were obviously there for the night. The next morning, the next morning we went out to have a look at the aircraft which was semi riddled with holes. Why it hadn’t burst into flames God only knows and there was the tail fin all flapping in the breeze. Just walking around there and I said to the mid-upper gunner, ‘Have you seen your whistle George?’ Well there’s a picture of it in there. There was a big indent in this whistle where I imagine it was the shape of a bullet.
HB: Right.
KG: And of course you wear it around your throat.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And George Hillier realised what that meant. That if it hadn’t hit the whistle he would have been a goner even if it was only a piece of shrapnel it was certainly you could see the picture in there and when he eventually came to leave the RAF at the end of his flying career they had to hand in all their gear, boots and everything they charged him threepence for his whistle ‘cause he kept it. Charged him threepence for his whistle. So that was, that was Dusseldorf and we went a week, or two or three weeks later to the hospital where the chap was and saw him there but if, the thing is, if he, if the mid-upper gunner had been killed and if that whistle hadn’t, shall we say, effectively saved his life then we would never have known where this fighter was and we would have been dead as mutton.
HB: Oh dear.
KG: Anyhow, the skipper, he got the DFC and the mid-upper gunner, because of his commentary he got the DFM and people say to me, ‘What did you get?’ I said I got the screaming abdabs. Yeah so –
HB: Absolutely. Your rear gunner. Did you say his name was Vic?
KG: Vic. Vic Lewell.
HB: Yeah. And did he, did he recover?
KG: He recovered and he died some, oh many years later really but he showed us all the shrapnel they’d taken out of him. There was the nose of a canon shell in amongst his souvenirs.
HB: Blimey.
KG: Yeah.
HB: So, but obviously to carry on you would have had another rear gunner join you.
KG: No. Yes. We did. We had another rear, rear gunner. The other, the other thing is it comes on to the next story. Am I doing too much?
HB: No. No. You’re doing great.
KG: The next story. We went to Trondheim. You’ll see it in there.
HB: I’ve got, I’ve got one marked Trondheim abortive.
KG: That’s right.
HB: That’s 22nd of November.
KG: 22nd of November. Anyhow, we went to Trondheim to bomb the U-boat pens and docks and God knows what and we were then told to abort the raid because the master bomber couldn’t mark the target accurately enough to avoid killing a load of Norwegians so we were instructed to fly back home. I don’t know how many aircraft, we often used to have a hundred, two hundred from 5 Group. So, as I said in that thing there, coming back over the North Sea at the end of November there aint a lot to see. You don’t see any lights. You’re not going to get any fighters around there. There was no flak. So I don’t know whether I dozed off or not, I don’t know but we were flying quite steadily and all of a sudden George Hillier who was the mid-upper gunner called out, ‘For Christ’s sake pull up Jack. We’re hitting the sea,’ and we were literally hitting the sea. You know how when you’re a kid you skim a stone -
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
KG: Over the sea. Well we must have been doing that without, without knowing it so we must have been flying a couple of inches I should think.
HB: Blimey.
KG: So he immediately pulls up and flew up to about five thousand feet and as the bomb aimer I said to the skipper, ‘You ought to jettison these bombs.’ You know you don’t normally want to land with a load of bombs on board or it might not be loads. So he said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘At the briefing we were told that if we didn’t bomb we were to bring them back ‘cause they were getting scarce,’ and I said to him at the time, ‘And so are people like me getting scarce.’ So we, we flew back, we flew back and I said, ‘I bet you’ve lost your tail wheel’. I don’t know what he said to that and so we flew, flew back and as we landed of course, with a Lanc you, or with a lot of aircraft you land on the front two wheels and slow down and the back drops down doesn’t it?
HB: Yes. Yeah.
KG: Well, we slowed down on the runway and of course the rear turret gets dragged along the runway. We had a Canadian rear gunner at that time because, because -
HB: Do you want me, do you want me to just give you a break a minute?
[machine paused]
HB: Right. We’ve all had a cough and we’ve ordered our coffees.
KG: We’ve got the new rear gunner because ours had been wounded a few weeks previously and we had a Canadian at the time and I remember this Canadian calling out, ‘What the hell goes on here? My goddamn ass is on fire,’ because his rear turret was being dragged along the runway, the fins of the aircraft had been cut down to ground level I suppose.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And he’d got all these sparks coming up the aircraft. So we pulled on to the grass and stepped out of the aircraft ‘cause you didn’t have to get the ladder out. You were on the, practically on the ground already.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And the skipper calls down to his drinking partner from the Durham area, George called, ‘Is there much damage George?’ ‘Away man,’ he said, ‘You’ll hardly notice it.’ And of course the instrument bulge underneath, that had gone. The fins had cut down to sort of ground level, the rear turret was a bit of a mess and he said you’d hardly notice it. Well a few days, two or three days later he was told to report to the CO with his logbook and he thought he was going to get a brownie point.
HB: This was the pilot.
KG: The pilot. Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
KG: He thought he was going to get a brownie point for bringing the aircraft back after hitting the sea. Instead of that he got a red endorsement. It’s in there, in that folder somewhere, the actual endorsement.
HB: Blimey.
KG: You can, you can have those.
HB: Yeah.
KG: If you’d like to take them with you you can.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Have a look through them if you want to. So where was I?
HB: He’d just had his red endorsement.
KG: Yeah, he -
HB: He was -
KG: He’d got this red endorsement and he got a red endorsement for not flying at the correct height, disobeying, was it disobeying instruction? Not flying at the correct height. Hitting, allowing his aircraft to hit the sea. So it’s not me making up my mind or making a story.
HB: No.
KG: It’s there in sort of, I was going to say black and white, it’s in red and white.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So that was, that was a bit hair raising.
HB: I can imagine. I can imagine. But that, but that, that pilot what was his name? Vasey.
KG: Vasey.
HB: That, that pilot at that time he’s already got the DFC, he’s on his, you’re on your twenty first, twenty second -
KG: Yeah.
HB: Mission. Operation, sorry and he’s got a red endorsement.
KG: Yeah, doesn’t affect him. Didn’t sort of say, in that case you can’t fly.
HB: No. No.
KG: Not like a driving licence if you get a red endorsement they might ban you from driving. They can’t ban you from flying really.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So -
HB: I notice in here you’ve got one of the operations, Keith is December the 8th and it’s Heimbach Dam.
KG: Yeah. I don’t remember much about it. It was -
HB: Oh right.
KG: A standard raid as far as I can remember.
HB: Oh right it’s nothing, nothing special.
KG: Nothing exciting.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
KG: The next thing that happened I think was on our last trip which was to a place called Siegen I think you’ll find.
HB: Yes. I’ve got Siegen that was February the 1st 1945.
KG: That’s right. And we were flying across something like Holland or somewhere like that and this, the navigator, he was pretty old, he was twenty eight. The rest of us were all twenty two and under and we, he said, ‘We’ll have to go back to base because my navigation things have gone haywire,’ so Jack Vasey said, ‘I’m not bloody going back to base,’ he said, ‘We haven’t returned to base yet on any trip,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to do this on our last trip,’ and he said -
HB: Just pausing the tape.
[machine paused]
HB: Right. Coffee having arrived we can restart.
KG: I think it was what they called the Gee and something else, the H2S, I’m not quite sure and he said, ‘Well give it a kick.’ Whether he did give it a kick or not I don’t know but anyhow he said, ‘Keith can map read us from the front turret, from the front nose. Keith can map read us until the, until it gets dark and then we’ll follow the searchlights.’ That just shows you how navigation has changed.
HB: Yeah. Just a bit.
KG: Well today you could put a bomb up a bloke’s exhaust pipe practically.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And blow him up. Yeah. So, we we bombed [Seagan?] and that was our last trip.
HB: Yeah. I’ve just noticed, I’ve just noticed on this one, that’s six hours twenty minutes to [Seagan?].
KG: Yeah.
HB: But you had, you had some very long flights didn’t you? Eleven hours, ten hours.
KG: Yeah.
HB: Munich was ten and a half hours.
KG: Munich. Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
KG: We bombed, we did bomb Munich. It was lovely going over the mountains just inside Switzerland.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Really. They didn’t fire at us.
HB: Didn’t they?
KG: No. I don’t suppose they have a gun in Switzerland did they? So we bombed bombed Munich. It was very awe inspiring to see the Alps. I mean we were flying at about seventeen thousand I suppose, the Alps were about eighteen thousand.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Or thereabouts.
HB: Yeah. Not something you want to bump into. So that’s, you’ve got in your book here, finished first tour February 1st 1944. Sorry 1945.
KG: Yeah.
HB: And you’d flown -
KG: I don’t know that.
HB: Two hundred and fifty eighty hours and forty minutes daytime flying.
KG: Yeah.
HB: And two hundred and sixty six hours fifteen minutes night flying.
KG: Oh right. I didn’t know that.
HB: That’s quite a few, quite a few hours that is and then you only get, you must have only, I suppose you had a little bit of leave and then you went off to Swinderby.
KG: That’s right. I went as a so called bombing instructor at Swinderby.
HB: Right.
KG: And that was fine because I got my commission so I was in the posh mess and I festered around Swinderby for some little while I guess and then it all finished and they more or less said, ‘Well where would you like to go?’ So I thought to myself Australia. I think I’ll go to Australia. It’s a nice long way away and I’m not likely to go there again so of course typical RAF where did I finish up? In the Sudan. Khartoum. But that was -
HB: That’s when you left Swinderby.
KG: That’s when I left Swinderby.
HB: Just looking in your logbook here Keith you’ve got one 24th of March 1945 you’ve got an entry here X VX 9 which I presume is exercise and it’s got France X C T Y and H L B I presume that’s -
KG: High level bombing.
HB: That’s high level bombing yeah.
KG: High level bombing.
HB: Yeah.
KG: That would be practice.
HB: Oh right. Right. And then on the next page in July this is just something I don’t know if you can remember about it, the 24th of July 1945 you got yourself with, the pilot is somebody called Daggett, you’re in a Lancaster and you’re going on a Cook’s Tour.
KG: Oh yeah. A Cook’s Tour. At the end of the war they took you around to show you what damage you’d done, you know. Have a look at the mess you made. So we flew around the Ruhr just having a look, a Cook’s Tour of -
HB: Yeah.
KG: Of the damage.
HB: You’ve even written down what you flew over. You flew over [Valkerin?].
KG: [Valkerin?] Yeah.
HB: Krefeld, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Essen, Dortmund, Ham and then etcetera. Blimey. Oh that’s a bit cutting. [laughs].
KG: What’s that?
HB: You’ve got August 23rd with a pilot called Enoch.
KG: Oh yeah.
HB: And you’ve got your duties as air bomber and it just says, Eric brackets waste of time.
KG: Most likely a code name for a practice flight I should think. I don’t know what Eric -
HB: Yeah. Yeah. I just wondered, just wondered if you could remember what X C T Y meant? Is that -
KG: Cross country.
HB: Oh right. Cross country. Right. That makes sense now.
KG: We often did that.
HB: Yeah.
KG: When we got nothing better to do we often do a cross country.
HB: So, so when did you go to the Sudan?
KG: Oh hell. Latish 1945 I suppose.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And I was out there for about six months swimming and playing tennis and I was supposed to be the air traffic officer.
HB: Right.
KG: But it was a little bit of a relaxation and a bit of a jolly really.
HB: Right. So that -
KG: A good experience to go somewhere like the Sudan.
HB: Yeah. So you sort of came to the Sudan and then you’re obviously on the down slope.
KG: Yeah.
HB: Heading towards -
KG: Demob.
HB: Demob. What, what was that sort of process like Keith?
KG: I don’t remember much about the demob process. I must have come back here and reported somewhere. They give you a suit and that’s you out of the air force so to speak and I went back to my old job which was, you see when I enlisted I was nineteen.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Nineteen. Well I wasn’t frightfully academic at the best of times but I did quite well with what nouse that I’d got and sorry my train of thoughts gone, and so I went back and having been a somebody -
HB: Yeah.
KG: I went back to this company where I was, in the eyes of the managing director, a nobody and I stayed with them until such time as the company was taken over by Plessey. Remember Plessey.
HB: Yes. Yes I do.
KG: They took us over and the, instead of us taking them over they took us over and they wanted me to go to Nottingham and offered me more money to go to Nottingham and I didn’t want to go because the kids were in grammar school in Enfield at the time so I then decided to make myself redundant and I was paid redundancy money because they were moving the company.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And I had already been invited by some people that I knew in STC to go and join them.
HB: Right. This is, this is all in the electronics industry.
KG: Well the telephone industry.
HB: Telephone industry. Yeah.
KG: I wasn’t a telephone engineer. I mean I wouldn’t, I know how to pick up a telephone and that’s about all but I became sales manager of a division where they sold the earpieces and mouthpieces, the microphone and the ear piece you know and I did quite well at that and I then retired from there in 1984. Yeah, about ‘84 on the grounds that I didn’t like the set up. It had all changed because people had been coming in and taking over this, taking over that and I thought to myself I don’t really want to stay here so I’ll take redundancy money and I left them.
HB: When did, when did you actually get married then Keith?
KG: 1947
HB: Right.
KG: So -
HB: And that was to your wife obviously.
KG: Peggy.
HB: Peggy
KG: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So but if you asked her now who she married she most likely wouldn’t know.
HB: No.
KG: Wouldn’t know when she was married. As I say she’s upstairs in bed I imagine.
HB: So how, and how many children did you have?
KG: Two. Jane.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Who’s around here somewhere.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And Ian who was a solicitor and then he set up his own business in the holiday world. Timeshare. Made a lot of money and he now plays a lot of golf.
HB: Right.
KG: Does odd jobs up in London for a company but hasn’t got to work.
HB: No.
KG: He come up here last Wednesday and he said, ‘Oh I’ve told you I’m going to America haven’t I?’ So I said, ‘No.’ I mean he’s like that. ‘I told you.’ ‘No.’ I said, ‘What are you going to America for? Because I can afford it,’ he said.
HB: Lovely.
KG: And for the last –
HB: Lovely.
KG: And for the last three years he’s been with his wife, who’s a West Indian girl, pleasant girl and they go, they fly to Florida, get on a ship, one of these bloody great ships.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And they do a seven days, ten days or whatever it is. I said, ‘Which islands are you going to?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘They’re all the bloody same these islands.’ He said, ‘They’re all full of people trying to flog you things,’ you know.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine. I can imagine. Keith can I just, can I just ask you, can I just something that’s comes to my mind while we’ve been, you know we’ve been chatting and what not I don’t think, I’m just going back over your log. I don’t think we actually know who your crew were. We know the pilot was Vasey.
KG: Oh yeah. I can tell you who the crew were. I’ve got a, I’ve got a lovely big photo, painting and you’ve, if you’d like to take those papers with you -
HB: Well we, what I’m, what I’m thinking we’ll do because there’s some in there, yes I can but what I just wanted to make some enquiries about some of the bits and pieces ‘cause I mean like you’ve got the usual things we all do. You’ve got some photographs but there’s nothing written on the back.
KG: Yeah.
HB: So we don’t quite know who’s who.
KG: Yeah.
HB: But having said that that’s that’s something we can address but no it was just, it was just the names of the crew.
KG: I’ll go through them for you if you’d like to jot them down.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Jack Vasey.
HB: That’s the pilot.
KG: V A S E Y.
HB: Ray Miller, flight engineer.
KG: So he’s the FE. Ray Miller.
HB: Oh dear. I’ll have to think a bit.
KG: That’s alright.
HB: George. George, God, George Hillier, mid-upper gunner.
KG: George Hillier.
HB: Vic Lewell L E W E L L.
KG: Hang on he was rear gunner. Sorry Vic Lewell.
HB: L E W E L L.
KG: Who haven’t, we haven’t got the –
HB: Navigator.
KG: I always remember he said, ‘It’s Edward to my better class friends.’
HB: Yeah.
KG: I’ll have to, I’ll have to look in there.
HB: That’s alright. That’s alright. That’s Edward.
KG: Crowley. I think he name was Crowley. Ted Crowley. C R O W L E Y.
HB: That’s brilliant. So that’s the pilot, the flight engineer, the navigator and can you remember who your wireless op was?
KG: George Hardy.
HB: George Hardy.
KG: From, from Houghton le Spring.
HB: Right. George Hardy, wireless op. That’s great. Yeah. It’s, it’s, did you after, after the war did you keep in contact with your crew.
KG: Well that’s something I’ve forgotten to tell you. We didn’t keep in touch with each other but about -, This is my daughter.
JT: Hello Harry, you must be Harry. Hi I’m Jane.
KG: Right. Just bear with me a second.
[machine pause]
HB: Right. Just turned the tape back on.
KG: About twenty five years after we had been demobbed I don’t know the exact date my wife had a phone call and the person said, ‘Is that Mrs Ganney?’ ‘Yes.’ Was your husband in 57 squadron?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘My name is George Hillier,’ the chap I was telling you about here, he said, ‘We’ve found out that the skipper, Jack Vasey is seriously ill,’ and George Hillier and Vic Lewell were going up to Newcastle or in that area to see him. Would we like to go as well? So we all trooped off to Newcastle or wherever it was and went in to see Jack Vasey and he was so thin. So he was in his dressing gown. It was one Sunday lunchtime and he was so thin and I was talking to him and I said to him, ‘What were you doing the night we hit the sea Jack?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know man but not many people have done it.’
HB: Yeah. That’s true.
KG: Yeah. And he died. He died a week later.
HB: Oh.
KG: With cancer.
HB: Yeah.
KG: But his family were so thrilled that we’d gone up there.
HB: Yeah.
KG: But other than that we haven’t been in touch with each other.
HB: So had you, had you, had you been in contact through perhaps associations reunions or -
KG: No. We hadn’t.
HB: You didn’t do much of that.
KG: No. We weren’t, we didn’t get involved in reunions at that time.
HB: Yeah.
KG: But then I joined the 57/630 Squadron Association because 57 squadron and 630 squadron shared East Kirkby.
HB: Yeah.
KG: They were both on the, on the aerodrome and we joined the Association. We did attend one or two dinners and reunions. We may manage to get to the next one which is something like the 3rd of July at East Kirkby.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Have you ever been there?
HB: I’ve been to Kirkby, East Kirkby, yeah.
KG: And have you seen the aircraft there haven’t you?
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
KG: Because it’s called Just Jane.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And so we may try and make it there depending on how I feel and how everybody else feels.
HB: Yeah.
KG: You know, just to go over there for the, for the day.
HB: Yeah.
KG: With my wife, as you see getting her up in the morning is difficult.
HB: Yeah.
KG: You know, she’ll be alright -
HB: What was, what was, I mean I’ve spoken to one or two people who were at east Kirby but what was your abiding memory of being at East Kirby cause there’s -
KG: East Kirkby.
HB: Sorry yeah.
KG: East Kirkby.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Abiding memory. Well let me just explain it. We joined the squadron and started flying August.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And we’d finished by February.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So we weren’t there for very, I wouldn’t be able to tell you the name of any member of East Kirkby at that time because people regrettably used to come and go. They would come in one day and two or three days later on a trip they’ve been shot down or whatever so you didn’t, you didn’t have any friends in other crews.
[ringtone]
HB: Sorry about this. I thought I’d turned it off. I have now. That’s it. Sorry I do apologise for that.
KG: That’s all right.
Jane: Nice bit of music though.
KG: You didn’t, you didn’t make friends outside of your own crew because you know, it was a bit without being over dramatic it was here today gone tomorrow.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
KG: So the, we were in nissen huts with a stove in the middle and a pipe going up through the roof but it wasn’t the most ideal place to stay.
HB: I’ve heard it, I’ve heard it described as cold and windy and draughty.
KG: That’s it. That’s it. Yeah.
HB: It seems to be a recurring theme.
KG: But as I say we weren’t there all that long.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Came in something like July. We’d be gone by February.
HB: Yeah. The, at the end of the war obviously a lot of people have got views on how Bomber Command were treated or viewed at the end of the war.
KG: Yeah.
HB: I just wondered if you’d got a view on that yourself.
KG: Yes. I have really. I can to a degree understand it in so far as fighter planes were there to shoot down the enemy planes and it was very flamboyant and they were quite rightly famous for what they, what they did whereas we were there to bomb them into submission effectively.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And I think at the end of the war Montgomery, Alexander, various other people in charge were all made lords and what’s the name was not offered a peerage.
HB: Harris.
KG: Butch. What’s his name? Butch Harris. So I think Bomber Command got treated very badly but of course they, as it was then we were at peace they didn’t want to upset the Germans any more.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And say, you know well we came and bombed all your places.
HB: Yeah.
KG: But I’m sure in my own mind that Bomber Command were, it was very significant of bombing Germany into submission.
HB: Yeah.
KG: I’m not saying the army wouldn’t, they would have to have done it eventually but no I think they got the thin edge of the wedge.
HB: Yeah.
KG: The only medals I got and I couldn’t care less about bloody medals, they’re surplus and stuck indoors. If I’d have stabbed myself with a pen in Whitehall I would have got the same medals.
HB: Yeah.
KG: As I got on Bomber Command.
HB: Yeah. What medals did you get Keith? Do you know?
KG: Oh. The usual Naafi lot. I think it was the victory medal you’d get.
HB: Yeah.
KG: They defence medal.
HB: Yeah.
KG: I honestly -
HB: Aircrew?
KG: No. No. We didn’t get aircrew medals. I mean I wouldn’t have minded an aircrew medal. If you’d flown before D-Day you would have got the air crew Europe.
HB: Yeah.
KG: After D-Day you all had the same medal which was, I don’t know, was it called the European star? I don’t know.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So all all they gave us eventually after kicking up a stink and of course the person who kicked up a lot of the stink was one of the Bee Gees.
HB: Oh right.
KG: Did you know that?
HB: No. No, I didn’t know that.
KG: You look it up. The Bee Gees. He’s died now. He was instrumental in putting the muck up. I’m not on tape am I? For putting the muck in the fan and stirring it all up.
HB: Yeah.
KG: And got that lovely memorial down at Piccadilly.
HB: Yeah. At Green Park. Yeah.
KG: Yeah. You’ve you seen it have you?
HB: Yes. I’ve been there.
KG: Yeah. It’s a good memorial.
HB: Yeah.
KG: So he was one of the main people getting involved with with that. But all we got was the soppy little clasp.
HB: Yeah.
KG: They call it the air crew clasp or something.
HB: Yeah.
KG: Well, I mean it’s like somebody’s put a little mark on your arm thing.
HB: Yeah.
KG: It’s a pretty pathetic sort of a gesture.
HB: Well I think, I think what we’ll do Keith is, I thank you for very much for that. It’s really, really interesting history of what you did. If we can I’ll turn the tape off. It’s a quarter to twelve now.
KG: Yeah.
HB: So you, I think, I think you’ve done marvellously to get, to get through all that. What we’ll do if you like I’ll turn the tape off. We’ll go through some of this paperwork and I’ll just make a few notes about some of the photographs.
KG: Yeah. If you go through -
HB: And then I’m just down the road so what I can I’ll I can do the copying so I’m going to terminate the interview at 11.45.
KG: Ok. We’re going into South Lodge.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AGanneyK170301
PGanneyK1714
Title
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Interview with Keith Ganney
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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:05:18 audio recording
Creator
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Harry Bartlett
Date
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2017-03-01
Description
An account of the resource
Keith was called up in February 1942 and after basic training learned to fly in the Tiger Moth and then sent to Davidson in Canada for further training in Cornells and Cranes. He failed a flying test and was remustered as a bomb aimer and sent back to England to 9 AFU at RAF Penrhos and then to RAF Silverstone to carry out crew training on Wellington and Stirling aircraft.
After attending the Lancaster finishing school at RAF Syerston, Keith and his crew were posted to RAF East Kirby. Their first operation was to Konigsberg, an eleven-hour trip but had to divert to Scotland because of bad weather. Several ‘bullseye’ feint operations were next before a raid on Bremen Docks was a failure due to navigator error.
Another operation was to Dusseldorf, carried out on a perfect moonlit night. An attack by a Me109, left the rear gunner severely wounded and the mid upper turret out of action. After fifteen minutes of corkscrew evasive action, the enemy fighter flew alongside, waggled his wings and flew off. Keith comforted the rear gunner until they made an emergency landing in England. Examination of the damaged aircraft revealed the emergency whistle of the mid upper gunner had deflected a bullet and saved his life. On an operation to Trondheim, the crew were unable to bomb so returned but had a lucky escape when they flew too low and hit the sea, tearing off the tail wheel and causing a crash landing for which the pilot received a red endorsement
Their last operation was to Siegen and in mid flight the navigator wanted to turn back so the pilot ordered Keith to map read the route from the nose of the aircraft and so he finished his first tour on 1st February 1945.
After time as a bombing instructor at RAF Swinderby, Keith was posted to Sudan as an air traffic controller from where he was demobbed.
He worked as a salesman until 1984, during which time he joined 57/630 Squadron association.
Keith feels angry at the treatment of Arthur Harris and considers the aircrew clasp as a pathetic gesture.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Newark (Nottinghamshire)
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Gwynedd
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Siegen
Norway--Trondheim
Russia (Federation)--Kaliningrad (Kaliningradskai︠a︡ oblastʹ)
Canada
Saskatchewan
Sudan
Germany
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1945-02-01
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Terry Holmes
17 OTU
57 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
crewing up
entertainment
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Lancaster
love and romance
Me 109
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Penrhos
RAF Silverstone
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/260/3406/PGardinerEF1701.2.jpg
3d1d6163b01832b82e5e90e52d7d1125
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/260/3406/AGardinerEF170809.1.mp3
344ed80f38814e93bb28e5aed249c0bb
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
Gardiner, Ernest Frederick
Ernest Frederick Gardiner
Ernest F Gardiner
Ernest Gardiner
E F Gardiner
E Gardiner
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Ernest Frederick Gardiner (1923 - 2019, 1322805 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-04
2017-08-08
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
Gardiner, EF
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PL: My name is Pam Locker and I am here in the home of Mr Ernest Frederick Gardiner [address redacted] and Mr Gardiner’s daughter, Lynn Moult, is also with us. So I would just like to thank you again, Fred, very much indeed, on behalf of the Bomber Command Digital Archive for agreeing to talk to us.
FG: My pleasure.
PL: Thank you. So Fred, I guess where would, a good place for us to start is perhaps your childhood and a little bit about your parents perhaps, and how you eventually became part of Bomber Command, so.
FG: I was born in Banbury, 1923, and I went to a local Church of England school, called St Leonards, when I was five, until I was fourteen. And my father worked for Morris Motors at Cowley, Oxford, and my mother didn’t work, out, but she died when I was just coming up to ten years old and I was then looked after, supposedly, by my father’s spinster sister, but I think we looked after her rather than she looking after us; she was a bit useless! [Chuckle] Anyway by the time I was fourteen I went to work in a furniture factory and I was trained mainly as a french polisher. Then the war started when I was sixteen, and I thought, the job I had wasn’t reserved because it was furniture making, although they were changing over to making gliders, but I wouldn’t have escaped being called up, so I jumped the gun as it were, and joined the RAF rather than finish up in the trenches, haha. So I was called up after that, after I registered. I was called up in November 1941 and went through usual training processes. I went to initial training place at Padgate, near Warrington, where I was kitted up and then went on to Blackpool. I was in Blackpool in digs, civilian digs, for four months doing the usual military training plus initial learning of Morse code and signals. After that, I, after a spell of leave, I was posted to Number 10 Signals School at Madley near Hereford and that was to complete the course as a wireless operator which meant training on radio equipment, continuing Morse code training, we had to reach a speed of twenty words a minute. After that, another little spell of leave and then I spent four months in Leconfield, near Beverley, Yorkshire, and my job there was to fly as a wireless operator with trainee pilots. So we had a trainee pilot and an instructor pilot and myself, the wireless operator, and my job there was to collect bearings from different stations, so that they could be used by the trainee pilot, and that was quite a nice job, I liked that job, for four months and I had to go back to Madley for another three months to take what they called the Aircraft Facility, the aircraft level of training which, until then I was supposed not to have been flying, but that was very nicely ignored I think. And after training there and I was sent to do an air gunnery course, that was at Walney Island, Barrow in Furness, and we flew on Boulton Paul Defiants, sing, two seater fighters, to do our training and we had to fire Browning machine gun from the turret at targets being towed by other aircraft. That was quite exciting, and from there I went back to Madley, did a further course and from there I went to an Operational Training Unit, an OTU, where I was crewed up, and that was an interesting experience. We, there were I think twenty pilots, twenty navigators, twenty of all the categories, and forty air gunners, because there were two air gunners in a crew. And we were mixed up in a hangar and told to sort ourselves out into crews. It was a bit strange, but I think it was a very effective, very worthwhile because you couldn’t really complain after that you see, it was your choice. From there, after we finished OTU, which was a three month course, and flying Wellingtons and doing practice, all sorts of practice flights, short distances, doing short take offs and landings and longer trips up to about eight hours, flying from A to B to C all round the UK, at night as well, to gain experience, did all the job, each one of us doing our job. So, after that we went to train on Manchesters and Lancasters and we were then given a flight engineer join the crew, so there were seven of us. A short course and we went on to Bomber Command which was then at Syerston, near Newark, and we were there and did, well we did, we were shot down on our fifth operation. We did, the first one we did was to Essen and then we did three in a row to Hamburg and then we were on our way to Mannheim, Mannheim Ludwigshafen, its full title, and that’s where we were shot down, by Oberleutnant Petrich, I’ve got a photograph of him, so [pause] from being, being shot down, I was picked up in Belgium by the Belgian Resistance. I’d come down right in the far south east corner of Belgium, very nearly into Luxembourg, and I landed in the dark. It was, to be shot down was about the most horrifying experience I ever had, or likely to have and that’s quite terrifying, sitting there minding your own business and suddenly you’re surrounded by tracer bullets and things coming whizzing past you. In fact that attack killed three of the crew, they missed me and fortunately they missed the pilot and the bomb aimer escaped and the navigator escaped, and we all managed to bale out. Then, as I say, I was picked up by the Belgian Resistance and after five, five weeks of being taken from house to house, village to village, town to town, into France and finished up in a place called Fismes, F I S M E S, Fismes, near Reims, Reims, Reims. And I’d then met another Air Force chap, a New Zealand pilot, he’d been shot down, well he crashed, he crash landed and so the two of us finished up the last week or two in France and then the RAF sent a Lysander aircraft which landed just outside this town of Fismes and picked up myself and this sergeant pilot, New Zealand pilot, and a Belgian agent. This was a night time job, we were escorted up to a lonely field, torches were placed out to make up a flare path. The Lysander came in and landed over a haystack, which was rather unfortunate, because the field that it was coming in had been ploughed up, but where the haystack was, they’d left that strip. Fortunately the pilot managed to do a reasonable landing, and the pilot was Group Captain Verity and he’s written a book on this, these adventures, called “We Landed By Moonlight”. His name: Hugh Verity. I’ve got a copy. So we were picked up there and made a decent take off, came back to England in broad moonlight. Fortunately I don’t think the Germans were interested in one little plane, so we weren’t molested all the way back and we landed at Tangmere, which is near Chichester, and went into an RAF house, on the airfield, and the next day we were taken up to Air Ministry to explain where we’d been [chuckle] and kitted out again, rekitted out. So, back to normal again. But I went back, had some leave - month’s leave. I was a bit annoyed that my New Zealand colleague, he got six weeks and I only got four weeks, and he couldn’t even go home, to New Zealand. And after that I was posted as an instructor in radio, Morse code and also the Browning gun ‘cause I was an air gunner as well. And I served, I was sent down here to Southampton, to the University Air Squadron and I was there until I was demobbed which was a couple of years. Nice job that, very nice job that was. So back home and I didn’t want to go back into factory work – it was hard work, not very well paid, no pensions or anything like that - so I studied and got a commercial wireless operator’s qualifications and with that I got a job with a local firm here in the Channel Islands, Channel Islands Airways, and as a wireless operator, radio officers we were called now, and I did that job for a couple of years to and fro the Channel Islands and then eventually I was posted up to first Northolt, and then Heathrow and transferring from de Havilland Rapides, which were old fashioned two, bi-planes, bi-plane, and went on to um, Vikings, Vickers Vikings, and then - Viscounts - and I did, I think it was thirteen years, and did most of that on the Vikings, er Viscounts, but then they made the radio officers redundant, technology advanced [interference] and they didn’t need a wireless operator and so I was made redundant when I was forty, but that took me up to finding another job, which I managed to do as a technician with IBM at Hursley, and I stayed there till I was retired at sixty, and from there went, with my wife, to live in Chandlers Ford, how many years, er, well, until I was, until I was -
[Other]: Ninety.
FG: Yes, until I was ninety and then we both, my wife and I, both came to Sunrise Care Home and my wife was only here for a few months and she passed away so left me here on my own ever since. That’s nearly four years ago. I think that brings up right up to today.
PL: Well Fred, [Clear throat] that’s a wonderful story. Can I take you back to when you were in Bomber Command and ask you to describe your escape? You’ve talked a little bit about being shot down, which was very interesting, but can you tell us about, you know, once you’d landed and this extraordinary escape that you had, in a little more detail?
FG: Yes. Okay. I remember the horrifying moment when these bullets and shells came through the Lancaster, absolutely terrifying. And you think, I thought to myself it’s our turn, because you knew all the time all the raids were going on, quite a lot of aircraft shot down. Lancasters, quite a lot of those went and this feeling suddenly, when it happens to you, you think my turn, it’s our turn. Anyway, the Lancaster caught fire. It was my job to go back to a position in the fuselage on the floor of the aeroplane, where there was a handle which you could pull which released a big bomb, we had a four thousand pound bomb, that released it, in case the bomb aimer either wasn’t able to, or his equipment was damaged, so he couldn’t drop it from his position so it was my job to dash back and pull this handle and the bomb went down. By then the Lancaster was so well alight I thought well I’m not going back to my seat, I’m getting out. In fact the mid upper gunner was getting down from his turret so I thought oh well, the captain’s probably told us to abandon ship, so I went back to the rear door, which was my escape hatch, escape exit, and I, we’d never done a parachute drops as practice, but we’d been told just what to do, especially in a Lancaster where the tailplane is right up alongside the door and if you didn’t do it properly, it would hit you as you went out. So all these, this training, these lessons, came, came sharply to mind and I managed to get the door open, kneel on the, kneel on the door sill, head down, I’d already clucked my parachute on to the harness, put my arm across the parachute, not my hand on the rip cord. Now some people lost their lives by pulling the ripcord too soon and sometimes in [emphasis] the aircraft, that dead loss, so I thought no, you’ve got to be careful, put my arm across the parachute to cover the handle so that I wouldn’t pull it too soon, so I put my head down to miss the tailplane. When I think about it, I think I did quite well there, I was with it all the time, sharp, sharply thinking what I’d gotta do, so I went out head first, did a couple of somersaults, let the Lancaster get clear, pulled the ripcord, big jolt [emphasis], then it was all peaceful. Lovely, a lovely calm night, and a little bit of moonlight I seem to remember. Anyway, the starlit sky above, but looking down, trying to see the ground, was absolutely black. You can’t see a thing on the ground at night. And I was trying to see where I was gonna land, looking down, focussing several thousand feet, couldn’t see a thing, absolutely black and wallop, hit the ground! Parachute came gently down over me and got myself sorted out and I was just a few feet away from an electric pylon. [Laugh] So nothing to do then, but I rolled myself up in the parachute until it got light. And we had an escape pack, so I opened that. I had some Horlicks tablets and some tubes of cream and few other useful things: a compass and some maps, which were printed onto silk, like handkerchiefs. I sorted all that out and I was just going to make my mind up to move, there was a little track alongside where I‘d dropped and along this track came a chap leading a horse and cart, and I thought oh, well, I didn’t know whether I was in Belgium, Luxembourg France or Germany, they all come down there and very close together, so I stood up and I took a handkerchief out to wave, as a surrender [laugh] and I think this chap leading the donk, leading the horse. thought I was going for a gun and he dived under his cart! [Laugh] Anyway, when he saw I was harmless, he came out and shook my hand, ‘Comarade’. I thought is that French, German, comarade, sounds could be either, play safe. So he pointed back to where he come from and said ‘Comarades, Comarades’. I gave him a handshake and I set off in the direction he pointed. I had bare feet. When the parachute opened, the jolt takes your flying boots off and the socks come with them ‘cause it was fur lined so I was in bare feet [chuckle] so I managed to stagger down in bare feet, in the direction this chap had pointed, and I went down, I remember I had to go under a railway bridge and I came, quite quickly, came to a road with a signpost on it which said Rulles, R U double L E S, so I thought well, I don’t know where Rulles is, never heard of it, but this is probably where I’ll go so I got onto this little roadway and I saw some cottages about a hundred, two hundred yards away, so I set out, I thought well I’ve got to get some footwear before I do anything else, whether I can steal some or be given some, I don’t know, I didn’t know what really was going to happen at that moment, and then I heard a lorry engine coming down the road and I thought there’s only Germans got motor vehicles here: they’re Germans. And I’d just got to the first cottage and I thought I’d better get out of sight so I opened the door, fortunately it wasn’t locked, I just opened the door, stepped inside and closed the door behind me and looked out the window at the side of the door, and the truck went past, open truck with a covered, canvas covered top, but the back was open: German soldiers sitting in there, with their rifles! I though ah, they’ve missed me – only just! So I turned to see where I was and there was an elderly lady in the room, all in black I remember, and she burst into tears and I never knew, then or now, whether it was due to fright or sympathy, bit of both perhaps, very startled, must have startled her for that to happen. Anyway a chap came in from a room at the back, he shook hands with me, he realised who I was, and gave me a black raincoat and some boots, socks and boots! Thought doing very well here and told me to follow him, and I went with him and across the road and I remember, over a little bridge I think it was, to another house, and took me in there and several people gathered – I was an object of curiosity - and I said where am I in English, but nobody could understand me, and I couldn’t understand them very well, but eventually one chap said, ‘Ici Belgique’ – I was able to translate that, Belgium, that’s good. [cough] Am I going on too long?
PL: No, not at all, it’s fascinating. Keep going.
FG: So. Can we switch off a moment?
PL: Just pausing for a moment. Recommencing.
FG: I was now taken to another house where several people had gathered, and one chap could speak a little English, and eventually they found some civilian clothes. [Coughing] So I changed into these civilian clothes and I was then taken by bicycle and escorted by a young, another young cyclist to the next village, which was about two miles away, and when we got there I was taken to a priest’s house [background music] and he took me in and er, I was given a room, and I was pretty tired, this was, I’d had no sleep all night, and he took me up to a room, little room, with a very soft bed, and I went out like a light. I don’t know how long I was asleep, some time I think, and when, later on, when I was awakened, taken down to his study, he and his housekeeper were there and they had a radio which they had to, they could listen to English radio but they mustn’t let Germans hear them, so very quietly put the radio on and put the English news on, BBC, from where I learned that seven RAF bombers were missing that night. That was six plus me. So they gave me some food and so called coffee which I was told afterwards it’s made partly of acorns, it was, I found it was drinkable, and black bread. That sounded nasty but I’m not fussy, food has never been a problem, I don’t turn anything down, so I was very pleased to get some food and I was taken to another house where the lady was in the kitchen, and I was taken into the kitchen and she had a huge [emphasis] plum pie and she cut me a big slice of plum pie and that was rather nice! From there I did this bicycle trip to the next village and I was taken into a room and shown to a bedroom. And I, although it was daylight it must have been then about ten o’clock in the morning, I was absolutely whacked, tired, and they showed me into this bedroom, so I got undressed and I got into bed, and I remember nice, soft bed, and just about to, within seconds to go to sleep and a chap burst in and he said, ‘you are in the house of a collaborator, you’ll have to get out, come with me!’ So having just trying to go to sleep I had to get out of bed quickly, dress quickly and follow him out the back of the house and across into some pretty wild countryside in fact we walked across what must have been a First World War battlefield, it was all hillocks and undulating ground and my ankles I remember playing me up a bit. Anyway we plodded on until we came to this next village, that’s [emphasis] where I was taken in by the priest and I stayed there till the next evening and he said ‘oh, you’ve got to go on now.’ By the way, while I was in the priest’s house, I was sitting there with him, in his study, looking out the window, and two gendarmes came up the path, oh, what do we do now? Anyway, they came in shook my hand and Comarade, Comarade! They didn’t speak English, but very pleasant. I remember their names, and er [pause]. So later on, I was given this room and went to bed because I was needing sleep. And then when I got up later on, more food, and then the priest said oh, ‘you’ll have to carry on, go on from here, you come with me’ and off, we left his house and it was raining and I’d got, I was still in, I’d got these civilian clothes, but no, nothing to keep the rain out, I think somebody had taken this raincoat away from me, wanted it themselves I expect, so he put his cassock round me, and somebody had given me a little black beret, so I had this black beret and this cassock right down to my ankles, absolutely invisible in the night, good thing perhaps. So we set off from his house, getting dark, in fact it was quite dark when we came to the edge of some woods and the priest gave a whistle, which was answered by another whistle and a chap came forward and he was going to be my guide, and he had a pistol, he gave me one, showed me how to take the safety catch off, ‘put that in your pocket’ he said. So the priest left me with him and we set off through these woods, and we got a little way in, in darkness, and he said we must be a bit quiet, there’s a German encampment here nearby and we were just going past like a Nissen hut, a military hut, when the door burst open and a couple of German soldiers came out with their rifles and my colleague pushed me into the ditch and came in with me, and we lay still in the ditch and these two Germans came out and got on bicycles, and rode past us about as far as my daughter is to you, and of course they’d come out from a lighted room so they were a bit, not very, couldn’t see very well in the dark, but we could see very well, we’d been out in the dark for some time, but it was a little bit scary because my companion pulls his pistol out and trains it on the Germans, as they went past. [Motor noise]
PL: [Sharp intake of breath]
FG: I thought oh, don’t want a gun battle here, we’re not going to win against rifles. Anyway the Germans went away and we stayed put for a little while and went on with our journey to the next village where he introduced me to another family and things went more or less satisfactorily from there and I was there for a couple of nights, in fact I stayed there with this chap who’d rescued me, and then he disappeared and I had another guide, a lady this time and [motor noise] she took me, escorted, by bicycle, we both had bicycles, and we went through woodland on our bikes, a little track through the woods, and we came to another village where I was taken into the house of the Burgomaster, and I was sheltered in there and when it became evening I was taken down the road a little way to another house which was, I think a relative’s house, [motor noise] where I was given a bed for the night. The next day the Burgomaster’s sister, turned out to be, nice lady, and she again escorted me on the bike, quite a long way through woods, and we came out at a little town in Belgium called Bouillon. B O U I double L O N, Bouillon. I think it’s the place where the soup comes from. I went up a little track down, between the woods, to a little detached house situated nicely, quiet position, alongside a river, and it was a tobacco farm and my lady companion took me into this house, introduced me to the people there, they took me over and found me a room on the top floor, I remember it, and because it was a tobacco farm, this room I was given was lined with little cupboards and I was quite curious to know what was in these cupboards and they were packed full of cigars, hand made cigars, from the tobacco farm, but I didn’t try one because I’d tried the cigarettes and they were ghastly enough; I smoked then. And I was there for a fortnight and it was quite pleasant, out of the way, no traffic, no roads nearby, and alongside the river, and I went for a walk alongside the river, people across the river walking about on the path, but quite a wide river, River Semois, and so I stayed there for a fortnight and then one day a taxi turned up, and he just managed to get down this little track, to the house, and beckoned me, come with me, so I said goodbye to these people, got in the car and he took me into the village, into the town, at Bouillon, took me in to a hotel, dropped me off at a hotel, in fact once he’d dropped me off he shot off like mad, get rid of me, got rid of me quickly. I went into the hotel, into a room, there were several people, they were all Resistance people and one of them there was Flight Sergeant Herbert Pond of the Royal New Zealand airline, Air Force, so that was rather nice, I was able to speak fluently to somebody and have a little chat, and he said ‘they’re suspicious of me, they think I’m a German plant, can you help sort this out?’ So at least one of these Belgians or Frenchmen, I think one was a French Canadian, and he said ‘can you vouch for him?’ So I said ‘got any experiences you can remember?’ And he said ‘I remember I was on one station and there were some Australian crews’ - and they were always getting up to trouble -and they’d hijacked some chickens, live chickens, taken them up to their room in the barracks and thrown them out across onto the parade ground at night, you know, evening time, night time, and they had bets on which chicken could get furthest along, that’s Australians for you, so he said ‘I remember that!’ He said ‘I saw that!’ So I said to these Belgians, or French people, he’s, ‘no German knows what he saw that night so he’s a genuine.’ And he said ‘I think you may have saved my life there’ he said, ‘they held a gun against my head!’ [Laugh] I still get Christmas cards from him. New Zealand. So from there the taxi driver turned up again and took us across the border into France. In fact, we [emphasis] walked across the border and he took his taxi round through the official entrance and picked us up the other side, at a pub I remember, haha, and from there we were taken to a little town. Oh, we were taken first of all to, to this little local town, and we did a train, we were given a train ticket, some train tickets, yeah, this helper was a French Canadian, that’s right, he took us over there, and of course he could speak English and French, and bought us some rail tickets and we sat on the station, outside the station, while he went and got these rail tickets and Herbert Pond, the New Zealander, myself sat on opposite sides of a table, long table, and he brought us, he went to buy us some beer and while he was gone to get this beer from a kiosk, some bloomin’ German soldiers came down, propped their guns up against the table and sat down next to us, [chuckle] so we weren’t able to speak after that. But then he came back with the tickets and just indicated us, come with me, didn’t say anything, off we went, followed him onto the platform, he said ‘they’re your tickets, when you get to Reims’, is it Reims? Yes, Reims, he said ‘you’ll be met outside the station, at the station exit, by a lady dressed all in black and she’ll be wearing a red flower.’ So the train came in and we separated, myself and Herbert Pond, he said separate on the train, so Herbert went off on his own and I watched where the door was, went across the platform, and in most of the carriages there was a notice up: ‘Reserve Pour Les Troops d’Occupation’. I could read that, even though I didn’t know French, I could read that. Anyway, I could see that somebody was, a civilian, was standing in the corridor and I thought well if he can stand there, so can I, so I went to get on the train but a porter shouted at me and pointed at this notice. I ignored him, I got on the train and went and stood in the corridor and then, from nowhere, goodness knows where, a load of German officers came in and came aboard the train and came past me, the reserved coaches for them, so they took their places in the carriages and one even said excuse me in French, ‘excusez moi’, as he squeezed past me. I thought you don’t know I’m wearing an RAF vest! [Chuckle] Anyway, I stood in the corridor, quite a long journey from this place to Reims, yes, from Bouillon to Reims, and when we got there, got off the train and Bert Pond was, he got off as well, and there was the lady waiting for us, oh skulduggery, I thought this is, this is kids’ comic stuff that we’re doing, this, and followed her at a distance and she led us to a flat where we were given some refreshments and then, after a little while, we were taken to another place, where we stayed I think it was two nights, and that was actually in Reims. By now, we’d got to know this French Canadian and him telling us what was going to happen, he hoped. He said we’ve got to do another train trip so when the time came, two days later I think it was, and we went and got on this particular train and it was a suburban train, wooden seats, bit backward, you know, bit elementary. Anyway we got on the train and I remember we sat together, with our guide, and on the opposite row of seats, facing, were several French women and it looked as though they’d been shopping, they’d all got shopping bags and stuff. So again we couldn’t talk, but it wasn’t too far to go and when we got off we were taken to, er, now where were we taken to, another house in this village called Thiem, welcomed there by the family, I was trying to remember their names, I can remember their names given time. We were looked after well there and I remember lots of white wine was provided for us, bottles of white wine, all the time. So Herbert and myself, we settled in there for a couple of days and I remember being taken from the house into the yard at the side, there was a yard, with doors opening into big open spaces, I think they’d been stables or something, and in one was a Flying Flea. Did you ever come across or heard of Flying Fleas? [Cough] Excuse me. [Pause] Well the Flying Flea was a little home made aeroplane, that could, a real miniature aeroplane, very tiny, stubby little stubby wings and little stubby tail and it would only carry the pilot and I’d seen these flying at Portsmouth when I was a lad and they were highly dangerous of course! And I remember that these people had got one of these strung up on a wall, and the guide said ‘I think these people like to think they’re gonna fly to England in that but they’ll be lucky!’ But I do remember that Flying Flea. So we were looked after there for a couple of days and then we were told that the RAF was hoping to send a plane in to pick us up. Oh gosh, possible, and they said it may be any evening, any night, depending on the weather and other circumstances, so we just had to sit around and wait but after two or three days this French Canadian, he’s still looking after us, he said ‘the plane’s probably coming in tonight’ he said, we’ll set off at a certain time, in good time. So a party of us set off, there were about four or five Belgians, and I remember one of them was carrying a rope, in case the aircraft got bogged down, which had happened, in the past. So off we went following in a single line, no talking, had to keep quiet, until we came up to this field, level field, bit of consternation because it had been ploughed! But there was a strip left, strip of grass, with a haystack at the end, which was a bit tricky, and I being the signaller, I was told to give the signal, think it was the letter R I had to flash. And we had to, well we didn’t have to wait. The aircraft had already arrived and was circling round, and we had to run the last few hundred yards, I remember through mud, and we got there, put the torches out quickly, gave him the signal to land, signal came back. How he found that field, in the middle of France, in the dark, well he wrote a book about all this, as I say, I’ve got a copy. So we set up torches as flare path, gave him the okay signal, came in and landed, over this little haystack – marvellous pilot. Came to the end, turned round, came back to where we were waiting and I’d been instructed to take some parcels off the back seat. There was a little ladder fixed to the aircraft on the outside, I had to climb up two or three steps of the ladder, take these parcels out, hand down to the party below, and he kept his engine running of course and I thought oh, you know, Germans are going to come rushing out from all angles! But of course it was a very lonely spot, and I think he made a record afterwards, he was only on the ground for two minutes and myself and the New Zealander and the Belgian agent all piled in to a single seat at the back. It had one seat, I never got the use of it, I think I sat on the floor, no parachutes of course, or anything like that, and off we went, fingers crossed, and we came across in lovely, lovely clear weather, few searchlights about, but of course it was over France, not over Germany and I don’t think anybody was interested, Germans weren’t bothered about one little aeroplane. So we ploughed a nice trip back and landed at Tangmere near Chichester and went and thanked the pilot for coming to pick us up, Hugh Verity, yes, got his book up there. And we were taken into a, this RAF house and given a bed, the night, and the next day we were taken up to London, to Air Ministry Headquarters, go in there to be interviewed, and rekitted, new uniform, and sent home for a month, month’s holiday, so that was that.
PL: Can you remember what happened during the interview? Can you remember what happened during the interview? Did they, what did they want to know from you?
FG: Well, they wanted to know which towns and villages I’d been to and the names of the people, so I said ‘well I’m not too happy about giving names’, but as it was I think a Wing Commander or somebody senior, RAF man interviewing me, in fact I think there were two or three officers there, and so I had to cough up, should be all right, unless the Germans win the war! [chuckle] And so I was able to tell them, gave them all the details, seemed to be interested and then said ‘off you go for a month’s leave.’
PL: What an extraordinary story! How old were you when this happened, Fred?
FG: Twenty.
PL: And can you remember, I’m just curious, I mean how did you feel about all of this. I mean were you frightened, were you excited, were you? How did you feel?
FG: I was, when the bullets came through the Lancaster I was terrified! I wasn’t too bothered about baling out, and the funny thing was, I was looking down to see where I was gonna land, couldn’t see anything on the, it was all black, but I wasn’t, I wasn’t particularly scared, I can honestly say I wasn’t particularly scared, I was just getting on with it, as you can say.
PL: And during your escape, this extraordinary escape where, you know, every so often you would come in close contact with the Germans, what about then, did you sort of?
FG: No I just held me breath a bit.
PL: Held your breath a bit.
EG: Kept me fingers crossed. No, I wasn’t scared, no. Because at the back of my mind I thought well, if I’m exposed enough to give myself up, they’re not going to stand there and shoot me in cold blood, surely. I don’t think they would have done, and I’d have finished up as a POW, prisoner of war. But these people who were helping myself and Bert Pond, they were risking their lives, in a concentration camp, whereas we would have just been put in a prisoner of war camp. So they were the ones, they were the heroes, they really were.
PL: And did you find out what happened to them?
FG: Yes, um, [sniff] with my wife, we went back to Belgium, and France, and went round to see these all these people and they were absolutely delighted to see us, and see me.
PL: How old were you then? When did you go back?
FG: After the war, when was it, 1947? ‘46 ’47, yes, in fact, we were invited to go back any time and we actually had two or three holidays over there and I took the car over a couple of times. There was one, there was one family who sheltered me for a fortnight, well there were two families who sheltered me for a fortnight each. one family were the tobacco growers and the other family was a chap who spoke perfect English, he’d lived in England previously for several years, and he was an insurance man and a very nice, a very nice character [engine noise], I admired him very much and he was very pleasant, really nice man, and his wife was a very nice, very nice looking woman, and they had a daughter, same age as me, and they sheltered me for two weeks and they’d got some English books, which was very nice, Dickens books, which I was able to sit and read, and they put me up in a little room in the top of the house, in the attic, and I could go down and have breakfast with them and then they said right, ‘the housekeeper’s coming in to clean and you’ll have to go back and hide and keep quiet’, which I did, and she came in several times while I was there, apparently, and she never heard a thing. And she was ever so surprised after the war, when they told her that they’d got a British, a British airman had been hiding up in the loft. They never told her of course, daren’t trust anybody.
[Other]: About your hat.
FG: Oh, yes.
[Other]: Just tell the story of the hat. Tell the story of the hat.
FG: Oh yes, my wife and I were out in Belgium one day, visiting the people in this town, very nice little town called Floranville, where I was looked after for a fortnight in this very nice house and there was an article printed in the local paper giving my name and details, and it was read by a Belgian policeman, and he rang up our host, hostess, and said I know, I’ve got the cap belonging to this airman, could you pop over and get it? And he said er, [pause], ‘I’ve got your cap’, he said ‘I picked it up near where the bomber crashed’, he said, ‘and your name and number and rank is inside’ he said ‘and when I saw your name in the local paper’, he said ‘I realised that was you’, so he rang my hostess and told her, would we go and see him and if we did he would present me with my cap. Which he did.
PL: How wonderful! That must have been an emotional moment for you.
FG: Yeah. It was all quite an adventure. Yes, we went back to Belgium, my wife and I, several times, [cough] looked after us, ever so happy to see us and we had one of the couples back to stay with us for I think a week or ten days, and we were living up in Greenford at the time, but they came over and stayed with us. I thought it’s the least I could do, but I’m afraid most, if not all [emphasis], of the people I knew out there have all died ‘cause I had contacts with several of them for many years, several years, Christmas cards to several people, France as well. I didn’t feel I wanted to give people up like that, give them up casually, when they’d done what they’d done for me. So I kept in touch.
PL: Did they all survive the war? Did everybody that helped you, did they all survive the war?
FG: Um, a chap I met at one house, who’d taken my photograph for my passport, identity card, he was very careless the way he talked, spoke, and he’s partly, I was told, it was his own fault, he was picked up by the Gestapo and he was sent to a camp somewhere, but he died of typhoid and I was told afterwards it wasn’t due to what he did for you, it was because he had so much to say [emphasis] to everybody, let himself down, so he said that was just too bad. One of the ladies, she had a, she was discovered as helping, she was in the, what the Belgians called, the Secret Army, and she was sort of a member of these people and she’d been, I don’t know whether she was betrayed by somebody but the Germans came to pick her up, and in some way, she got up on to the roof of the house she was in and she was standing up by the chimney stack and one of the German soldiers shot her, in the leg. And when, they took her prisoner then of course, and she went to a concentration camp but they fixed her leg and when mum and I went over one time, she showed us this nasty scar in her leg where this bullet had gone in, but otherwise, the man who’d organised the flight out of France, organised the escape line, Belgian, and he was betrayed, and he was tortured and I learnt afterwards he threw himself out of an upstairs window to avoid this torturing, and killed himself. But as I was told, not particularly due to you, I’d have felt a little bit awkward, bit shocked really, didn’t want to think I was going to cause other people trouble like that, but apparently he was betrayed, by a so called friend. [Sniff] [Pause] Trying to think if there’s anything as a follow up.
PL: Going back to Bomber Command, what are your feelings about how Bomber Command has been treated over the years?
FG: I don’t know how to think about it to be honest. I don’t try to think about that. It was all done at the time, it was thought it was necessary and you know at the time, everybody’s saying, oh you know, course we were dropping bombs on civilians as well as on industry: ‘oh never mind, kill a few of them off’, that was the attitude, didn’t think much of it otherwise, and I must admit when I looked out at Hamburg burning I thought it must be terrible down there and it was. We learned after the war how terrible those raids were for the Germans. Six hundred bombers raided Hamburg three nights running. Then I went back as a civilian, because British Airways did a run, London to Hamburg, and I did those. [Laugh] Yes. Long time ago, it’s all in there and I’ve got a good memory.
PL: You have a fantastic memory. It’s been the most extraordinary experience, listening to your story, and is there anything else at all that you would like to mention or talk about as part of your interview?
FG: Well I’d like to give credit and thanks to all the people that really helped me, especially the Belgians and French, otherwise, I think that wraps up the war story.
PL: Well Fred, I’d just like to thank you again.
FG: That’s all right.
PL: For sharing your story.
FG: Pam isn’t it?
PL: It is.
FG: Do you mind if I call you Pam?
PL: Absolutely! It’s been just fascinating and it’s just I mean it’s like the most extraordinary story really of survival and of huge, huge value to the Digital Archive, so thank you very much indeed.
FG: You’re welcome. I quite enjoy talking about it still.
PL: Lovely.
FG: Some people who’ve had experiences like that don’t want to talk about it. Whether or not it’s because they can’t talk about it, haven’t got a very good vocabulary, and I’m not too bad at that am I?
PL: Very good.
FG: I don’t know what sort of accent I’ve got because it’s a mixture, but it’s northern Oxfordshire and it’s a little bit sort of rural, but apart from that have to live with it.
PL: It’s a wonderful accent, Fred Gardiner, thank you very much indeed.
FG: You’re welcome, Pam.
PL: So sorry, we’re restarting.
FG: You switched off.
PL: I’ve just started it again, so that we can hear about your work with the charter company. And you were flying?
FG: Yes, Halifax freighters. And I’ve written an account of my four, three or four months with them. I’ve got it written down the if you’d like to borrow it and read it at any time. That was interesting, very interesting, and quite dangerous.
PL: So that was after the war?
FG: Yes, immediately after the war.
PL: So what made it dangerous Fred?
FG: The way the aircraft were operated. [Throat clear] [Pause] Yes, it was a bit dangerous, in fact one of the aircraft had to ditch in the sea. They were coming back from Italy with a load of fruit, they got low on fuel or something, and I think they’d got a pretty poor wireless operator, and they had to ditch. Because on one trip I had to send a distress call because we were running out of fuel, in bad weather, over Norway, that was, that was a bit dodgy, I could see us ditching. [Cough] The aircraft was full of stockings, boxes of stockings, made in Britain, exported to Norway. And when we got to Norway there was low cloud, very low cloud, and Oslo is situated in some, between some nasty hills, not, I don’t know whether you’d say mountains, but pretty steep hills, and I flew with a very good pilot, he was really super, and it was my job, as the wireless operator, to get him bearings, radio bearings, that he could follow in to land, and the idea was I got lots of bearings from the ground station as fast as I could, one after another so that he could keep lined to the runway and come down until he could see it and you’d know if you were on the right course that there weren’t any high hills in the way, so that was satisfactory, but the weather was so bad that he overshot twice because he couldn’t quite make it. Up and round again, same procedure again, I think on the third attempt, third trip he managed to touch down. No, wait a minute, no, that wasn’t, that’s not true, on the third trip he didn’t make it and he said ‘I’m going to have to divert somewhere’ and - I don’t know why had a slip of memory there - so we set off going south from Oslo and we were getting low on fuel, and it was low cloud, everywhere, so I said ‘shall I send a distress call?’ ‘Yes’, he said, ‘you might as well.’ I sent a distress call and it was answered by a station, all in Morse code of course, this station’s callsign was S E A, I remember, Sea, S E A, and I didn’t know where SEA was so I had to ask the operator on the ground where are you, who are you? And they sent me a stream of stuff back and it proved to be a Gothenburg airfield, so we headed for that and I continued to get these bearings and give them up to the captain and he carried on flying towards them until in the end we got down quite low over the sea and Gothenburg people fired up some search rockets and a searchlight and Very cartridge lights because the weather was still very bad, and being over the sea we weren’t likely to hit any hills and when we got very close to Gothenburg and the pilot could see where he, just see where he was, he did a circuit round and he lost sight of it in the circuit, that was how bad it was, so he had to do that sort of approach again, using the radio. Anyway, after a couple of runs at it, he touched down, fortunately the runway was right on the edge of the coast and he flew over a sandy beach, onto the runway which we were able to do, and when we came to the end of the runway and sorted ourselves out and they got some people up to fill up the tanks and they came back and they said your tanks are more or less empty! I think I saved that, I think I saved that Halifax that day.
PL: Well, to have survived the war and everything that you went through then, you know, to have been lost in that way would have been just so terrible, wouldn’t it.
FG: Yes. Yes, I had a quite interesting time in flying. One or two little hiccups in BA, BEA actually, with engine trouble, engines failed two or three times I was on, engine failure. Very good pilots all the time, got us down on single engine. [Pause]
PL: Are you happy for us to end there?
FG: Happy?
PL: For us to end there?
FG: Yes.
PL: There’s nothing else you want to say? Is there anything else that you would like to say?
FG: Just have a quick think. [Pause] I don’t know if you like to, I’ve got a copy of my time with that charter company and I think it makes an interesting story, all in all, I don’t know if you’d like to read it?
PL: I’d love to read it, let’s end there then. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AGardinerEF170809, PGardinerEF1701
Title
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Interview with Ernest Frederick Gardiner
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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:25:04 audio recording
Creator
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Pam Locker
Date
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2017-03-01
Description
An account of the resource
Fred Gardiner grew up in Oxfordshire and worked in a furniture factory before volunteering for the Royal Air Force. He flew five operations as a wireless operator / air gunner from RAF Syerston before his aircraft was shot down. He gives a detailed account of having to bale out of his Lancaster at night, of meeting civilians who sheltered him in various locations whilst he and others avoided German soldiers prior to their rescue. After the war, he and his wife returned to thank those who had helped him escape and remained in touch with many of those who he came across.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
New Zealand
Norway
Sweden
England--Nottinghamshire
France--Reims
Germany--Mannheim
Norway--Oslo
Sweden--Göteborg
Temporal Coverage
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1941
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
aircrew
bale out
crewing up
Defiant
evading
Halifax
Lancaster
Lysander
Manchester
Operational Training Unit
RAF Syerston
Resistance
shot down
Special Operations Executive
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/262/3410/AGouldAG160708.2.mp3
73437c87dfac06a7e6749cfe5ed84141
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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Gould, Allen
Allen G Gould
Allen Gould
A G Gould
A Gould
Description
An account of the resource
Twenty-seven items. Concerns Allen Geoffrey Gould (b. 1923, 1605203 Royal Air Force). He completed a tour of operations as a flight engineer with 620 Squadron and the Special Operations Executive. Collection consists of an oral history interview, his log book, flight engineer course notebooks, pilot's and engineers handling notes, mention in London Gazette, official documents and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Allen Geoffrey Gould and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-07-08
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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Gould, AG
Requires
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Sgt. Allen G. Gould – 1605203, was born in 1923, after leaving school in Bournemouth at 13, he worked for the Danish Bacon Company until being called up in 1943. Choosing to join the RAF, initially wanting to be a Navigator, he ended up as a Flight Engineer, flying in the Short Stirling Mk. I, II, III and IV variants. Training at RAF St. Alban, then the Heavy Conversion Unit. Allen joined No. 620 Squadron, flying from various bases, RAF Chedburgh, RAF Leicester East and then RAF Fairford. The roles for this squadron were not just bombing missions but Minelaying, Supply drops, Glider Towing and Paratrooper drops. He took part in D-Day, dropping paratroopers from the 6th Airborne Division over Caen, France on the night of 5th June 1944, returning on the 6th towing a glider of heavy equipment. He was also a part of Market Garden, towing a glider on 17th September 1944 and returning on the 19th and 21st on supply drops. There were also numerous drops on behalf of Special Operations Executive (SOE) as well as Special Air Service (SAS) dropping supplies and paratroopers.
Andrew St.Denis
Allen Gould was born on 16 June 1923 in Bournemouth. He left school at fourteen and worked for the Danish Bacon company until he was called up. His father having spent four years in the trenches, in WW1, advised him against joining the Army, so he volunteered for the Royal Air Force.
He joined the RAF on in October 1942 and following basic training he attended the first-ever direct entry, Flight Engineers’ Course at RAF St Athan.
On completion of flight engineering training, he joined up with his crew on 1657 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Stradishall, then moved with them onto 620 Squadron at RAF Chedburgh and later RAF Leicester East.
The squadron later relocated to RAF Fairford where they trained to tow gliders. He was billeted with 12 others in a Nissan hut, conveniently close to a trout stream. They often caught trout, away from the watchful eye of the bailiff and cooked them in a tin on the large coke stove that heated the hut. The illicit bounty was a most welcome supplement to the barely adequate daily rations they received.
Direct out of training with no aircraft experience he had to earn the trust of his crew who up until then had only come across experienced flight engineers. On only his second operational trip and flying with an inexperienced crew, they arrived late over Ludwigshafen, where they found themselves alone and under concentrated anti-aircraft fire. The aircraft was being peppered and was full of holes while the pilot was executing extreme manoeuvres trying to avoid further damage. A fuel tank was hit and Allen had to work hard to ensure the engines received sufficient fuel to keep running. At the same time he had to make sure there would be enough fuel remaining to get back to the south coast of England for an emergency landing. As the aircraft approached the runway, the airfield lights went out and the pilot announced he was going to do another circuit. Allen told him, bluntly, he couldn’t as he didn’t have enough fuel, so the pilot made a steep turn and conducted a blind landing with no fuel to spare. Allen bonded well with his crew and in their free time they would often all go out to the pub together.
Throughout his tour his squadron undertook a variety of roles, much of was it in support of the Special Operations Executive personnel, operating covertly in occupied Europe. They also trained to tow gliders and dropped parachuting troops on D Day.
Allen completed 32 operations as a flight engineer with 620 Squadron and he totalled over 460 flying hours on Stirlings. PGouldAG1610.2.jpg (1600×2310) (lincoln.ac.uk)
For his services to 620 Squadron, he was ‘Mentioned in Despatches’ for distinguished service. MGouldAG1605203-160708-13.2.pdf (lincoln.ac.uk)
Post war, he married his wife, Norma, who was training as a mechanic at St Athan when he met her. PGouldAG1601.2.jpg (1600×2412) (lincoln.ac.uk)
Allen was discharged in October 1946 having attained the rank of Warrant Officer. PGouldAG1604.1.jpg (1600×2330) (lincoln.ac.uk)
He returned to the Danish Bacon company where he worked for another 40 years.
Chriss Cann
October 1942: Volunteered for the RAF
January 1943 - July 1943: RAF St Athan, Flight Engineer Training
July 1943 - September 1943: RAF Stradishall, 1657 HCU, flying Stirling aircraft
September 1943 - December 1943: RAF Chedburgh, 620 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
January 1944 - March 1944: RAF Leicester East, 620 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
March 1944 - April 1945: RAF Fairford,620 Squadron, flying Stirling aircraft
8 October 1946: Released from service having attained the rank of Warrant Officer
Chris Cann
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the eighth of July two thousand and sixteen, we’re in Oxford talking to Allen Gould about his experiences flying Stirling’s in the war. Allen what are your first recollections of life with the family?
AG: Well I went to school at Winton and Moordown council boys school in Bournemouth, erm, left when I was fourteen, which irritated my father, ‘cos he hadn’t got the money to pay for me to go to grammar school, there were only two seats allocated to our school, after the erm, eleven plus, and, erm, everybody there failed except for the doctor’s son and the councillor’s son, who both got a grammar school seat, which I would have loved but there you are, because in those days that was the only way you could get to university, grammar school first and then go, [pause] and I left school at fourteen, got a job with the Danish Bacon Company, [pause] a shit house firm right from the start, I was there for, getting on for forty years, after the war I came back there and erm, and then I, my nerves got back to normal when I was, after I had been away from the air force for, ten or twelve years, and erm, I got another job, which I was quite pleased about but they wouldn’t let me take my pension with me which my new firm offered to do and treat it as though I had been there all that time, but they didn’t, they made me take the whole thing out, not the part they paid in, all I’d been paid in, they made me take that out as part of my last week’s wages there, ‘cos the income tax that week would frighten anybody, [laughs] and that was it, and I was there until I got called up, with erm, three other fellas, I was the only one that came back without any damage, two of ‘em got killed, one of them finished up with one leg about three inches shorter than the other, I was the only one that was alright when I came back, and then went on the road and did commercial travelling, up and down the country, and I did that with a new firm I joined, Patrick Grainger and Hutleys, nice firm based in Fordingbridge, [pause] so I was up at half past five in the morning going to work, driving up to Fordingbridge, and picking up one of my drivers along the way [pause]
CB: Ok, so, you started with the bacon company, how did you come to join the RAF?
AG: Well, I rather fancied it you know I mean when I was called up my father had done four years in the trenches and he said ‘no way are you going into the army, my cocker’ so I said ‘ Oh alright I’ll take your advice on that’, so I put my name down for the RAF, and when it came to a choice between this and that and I thought flying, oh wow, let’s have a go at that.So, er, I, finished up in Blackpool getting my uniform and one thing and another, and then erm, posted from there down to St Athans, on this first directory, first direct [emphasis], flight engineers course, because they were losing so many flight engineers who’d taken a long time, a really [emphasis] long time in training and they couldn’t afford it any longer. So we were pushed through, erm, six months and I was out on the squadron, at erm, Stradishall and then in the finish we wound up at Fairford and we were there for years, [pause] the only other aerodrome we flew from during that time was from Hurn, just outside Bournemouth
CB: So, you did your training at St Athan, what was the training that you did there?
AG: Direct entry flight engineer
CB: Yeh, but, what was involved in that?
AG: Well, really all it boiled down to was, looking at pictures of engines and exploring the airframes, and one thing and another, so when we were flying I was always on the move, bouncing up and down on me toes for up to twelve hours if we went down as far as Switzerland, ‘cos flight engineers don’t have a seat [pause]
CB: Ok, so on the training though there’s a lot of aspects of the aircraft?
AG: Yeh
CB: So, what aspects were you dealing with, you talked briefly about airframe, but what else were they focussing on?
AG: Oh, erm, the engines and erm, more particularly the amount of fuel they would be using and heights we were going to, how it objected on the fuel take up and er all that sort of thing
CB: So, on an aircraft the size of the four engine planes, how many tanks would there be on those planes?
AG: Err
CB: Fuel tanks
AG: Numbers two and four, and one, two and three in each wing
CB: So, what was the flight engineer’s job in that?
AG: Well. I had to control that, when the pilot was fiddling about with the controls, I was watching the dials and making sure that everything was as it should be, erm, we only got into real trouble on one flight, erm, when we were still sort of, an inexperienced crew, we had to, erm, join bombers going to Mannheim Ludwigshafen and we were bombing the Ludwigshafen, and being a sprog crew, ‘cos we got there ten minutes late all the others had gone through, so we were going over on our own and we were really getting bashed. Our pilot was doing mad dives and turns to get us out of it, the only thing that we lost was the number four tank in the starboard wing, so I had to run all the engines off that to make sure we used everything we possibly could, and, we did, just save enough to get back to an emergency aerodrome on the south coast, whose name I’ve forgotten to be honest, and we were just going into land and they turned all the lights off, and the pilot said ‘I’ll do another circuit’ and I said ‘ you can’t, you haven’t got enough fuel’, I’m afraid that became a funny word to them because every time he saw me in future he said ‘We can’t, we haven’t got enough fuel!’. So, he did a sweep to the left up on one wing and came straight back in and landed, lights or no lights, he was going in, and we did, I said to the bomb aimer, who was also the second pilot afterwards ‘how did you, er, cope with that ‘? He said ‘well’, he said ‘you know when the undercarriage is down you get a green light’ he said, ‘and if it’s not you get a red light’ So, he said ‘we were as bouncing down the runway and it was going red, green, red, green, red, green, red, green’, [laughs] I said, ‘Oh, thanks very much, cheered me up no end that has’
CB: But, it stayed down?
AG: Oh, yeh, we got down no bother, we just got enough. The pilot came out the following morning and said ‘Look, if we’ve got any fuel left, I’m gonna kick your arse all round this aerodrome’, so I dipped every tank, he and I walked across the wings and I dipped every tank, and it was just enough left in one of them to damp the end of the dipstick, so he shut up after that [laughs]
CB: So, it was reassuring that the gauges were accurate
AG: Well, I wondered if that was what finished up with that MiD of mine, ‘cos they must have made a note of it because we had to abandon the aircraft there and get a lift back to our aerodrome at Fairford, we just left them on this, at this other aerodrome, whose name I don’t remember unfortunately
CB: So, MiD is, mentioned in despatches?
AG: Yeh
CB: Right
AG: Yeh, so somebody must have made a note of it, I expect my pilot went back and said, ‘he was right you know, we didn’t have any fuel’ [laughs]
CB: Saved the crew, effectively
AG: Well, there you are, yeh, so, perhaps that’s what I got it for
CB: So, the reason I asked you about the training is, because clearly, it was focussed on, what in those days was state of the art aircraft, the first of the heavy bombers was the Stirling,
AG: Hmm
CB: but it was different from the other bombers, in that it had electrical circuits for so many things where others would use hydraulics
AG: Oh, yes
CB: In your basic training, what emphasis, was there, on hydraulics and electrics, in the training at St Athan?
AG: Well, skimming over it, as it was a direct entry course they didn’t waste a lot of time, I’ll tell you
CB: How did you come to do flight engineering, because you, had you, when you were working for the bacon company, had you been involved in technical matters then?
AG: No, no
CB: So, how did you come to be selected to train as a flight engineer?
AG: Well, I think they wanted when we were in Blackpool, they wanted flight engineers more than anything because they’d lost so many, and erm, I was automatically put onto that, you know, I’d erm, I think I put my name down to start with for navigation, but never got to that [pause]
CB: So, you finished the training after six months and how did you feel at the end of the training about your knowledge of engineering and aircraft?
AG: Well, I thought at the time that it wasn’t up to scratch, really, I mean, when I thought of the work that previous flight engineers had, had to do, different courses and out on a squadron for six months and then come back and do another course, I mean what we, what they went through to get us out was quick and easy, you know, and that sort of thing.
CB: So, the process for crewing up aircrew, was that at the operational training unit the crew got together, the flight engineer didn’t join until the heavy conversion unit?
AG: That’s right
CB: So, what was the crew like when you, how did you come to join an existing crew that had been on Wellingtons?
AG: Well, they were a bit iffy about having a direct entry flight engineer
CB: Were they?
AG: Because they were told I was one, and they’d never heard of anybody like that, you know, and they thought they were going to get somebody who had been out working on aircraft, on the flights, on the aerodromes, but they didn’t they got me and er, until this second trip, when I got away with this fuel business, after that we were, they relied on me, really, and er, were extremely friendly
CB: As a crew, what were the ranks, was the pilot always commissioned or was he only
AG: Oh yes
CB: Commissioned later?
AG: Yes, the pilot and the navigator and the rear gunner were all commissioned, [pause] and the wireless operator was a sergeant like me when we started flying together [pause]
CB: Ok, so you joined at the heavy conversion unit, where was that?
AG: Stradishall
CB: Right
AG: I do remember that name
CB: And how long where you at Stradishall?
AG: Oh, only about a week [pause], then we went up to Fairford and started ops
CB: Right
AG: Our first one was erm, minelaying, off erm, [unclear] Byrum [?] I think I got the name right, other side of Denmark, going down towards where the Germans were
CB: The far side of Denmark?
AG: Yeh
CB: The Swedish side?
AG: That’s right, yeh, yes, I remember coming back from there, we were flying along and you could see all the Swedish coast, all lit up, the pears, the piers and everything, all the lights
CB: Didn’t do you any good from a silhouette point of view, did it?
AG: No, it didn’t, no that’s true, yes, the only other place, that er, we were worried about the silhouette was erm, we did erm, three or four trips to Norway, supplying free Norwegians, who were up in the mountains, we had to look out for them and then drop stuff to them, funny enough, I see in the paper, that it was only last year, that they found some of the stuff that had been dropped for these people, that they never found and it was still in the snow, but when we were flying over there, we only went up there on a really full moon at night, and we could see our shadow going across the snow, well if anybody had been up, all they had to do was to look at the, moon and our shadow and they knew exactly where we were, and of course the only thing we had to worry about there, was the right up in the north of Denmark was this big German fighter unit, they used to cover the North Sea and out in the Atlantic and all over
CB: So, you were supplying the SOE, the Special Operations Executive in that case, weren’t you?
AG: Yeh, that’s right
CB: So, are you saying that the squadron, 620, had a variety of roles?
AG: Oh yes, we erm, D Day, we dropped parachutes on Caen bridge, and then we had to go back and come over again in the afternoon with gliders, with heavier equipment, down in the same place
CB: So, on gliders, where did you train for towing gliders?
AG: At Fairford
CB: What was the main activity at Fairford then?
AG: Well, the main activity there, was putting us out on raids or supply trips, which went on for years
CB: Rather than bombing you were supplying agents
AG: Yeh, oh yeh
CB: Right
AG: We did bombing raids as well, because I remember we, that, our troops on the ground had got this, surrounded this wood which had got the Germans in it, and we had to go over and bomb these German troops in this wood, and we had a plane going over there about every ten minutes so they wouldn’t get any rest or peace and we just had to keep on bombing this wood
CB: And the effect?
AG: Well, it seemed to work alright, but erm, [pause]
CB: And what about the bombing then, other bombing, what other tasks were there? So, you talked about mine laying
AG: Yeh
CB: Well, let’s just cover minelaying for a bit, mine laying was at a low level wasn’t it
AG: Oh yes
CB: What height were you doing the mine laying?
AG: About five hundred feet
CB: Right
AG: And erm, after that I think, we were mainly doing supplies, down over France, to anyone who needed it, and we did take some paratroops over there, Occasionally we had some odd characters, there was a bloke arrived there, put his parachute on, and he’d got a very smart suit on and a bowler hat, and he was, we were dropping him outside some village, where he had to get in by himself after he landed, and pretend to be the mayor, which is why he was so smartly dressed [laughs]
CB: This was after D Day, was it?
AG: Oh, yeh, yeh, well after, yeh, and then we were sent down, a little while after that, we were sent down to Italy, ‘cos I think they had some idea of us towing gliders from Italy with heavy equipment across to Greece, but it didn’t come to anything, we been there about four or five days, and the whole thing in Greece, came to a grinding halt, so they just said, no we don’t need you and we came back to England. That picture there, is erm, when we were in Italy, Pomigliano, I think it’s a little aerodrome, not far outside Naples, [pause]. Not that we were looking forward to trying to get off there with gliders, because they’ve got these great big heavy power lines right across the end of the runways, we couldn’t see how the hell we were going to get high enough to get the glider over those
CB: Well, it’s the wrong side
AG: Fortunately, we never had to try
CB: Right, it was the
AG: We were a bit worried about that [laughs]
CB: It was the wrong side of Italy to go to Greece anyway wasn’t it?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh
CB: But, the gliders were on this airfield as, well, were they?
AG: Well, no, we didn’t get as far as that
CB: Right
AG: They would have been coming from somewhere else
CB: Yeh
AG: But they stopped it in the end, said it wasn’t necessary, Greece was in a hell of a mess at the time anyway and our troops were in there, so they didn’t need the gliders, so, go on home, so we went, back to England
CB: What was the balance between supplying, agents, in activity and doing bombing raids?
AG: Very few bombing raids, it was mainly, either supply, or erm, taking people over there. I remember we had to go to an American aerodrome and pick up some American paratroops, I was very sorry for them, ‘cos the sergeant in charge said ‘have you got a gun’ I said ‘well yes, of course I’ve got my usual forty five issue’. He said ‘right, well if the first bloke refuses to jump shoot him, I shall be pushing from the back and you go out anyway’ and I thought well that’s a fine way, and I didn’t even unholster the gun ‘cos I had no intention of doing it, but erm, I’m afraid with some of these Americans I was very sorry for them, they were shit scared and badly trained, still
CB: In what way were they badly trained?
AG: Well, they’d never done a jump before, this is why he thought the bloke in front might stick his toes in and refuse to jump out, ‘cos in the Stirling, it was a big hole in the floor and you went out that way, you didn’t go out the door, ‘cos there was always the danger of being caught by the wing, by the tail, plane as it came by, so, the Stirling had a hole in the floor, and erm, these people hadn’t done any jumps at all
CB: How extraordinary
AG: Yeh well this is it, you know, they got in and clipped on
CB: They had a static line to clip on?
AG: Yeh, that’s right, yeh
CB: But, they all went?
AG: Oh yes, they all went out, no bother at all, but erm, I won’t going to shoot anybody anyway, I was very sorry for them
CB: Now, on the supply raids and when your’e dropping, trips, when your’e dropping material and people, this is largely low level is it?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh,
CB: What sort of height?
AC: Particularly with people because you had to drop them from a reasonable low height, it’s no good chucking a parachute out you know, at eighteen thousand or something like that, and hoping he’s gonna get down to where he should, because if there’s any wind blowing he would land miles away
CB: So, what height were they being dropped?
AG: Oh, between five and six hundred most of them I think, as far as I remember
CB: And most of this is in the dark, is it?
AG: Oh yes, yeh of course
CB: How did the navigator find the target for this, because you’re on your own when you do this?
AG: Oh yes, yes, oh yeh. Well, he was told, you know, where to go and miles from wherever, and er, we just had to find it, or he did
CB: Were there electronic devices used to help?
AG: No, no, we didn’t have anything like that, we had an, erm, sort of a semi radar thing, in the plane which was the start of that sort of thing, but erm
CB: Was that H2S or different?
AG: I have no idea
CB: Or other words, a mapping radar, was it?
AG: Yeh, well, it showed up, you know, things like mountains and things like that, but that was all, I mean it was fairly beginning things
CB: So, when did you start, flying with 620 Squadron?
AG: Erm, [pause], oh dear, [pause], well, it was after I’d done my six months at St Athans, so that would be
CB: So, when did you go to St Athan?
AG: Erm, so that would be erm, [pause] when I were called up, I went to Blackpool, so it would be, erm, [pause] beginning of forty-three, I suppose
CB: For six months?
AG: Yeh [pause], or was it forty-two for six months? and then on, [pause] difficult to remember because
CB: So, when in forty-one did you join, what time of year?
AG: Oh, in the September
CB: Ok, so then you went to Blackpool?
AG: When I was called up, yeh
CB: Yeh
AG: I developed scarlet fever, the week I was called up, so the doctor said I’d got to stay there, I was in bed, with a blanket over the door, which had been sprayed by my mother, to keep the germs in the bedroom [laughs] and then so when I got to Blackpool, I had to report sick with scarlet fever, and the bloke said, ‘how long have you had it’? and I told him, and he said ‘no, that’s alright, you can carry on’ [laughs.] Yes, I remember that, I was sitting there and the nurse came round and said ‘why have you come’ and I said ‘’cos, I’ve got scarlet fever’ and I could see these two blokes, either side, go like that [laughter]
CB: Amazing, [pause] so, how long were you at Blackpool?
AG: Erm, oh, must have been about, I was there quite a long time
CB: You did your square bashing there, did you?
AG: Yeh, must have been, what, three months, oh, we were not only square bashing, I was, out digging in some place where they were putting in, erm, assault courses for people to practice on, we were out digging that, while I was there, they didn’t waste us.
CB: So, that would take you to Christmas?
AG: Yeh
CB: So, you went from Blackpool to St Athan?
AG: Yeh, well, I couldn’t tell you when
CB: So, that sounds like the beginning of forty-two, we’ll check it out anyway
AG: Yeh
CB: And you were there six months, so you would have joined the squadron
AG: Yeh
CB: When?
AG: I went from there, straight to Stradishall and joined up with the crew and then we finished up in Fairford
CB: But, you were involved in operations in D Day?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh
CB: How many tours did you do?
AG: Only the one
CB: Right, and how many ops did you do?
AG: Oh, thirty-two, something like that, just over thirty, a fraction over thirty
CB: I’m going to stop just for a mo.
AG: Yeh, right
CB: We are just going to talk a little bit about the crew, we’ve talked earlier about, when Allen sorted out the fuel distribution arrangements and how they were short of fuel, and that got him accepted, but how did the crew gel?
AG: Oh, very well, erm, our pilot had a car, I don’t know where he got it from, but he had a car at Fairford, and erm, we used to go out at night, to one of the local pubs, all of us
CB: All seven of you?
AG: Yeh, oh yeh, I think we meshed very well actually
CB: Right, and how well equipped were the pubs for supplying thirsty air crew?
AG: Oh, very well, particularly the one we used to go to which had a lot of really nice-looking girls serving there, which always started my pilot, [laughs] away [laughs] if he got half the chance [laughs]
CB: Yeh, and did they ever run out of beer?
AG: No, never, never, yeh
CB: So, part of the crew was commissioned, and part of it was NCO?
AG: Yeh
CB: So, what were your quarters like as an NCO?
AG: What were my what?
CB: Quarters, where were you?
AG: Oh, I was just in a billet with, twelve other people
CB: Right, so, what was the billet, a Nissan hut?
AG: Yeh, a Nissan hut, yeh, and at Fairford, we were right down the bottom of the hill, by the stream, where we could go fishing for trout, very naughty, and we knew what time the bailiff used to come round, and make sure there was nobody fishing in this trout stream, and so, we always used to make sure we weren’t down there when he came by [laughs]. No, I used to like trout, done on a coke stove
CB: Is that the coke stove in the Nissan hut?
AG: Yeh, yeh, that’s all the heat we had in there, was just one of these big coke stoves
CB: So, what was the recipe then, how did you deal with it, so you got the trout?
AG: Oh, put it in a tin on the top, after gutting it and chopping it, putting it on, and just standing it on the stove until it was cooked, knowing what the food was like, you know, we was always trying to add to it [laughs], one way or the other
CB: Were you normally hungry or was the normal amount adequate?
AG: Well, it was for me but I don’t think it was for some of them, but er, no, I always, I always, seemed to get on fairly well. The only funny thing that happened down at that Nissan hut that we were in, eh, one of the blokes had gone into town on his bicycle, when he came back, he’d thrown the bicycle over the fence, not realising, that he’d thrown it into a sewerage pit, so he climbed up and jumped in after it he turned up at the back door of the hut covered in green muck, and we threw things at him until he went away and got in the shower with all his clothes on [laughs] we weren’t going to let him in [laughs] Yeh, I can see that bloke standing there now
CB: How many uniforms did you have? He had to dry it out, first did he?
AG: Er, well, you really had one and a spare which you kept, you kept one, you know, for parades and one thing and another, and a spare, and of course when I became a warrant officer, then I was never short of clothes and it was all extremely smart, and I had more spares than I could cope with
CB: At what stage did you become a warrant officer?
AG: Oh, in my third year, because you went up one rank every year, this is why we had flight lieutenant rear gunner, he’d gone [laughs] gradually up [laughs] anyway
CB: So, you, worked well as a crew?
AG: Oh, yeh, really well
CB: And, erm, how did the food come, if you were flying at night, before you
AG: Well, we had to eat before we went
CB: Right, so what was that
AG: If it was a night flight
CB: Ok, what did you get?
AG: Well, anything that was going, you know, I seem to remember a lot of sausages in those days, I suppose they were easy to come by and easy to make so, they were alright, yeh
CB: Did they keep pigs on the station?
AG: No, not that I ever saw
CB: And, when you landed after an op, what did you get for food?
AG: Eh, well roughly the same thing again, whatever was available, you know, but erm,
CB: Bacon and egg?
AG: Oh yes, yes, we always had that, the only thing that I remember about coming back late one night, before we’d taken off, I’d gone out to the aircraft with a bicycle and had a look round like, as I usually did, and er, when we landed I got on the bike and whizzed off back, and, in the meantime they’d put a barbed wire fence across the bloody path and I rode straight into that and went flying, pitch down, and I got barbed wire cuts all up one arm, and of course, we hadn’t been debriefed or anything, so in between take off and being debriefed, I’d been wounded, I was entitled to a wound stripe, and I thought I shall never have the cheek to wear it, so I didn’t, ‘cos it wasn’t my fault they’d put a barbed wire fence up there
CB: Now, you’ve raised an interesting point there, the wound stripe, how was that allocated and then shown on the uniform?
AG: Well, you had an upside down v, a little red v on the bottom of your left-hand sleeve, I mean I’ve seen
CB: On the wrist?
AG: I saw a bloke once, he’d got fifteen of these all up this arm, so I thought, he must be ruddy unlucky [laughs]
CB: So, this will come as a result of aerial combat of some kind, would it?
AG: Oh yeh, oh yeh
CB: So, how often were you hit and by what?
AG: Well, the only time we were hit, hit badly, was when we were so short of fuel, because they’d absolutely peppered the aircraft, it was full of holes all over, up in, down, and underneath, under the tanks in the wings and everywhere. It was our own fault because we’d arrived ten minutes too late, we blamed the navigator, the rest of the bomber crews had gone on by, so we were flying over Ludwigshafen on our own, we were getting pasted
CB: No fire?
AG: No, fortunately
CB: And er, so that’s flak, so what about fighter attack, how often did you have those?
AG: No, we were lucky, we never had one, ever, [emphasis] although our gunners were ready, but we were lucky to get away with it, particularly when we were doing those Norway trips, ‘cos we’d got no cover there at all, and everything was wide open, you could see our shadow moving across the snow, and this German fighter place up in the north of Denmark, was huge, God knows how many fighters they had there, but we were lucky, we got away with it every time we went to Norway we got away with it without seeing one. The only time we got shot at in Norway, going up the creek to Oslo, and we had to go over Oslo and up into the mountains, to drop this stuff, and in the creek was three islands, one there, one there and one there, and they all had German flak guns on, fortunately, we came in so low that we were leaving a wake up this creek, I looked out and I could see it
CB: On the water?
AG: On the water, and this island was firing at us and hitting the other island, which we thought was quite good [laughs] but when we got to the third one of course, we were just taking a chance, round and round and out quick and after that it was just up over Oslo and into the mountains [pause] interesting, it was only last year that it was in the paper that they found some of this stuff up there that had been dropped, and the people up there never found it
CB: Where they able to find out who had, which aircraft had dropped it?
AG: No, no, they couldn’t find out anything about it at all
CB: So, you said, earlier, that the, Stirling was grossly under-rated, and you thought it was a brilliant aeroplane, what was so special about the Stirling in your perception?
AG: Well, the fact that it was solid metal, you know, it would stand up to practically anything, and only get minor damage, and of course the engines were superb, far better than anything on any of the other aircraft
CB: So, what engines were on the Stirling?
AG: Oh, those Bristol Radials
CB: Hercules
AG: Yeh, I know that we started off with two, two banks of pots and finished up with three, and erm, they were really good, far better than these Merlin engines, ‘cos these would take punishment, the others wouldn’t
CB: Going back to your training, looking at your training manuals, books you filled in, erm, exercise books, when you were training, there, there’s a section on everything but, the significance of the Stirling was it was, it had so much electrics on it, so how well were you prepared at St Athan, for going onto an aircraft that had such a large amount of electrics?
AG: Oh, pretty well, I think I never had any trouble with any of it, the only thing I nearly did one night, was to cook the pigeon, they gave us, in case we came down in the North Sea, and we were sat in a dinghy, there you know, waiting to be rescued, they gave us a pigeon that we could put on out last position and send it off, and I put this pigeon on the floor and I didn’t realise until I got back, that I’d stood it up against this heating pipe that was coming through from one of the engines, I thought the bloody thing will be cooked, but it was perfectly alright, thank goodness [laughs]
CB: Just gone deaf
AG: Well, it must have been warm, which was more than the rest of us were on some of these flights
CB: Where was the warmest part on the aircraft?
AG: At the end of this pipe that was coming through from the inner starboard engine
CB: That was the heater for the fuselage, was it?
AG: Yeh, that’s right, yeh
CB: So, what were the things that were electric, driven electrically, on the Stirling?
AG: Well, practically everything, I mean, I’d got a bank of dials in front of me where I was, which were, erm, you know, gave you an indication of how much fuel was in each tank, ‘cos you had one for each tank, starboard and port, and that was all run by electrics, I mean, if you lost your electrics, you’d got no guides at all, that sort of thing, but we never did, fortunately
CB: And, were any of the flying controls electric?
AG: Ah, the only thing that I knew about, that was my job, was the undercarriage, which was electric, down and up, but, erm, if that had failed I could do that by hand take me about half an hour I should think [laughs] ‘cos it was really hard work, but er, that you could do
CB: And, what about the trimmer? so, in the flying controls, were the trimmers electric?
AG: Erm, yes, but that was done either by the co-pilot, the bomb aimer or the pilot, I never had anything to do with that
CB: You said earlier that you had to stand up all the time, but did you have a seat for take-off and landing?
AG: Well, I had to sit on the parachute
CB: Where?
AG: The type of the parachute was the cushion type, with the two, rings at the back, which you just clicked onto your harness, which was there at the front, you just clicked on, yeh that’s right, on the front, [pause] and as it was that sort of thick, and that big, we used to sit on it
CB: Now, thinking now, about the take-off and landing, as the engineer, to what extent, were you involved in helping with the take-off with the throttles?
AG: Not at all, the pilot did it all and I used to watch the dials and make sure that there was nothing I had to tell him
CB: So, were you sitting next to him at that point, or
AG: No, no I was
CB: You were standing?
AG: No, I was either standing, bouncing up and down on me toes or, sat on the parachute looking at all this, wall of dials in front of me
CB: And erm, with most flight engineer tasks, positions, er, logs had to be taken, so,
AG: Oh yeh
CB: What logging did you do and how often?
AG: Well, you had to do one for every flight
CB: But, during the flight, what did you have to record?
AG: Well, if anything went wrong or, we needed something that wasn’t there or whatever, you had to put it in the log, you know, but erm, I never seemed to have any trouble with that, we were lucky really, we really were lucky
CB: From what you have said, fuel management is a key matter, so, of the tanks, in what sequence did you, use for fuel, you’d have one for take-off and then how did you distribute the fuel?
AG: Well, there was two big tanks, number two and number four, in each wing, and you used those for take-off particularly if you were towing a glider because you used a lot of it, and er, once you were up and on a long, fairly longish flight, because we did, we had to go twelve hours sometimes, which took us nearly down to the Swiss border, to supply, Free French that were in the hills there, in the foothills, and erm, as I said, it was, by the time we got back to base again, we’d been out twelve hours
CB: And erm, in terms of the next range of tanks, how did you switch, in what sequence did you use the fuel?
[background noise]
AG: Well, you used the little ones, number one and number two
CB: Which are on the wing tips?
AG: Number one and number three, out, at the far end, you use those first, on both wings, and you tried to keep them going to the engines, you got [pause] like two engines there, and two engines there and you had to keep them going, from the same tanks, pretty well for the same length of time, so you’d know exactly what type of tank was going to be empty, you didn’t have to look at your dial until it went empty, I mean, you had to do it by time, and er, whatever revs were on the engines
CB: And, setting the revs on the engines, and the pitch of the screws, who dealt, did that?
AG: Oh, that was the pilot, did that
CB: Right
AG: And if you didn’t like what he was doing, you had to tell him and he had to alter it
CB: And to what extent was it necessary to synchronise the engines in flight?
AG: Er, not a lot really, we had an extremely good ground crew and normally we found that they’d adjust, perfectly, [pause] because we really relied on our ground crew a lot and we had four really good blokes
CB: And did they come out with you, in the evenings sometimes or did they?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh, oh yeh, we thought a lot of those fellas, in fact I gave one of them my bike, when I left, when I was posted away from the squadron, erm, I gave him my bicycle, which I was sad about, but, he deserved it
CB: So, you come to the end of your tour, and you did thirty, thirty-two operations, what did you do after that?
AG: Well, we only had one flight after that because the officer’s mess had run out of beer, we had to fly over to Northern Ireland and bring back a load of beer for them [laughs]
CB: Must have been an arduous trip!
AG: Oh yeh, [laughs] because we’d have liked to have gone on over there and done something, really naughty, because at that time the IRA were building bonfires in the shape of arrows, pointing, to where the aerodrome was
CB: Oh, for German bombers?
AG: That’s right, yeh, bastards [emphasis]
CB: And, how long had they been doing that for?
AG: Practically, since the war started
CB: And how were they dealt with?
AG: Well, they should have been bloody shot, but we never got around to it! It’s like that bloke McGuiness, I mean he’s in the Irish government now, he was the one that started that Bloody Sunday, he was the one on top with the rifle, firing at our troops what did they think, that we weren’t going to fire back? I don’t know, that bastard should have been shot, and you can write that down and put my name on it [laughs]
CB: So, the arrows bit is interesting, how long did that go on for?
AG: Oh, quite a long time during the war, [pause] yeh, swines
CB: And, what did the beer taste like when you got it back
AG: Oh, that weren’t for us, that was for the officer’s mess, we weren’t allowed to touch it
CB: Didn’t you sample it to make sure it was ok?
AG: No
CB: So, your last flight was keeping them topped up, then what did you do? So, you’ve left the squadron now
AG: Oh, well, I was erm, posted away then, and er, [pause] and finished up at a place called Burnham Beeches
CB: In Buckinghamshire?
AG: Yeh, and erm
CB: What happened there?
AG: Well, nothing really, I don’t think they knew what to do with us, I mean that was where I learnt how to play tennis, one of the blokes there, he’d been champion of Yorkshire for two or three years, and he gave me one of his racquets, and I’ve still got it, I’d still use it, if I played tennis, which I thought was very nice of him, and er, we went rowing on the river there and all sorts of things. As I said they didn’t know what to do with us, we were just keeping out the way
CB: So, we’re after Arnhem now aren’t we, so
AG: Oh yeh
CB: So, what sort of time are we talking about? In the autumn or are we later?
AG: Oh erm, [pause] now, I think I went there if I remember rightly, I went there in er, January, February somewhere like that, fairly early
CB: Forty-five
AG: At Burnham Beeches and we were erm, we’d taken over this big country house that was there, and erm, they just kept the top floor, to live in, and we had the offices all down below, and er, working in there
CB: Doing what?
AG: Well, I was sat in the office there, and it was a most peculiar effort, if they, had a man posted from Edinburgh to Glasgow, an RAF policeman, he had to come all the way down to us, be booked into my office and booked out again, and given travel warrants and away he went, most peculiar efforts, still there you are, you wondered who was running these things sometimes
CB: And then after, how long did that go on for?
AG: Oh, I think I was there for about erm, three or four months [background noise] and then I was posted to Leicester
CB: Leicester East? The airfield, Leicester East?
AG: Oh no, no, no, no, just somewhere in Leicester, erm, and erm, I was there for about a fortnight or so I think, and then I went back to Burnham Beeches and got discharged, and went to London and picked up my civvies
CB: Then what? So, you’re discharged, demobbed, what did you do then?
AG: Well, I went home and had a week off and then I went back to work for the Danish Bacon company, shit house firm
[background laughter]
CB: Would you like to explain why they were like that? What was it that was so upsetting about the Danish Bacon
AG: Well, because I’d
CB: Company
AG: Been here for nearly forty years, until I got another job and I wanted to take my pension and money, put it into this new firm and they were going to treat it as though I’d been there all the time, so I’d have had a really good pension when I did eventually retire, but they wouldn’t do it, they made me take all the money out and it was only what I’d paid in, nothing of theirs, and I had to take it out as my last week’s wages and the income tax was unbelievable, not a nice firm, fortunately, they went out of business after that
CB: Right, so
AG: It went broke
CB: When did you leave them?
AG: Ah, [pause] I’m scratching for the year, [pause] I can’t remember to be honest
CB: So, you left the RAF in forty-five
AG: Yeh
CB: How long did you stay with the Danish Bacon people?
AG: Er, oh another [pause] eight or nine years
CB: Then what?
AG: Then I got this offer of this new job
CB: At?
AG: Patrick Grainger and Hutley’s, at Fordingbridge
CB: What were you doing there?
AG: I was assistant manager and I was also travelling round, seeing some of their customers, and building up trade of course
CB: Ok, we’ll just have a break there, thank you
CB: So, you kept staying, kept with Patrick Grainger, who’d then been taken over by Danish Bacon until you retired after forty years. We are now going back to flying, so when you were flying Allen, as the engineer, you had to log various things because it was important to see how the plane was performing. What were you logging?
AG: Well, if you have a look at this, its erm, oil pressure, oil temperatures and cylinder temperatures
CB: Right, ok, and how often were you doing that? Did you have to do it at a particular time? Every hour?
AG: Yeh, well, this, if you look at the times down the left-hand side, its roughly about every fifteen minutes, I think
CB: Right
AG: But, I had another line, right the way across
CB: Yeh, so, when you got back, you, the aircraft lands, we didn’t get on to debrief, but, you’re the engineer, when you get out of the aircraft, who’s the first person you speak to, is that the Chiefy?
AG: Erm
CB: Your ground engineer?
AG: No, I wouldn’t see anybody until I got back into the debriefing hut
CB: Ok, so at debriefing, what would you be doing?
AG: Well, I had to hand my log in
CB: Right
AG: And erm,
CB: That you’d been completing in the flight?
AG: That’s right, yeh this one
CB: Yeh, ok, and then what, who was the person that looked at that?
AG: Well, they used to take them all away, and erm, if I remember rightly, it was the chap who was in charge of all the, erm, maintenance and all that stuff, he’d go through it, and any anomalies he’d then probably come, and ask you what happened then and [unclear]
CB: This would be the station engineering officer?
AG: Yeh
CB: Who would be dealing with all of that or one of his erm, people?
AG: Well, it was a bloke in charge of erm, all the ground crews
CB: Yeh, yeh
AG: He’d want to see that
CB: Now, would you then join the rest of the crew for the crew debriefing, what would happen?
AG: Oh yeh, yeh, we would all go and sit down together
CB: Where would that be and who would you see?
AG: Well, the CO would be there and a couple of his underlings and erm, they’d just go through the whole thing, right from the take off and erm, and talk to the pilot about what happened here and what happened there, and did he have any trouble, and went right through and made sure that we’d put either the bombs in the right place or erm, or supplied the people that were in the exact same spot that they were supposed to be in, because sometimes all you would get was one bloke flashing a morse letter on his torchP particularly if we were on one of those Norway trips, we used to go miles over the snow, and there would be some poor bugger right up in the mountains, with his torch, and then we would drop all these containers down there, so, what they did with them after that I don’t know, whether they towed them away or what
CB: So, the debrief, covers all the aspects of the flight?
AG: Yeh, oh yeh
CB: And, bearing in mind in many cases, your, you were a special duties squadron, so you were supplying SOE, to what extent were there SOE people there, during the debrief?
AG: Well, we assumed that, you know, there would be one or two officers there that we didn’t know where they come from, so it would have been them
CB: They were the air force officers?
AG: Yeh, it was either SOE or SAS
CB: Right
AG: Yeh
CB: What was the most memorable thing about your operational career, on operations?
AG: Oh, that one when we just got back with hardly any fuel, [laughs] the only thing that stands out in my mind
CB: Now, the aircraft had been peppered, pretty badly, why was it, it didn’t catch fire?
AG: Well, it was the way they were built, this is why we like the Stirling’s, there was nothing there to catch fire
CB: Did you have self-sealing fuel tanks?
AG: Well, up to a certain point but, that time we got caught with it, I mean, it had blown a hole about that big and of course that self-sealing didn’t work, over that size
CB: But the tank was empty anyway?
AG: Well, yeh, I ran all four engines on it, until I could see there was nothing left, and just went switching from one to another, then eking it out as well as I could, until we got back, right [hand clap] good
CB: Finally, where did you meet your wife?
AG: Ah, when I was at St Athans
CB: And what was she doing there?
AG: Well, she was doing this erm, mechanics training course, which she finished up doing, erm, I don’t think she was ever on, erm, an operating squadron, er, she was at this aerodrome down by Exeter, I went down there to see her once or twice, and erm, you know, that was it
CB: Was she on the flight line looking after the aircraft, or in the hangar?
AG: Oh, both, because erm, the only thing she ever moaned about it was the fact that they were working out in the rain, with no cover and erm, the only way they could get dry was to go in and stand with all their clothes on by this coke stove, get it red hot and stand there and hope their clothes dried, which is why she finished up with really bad arthritis in her legs, I reckon, because of that
CB: So, when did you meet her, oh you met her when you were at St Athan
AG: Yeh
CB: When did you marry?
AG: Oh, about er, about ten years later [pause] I can’t remember what year it was that we got married, no idea
CB: Sounds like about nineteen fifty-three?
AG: Hmm, probably, somewhere around there [background talking] yeh, one thing I should remember and I don’t
CB: Thank you very much
AG: Oh, it’s alright sir
CB: On the minelaying, you were talking about, so this is, the other side, having to fly the other side of Denmark
AG: Yeh
CB: How did that raid go, were you high up and then went down or, and how did you do the mining run
AG: Well, it was our first op that was, erm, well it was just a question of relying on the navigator, ‘cos I didn’t know where we were going, and erm, anyway, we had to come down really low, off this island I think it was called [unclear] Byrum [?] and er, drop these mines right across the erm, entrance to the harbour. If anything had come in there, they would have gone off, so, and then we came back, and flew up between the other side of Denmark and Sweden, and watched all Sweden being lit up, lights on the piers and all the way along the sea front, looked beautiful, we ain’t seen anything like that for years
CB: And then you were, we’ve got a picture here, of your, aircraft, on the flight line ready for take-off for Arnhem, so, could you talk us through that one?
AG: Well, erm
CB: What were you carrying?
AG: Well, the first day was alright, we were just carrying supplies, the only thing that buggered up Arnhem was the Americans, again, as usual. Erm, our troops took the first bridge, the Americans were supposed to take the second one, and we dropped our troops on the third one, and they’re the ones we were supplying, and erm, of course the Americans made a cock of it and couldn’t take theirs, which left our blokes on the third bridge sticking out on their own, and unfortunately, the intelligence was so bad, that nobody realised that, just a little way, away from there, there was, a big mass of Germans, who had taken back for a rest from the Russian front, and they had got their tanks and everything there, and our blokes on the third bridge didn’t stand a chance. They were gradually surrounded, erm, we went over there again and dropped more supplies, but the third day when we went over there, we didn’t realise but we were dropping to the Germans, and that we were sitting ducks at that height, fortunately, our pilot decided not to climb away and leave us vulnerable, he went down even further, and went in between the two milk factory chimneys and came out over the sea, clever bloke
CB: At what height were you dropping?
AG: Oh, about five hundred feet
CB: And how much stuff did you drop, it was in containers with parachutes, was it?
AG: No, it was all in, yeh, it was all in containers with parachutes, because we were, the first and second time actually dropping to our troops, it was the third time when we weren’t and didn’t realise it
CB: What was in the containers?
AG: Oh, small arms and food and supplies, and all that sort of thing
CB: Right, anything else? Good, thank you
AG: And we were erm, the planes were being loaded up, for supplies to the French, in some area, and er, we were walking out and one of the containers fell out the plane, and hit the ground, so we all went flat, so we thought knowing what was likely to be in them. Anyway, when the dust had settled and they hadn’t gone off, we walked over and had a look in this container, half of it was full of socks and the other half was full of durex, and I thought the French don’t need those [laughter] and they don’t use them anyway, [laughter] and I thought well, that’s a bloody fine thing, we are risking our necks taking over socks [emphasis] and anyway [laughter] that’s what wars all about I suppose
CB: They’d say that’s what they put in them before they chucked it
AG: Yeh, I’d forgotten, yeh, I’d forgotten about that, and I suddenly thought about this thing dropping down, and we all dived flat, because we reckoned it was going to blow up, but it didn’t, and we walked over to have a look, and that what was in it, socks and durex [laughs]
[Other] That’s the first time I’d heard Dad be angry about the Americans
AG: They were normally shit scared and badly trained
CB: The Americans?
AG: Yeh
CB: Right, erm, thank you.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AGouldAG160708
Title
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Interview with Allen Geoffrey Gould
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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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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:10:32 audio recording
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2016-07-08
Description
An account of the resource
Allen Gould grew up in Bournemouth and worked for the Danish Bacon company until volunteering for the Royal Air Force. He completed 32 operations as a flight engineer with 620 Squadron from RAF Fairford. Post war, he married his wife, who was training as a mechanic at St Athan when he met her. He returned to the Danish Bacon company and worked there for another forty years.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Norway
Wales
England--Gloucestershire
England--Suffolk
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Italy
Italy--Pomigliano d'Arco
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Cathie Hewitt
Chris Cann
620 Squadron
aircrew
animal
bombing
flight engineer
mine laying
RAF Fairford
RAF St Athan
RAF Stradishall
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/271/3424/PHenwoodP1701.2.jpg
5bd36850f41a574b0a6cb559380241aa
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/271/3424/AHenwoodP171125.1.mp3
7d85bbdcc9253696b663f18de3fe16fd
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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Henwood, Priscilla
Priscilla Henwood
P Henwood
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Priscilla Henwood (b. 1921, 21397/2618 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-25
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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Henwood, P
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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MC: Right. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Margaret Carr. The interviewee is Priscilla Henwood. The interview is taking place at Priscilla’s home in Helderberg Village, Somerset West, South Africa on Saturday the 25th of November 2017. Priscilla, thank you so much for seeing me today. I really appreciate it. Would you like to tell me just a little bit maybe about your early life, where you went to school and your family.
PH: Thank you, Margaret. Thank you very much for taking time on your two day visit to come and visit me. I feel very very honoured. Truly honoured. And it’s lovely to meet you and your family. My early life. Well, my early life. My brother and I were twins. Our parents lived in, were stationed. Well, my father was stationed in the Royal Air Force, or Royal Flying Corps in Palestine in the 1916/17 I suppose. And then my mother was stationed in Salonika in Greece — working with the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve. And they all wore grey and scarlet and they were very, very elite nursing sisters. Anyway, she was there until the end of the war and then she went. She somehow managed to go from Salonika to Palestine to meet my father whom she’d known before in her early life in — down in the New Forest. And so they were married in 1919 in Cairo. In the riots. Always riots in Cairo. And I see today two hundred, six hundred people have been killed in Cairo. This is today. Saturday. In November 2017. It’s a tragic country. Anyway, they were married there and went back. Eventually they went back to England. And my brother and I were born at Farnborough. One of the first RAF stations in, in Hampshire. Royal Flying Corps. We were born in October 1921. And my father was stationed near. Then, it all changed then and people were re-routed and reconnected. He left the air force and eventually we lived in London. All sorts of post war problems that we recognise today. They were the same problems back in 1920s and ‘21s. In fact they call the 1918 to 1939 “The Long Armistice.” And so anyway there we were living in Sussex for a while and then my brother and I grew up in London. In Maida Vale and St John’s Wood. And we had a happy time visiting, with going to museums. The Science Museum or the, always Westminster Abbey, the unknown warrior. And so we, we went and we grew up there. I went to school in Maida Vale and then to secretarial College. My brother went to school at Monmouth. And then just before the war in about 1938 I had a great friend whose father was in the War Office and he recognised this war was coming. He recognised that women were going to be recruited in to munitions or farmer’s labourers and all sorts of things. So he arranged for my friend Joan Morgan and myself to join the 600, City of London Squadron. That was a fighter squadron in London obviously. And they wore, they wore red and scarlet cloaks. Or their cloaks were lined with scarlet. They were an elite but they were stationed at Hendon. And this is a bit, this is an interesting part. We used to, I used to go about once a week. I never actually went down to Hendon but they had meetings in the HAC headquarters and at Finsbury Barracks in London. And the idea was that we were to be as a group. We weren’t really the WAAF yet. We were going to be the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and we were going to do exactly what everybody had done in the first war. We would go with the squadron, 600 City of London Squadron. We would go and be typists or telephonists or cooks or drivers, or whatever. Medical assistants. And so then we went to various lectures. Very interesting people from the first war. And learning about how it would be in trenches and stations in Europe when we were conquering Europe. But it was not to be. The training went on. My brother was in the Royal Fusiliers in that time. So we were pretty well prepared for the war when it came. In fact, I was called up before the war. And we went. We were then based at Finsbury Barracks in London and did recruiting. The great thing was we used to recruit young women for the air force and then they’d say, ‘Yes I want to be, I want to be in the air force. I want to be in the secret service. That’s what I want to be.’ So we said, ‘Well that would be nice.’ I said, well we must have, one of the first things we had to do is to go for a medical. And there at Finsbury Barracks we used to take, one of those places to be — ‘No. I can’t go for a medical today. I was out at a party at the nightclub all last night. So can I come back and have a medical later?’ [laughs] In fact one particular person did come back and had a medical and she passed. And the big passing was that I remember my [unclear] — fit, brave one, mentality alert. And so we were launched. And so I did various tasks in Finsbury Barracks. Including working on the telephone exchange at Clerkenwell. And then in October 1940 I was posted. And I went off with a rug in a rug bag and ready to go to the trenches really. That’s what we thought would happen. But anyhow off we went to Royal Air Force Station Bassingbourn. B A S S I N G B O U R N. Which is near Royston in Hertfordshire and Cambridge. And that was an Operational Training Unit for Wellington bombers and we, I was in the equipment section and typing on a Royal machine. And you see, I mean, they said, ‘You’re setting that machine on fire.’ There was a lot of nonsense going on. We were all very young. And one of the people who was stationed there was Hope Embry and her husband Basil Embry became a most highly honoured and significant member of Bomber Command. And he survived the war. I think you can read more about Basil Embry. But he was a lovely person. Obviously, I was all of seventeen and thought I was, I’d conquered the world, you know. I had arrived. But he was, I suppose much older. Probably twenty five you know. And there was Corporal Bates who was in charge of equipment in this Operational Training Unit and he used to tell us a story of how he was in charge of, of parachutes. And his parachute, what it did, what happened was they decided to change where the parachute, they had the rip cord here but then they decided it was awkward, and fear. And he used to tell us this gruesome story of a pilot who used his parachute, forgot it was on this side and they said he’d scratched himself to nothing on the way. We always used to be horrified by that story. And so it was very, very interesting and we saw the Wellington bombers. We met a lot of sergeant pilots. There was one man called Wally Walsh who was from Toronto. And I remember another, Len Day from London. There was several of them. And what we used to do as we became a little more used to Royal Air Force life we’d walk up to the pub at Royston. It was probably not as far as Royston — Bassingbourn. A local pub. Well I always remember before I left to join the air force or to go to Bassingbourn my mother said, ‘Now, Priscilla, you may, you must be very careful what you drink.’ She said, ‘You may have a shandy. Ginger beer shandy. You may have a little sherry, but no cocktails. Don’t you ever have cocktails,’ and since then I never had a cocktail. Now I never drink cocktails [laughs] but it was all very innocent. Two or three of us used to go with these dear men. They were just that much older than us. They never took advantage of us. We all went up to the pub and had a shandy and played shove ha’penny and had a lot of laughter. And those were those early days of the war, before Christmas in 1939. And then I went, I remember I went home for Christmas. Some of the, some of these pilots had had a car and one of them drove a lot of us up to London where my mother was now living in a flat. And so that was the first Christmas of the war. And my brother came down, still in the army, from wherever he was stationed. Bushey I think. And so life was very interesting and we learned a lot. Bassingbourn. And it was very, especially good for me because my, my cousin was still at University in Cambridge. And so I could cycle to Cambridge. In fact one day I walked from Bassingbourn to Cambridge. This was lovely. It was fun. So we did that. And there was talking about photographic interpretation. There was a Photographic Interpretation Unit at Benson just near, and I had never went to Benson but I met people who were there. And it was wonderful work they did interpreting a little dot in the sky. In those days with no, no modern facilities. And they did wonderful work those photographic people. And then we used to go into Royston. So then, in May 1940 a message came, or a signal came. My name was Welsh then. W E L S H. That was my maiden name. I meant to tell you that going to Cambridge I met, I’d already met him but I met Paul who I was eventually to marry or who would marry me. But he was a great friend of my cousin. They were having their last year at Cambridge and then they both went off. He into the army and Paul was, who I married, into the navy. But that’s another story. Anyway, that was so, I didn’t waste much time when I was at Bassingbourn. But I enjoyed every minute. It was all an education. Like a university education I suppose. And so then I was stationed, sent to London to the Air Ministry War Room. W A R room. In, in Whitehall. Near the [pause] I think it’s a, not the Home Office [pause] I can’t remember but it was that end building at the end [unclear] at Whitehall. And the Spanish, the St James’ Steps, King Charles Steps below, in to Green Park. Anyway, I went there as a rookie little WAAF and was put in to a correspondence. What do you call it? Just give me a minute.
MC: Secretarial. Typing and —
PH: Just put this thing off a minute.
[recording paused]
PH: Well, I was in the room where all the correspondence came. And in those days in The Air Ministry in 1940 it all came through on tubes. Like you have at the grocer’s shop or the haberdashers. You know ,they all had these tubes coming in, down and these messages would come in. So really it was a very responsible job because extraordinary messages came. One actually I remember was Amy Johnson. Amy. She was the wonderful pilot. And she had been, some said she’d been shot down into the Thames but she, she had crashed in to the Thames in London at that time. That would be about probably June 1940. So this, then I was to be there in the Air Ministry War Room for the next year and actually it was May 1941. We used to go up to, walk up to Westminster to Trafalgar Square for lunch. And Myra Hess played and it was quite peaceful. Then of course the Blitz started. And so then I had very interesting work then but we seemed to just take it in our stride because we did twelve hours on, twelve hours off in the War Room. And we’d have just a, right down in the bowels of the, of the War Rooms. The War Office I’m sure. And we used to have time off and we’d go up and amongst the ramparts of the building. Churchill and Clemmie would be walking about too because he had his secret place down below. Quite close to where we were. And the whole idea, object of the War Room, Air Ministry War Room was to supply the Cabinet War Room with up to date information. So all the correspondence came in and then we distributed to the, to the necessary parts. One of the very important parts was stats. Statisticians. How many tons of bombs had been dropped. Tons of bombs and then piles of bombs I think they called them in America. So stats was very important. And somebody was working at the back at the war room on them and it was very interesting because they were also working in the Battle of Britain. So messages were coming in and they’d, rather like the cricket scores. Twenty four for two. Six for eight. You know. They were counting it all. So that was a very interesting time for me. But then suddenly when I could go into all sorts of details but there was a great feeling of, of confidence and hope. You know, we never thought of any other way but we did realise that by then, by 1940, the end of 1940 just before the Blitz ended, the big Blitz ended there were no more planes. No more pilots. Just one more and suddenly Hitler had a brainstorm and decided he was going to attack Russia. Do something extraordinary. So my part as a WAAF, I was still a WAAF, they suddenly said I must go on a corporal’s course. I said, ‘Oh that’s lovely.’ I can’t remember where I went to that course. It may have been to Alnwick for that. I know I went to Alnwick in South Shields later but, so I did a corporal’s course and came back with these two stripes and was sent. I can’t, I can’t remember. Oh yes. I was sent to Tangmere but to be down in a little GCI station, Durrington near Tangmere. Anyway, I wasn’t long on that course and somebody said I must go on an officer’s course. Oh I know. Sorry. I did go from that corporal’s course. I went up to Chester. To Cheshire. To Honington. RAF. That’s it. From the corporal’s course that other bit. I never went, I didn’t go back to the War Room. I was sent to RAF Honington in, in Cheshire. Near Liverpool. So there I was with a, with a very nice sergeant. Woman sergeant. And she and I became great friends. And we had a big challenge at, as you were, it was not Honington. Honington was where my bomber friends went. It was Hooton Park in Cheshire. And that’s where I was stationed for, from April 1941 ‘til about July I think. And my promotion to sergeant came through and then in the same correspondence I was told I must go to an officer’s course at Loughborough. I remember saying, ‘Can’t I be a sergeant first and then go to Loughborough?’ They said, ‘No. You must stay as a corporal then you go to Loughborough.’ So I went to do the officer’s course at Loughborough and I was there for six weeks I suppose, whatever. And somehow or other I passed and I went to, I was posted to Tangmere. But going back a while I haven’t said enough about that time that I was in Bassingbourn. Can I go back to that? Because these, I told you about these, these chaps who were, they were all sergeant pilots and very fine men. Then they went off to — one went to Honington in Bomber Command and the other one went to Marham. I think he was 215 Squadron in Honington and 9 Squadron in Marham. Also up near Bury St Edmunds and there they flew and then I lost touch with them really but I know that Len Day went to Malta with Bomber Command. And while he stayed in London and then as war went on one lost touch. But I knew they did wonderful work. But I never really found out what happened to them but these people were the salt of the earth and so steady. And so that that time in in Bassingbourn which I just spoke about earlier made a very strong impression on me. It was a short time really but it was, it gave me inspiration and confidence and as I said earlier one always felt secure. They weren’t, there weren’t problems. At least I never found them. Probably there were too. So now I go back to my arrival at Tangmere. The day I arrived at Tangmere everybody was in mourning because Bader, the famous legless pilot, had been shot down that day. That was in August 1941. And there’s this famous story about his legs. They wanted to, the Germans said they’d give safe passage for his legs. And Fighter Command said not on your life. We’ll bring them over, as it was [laughs] if you catch us you catch us. We don’t want any special courtesies. We’ll just bring his legs. And they did. They flew them over. I think they parachuted them down. And Bader went on to have an extraordinary career too as a prisoner of war. But it was very interesting for me to be at Tangmere. There were Hurricanes and Spitfires and they’d had a tremendous bashing in the Blitz and a lot of people were killed and a lot of WAAF were also injured. And some of them were, were honoured with medals for bravery in that Blitz. But this was in 1940 when I was in London. So I, I went after that so all was so called peaceful then. There was no more bombing there. And then they, they had, this was what I was saying earlier. It was a little station near Ford, near Arundel, also in Sussex. Down from Tangmere. And I was put in charge, only having been on a course as an adjutant. And I was put in charge of this little station which was GCI and doing, working in radar. This favourite vital work. So we had this little office down below then, up at the top of the hill where these people were working on the radar. And wonderful things that came from, from that radar time. Interception and all that and I knew the [pause] when I was at Durrington it was probably early in 1941. There was a, it would be probably September ‘41 there was a warning that the Germans were coming to Durrington. They’d be parachuted in to, to get the people who were doing the radar work up at the top of the hill and kidnap them and take them back. And so they said, ‘Now, you people here below who are looking after them, you are going to be getting issued with Tommy guns so that you can protect your people.’ And along came a Home Guard. A Home Guard chap with a Tommy gun and he said to me, ‘I want you to learn to fire a Tommy gun. When the Germans come you’ve just got to pick this thing up and go boom, boom, boom and he’ll be dead and then you,’ [laughs] and then I put it on my shoulder and tried and I couldn’t do a thing with it [laughs]. I said, ‘I’m very sorry but you’ll have to have a bigger chap than me to protect these people.’ So there was a lot of laughter about that and of course the, again Hitler changed his mind and they didn’t come. So then, when I was there in Durrington and got married in the middle but that’s another story. A lovely time. It really was. My brother was, by that time, in the air force and he’d been shot down in the North Sea but rescued after two days and my husband Paul had been in the Malta convoy. He’d been in a Russian convoy but at this time he was in a Malta convoy relieving with The Ohio which was a ship with supplies for Malta. And anyway while he was in this convoy in Italy somewhere they were very upset. They were bombed by an Italian plane which was very interesting, and they said the plane was badly hurt, the ship was destroyed. They’d lost a whole keg of sherry they’d been given somewhere. That upset them. Anyway, he, he survived and we were married in 1942. In the war. Again near Cambridge, near Bassingbourn. So I was stationed. I went on to be stationed at Durrington and then went on another course and my, my husband left South Shields in his destroyer, a new destroyer to go to the Far East and he was away for three years. And I was on another course at Alnwick and enjoyed that. And I was stationed. Then I was sent to Biggin Hill. Stationed at Biggin. Again as adjutant. Sailor Malan was a famous South African pilot. And a lot of the Free French Air Force were there. And they were famous because they had at Biggin Hill, the squadrons there had shot down a thousand bombers. There was a tremendous publicity stunt with the papers. There was a big ball at the Dorchester to which we all went. All the, all the Windmill Girls were given open invitations to come to Biggin Hill for that weekend so there were high jinks with the Windmill and the other, I suppose night club characters would come. And Biggin Hill was the talk of every Sunday newspaper and everywhere in the world. They shot down a thousand planes and all the wonderful men which of course they were wonderful men. There was no doubt about it. And then they were to have a reception at [pause] in, at Biggin and Lord Trenchard was to come. Lord Trenchard, one of the founders of the Royal Air Force. Royal Flying Corps. And he came and the pilots told me that he, he came very much in his military Royal Flying Corps sort of uniform I think. Very impressive. He came and he said, ‘Good day gentleman,’ he said, ‘I come here to give you one message. It’s the bomber’s boys who is going to win this war. Good day gentlemen.’ And he turned and left. All the deflated people who were not really. That was, that was the big thing was the bomber boys who were going to win this war which of course we remember very well happened. And that, the tragedy of that was that the bombers did the job they had to do as we well know with, and I had many friends there and people to do with it and the casualties I knew. But after the war they were treated like [pause] like rats had left the ship. It was disgraceful. And people said, ‘They bombed Dresden. Dresden. With all that china. Look what they did,’ and I’d say, ‘Well Dresden was a route for those bouncing bombers to go thorough.’ They were, they were transporting all these bombs to go through to wherever they did. So those bombs were based before they bombed. These wonderful men who of course I can’t even think of the names as I’m talking but everybody knows them and they, well they saved, saved England really. Saved the world. And we all said if it had not been done, if the bombing had not been done successfully we would all be speaking German today in England. Nobody really saw that. People still don’t realise the precarious critical situation we were in because Churchill would always talk and buoy us up and life went on. And those bombers and the fighters. We all needed each other. And the Coastal Command and Transport Command, and balloons we all needed but it was the bombers who were the vital factor in any war. And their bombing saved Britain and to me it is, one feels ashamed that they’re only now being recognised and still people say, ‘But they bombed Dresden. How could they dare to bomb Dresden?’ Never mind they bombed London and would have absolutely finished us if they’d had their way. So, so where did we go from there? Let’s have a rest.
MC: Do you want me to turn this off for a short while?
[recording paused]
PH: I’m talking with Margaret about Bomber Command and at Hucknall and Scampton and others that I can’t remember, some of those. I was never actually stationed again on a Bomber Command station but we knew about them and recognised them and honoured them and a lot of the, it was an extraordinary life they lived because they lived in a nice cosy little English town where they’d be in tea rooms and life would go on and the station, people stationed nearby and some of the pilots —
[doorbell rings. Recording paused]
MC: Ok.
PH: Can you go back to what I said?
[recording paused]
PH: I was probably talking about, have you been to the War Room in in —? Cabinet War Room in —
MC: In London.
PH: King Charles’ Steps there. And you know how they said there’s nothing more. There’s nothing we can do. And then Hitler, you know, we believe in prayer. I don’t know, we’d had, we’d had a World Day of Prayer and suddenly Hitler changed his mind, we don’t know. I don’t know. I’m not telling anybody what they should or should not do or how they should be but there is something more than we know. It’s not just, it’s not just the computer and wireless and all these wonderful new ways of [pause] somebody said I’m watching a good film. Somebody gave me a stick. You get a stick and you put it in your television and then you watch a film. So we’ve got all these wonderful contraptions and things but we still can’t regulate the weather. We can’t regulate the tides and we can’t regulate the eclipses of the moon and the sun. And what happened two thousand years ago at such a time suddenly happens again two thousand years later, whatever, at such a time. There’s something more than even our brains can do. But so there we are. So I was talking about the faith and they had the, there was faith. We couldn’t have managed without faith in those days of war and I think maybe we might have done better in these last ten years if we hadn’t been prohibiting people from praying at the school. And you mustn’t mention Jesus and you mustn’t talk about Christmas. You talk about the holiday. Anyway, somehow and then other people come and say what’s what about this God? He doesn’t do anything for us. Well poor chap he doesn’t get much chance. He’s not allowed. So I’m not into religious talk but I do believe in faith and I do believe that it was the faith and prayer that brought us through that war. Maybe without, it would have happened, but we haven’t come through very well this lot. So where are we back to? Can you just stop a minute?
[recording paused]
PH: And then the pilots would get married and their wives would come down and stay in the local hotel or boarding house or get a house and next to the RAF station so they’d live a normal sort of life. But then at night time they’d hear boom boom. The bombers going off. Counted them and when they came back five, six, sixth where’s the sixth? And they’d be off to the station to see if their husband had come home. So there was an extraordinary artificial but normal life living right in a war. Yet going as I say, you would go to the flicks. Everybody went to the flicks in those days, and going to the pub. So that I think the wives and the mothers really suffered. Even if they were in a town where they didn’t have a husband or son or somebody they heard the bombers going off and they would listen for them to come back and there would be one short or none would come back or something. And they would be very much aware of these people. So there was a strong [pause] a feeling of rationing, of letters to the Far East. Air letters we did, air letter cards we wrote. And they would be they would be minimised and sent off. And I think that people like myself who were privileged to be in the air force it was a full interesting life. We were all in it together. But for the mothers with the children and the one egg and a couple of potatoes a week and maybe some, a bit of meat — it was, it must have been terrible. And those cold, cold winters. One, one good thing that came in the war at that time was Lord Woolton and his feeding. All those children. They were very bonny — the wartime children. He had a special orange juice sort of proceeded so that all every child had on their ration card — orange juice. No bananas. They didn’t know about bananas in those days. So that the children were well cared for but the mothers had a terrible time. And other people who came into the war at that time and did a lot of, a lot, a great job, were the land girls. And the Land Girls were often employed on, on farms and learned to milk the cows and to make up the hay and all the rest of it. But some of them of course were misused and used as maids. They would milk the cows and then come on in and make the breakfast for the farmer and his wife and his children. And they’d wash up afterwards and then go back to the fields. So the Land Girls were magnificent and did a great job. And the other people I always feel we’d never, they’d never been, to my knowledge, been recognised as they should have been were the mechanics. When those fighter planes landed the mechanics were there. They bashed, probably had some shooting, and the pilot would go off and have a shower and had some breakfast. Meantime this chap would be working on his plane so it was ready and he could take off again. Take off. And it’s the same with the bombers. Those chaps who looked after the — the engineers and the, all the people who worked on the planes. One has never really heard enough recognition of them, or for them. I think that is something that is missing. Maybe you could mention that to your people in Bomber Command. And Fighter Command too. Because they were, they were on the job and of course suffered terribly when their pilot was killed. And they, you know became, you know mates. Worked together. Worked on the plane. And so that was that. So then I told you I was, I did the officer’s course at Loughborough and I went to Tangmere and then did where I’d been. I’d put Hooton Park as well. But then I went to Biggin Hill. I told you this and as I said Sailor Malan was there. And Churchill lived nearby at Chartwell. And Sailor Malan’s wife was there too and she had a baby and Churchill was the baby’s godfather. He was there. It was a wonderful station Biggin. In spite of it being rather choked off by Lord Trenchard telling them that it would be the bombers who would win the war. Separate from Biggin Hill I went, I was sent on another course. Of course they loved to send us on courses. So it was very like being at university but you’re not. And a lot of legal work too. Not that I can remember any of it now, as you can hear. I can’t always remember the names of the stations but from, from Biggin Hill I went on this course and it was and I went to Shrewsbury, Shropshire. To Montford Bridge. And that was another training station. Rather like Bassingbourn had been originally. And I was stationed there as adjutant near another big RAF station — Oswestry. All near Shrewsbury. And the, and at Montford Bridge there were Czechoslovakian and Polish pilots all waiting. Doing circuits and bumps waiting to go. To go off, to fight. They were waiting to go off but the weather was dull all the time. and they were frustrated. And the Poles and the Czechs were not good friends so there wasn’t always a very good atmosphere there. But they were lovely. They used to call me — the Poles used to call me mamushka [gihana?] — little mother. And I, because I had to sort of tell them what to do. ‘Oh Adjie, can’t we do —?’ They wanted to fly but they couldn’t. They nearly went mad because the weather was so bad. And that was in, I’m talking now about 1943. October. That sort of time. And while I was stationed, while I was stationed there I had a phone call to say that my brother had been — it was an accident I think in a Mosquito night bomber and his plane had crashed. And he was alright but his observer wasn’t, and he went to try to rescue him and he was also burned. That was my twin brother. November 1943. Seventy something years ago now, just this week. So then somehow or other I didn’t apply so I left Montford Bridge and I went back to the Air Ministry of War Room in 1943, November. And I was in the Far East operations and was there ‘til the end of the war. ‘Till ’45. But my job there was to monitor signals that came in. And they came in then for one and we had to read them and work out the tonnage of bombs that had been dropped. This was all in the Solomons, in the New Guinea. All near Australia. All the fighting of the Japs which were impossible really. We’d never beat them as it seemed. Anyhow, we had to have this report ready by four in the morning to go through to Churchill to go to the Cabinet War Room where Churchill would be with, of course, all his people. And it had to be accurate. And I remember I made a mistake of saying Zagreb was [pause] and they were dropping bombs, dropping bombs on Zagreb which was west of, of the ocean. Of course it was east. Whatever it was I got it wrong and Churchill in amongst all the other things he picked up this mistake and it came back. He didn’t miss a trick. But it was very interesting time in the War Room with the Far East and the war going on in Italy. That was a new one. Remember we were fighting in Italy. That was an unnecessary tragedy too. And that was the time when I was in London of the bomb. What did they call them? Dropped bombs. I can’t remember. They came through silently and they dropped.
MC: Oh I know.
[pause]
MC: I know what you mean. Yes.
PH: I had a few adventures with that. And we were stationed in London again and it was a very exciting time in a way waiting. Waiting for D-day. Buzz bombs they were called buzz bombs. And they were the ones that were boom boom boom and then you heard them when it stopped that’s where they dropped. And then they had an even worse bomb that just came silently and it just, you didn’t know and the next thing was chaos. I experienced a bit of that when I was living by then at, when a whole group of us WAAF worked for officers all together in Chelsea. We had, there was a flat and somebody else had a room and we all used to get together. And there was quite a bit of bombing then in the night again. And I remember one of our, one of our friends had a flat in Chelsea. She had a lovely flat upstairs which she’d had for some years, it was her home. We were down, we were down below. A couple of us were down below in more the basement. So we would all come down to the basement for the night when the bombing was on. And then next day we’d go up onto the, into her flat when the sun was shining. And a big fruit to have in those days was rhubarb. We’d always have rhubarb. And I remember we had rhubarb at the top of the nook for pudding and he used to call them — we always heard, none of us had had babies but we always heard that the, after your baby you have a wonderful sort of party. You forget all the pain, all the problems, and just sit down and enjoy it. We used to call them our post baby, post bombing breakfast. Then I can remember going back again. Way back to when I was in the War Room in 1940. Again, we were caught one night going somewhere. A friend had had a flat in Ebury Street in, near Victoria Station. So the bombing was pretty hard that night but she had one of these records playing the Warsaw Concerto which had just come out and some Beethoven and boom, boom, boom you know, the sign from France when the code Beethoven’s fifth. So I can remember those days. We were really in trouble but it was alright. We were all in it together. And that’s, as I said earlier was how I felt sorry for the mothers who were left behind with the children and rationing and clothing. Maybe their own sick mother with them. Their diets were not easy. Neither, as I’ve said earlier, were the lives of the people that maintained the aircraft and the ships and the guns in the air force. We have a very fine young woman. Well, she’s not young any more, she’s my sort of age. She was on searchlights in London, and in the park and they used these lights all the time. And that must have been a big, big strain because they were right out on Hyde Park and I suppose Regent’s Park with these lights going, so they were a certain target for the bombers but she survived it all. She’s written her book about it. Then came, going back again now to the War Room and there was D-Day which we were all involved in in the War Room of course. And still the Japanese war going on I was very much involved in that. There were reports coming in. And we, the [unclear] then there was that sudden war. Somebody decided to fight in Holland between Holland and Germany and a lot of casualties there. I can’t, I’m trying to think of the name. We can probably think of it afterwards. But where the army obviously were involved. I’ll think of it, and tell you later but it was in, it was in Christmas 1944 because the, it was D-day was June ’44. 6th of June. But this was another little war that somebody seemed to start and it was on the Holland/German border, and we had a lot of casualties. And then after that came, came May and the end of the war. And I remember we were all, we were, I was on duty in the War Room that night and so we phoned Buckingham palace and asked, ‘Would the king and queen be out?’ And they said, ‘Yes.’ So we all went down to Buckingham Palace.
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AHenwoodP171125
PHenwoodP1701
Title
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Interview with Priscilla Henwood
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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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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:00:01 audio recording
Creator
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Margaret Carr
Date
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2017-11-25
Description
An account of the resource
Priscilla was encouraged by a friend’s father to join the 600 Squadron in anticipation of the war. She was called up and was based at Finsbury Barracks, involved in recruitment. Priscilla also worked on the telephone exchange at Clerkenwell.
In October 1940, she was posted to RAF Bassingbourn, an Operational Training Unit for Wellingtons. Hope Embry, wife of Basil Embry was stationed there.
Priscilla was sent to the Air Ministry War Room in Whitehall and received correspondence in pneumatic tube system. She recalls an extraordinary message about Amy Johnson crashing into the Thames. She would see Churchill and his wife. They provided the Cabinet War Office with information, including statistics.
Priscilla went on a corporal’s course and was stationed briefly at RAF Hooton Park. After promotion to sergeant, she was sent on an officers’ course at Loughborough and then posted to RAF Tangmere and the ground-controlled interception (GCI) radar station at RAF Durrington. Priscilla was put in charge of the GCI station near RAF Ford. She did another course at Alnwick and was then made adjutant at RAF Biggin Hill.
Priscilla expresses her disappointment with how Bomber Command was treated after the war. She praises the land girls and mechanics, who were often overlooked.
Priscilla went to RAF Montford Bridge and was an adjutant at RAF Rednal. She returned to the Air Ministry War Room in 1943 and was involved in the Far East operations until the end of the war, monitoring signals. On D-Day they all went down to Buckingham Palace.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cheshire
England--Sussex
England--London
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1940
1941
1943
1944
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
600 Squadron
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
faith
ground personnel
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
promotion
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Biggin Hill
RAF Hooton Park
RAF Tangmere
training
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
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1fe9ff0f6c1dc2e0bfca85c6277a2195
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/274/3426/AHicktonH170113.1.mp3
7a4236850c3a0519684326915b9d00f6
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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Hickton, Henry
Henry Hickton
Pat Hickton
H Hickton
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Henry "Pat" Hickton (b. 1921, 403004 Royal New Zealand Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-01-13
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.
Identifier
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Hickton, H
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MS: This is Miriam Sharland and I’m interviewing Henry Hickton today. Also known as Pat Hickton. This is for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We are at Henry’s — Pat’s home in Palmerston North and it’s Friday the 13th of January 2017.
HH: It’s my daughter’s birthday today.
MS: Oh happy birthday to her. Thank you very much Pat for agreeing to talk to us.
HH: Yeah.
MS: Also present is Glenn Turner from the 75 Squadron Association. Pat can you tell us a little bit about your early life? Did you grow up in Palmerston North?
HH: No. I was born in Taumarunui in the 26th of January 1921. And we were, lived at Owhango. That’s this side of Taumarunui and that. Yeah. We used to have a hotel and east of that hotel on a little dairy that was there was the Owhango School, butcher’s shop etcetera. And that, and that’s where we were for five years with our father and mother. They worked. And my father worked with all the butchers around there at that time of the year. And my mother died from a haemorrhage in 1925. So I was taken from there to an uncle of mine who looked after me at Mercer, up north by Hamilton, until I could go into a home. Then I moved from there into the home in Palmerston North on the corner of Ada Street and Ferguson Street. And there was about, boys and girls and everything were in there. And then in 1928, that was in the Anglican Boy’s Home they called it then we moved to the one that has just been pulled down in Pascal Street in 1929/30. We went there and from there we went to Central School. And we had the earthquake boys and that that came from Napier. And in ’31 I was moved to Foxton Beach by the, by the, what would I say it was? The seaside resort. And from there I went to Anglican Boy’s Home, Lower Hutt. And I was there right up until nineteen thirty — late 1931. And from there I went to the boys home in Marston at Sedgley. And from there that same year I went back to the Anglican Boy’s Home in Masterton. And from there, when I was thirteen I went out to work northeast on a farm. Out from Masterton. From there I worked for a little while and then there was no jobs. I came back to one or two jobs around Palmerston and then I got my last job down at Cape Rivers down by White Rock. Down below Martinborough. And then I had already applied when I was here to join the railways as an engine driver. Or it was a cleaner, fireman and engineer. And then I got a reply from them in 1938 and I joined the railways. And I went in there as a cleaner. Then the war broke out and then in 1940, with the war going a whole lot of railwaymen — drivers and firemen and everything like that all joined what they called at that time the Railway Operating Unit, New Zealand. One that went to Egypt. And then they stopped anyone from the railway from going overseas because it was an essential industry. So the only way I could get away was write to the general manager. The general manager at that time was Mr Macklink. And he wrote back to me and saw me when I told him why I wanted to go and he says, ‘Yes. You can go with my recommendation. We’ll pay your union fee. And we’ll have a job here when you come back. So whatever you want to do and here’s a pass for going around on the New Zealand railways while you’re in New Zealand.’ And I did that. I went to, as I said down to Kimberley below Levin. Done twenty seven days there on health and done a lot about armoury and everything like that and how, or supposed to be how to shoot and how to get on to your target and everything like that. And from, I had to go to the high school to learn a little more about trigonometry. And I went there for three months and then I, and then I went in to sort of Kimberley then. But from Kimberley we were all, seventy two of us that were in there all went up to Auckland. And we went on the RMS Aorangi on the red route. Sailing boat. Boat. Seventy two Australians and seventy two new Zealanders. We went to Canada, and we, from Canada we went to Vancouver and then by the Canadian Pacific Railway to Calgary and there we went in to the camp. Number Two Wireless Camp there. And twelve of us that were left they went to Montreal. From there we did all our, in New Zealand we had to, before we left here we had to do at least Morse Code twelve words a minute. By the time we finished we had to do about twenty. And then we went to Saskatchewan to Macdonald to do our air, our air training on guns. Lewis guns, Browning guns and Vickers guns. From there, when we passed that and we came out we were given our sergeant’s stripes and we went to Halifax. And from Halifax we went on board a ship called the HMS California. It had a big gun on the back but I don’t know whether it could fire or not but it looked alright. This was just after The Hood was sunk. So away we went from Halifax to Liverpool. Had no trouble. From Liverpool we went down to Uxbridge just west of London. From there after a week or two we went up to Lossiemouth on the Lossiemouth side, in Scotland to do our Operational Training Unit. We did that for three weeks and from there we were posted to squadrons. I was posted, Jack Menzies Smith who was the other joker up there at Lossiemouth with me from New Zealand, well he went somewhere else but I went to 101 Squadron. An RAF squadron down just at Oakington. Just out of Cambridge. And there was where I stopped ‘til I could be put into a crew. From there we’d done our special training etcetera while we were in the squadron. Wing Commander Biggs was our CO. One of the best [unclear] I’ve ever met. And in the end he said to me, ‘You haven’t been on a trip yet Pat, have you?’ And I says, ‘No.’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’ll tell you what. You’re going on, you’ll be on one shortly he says and you’ll be with Pilot Officer Allen.’ Oh, I didn’t know who Pilot Officer Allen was, ‘And you’re on these Wellington bombers.’ With the Peggy motor. And those motors on the Wimpies you couldn’t feather them to cool them down. Not like you do today. When they got to the red mark well that was the finish. The propellers just fell off. No matter what height you were at. So at the first I went into the briefing, ‘All those not on briefing out you go.’ I went to go out and Wing Commander Biggs said, ‘Not you Sergeant Hickton. Sit down. You are with pilot officer Allen.’ And just as I went to sit down he said, ‘Well boys, we’ve all been waiting for this. It’s Berlin tonight.’ Well I froze. I just stood with my arms on the back of the chair. And the joker next to me held me and he gradually started to pull me down. I think I just about turned to ice. And then he said, ‘It’s the big city tonight. We’ve been waiting for this one. So when you come in, we’ll let you know at 5 o’clock.’ We went in for the last briefing at 5 and when we went in there he said, ‘I’m sorry boys. You’re not going to Berlin tonight. There’s ten tenths cloud. You’re going to the Kiel Canal.’ Where the warships are. So we did that trip. That was my first trip. And then I done trips to around Germany. Bremner and Karlsruhe and down in to the Ruhr. All the searchlights you get in these places — some of them went up to about thirty thousand feet or twenty five thousand feet and they all kept at that. And when one picked you up all the searchlights would come on you. But we were lucky and the pilot used to say to me, ‘Can you see anything?’ And I said, ‘Yes, there is.’ And when we were going around Berlin. He said, ‘Can you see anything Hickie?’ And I says, ‘Yeah. There’s a big searchlight following us and it’s gradually getting a bit close.’ ‘Well, he says, ‘We’ll go in and drop our bombs and we’ll get out of it.’ And that’s what we did and we got back to England. The next ones I did down the Ruhr and everything and then in the end the crew itself had just done twenty eight trips over Germany. And this was in early September. Then they decided that they were going to do a trip to Turin in Italy. To the Royal Armouries up there in Turin and the CO said to Mickey Allen, ‘You are on twenty eight trips,’ and you had a briefing. After that you had a holiday. But he said, going to Turin, Mickey said, ‘Where are you going?’ He said, ‘To Turin.’ So he says, ‘Oh that’s a piece of cake. Straight down France. No. We’re going to go on that too.’ So he says, ‘Righto.’ So that’s where we went. Down to Turin. Six hundred miles. Berlin was six hundred miles also. But when we went down there we went down — everything was alright. We went all the way down. One or two Stirlings also went because they came on to our squadron in late August. So when we went on this trip on the 10th of September 1941 and we got down there. Did the good run. We could see all the fires and everything was burning. And then we turned around to come out and one, the only shell in the whole of the war from Italy that hit anything hit our right propeller. We got back over Mont Blanc on the one motor at twenty thousand feet and when we came down the valley we headed on and then Mickey Allen said, ‘This right hand motor is not too good. It’s getting around to the red mark.’ So he said, ‘We might make England. We might not,’ because a Wellington bomber can float a long, long way. So he said, ‘Right,’ and we went on. We crossed over Vichy France into occupied France. We were still going along and then the next minute the propeller fell off. And when it fell off we went down ten to twelve thousand feet. By the time we pulled out and we were going in occupied France there we, Mickey Allen says, ‘We’re not going to make it because the left hand motor is starting to get near the red mark also.’ The old Peggy motor you could put about sixty bullets in it and it would still turn over but you put one bullet in to a Rolls Royce engine it would stop. So we went on and Mickey Allen says, ‘Well we’ve got to crash land somewhere. We won’t be making,’ he said all the crew in to throw the oxygen bottles and all that out and everything and they did that. And then all of a sudden we were turning around and Mickey Allen said, ‘Look for a big area where we can crash land.’ And he’s looking around and one of them said looking through the astrodome, he said, ‘There’s a big area over there to the north. Hundreds of acres look like.’ And he said, ‘It looks like it’s just been a big paddocks that had been cut.’ Of hay or rice or something like that. Because in August, in September, that is autumn in France. So we were going along there and just as we was going along there — a JU88. I spotted him while I was still in the turret and looking around the back and I spotted the exhaust as he was turning. Someone must have seen us or noticed us or something like that. Or noticed our one motor from the back. Anything it could have been but he started to turn and when he turned I fired a few shots at him. He still continued to turn. Then I lost him. And then Mickey Allen said to me, said to all of us, ‘Righto boys. We’re going to go in to land. I’m going to put down the undercarriage.’ So, just as he said that the JU88 came back again. I fired at him again but I never saw him again. Never came back. Never saw him. And Mickey Allen then at that moment we must have been down to about three thousand feet or less. He says, ‘Here we go boys.’ We went down and the last words I heard him say, I couldn’t get out of the turret, I was not supposed to be in the turret so the only thing I could do, he said, ‘We’re going in to land,’ and I heard him say, ‘Oh shit.’ And we didn’t know what that was but we knew in a minute. In where we went where all these trees had all autumn leaves on them. And it looked like a big area where they cut hay. And when we went in there was these big trunks of the trees that were all on an angle. And our undercarriage hit it. That’s the only thing that saved all of us. I had already turned my turret around and lowered the guns and I was just ready when we hit. I don’t know any more after that until I heard someone say, ‘Oh, look what we’ve found.’ And behind the nuclear of the right motor, where they have a blow up boat and fallen out of that was a bottle of brandy. So one of the jokers that got it says, ‘Gee we’ll have a drink out of this.’ And I sort of woke up and I put my hand up and I sort of had my head cut open. All right around here etcetera and everything. And they all took a drink out of this bottle and then one of them says, ‘Where’s Hickie? Pat’s not around, there’s only five of us here.’ And just then I sort of realised when I heard the voices. So I just pulled the pins on the back of the turret. They fell off and I fell out and I was eight feet off the ground. I fell to the ground. I never got hurt any more and the joker says, ‘Look at all the blood and everything.’ They got a big bandage that was there and put it on and the joker says, ‘Are you alright?’ I says, ‘Yeah. Yeah. I think so,’ and everything. So he said, ‘We’ve all had a drink of this brandy.’ It was still over half full. So he says, ‘Have a drink.’ So I took it. I gave them back the bottle empty. And they says, ‘You’ve emptied it.’ And I said, ‘Well, why did you give it to me?’ And from then on we had to, that was at that time when we crashed was 1:30am in the morning. The moon was up and you could see everything quite nicely. So we decided to chew up all our secret papers etcetera. Smash the, on the guns where they had these sights, the electrified ones. Smashed them up and one or two other things. And then we had to get out of it. So we left about 2 o’clock. I don’t know what time. It would be about 2, I expect. And we headed south to go down to Vichy France. The first night we went, as soon as it became daylight we got into an area where we covered ourselves in slap during the day. All of us. Six of us. Then that night we went off again. And the next night we got in to a little bit of a gravel pit and we slept there. But between the first night and the second night when we were up on the top of the hills where our plane crashed at the La Riche and when you looked down you could see all the German troops looking for us. The third day when we came down there after the second night in the gravel pit we walked around. And all your flying boots were not meant to walk in and we all had blisters and parts of them were falling off. So we decided to go into a little place down there. And we had eaten all the chocolate and everything that we had had on the plane so we decided, we tried one or two places but they shooed us out of it. And then we came to this little place and at the back of the place there was a garden. A big two storey building and there was a garden at the back and there was tomatoes in it. So we went in and had a feed of tomatoes. And then a little girl came along, six years old and was looking at us. She had gone out to get the cows for milking. So then she went and then her father arrived. And when the father arrived he came around and he took us in. There was about eighty people in this little village of village Les Moines. So he took us around there, around all the people and that and all the children and that were there. And then while he was talking to us and everything they heard a motorbike. And he says to one of the jokers in a bit of broken French and he said to them, ‘Around behind the two storey building and get out of it. They’re Germans.’ So we went behind there and the German came in and he was a captain of the SS. German army. And he had a sergeant in the pavilion and they had a machine gun. And he said to them, spoke perfect English, and he said to them all around there about it. Then he spoke perfect German and French to them and he said, ‘Anybody seen six airmen?’ And they all said, ‘No.’ This little girl, the Germans got her, the little girl and one or two others and said to them in French, ‘Have you seen six British airmen? Or six people in uniform?’ And they all shook their head. And he says, ‘Right. If ever I come back and I find out that you had helped them or seen them and hadn’t told us we’re going to shoot the lot of you.’ And away they went. He took us in and he gave us a meal and then we went over to a little place just about two miles over further to Chenaud. And the farmer there, he decided to, we stopped there for a couple of nights. He used to take us into his house and give us breakfast, dinner and tea and we had, also had wine for breakfast. And then we went out and we go up into a hayloft. His house was there. And along side he had the driveway and there was this big two storey building that went back. In the top was the hayloft. And there was the steps you went up the hayloft to get into the top. But alongside of it, that high off it was a tap that was leaning out there and it was dripping. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. And we went up there. Never thought anything of it at the time. So we went up there and as we were in there Mickey Allen our captain said, ‘Well. What are we going to do?’ and I says, ‘Well, you ought to know Mickey.’ He says, ‘Why?’ ‘Do you remember the other day, about three days ago, we were in Cambridge and you said, ‘That barmaid that I know there. She wants to know where I’ve been lately.’ And he says, ‘I can’t tell her because I was going out with another girlfriend.’ So he says, ‘I know what I’ll do. I’ll tell her that I have just come back from France.’ So he told her that and oh she was all over him and everything. ‘Oh, I’m sorry that happened Mickey’ and everything like that. And then we came up eventually, this trip and we get, I said to Mickey when we were in the hayloft I said, ‘It won’t be bad Mickey.’ And he said, ‘What?’ I says, ‘Well you’ve just come back from France, you told that girl in Cambridge. So you’ll know the way back.’ Before you go on to a trip they always tell you that before you crash or wherever you go look where you are. You’ve got a compass. You’ve got a bit of a torch. You’ve got one or two other things that are all secret and everything. You take them all with you and you use them. Well, in this case we were getting around down here with this, these different issues and they says, ‘And when you in to there, if you get down to Marseille go down and see the joker that’s the major that’s in charge of the Resistance movement in the south of France.’ He was an officer that was at Dunkirk and he never got back to England. MI9 took over with him and he worked with them. Then we, after two or three weeks with these people they moved us in to the bush ‘cause the Germans were getting a bit near and there was hundreds of them getting near and in this heavy bush there was a two storey building that wouldn’t be much bigger than what that, and a bit on the top and a chimney that went up. It was an old, a bit of an old house. It must have been hundreds of years ago. Well, that’s where they took us. They’d take us in for tea at night and instead of taking us straight back out they said, ‘No. You wait here. We’ve kept our cows here. Now, when we take you back we’ll run the cows back over where you walked. They won’t know where you are.’ So that’s what they did. And then we met a young joker. He was twelve years old. [Pointson?] was his name and he was learning English in Paris and these people at village Les Moines and at [unclear] Chenaud they were relations of his. So he came out and he could speak English. So he says, ‘Well, we’ll work something out here. Well, I’m going back to Paris and I know a joker up there that was in the French army. He’s now with the Resistance movement with the new joker that’s in charge. Patrick O’Leary.’ The Belgian joker. Major General Guerisse he was and he worked for MI9 as well. So he said, ‘I’ll go back to Paris and I’ll come back.’ So he went back and he came back and he says, ‘Right. We’re taking two at a time,’ and they’re going there. And the young lad that was twelve, he took two of them. Mickey Allen and Saxon the navigator. He took them up to Paris. Then when this joker and other people came in and they took the other two. That was the second pilot and the front gunner. And that left the second pilot and me. That left only two to go. This young lad [Pointson?] came back and he had with him a joker. His name was [pause] it’ll come to me in a minute, and he turned around and he said, ‘I’m in the French army. I’ve brought you some clothes.’ Now, we didn’t know any name of any of these people at that time. We only found out these about twenty or thirty years later. But when he came down he said, ‘I’ve got some clothes here for you. Now, put them on.’ We said, ‘Yeah. Righto.’ We put them on and he said, ‘You look alright.’ And the shoes were half a size too small for me. He said, ‘We’re going to bike to the first station, get the train and go to, and we are going up to Paris. Have any of you jokers been to Paris?’ We said, ‘No. We’ve flown over it.’ So he said, ‘Right. Anybody that’s been in France has got to see Paris on the ground so we are taking you to Paris.’ So that was a surprise for us because we were still in occupied France which was halfway, you may as well say between Paris and Dijon and La Riche is just there. We were down there at village Les Moines. So he said to me, ‘Are you ready?’ I said, ‘Well these trousers are not much good.’ Oh listen all the fly and everything was all shredded and everything like that. I said, ‘Well they’re not much good.’ And everything. He said, ‘Don’t worry about it. You look a true Frenchman,’ [laughs] so there was a lot of humour that comes out at serious times. And he took us on the train. Took us up to Paris and he took us around the corner and then we went to a duke’s place. The duke had been caught by the Germans in the First World War and he had been badly injured with his hand. It was in a sling. And when we were there he said you’re all, gave us dinner. We sat down at 12 o’clock and we didn’t get up until 3 o’clock. And then he said, ‘You’re all going to go to someone else’s place.’ So he said — in twos, ‘There will be some people walk in. You won’t know who they are. And when they come in that door, that door or that door whichever one comes in and you’re near it you go with those people.’ So Mickey Allen went with the first one and the front gunner he went with the other and of course the Aussie who was our second pilot and I, we were over here. And that was the White Mouse we learned later on. That was her that took us to a joker who was in the government Henri Rolet and I’ve got his number 69 Rue [unclear] in Paris. Just over from what they called the painter’s area. So I went. We were there two days and after we left, after two days they said you’ve got to get out of it because Henri Rolet has a young son that’s two years old. And with people around and anybody come in then the lad would most likely say, ‘Yes. They did have someone here,’ and everything. So they decided to move us. The same joker that took us, the same joker that brought us up from village Les Moines. He took us across the Champs Elyse and there was the Arc de Triomphe standing up right in front of us. There was this big hotel and the Aussie said to me in a quiet voice, ‘Take short steps. You look like a Frenchman then.’ And I didn’t take any notice of him and just when we got there Andre Postel-Vinay is the joker that brought us up from village Les Moines. He was the joker in the army working in the Resistance movement of Patrick O’Leary. So André was across the road, about thirty yards in front of us and just then a big Limousine pulled up. All the soldiers came out both sides with all their guns. And the soldiers, I was standing right next door to them and the Aussie joker was here. And they all came out and out came that Kesselring. Major General. He came out, got into the limousine and off he went. And then all the soldiers went back in. Andre was waiting over there. We walked over with him and he says, ‘Right.’ We went around, over to an elderly lady’s place. She was about seventy. Couldn’t speak English. So she said, and she said to André, ‘I’ll give them these.’ One each. A package of cotton wool. And a great big bottle each of eau de cologne. Gave them that and she said to Andre she has no bath, she has no shower and she has never had one in her whole life. This was all she has washed with all her life. Now you’ve got to do the same. So for two days we stopped there. Then he came in, Andre, and says, ‘We’re going on the electric train from Paris down to Vierzon on the border of Vichy.’ We had our passports. And when we went out I says to André, ‘I don’t think we should go today.’ ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Well we can leave it for a couple of days because I smell like one of the Geordie boys with all this eau de cologne.’ So he said, ‘You’re going.’ So we went on the train that came in. He took our passports. Everything like that. Got down to Vierzon. Came off. Met a Mr Clerique who worked for the Resistance movement of Patrick O’Leary and he also took us out to watch the bridge. The river that ran right through the bottom of Vierzon. The south of Vierzon. All the German boats were on it. It was, had the German soldiers marking it and when they came down there they got one lad that came up, only about eight or nine and he took the Aussie joker first. Took him across at a quarter to 4. Took him over and that lad came back. Then the guards changed. When the guards changed he brought the Aussie joker’s passport back, ripped his photo off and put our other one on it. Now, all those photos that they had they had worked out it didn’t matter whether you ripped them off and put another one on. Where the bottom part of the stamp came into ordinary paper they had worked everything out that they fitted perfectly. And my photo went on and the Aussie’s photo. Went over to an elderly couple and we sat in there, went in with them. Went in the back door and the whole house was door to door and all the rooms went straight across it. They were people in their seventies and they fed us and said if anybody comes — that front window. Use them and go down the back. Well, there was one other thing that we did. We wanted to go to the toilet so they took us down the back and it was about, say about twenty feet down the back. And it was painted red. When we opened the door they closed the door and shut it. No light. And there was no toilet bowl. There was only a hole in the ground. Now, they told us later that that had been done right over the area. They started when Napoleon was around. And they just moved it over over the years. And so we did that and went in and then the next day or two days later they came back for a charabanc that was, went on charcoal and we went east. Right over towards Dijon. And from there this André Postel-Vinay took us on the train. All Germans in it and everything. And we were, on our passport, deaf and dumb commercial travellers and we only could speak sign language. I only know that, that’s schnell. So we had to be careful what we did. Andre took us in to get a meal. We were on our way to Marseille and while we were in there we never spoke. We just did a bit of sign language. I don’t even know any of it now. And we had German captains and colonels sitting at the same table with us with André Postel- Vinay. He was talking to them. And he told them who we were etcetera and everything you know. We were those people that are unlucky in life. So we went down to Paris. Down to Marseilles. And when we got to Marseilles we were taken from there over to a place that was run by a doctor, a Greek doctor and his name was Dr Rodocanachi. He had married an English woman and he was one of the best surgeons and doctors in the whole of France. You must remember that France was, had about sixty or seventy different states all through it. Not like it is today. And they all run their own little areas and provinces. That’s why they were fighting all those years with different other countries. And of course all those little areas that they ran was run by the cardinals. They were the big chiefs. So, and there was about thirty or forty different languages in France at that time. Not like it is today. That’s why I always say they’re a bit of an enigma. France. Even today at times, when you hear things about them. So when we went there we went to his place. We stopped in there and then they said, ‘Right you’ve got to go down now. Where we went to this Dr Rodocanachi,’ he says, ‘You’ve got to go over to North West of Marseilles. There’s a place called Nimes. Just out of Nimes there’s a prison camp called St Hippolyte du Fort. We didn’t know that at the time but we went there and this Negre, he was a Frenchman and he was a multi millionaire grocery joker and the Germans thought he was one of them but he worked for Patrick O’Leary. And he looked after us for about three days and he took us to their circus where all the Frenchmen were and everything and told them who we were. And we were drinking sweet and dry vermouth. Then we went from his place. They took us down to Perpignan. And from Perpignan we went down to the beach like going from Palmerston down to Foxton Beach. There, in the house we were in there was no, nothing or anything in it that anybody was using it. When we wanted to have a wash or something like that we used to have to go down to the sea and have a swim. And that’s what we did. Did our business and everything. That’s the only thing we could do at that time. Then we did that. We were there for about seven days. A lot of the people from between Canet Plage and Perpignan they’d would come in a roundabout way and bring us down tucker. And from there they decided that Patrick O’Leary had told them that we are going to go by train from Canet Plage, Perpignan and down to Andorra. The little principality at the Pyrenees. And when we got on the train we had to stand and seat ourselves outside the carriages because there was no room and they stopped at every station. And when we got down so far, three quarters of the way, we got some seats on these three cars and we were in the back car. And when they came into there. Right. They stopped and in came the Germans. In came the gendarmes. And they said, ‘Passports.’ And we all had our passport. Handed them over and as they came up the other four of them were back a bit further in this carriage than us. Saxon was the other joker that was sitting next to me. And they looked at the photos. And they looked at Sax and then they looked at me. And then they had another look. And they says, ‘Come with us.’ So rather than argue or anything like that because you still had four jokers in there we decided we’d go with them. And we’d already been told that if ever we got caught before we went on a trip to bomb we would have to be especially near the Pyrenees. We would have to try and keep the gendarmes from finding out too much. So they said, ‘See if you can keep them occupied for three or four hours.’ So we said, ‘Righto.’ We did. Any rate we were taken out. Went to the outside, to the gendarmerie and they kept us there. They gave us what I thought was lamb but I learned later on it wasn’t. It was goat. But it was nice and we were still deaf and dumb and then after three and three quarter hours these two gendarmes decided, the captain of one of them says, ‘You take that joker in that room and write something down and give it to him. I’ll take this joker in this room and I’ll write something down and get him to answer it.’ So they took it in to Sax. They wrote it down and Sax said, ‘Oh that’ll be easy. That’ll be no.’ He just wrote “No.” They wrote it down for me in the other room and they wrote it down and I looked at it and I said, ‘Oh, that’ll be easy. That’ll be oui oui.’ So I said, do you know what I wrote? “W E E. W E E,” [laughs] ‘Ahh English,’ they said. So from then we were prisoners of war and went up to Nimes by train with three guards. And went into St Hippolyte du Fort. We were in there for a while and then my friend who had escaped from Stalag 13 in West Poland came right across Germany, Holland, Belgium, and you had to have two red passes to get out of Belgium into France. And he got through that with a friend and got down to the demarcation line and he thought right, I’ll be right now. And he, the fog came down and he followed the track. And as he followed the track it winded all over the place. Next minute there was a rifle poked into his stomach. It was a German. The German says, and Derry [Naburrow?] he could speak good French. And the German could speak good French. So they got talking and he says, ‘You’re trying to get in to occupied France. Now, I’m taking you back and putting you in unoccupied France.’ So they put him in Vichy France where he was trying to get. And when he got down so far he got caught. I don’t know why. It would surprise you the number people came into Vichy France because in there even though there was plenty of Germans there was commissions. And there was a lot of people that were all around there that were divided but a lot of them were for the Germans. So that’s where we were and when we went we were in there for a while and we were looking for a place to escape. Inner courtyard and an outer courtyard. Went into the outer courtyard there was a young lad there and he was about six foot six. Well dressed. He was about eighteen or nineteen or sixteen or something. So we were looking him over while we were looking around for some place that could help us. And Derry said to this, ‘By Jove, he’s a fine looking soldier isn’t he?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, he is,’ I said, ‘I wish I was his build,’ I said. And we were looking up and then this soldier called out. And the next minute the guards arrived and we were arrested. And we went in to the room upstairs and a German general arrived from the commission in Vichy France. Our joker, who was in charge of the camp, he was at the, he was at our hearing and this German general could speak perfect English and he said to us, he listened to the soldier. We didn’t know what he was saying. Derry did but any rate I, we just got there and then the Germans said to him, ‘What did you say to him?’ We told him what we said, ‘What a fine joker he was and we wished we were the same build and everything and then he yelled out and we were arrested.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘That’s not what he was saying. And normally what we do when people do that to our friends we shoot them.’ So Derry looked at me and I looked at Derry. So we got up and we walked over to the door. Got hold of the handle, it was opening and this German general says, ‘Where do you jokers think you’re going?’ And we both said at the same time, ‘Well, if you’re going to shoot us get it over with.’ He says, ‘Get back.’ We got back over there and we got twenty five days in the cooler. But before we finished that time they decided at this time in, by the time we got to January, early January of ’42 that we were going to be moved to a new fort right up on the Italian French border. And they said they’d done it up, spent a few million and you’d like it. So they put us on a train and Derry and I we didn’t do anything. We weren’t going to escape off the train because there was that many gendarmes and special gendarmes all the way ‘til we got to Nice. And when we got to Nice there was the buses there for all the army and everything. They put us on it and away we went. And when you go up from Nice you go up what they call a high corniche road. There’s a bottom corniche road, there’s a middle corniche road, and there’s a top corniche road that’s up by this new fort they had on the border. When we got up there all the lights were on. We were on the road right outside and as we looked out the window there was a big broad bridge that went across and when we looked over and down there there was a moat. Eighteen feet by eighteen feet deep. No water in it. And this was the only bridge from the road into the camp. We didn’t know until they got us in and fed us that everything else is all underground. Except in the centre. That was the big parade ground where you had your meetings in the morning with the CO. That’s where we went for timey and we were in there and they said to us, ‘Well, nobody escapes from here,’ and the new CO they’d put in for us was a joker that was in charge of the French Foreign Legion from Africa. And he had a walking stick and every time he used to twirl he’d say vous and he’d be about that couple of inches off your nose and he says, ‘Nobody ever escapes from here. You’re like flies in a Chianti bottle with the cork hard on. So that’s what it is. Now then, I know you’ve got to escape. That’s your job and everything but you won’t get out of this camp.’ So as soon as we got up of our first morning there we had our breakfast and soon as they opened it up and we went out. And then over the other side there was a big concrete wall that went up over the parade ground and at the end of it there would be about from there to there wide where it went into a sort of a tunnel. You could drive a car into it. And then it went down. Right down the bottom and then it went along and then it came back out on to the parade ground the other side. So Derry and I, we said, ‘We’ll go down and have a look.’ Went down. Had a look. Right down the bottom. Got right down the bottom and then we turned the corner. Derry said, ‘I wonder what that is over there.’ Then I had a look this side and there was three steps. One, two, three. And there was a door. I says, ‘Derry, I wonder what’s there. There’s a door there.’ So when we got up it had a key in the lock. Turned it and opened it and I can show you a photo. That — in those places and all those underground things they have ventilator shafts to let the air in and they’re about, I can tell you, from there to there wide. So we got the key, went in, had a look and then we all came out and we got the other jokers, airmen that we were there and we all had a bit of a talk. Made sure there was no one else around. So we decided that we’d make a ladder and we would also get the Red Cross box things. Red Cross string and then tie the knots right and make it so as it would go up sixteen feet at least. Someone had to go up there to do it so we didn’t know what. So we had a look at it. I was one of the lightest. And we went along there and Derry, Gary, I mean Derry, my cobber, he says, ‘Someone will have to go up there.’ So I said, ‘Well, I’ve got a bit of rubber on my shoe and everything. I shall go.’ So we got a big board and put it there and they all helped me up and I put my backside there and my feet there and I went up these sixteen feet like this. When we got to the top there was the bars. So I hung the ladder but I hung it right in the corner of the bars so no one could see it because that side the guard went on. This side was too sloped down so we didn’t want him to see it. So the next day after we’d done all that and got it we went back in and with the wind blowing badly — better for us. We could cut the bar that was there and we cut the, and also with doing that we also had some chewing gum and we used the chewing gum and made it the same colour as what the bars were. The bars wouldn’t be much thicker than that. So we had two of them and we just put the chewing gum in it and it just looked ok. We were there practically, that was on, as I say we were there on the Monday and on the Thursday Derry says, ‘Well there’s seven of us. What are we going to do?’ I says, ‘Well I know,’ I says, ‘We’ll draw lots. Someone has to stop behind and pick this up and take the key again and use it again later on.’ So he says, ‘Oh well we know whose –’ ‘No. We put it all in. Whoever gets the shortest straw stops behind.’ So we all agreed with that. Went around and went around. I was the second to last one to take. I got the shortest straw. So Derry says, ‘Oh crikey.’ I said, ‘No. It’s alright. I know everything and what’s required.’ So I said, ‘No. It’ll be alright. We’ll come out later on. After another week or two.’ So he said, ‘Righto then.’ So I says, ‘Right.’ We fixed it all up for the lads and when they, we had to be in at 7 o’clock at night, we got the lads all dressed and ready and we took them over. Put them in there and locked them in and left them there. They had the chocolate and everything we’d got from the Red Cross parcels and everything. So the six of them were in there and then I went to bed and we duffled up their beds for them and everything. And the guards came around and had a look and everything like that and everything was alright and away they went. Then the next day we got up, I had breakfast and I had to get into the room and I had to get this ladder and everything because on top of this big ventilation shaft there was a big piece of glass that covered the top. And that had to be shifted by the jokers escaping. Well they did that. Never made a noise. And yet about twenty feet away was a guard but he was facing the other way. So the jokers were there and when they went over the top, went over the other side and down in to the moat the other side. It was all covered by the barbed wire. Porteous was a New Zealander. He was the six that got out and he hurt his ankle and he couldn’t walk. So he said to the other five, ‘Away you go. I’ll be alright. I’m not going to hold you up. Off you go. Get out of it. I’ll get back up.’ Well he got back up. He got back in to that little room that we found. Got down the ladder and he lay there and I had breakfast and I went over. I took the key out and opened the door and I got in. And I said, ‘What are you doing here Doug?’ And he said, ‘My ankle is crook.’ So I says, ‘Crikey, I’d better get that ladder and everything.’ So I got that. Rolled it up and I had a coat on because the weather wasn’t too good. The coat on and I stuffed it under. And I said, ‘Come on. I’ll take you.’ He was limping a bit and when we went to go over the courtyard where we had our meetings there was one joker there who was a corporal and he had an Alsatian dog. And he was a joker that was turning everybody in. And I saw him there and he looked at me as I was going across the courtyard. And I thought I’d better get rid of this as quick as I can because this joker looked interested. So I went in to my dormitory, the big dormitory we had. I went out onto it and I opened the doors and on the parapet outside and then into the, into the moat. I took the ladders out and I threw it right up on the right hand side. Went back and lay down on the bed. I lay down and he came in. And he says, ‘What have you got on?’ ‘Nothing,’ I said. I’m keeping warm.’ I’d stuffed a pillow up here. And Porteous was just laying on the bed as though nothing had happened. So he went out and he never said any more. And we didn’t do any more. We never heard any more. And Derry and them others must have got away. Then on the second day we had always been told that you’re in France. You can go to the nunneries or you can go to where the prostitutes work and they’ll all help you. So these jokers had got down and got into Monte Carlo. And when they got around there they couldn’t find anybody to find them. They couldn’t find this British cafe that was in there and they were walking around and they run into one or two prostitutes and they took them in to their place. But while they were asleep the prostitutes came out and told the police. So three days later they were back in prison. And we, and they knew they had gone because when we went the day after they escaped we had to fill in when we had the numbers were all set in eight, six and someone in charge of you. That’s how they did it. But we couldn’t cover six and of course the guard up there saw it and he would point down and tell the joker that was in charge doing the counting — six missing. And that’s how they knew that six jokers had escaped. After four days. So everything was cut down. Left there. When they came back they got thirty days solitary confinement and they all did that and we still stopped there and then we were always told to cause as much trouble as we could because they would have to keep the majority of guards with you and everything. So when Derry and I went around one of us would go one way and one would go the other and they would turn around and they’d say, ‘There’s Naburrow. Where’s Hickton?’ And they’d go looking for me. And the next time they would look around, they’d see me and they’d say, ‘Where’s Naburrow?’ And some one always came and looked. Then this little corporal after a bit we got down to about and we had to go somewhere. We had to do something. We tried other places to escape but no. It was solid concrete etcetera etcetera etcetera. So we decided one day they wanted us to give them a hand to cart a lot of stuff over the bridge and put it in the kitchen. The kitchen was below our dormitories so we took it in there and we had a look around and looking out the big window over there, a huge window like that with concrete and it had these big steel vertical and horizontal bars on it but at the top they only had [pause] went up that far. That part was clear. But down to the horizontal bar there was quite a gap. So Derry and I had been reading a book about Winston Churchill and how he did the BBC news when he was in South Africa. And when he got caught and the way he got out — these bars in South Africa were the same. So what he did he got a magnet and on that magnet you could put it over the top because it was dirt metal. That stuff they put there. And you’ve only got to put it over the top if you got it set right in a bit of wood and everything. You’ve only got to move it back two or three times and they come off right at that horizontal. So we thought, right, we’ve got to get a magnet. And we had a guard that was fairly good. He had some children that were sick and we were giving him some Red Cross stuff. And we asked him and he said, ‘What do you want the magnet for?’ ‘Oh we want to go around and see if we can pick up any nails and everything.’ So he says, ‘Yeah. I’ve got one up there about that long. Yeah. Yeah.’ So he brought it hidden under his jacket and he gave it to us and we just had a look at it and said oh yeah and we tried it on one or two other bars and one or two others the same size. So we made the string from the Red Cross box. Thin string so we had to put two or three of them together and tie knots so that you didn’t slip down. You had to go from this room, we’d have to go down about fifteen or sixteen feet into the moat. And right up by the moat and this window that was down here that was the bridge. The only entrance into the camp. And it had a railing along the top. And there was always three or four guards. Always on there. So Derry and I we says, ‘Well, what are we going to do?’ Well, he says, ‘Let’s have a go on Monday eh?’ And I said, ‘Yeah. Righto.’ So we told the jokers, and where our dormitory was, the passageway that went right up by the dormitories and over the wall from the kitchen, apparently, at some time they must have made meals down in the kitchen and they used to send them up this. It was about that wide and it had a grille on it and of course the key that we had from the other door we managed to make that to open this grille door. So we thought, right. Had a bit of barbed wire in it but we weren’t worried about that so we said, ‘Right. Monday we go.’ He said, ‘ Yeah. Right.’ That was on the Thursday. On Friday the officers that were in there they were all gone under army names like captain etcetera etcetera when they were wing commanders and squadron leaders and nobody knew any different. So as one of them was missing, the top one, Higginson who was a squadron leader. He was in charge at the time and he called us in to see him. And he agreed with us that we were going to do this escape. Then he says, ‘Read this.’ They’d given him a notice that on Monday or Tuesday they’ll all, the officers all, they’ll all be moved to Germany. They were taking them all out of there and taking them to Germany. Because they’d practically, the Germans had practically taken over Vichy France. Even from the beginning. So he said, ‘We’ve got to go. What about can we come with you?’ And Derry said, ‘Just you?’ He said, ‘No. Two others.’ So Derry looked at me and I looked at Derry. We thought it was tough enough just for two. And over from this only entrance with the guards on it. And Derry said, ‘Oh gee. Well if they’re going to Germany well ok.’ So he said to him, ‘Ok Taffy. Who are the other three?’ And one was a Pilot Officer Pyggott and there was a New Zealander that was a flight lieutenant and there was Higginson and he was a squadron leader. So we says, ‘Well, we’ll have a go.’ But we said to them, ‘Whatever you do you must do exactly what we tell you. Nothing else. Because it’s pretty dangerous,’ and we told them where the bridge went across where we were going to go out at the road where the bridge went into it. There was a big steel thin there and about two feet off the ground. So we said, ‘We’re going to try through there and see what’s what.’ We don’t know what’s what there because we weren’t allowed out to work. So we got there and we got it. We said, ‘Now, put another jersey on top. Put socks on your boots.’ They put that on and everything and something on their hands. When we went down through the ’chute the first jersey came off with the barbed wire there. It wasn’t much but we all got down there and with the concrete floors and that there that’s why we wore the socks on our boots. When we got over there we saw the guards but prior to this, the day before, we decided that it would be a lot better if we could get — all the army was on the south end of the fort. All the air force was on the north end of the fort and that is one was south of the bridge and we were north of the bridge. ‘What say we get the army jokers — Sergeant Hargraves and one or two others from Scottish Highlanders.’ They were good. ‘Put a concert on and come out on the parapet and put it on and these guards would go on and watch them. It would give us a chance.’ So we saw them and they says yes. So they went out there and they said to one of the guards that were up there. They said, ‘We’re going to have a concert. Do you mind?’ They said, ‘No. We don’t mind or anything,’ So we said, ‘Right.’ We got in there and they were all over there while the concert was going on and they were all over that side of the bridge and if I walked from here to that building that’s where the bridge went across. And that’s where all the army jokers were. So we said, ‘Right.’ We got, got the three off. Didn’t make any noise and put them down. Derry went first. And I went down. Then Higginson came down and then Bennett came err what do you call it came down. And the other joker, the pilot officer he came. We all got down there and they were still all watching the concert. We got over. Went under this big steel frame. We didn’t know what was behind it. And we went underneath it and we went up a bit. And when we went up a bit we went over and we were in a sewer above our shins. And there was rats in it and everything. But that didn’t bother us. We went there and we walked and we walked and walked along there to the other side of the road and then it turned around that way. And when we got there there was another lot of concrete and bars. So Derry says, ‘Oh crikey, what are we going to do?’ Well we went in there at 7 o’clock. 7pm. And when we got around there we had to get out of it. We were already told that if we got out we had to go so far below the fort on the road and there’s a little side road there. Go in there and the joker that’ll pick you up will be the Australian that’s in charge of the Monaco police. And he’ll take you to Monaco and give them to Patrick O’Leary. So we said, right. We got all that sorted out and everything. And we had everything all ready and we worked and worked and in the end the bottom part gave. Why I don’t know but all of a sudden it gave and that went out and the top one just fell off. We walked out. That was quarter to 12 at night. All the lights came on. And we looked at all the lights. We could see the guards and the sirens were going. There’s been an escape. So, the only thing we could do was go straight down the hill to the Mediterranean. And that’s what we did. Must be about ten or twelve miles. While on the way down there we got down and we could see the soldiers, see the cars all going up the long road up to the fort. But we still kept on and we went down and we got down at the bottom and when we got to the bottom there was a tunnel on the road. And we were going to go across and I was going to go across. I said, ‘Wait a minute,’ and I had a look right up at the other end. There was a joker smoking a cigarette. I can still see it today, you know. Smoking a cigarette. I said, ‘No. We can’t go. There’s a guard down there.’ Then a car arrived. The guard got in it and he went right past us and went up to the fort. So we went across the tunnel, in to the little stream and then up a little bit of a hill there and there was a railway station and there was this big tunnel. And on top of the tunnel there was a cave. So we got into the cave and we slept there during the night. We stunk to high heaven. The next morning we had a look at it. We said, ‘Well who’s the best looking one of the lot?’ So we said, ‘The pilot officer there. That RAF man.’ And we said, Derry said, ‘Yeah. Well you’ve got a good job to do.’ And this joker says, ‘What?’ ‘You’ve got to walk from this station along the railway line into Monaco and go to the cafe in the town that is run by the English couple. They work for the Resistance movement.’ So that’s what he did. He got them and they got around. The next day Patrick O’Leary was in Monaco. He came back with all clothes and everything like that and he came up into the tunnel. We changed. Left all the clothes, our old clothes that were in there, in the tunnel. And then he got tickets and we got tickets and got on the train from Nice into Monte Carlo. And in Monte Carlo we went to the cafe run by the British people and they, we had a meal etcetera and everything. Then I went very very crook. I got the flu bad. I had sores all around here and everything and I could hardly stand up. So next day the other four went with Patrick O’Leary with passports to Marseilles on the train. He came back three days later and I was a lot better by that time. So he picked me up, gave me my passport. We got on the train and as we were going down to Nice and Marseilles they had a lot of these cattle trucks and everything around. And they had men one side. Women and children the other side and they were loading them into these trucks to take them to Buchenwald. And yet the guards would come on and come around, look at our pass and hand them back and on they would go. When we got down to Marseilles Patrick says, ‘Come with me,’ and a joker came up to me and said, ‘Hello Pat. How are you?’ I looked. I didn’t even know him from a bar of soap. I thought I didn’t. Then we went up about fifty yards and Patrick went in the back where the Resistance movement had a special room. That was the day that Patrick O’Leary, we listened to the English news and he was presented with the DSO. I’ll always remember that part and then from the next day we stopped there. The next day we went up to the doctor’s — Dr Rodocanachi’s place. And from there we stopped for three or four days and we were just watching everything that’s going. Had to be a bit careful when you went out and when you come in. Nobody in Dr Rodocanachi’s house wore shoes. As soon as you went in you took your shoes off and put slippers on. You weren’t allowed to look out the window because the Germans were all over across from his building. And the Germans used to come in because he was their doctor. They wouldn’t, they didn’t think that he was a Resistance man. So all that went on and then they said, ‘Righto.’ He came up and after we were there, and his wife, she was very good. Fanny. She was an excellent woman. And then Patrick arrived and he says, ‘Tomorrow night. Tomorrow we’re all going down at different times and we’re going down to the Pepignan to Canet Plage.’ And I thought we must be going down to the Pyrenees. Any rate that’s what we did. We went down there. And when I was, when we were down there and it was still a bit light I see a lot of people coming in and I saw a joker with crutches. And I got hold of him. I got hold of Derry and I said, ‘I know that joker.’ And he was bent over and everything and I thought, well I’m pretty certain that’s André Postel-Vinay. The joker that helped me right up to Paris and everything. So I said, ‘Right.’ Patrick O’Leary went out. Shone a torch and got nothing. So we stopped the night. The next night he went out and a trawler came in. And on this trawler we all were taken on that trawler. I’ve never been so sick in all my life. You’re only about that high of the water and we went for two days and then I saw it was Patrick O’Leary. When he left me in Marseilles when I was going down to Canet Plage the first time he went back up north and when he got back up north he got caught and they put him in a two storey building on the top with about seven or eight acres of grass all around except below the window where they, he was, he couldn’t walk. He was just about done for and he said, ‘Well, I’m not going to give any names of anyone. I’ll jump out that window.’ They hadn’t tied him up or anything. I’ll go out the window because there’s concrete down below and I’ll kill myself.’ Well, he fell out of it but two days previously they’d cut the grass and then that’s where they piled the grass. Anyway they got him back in and they left him in that room and then there was a big disturbance in Paris and a German doctor from the First World War came in and he said to Andre, ‘See those white coats there? Put one on and go out. They’re all out. There’s a big disturbance in town. Put it on and go.’ That’s what he did and he went around to André Rolet’s place where we first went. And Henri said to him, ‘Come in my man.’ He said, ‘No. Give me some money. I’ve got to get out. My feet are crook,’ and everything like that. And Henri said, and Henri said, ‘No, I’ve only got one bottle of champagne left and we’re going to have it.’ So from there we went for two days on a British destroyer and then to Gibraltar. And when we went to Gibraltar we waited two or three days there and then HMS Malaya, the battleship was there. And those jokers were there and they said, ‘Where are you jokers going?’ And we said, ‘Oh we’re going to England.’ ‘Oh well we haven’t been home for two years,’ they said. The next day we were told that we were going aboard HMS Malaya and we’re going to Greenock. Up by Glasgow. And that’s what we did. We went on there and they said, ‘If we go up there you can have our rum.’ Well, that’s the worst thing they ever said. That rum was strong too. And when we got off the boat at Greenock the squadron leader taking us says you or Patrick O’Leary when we left Canet Plage. He gave Derry and I a whole lot of information to take with us. He wouldn’t give it to the officers. He gave it to us. ‘And give that, when you get to London, give them those papers and give them to no one else.’ So when we got up there and everything was alright. We got off the boat and we were going along Greenock and going along and I said to the squadron leader, ‘That’s a pub there. Gee I’d like a drink.’ And he said, ‘No one’s allowed to talk to you.’ No one’s allowed to do this and no one’s allowed to do that. ‘You’re going in and you’re going to be imprisoned in here.’ ‘Oh.’ So, Derry and I went along. We got past the guard. Went inside. Walked about ten paces and there was another wall that went along. A solid wall that went along but it didn’t go up to the roof. And when we went around that there was two guards standing there and they said, ‘That’s where you’re going in. You’ll be in there for at least one or two days. Then you go by train to London.’ Derry said, ‘Oh righto then.’ So we went in. The door opened that way and we were in there and here was the squadron leader. He was talking to the two guards telling them this, that, that and that. The bottom of the door didn’t have glass in it. It was solid. So Derry and I looked at one another and we got on our hands and knees and we crawled along the floor and we crawled around here and they couldn’t see us. Crawled around there and then we got up. Walked around this wall. Went to the first guard we had passed when we came in and said, ‘Where’s the nearest pub?’ He said, That’s it over there.’ So we went over there and what we did was I asked for two handles of scotch ale. We drank them and Derry said, ‘Two more handles of scotch ale.’ We had just about finished them when a hand fell on each of our shoulders and said, ‘You’re under arrest.’ [laughs] and that was and that’s when I sort of came under Air Commodore [Issot] when I should have come under, actually my CO that was on 101. But 101 had moved south. And the Stirling squadron that was 101 — they had taken it over. So I didn’t know where the 101 Squadron was but he took over and he said, ‘Right. You’re going to do this and do that. Now then, you go over to Sutton Bridge in Anglia and you do a gunnery leader’s course.’ So I did that. Done it. And we came out and after I came out he says, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to go on those Fiat where they’ve got those electric guns and everything on. I’d like to go on to them and night fighters and everything.’ He says, ‘You’ll do what I tell you. I’m running the show.’ And I said, ‘Oh well, ok if you’re running the show that’s ok.’ He said, ‘You’re going back to New,’ he says, ‘You’re going back to New Zealand.’ I said, ‘No I’m not. I’m not going back.’ He said, ‘You’ll do as you’re told.’ And I said, ‘Am I?’ ‘Cause we were always told no matter who the officers were always in the prison you always cause trouble.’ Well I caused trouble with him because he said to me, ‘We were going to give you a medal but we’re not going to give it to you now. ’So I said, ‘Shove it up your backside.’ And that’s what happened there. Derry, he got for his escape all of that and from Germany, he got the Distinguished Conduct Medal. One of the highest medals you could get. He died in 1993 in [unclear] a car accident. He took a heart attack. Even when I got back to England I went with him. We went to see his father and mother and everything and it’s the only time in my life I was playing cards with them and I got a royal flush of hearts and I wouldn’t bet with them because I said, ‘You can’t beat me.’ But no, all the different things that happened in Britain and everywhere you went. Even in New Zealand House or Australia House and yet when you go in there and want to go to the toilet at Australia House they used to be up at the top and when you wanted to go to the toilet you used to go out there in to the passage and the toilets, there were the stairs that led right to the toilet down there. And sitting on the top of the stairs was a notice, “Is your journey really necessary?” So when you look at a lot of the issues that come up there’s a lot of humour come around with it. And I saw one joker who I saw before the war and this joker was talking about — he was a squadron leader and he was talking. Doing a lot of jokes and telling them all the bomb raids he’d been on and everything like that. And Angus said to us, ‘We don’t want to listen to that.’ He was an instructor for all gunners and everything that came in to New Zealand. He was over there right at the beginning of the war. He was only a sergeant then but any rate him and I got on well together. When I got back to England he came and looked me up and he said, ‘Yeah, I heard that you were here so I’ve come to see you.’ He said, ‘I want to tell you this.’ I said, ‘Yeah. What’s that?’ ‘You know that squadron leader that was over there telling us all about all the bomb trips and everything he went in. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I went back to my squadron and I was in charge of instructing everybody on gunnery and everything like that. And sitting in the front seat was this squadron leader.’ He says, ‘After morning tea he sat at the back of the crowd,’ [laughs] he said, ‘He had never been on a trip.’ So when you look at a lot of them, I had another joker that I was brought up in the home with in Palmerston here and he had curly hair and everything like that. He came over in the second lot and I saw him later on and he says, ‘Yes.’ And the other couple with him, he came in a bit later and I said, ‘Where’s Curly?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Haven’t you heard?’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘He went over there as a wireless operator gunner and a cannon shell came through and blew his head off on his first trip.’ So you never know what’s coming. Even on a raid you don’t worry about what you can see. It’s what you can’t see. Because they just look like, you know how you dry onions and you lift it up and you’ve got the bulb up there and you got all this. That’s exactly what they look like, all around. When you don’t hear anything you know you’re not going to live very long. But yes in many cases, yes you’re frightened. You worry. You’ve got a job to do and that’s all it is at that juncture. You’re there to save the crew and the other members of the crew are there to save you. And that’s how you work together. It’s a, it’s a sort of scheme that when you go into it then you all stick together. You’ve got to. Even if a sergeant is in charge of the plane and you have flight lieutenants and squadron leaders in the other part of it they’re still got to abide by the sergeant pilot because he’s the man that knows everything. And as one thing we had, one joker that was there he had to go and when we were going on this Berlin raid on our fourth trip we had this Aussie joker, second pilot and Mickey Allen said to me one day, ‘Pat.’ ‘What Mickey?’ ‘Can you see that bloody Aussie?’ And I turned my turret. I said, ‘Yes I can see him.’ ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘Can you?’ I say, ‘Yes I can see.’ ‘Where is he?’ I said, ‘He’s below the stretcher.’ In the Wellington bomber there and where the astrodome is, and there’s a galvanised pipe that goes down there and there’s your toilet. The toilet is chemical and the seat’s on the top but inside it there’s also when you sit on it the two wooden pieces are there. When you press down on there those two open up. So Mickey said, ‘What’s he doing?’ I said, ‘He’s just undoing his belt.’ ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘Right. You know don’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ Anyhow, I waited there and he got down there and he took his trousers down and he got on there and he hung on to this galvanised bar that was there and he just, when he just started to smile I said, ‘Now Mickey,’ and Mickey threw the plane three hundred feet, four hundred feet and of course the Aussie grabbed this near enough. One part was below and the other part was above and Mickey says, ‘How’s he doing?’ And I said, ‘Oh he’s not enjoying it. Oh it’s alright now,’ I said, ‘He’s getting up,’ [laughs] So when you look at a lot of the things it doesn’t make any difference. It’s the war. They’re terrible things and what happens in them but in this case there is always one thing that you do. If you’re in an aircraft, if you’re in there to do that you work in with the crew because any minute you could be shot down. And you had to work together to be a crew. You also, in a lot of cases all went drinking together. It didn’t make any difference where you went to drink etcetera. Everything like that. But yes I enjoyed, if I had to do it again, yes I would do it again. It was one of those things that at that time all things were totally different. Even in France when the Germans walked into Paris to take over, the number of Frenchmen that came out in their SS uniforms. Andre Postel-Vinay told me that. But I didn’t know his name until about 1965/70 when Jack Warboys, our operator/gunner, when he went over and visited him. That’s when we started to find out. And then a lot of people used to write to us and want to know, ‘Do you know these people that helped us? Can you find out?’ This and that and that’s what we did. Quite a few other jokers that I had there. They all, that’s what they did to find out there to help those people do it. Then on top of it as soon as the war finished [pause] they decided that the RAF would do something for all the Belgians, Dutch, Norwegians, Greek, French, some Germans, Italians etcetera who all got injured and badly injured etcetera and everything. That they would do something to help them in their new life. So in 1948 we formed the Royal Air Force Escaping Society. And what we did we all paid a day’s wages a year. The RAF went around all the stations in England and Scotland and Wales and everywhere and they charged an extra shilling for the dances on the Friday and the Saturday and all that money went into the RAFES to pay for all these people. And they used to write to us and let us know. They got a Christmas parcel hamper. They also got birthday presents etcetera etcetera. They also were sent to hospital and fixed up as well as they can. What they could. And then about 1970/75. They had that much money in there that they turned around and they told the people of these that were injured and everything with their family they’ll pay for their sons and daughters to go to university. And that never finished until 1995. Now then to top the other part off with what you said I went over and I saw Michel [unclear] in Village Les Moines. And he told me that if ever he had time he would cut the throat of the Aussie joker because when he went over to Paris as a trip to see him he called monsieur [unclear] there was only five in the Wellington bomber that crashed here. He was the pilot. And they gave him a big write up, and everything. So Mr [ ] said that and when I got back this joker Christianson he rung me up and wanted to find out what was what and he said, ‘I’m going over to see him.’ Well, I says, ‘You go over to see him.’
[recording paused for a visitor]
MS: Pat, can you tell us about your, the Bomber Command clasp and your medals?
HH: I had — about medals. Rather strange for a lot of people who came back from the war because all those of ‘39/45 never had their name or number printed on them because Peter Fraser the prime minister said in 1945 he was not going to print all them on all their medals because it was going to cost too much money. All the 1914/18 war, yes. And if anybody like that joker we had here, you heard about him didn’t you? He was the president of the Otaki RSA and he had medals and everything and he hadn’t been away to the war. And he had those medals and they had no numbers on them. So if you lose your medals, I’ve had a lot of medals given to me by different people that have a number and that on them and I send them to the RSA etcetera etcetera and they find out who are the people that own them. And some of them that they have they’re living in England now. And that’s what happened. A lot of our people that came back from the Second World War would not apply for their medals. And a lot of them still haven’t applied for their medals. And when the Minister of Defence here, Mr Coleman at the time he put something in the house and he said about it and everything. I wrote him a letter and I said, Mr Coleman you don’t go back far enough. 1914/18 medals were presented to each man that came off the ship by the minister of defence and it had their name and number on them. When all the people came back from overseas in the ‘39/45 war Peter Fraser says they apply for them. And I’m not going to put their numbers and names on them because it’ll cost too much money. And that’s what happens today with a lot of them. So, I see a lot of people around who have got medals and they’re sort of getting them put on themselves. So with a lot of them that I applied for I was sort of turned down. I just mentioned something, even down at Wellington when I was sent to Upper Hutt somewhere and when I sent down they said, no. That’s your medals. That’s all there is. So, I’ve never sort of applied. I go to the high school here. I do the Anzac parade here. Every May we do it. And a lot of them over there always say, ‘You haven’t got your Bomber Command medal. You haven’t got your other medals. You’re supposed to have them.’ And I say, ‘Yeah, but I’ve applied for them and that’s been it. No. I’ve heard nothing.’ And I wrote when I was given a Wellington bomber photo of the old days I gave it to a joker who was going to do it up and photo it up and it was going to go into the RSA here. Well he lost it. And I wrote to England to the Royal Air Force in command to see if I could get a photo. And I had the letter returned. It’s still back in there somewhere. So, there’s a, there’s a lot of things you know around that sort of happened that you just say, ‘Right. I’m not going to muck around with that.’ etcetera etcetera etcetera. So I just let it go. But other than that, yes. There is certain ones that you get and like I say, like this plate that they give and they did that through the Royal Air Force Escaping Society. And Elizabeth Harrison, you’ve heard of her? She used to be in charge of this for years. She just died recently and she was ninety three, I believe. And she always used to write to me and say this person wants you to cover them etcetera etcetera etcetera and they write to me and I write to them and they let them know. And they, all of them, and one of them from Belgium wrote to me and said — you know a joker who’s a New Zealander. I was in the SAS with him. Do you know where he is? And I said well the only thing that I know his parents are in Church Street here. So I went and saw them and they said no. He’s in Vienna. So I wrote to the University in Vienna and they wrote to me and said no he is now in Wellington. So I wrote to Wellington and Wellington wrote to me and told me he is now at Massey University. So I saw him and we had a talk etcetera etcetera. And that was about what they were talking because this New Zealander was in the SAS. And they always knew that there was something crook abut Three Gun Patton and Eisenhower and he wanted to know, with the accident that Patton had that it was jacked up. At a certain place where they were supposed to stop with these special trucks and let his car go through and they didn’t stop and they smashed it and killed him. Because Three Gun ‘Patton had a lot of arguments with Eisenhower. He was a man that when he went out he did it. I know he used to push everybody into it who was going to go ahead. He always beat everybody wherever he wanted to go and everything but there was one thing about him. When he went to do anything he’d even be there with his men, and that’s how. A bit like Montgomery to a certain degree. But yes, it’s when you look at a lot of the issues and everything that happened I always look at the one thing that I think is the most loyal to me, and I think to a hell of a lot of people who don’t know anything about it, is the Resistance movement who are the unsung heroes. And there’s hundreds of them that were shot. And that joker that said to me in Paris, in Marseilles when we escaped from Fort de la Revere and he says, ‘Hello Pat,’ and when I went around and went in there he was a joker, Davidson. And he was an Australian. Later on I learned that he was helping a priest and a, two nuns etcetera and everything and they got caught. And when they got caught they got the orders from Hitler that there was too much of this had been going on and they sent them to Buchenwald and put them over a chair and chopped their heads off. And that’s that’s jokers name was Davidson. So when you look at a lot, and those men no matter where you go or what you do they’re there every minute when they’re with you and they make sure that you do exactly what they, is it, you take that, “’Allo. ‘Allo.” You know that French that went on. A lot of that stuff that you look in there and it looks like a lot of its tripe. A lot of its true. And a lot of it is done by a lot of our people. You take the legless pilot. Now he done a lot of harm to a lot of people and when he got caught and he went in and then he escaped with his boots didn’t he? And they got him right through the German lines in occupied France, through the Germans and got him through and got him right around there and put him in to a little village and said to him, ‘Stop here. Don’t go out for a week.’ After a couple of days he decided to go for a walk and he got caught. All those people in that village were shot. And that’s when he went back into the camp again they took his legs away. So when you look at it it doesn’t matter who you are or what you are when those jokers are doing it they are working twenty four hours a day, every second of the day and everything to help you. And when you, they tell you to do something you do it because they know what is what. And they know, and in many cases we were in Vierzon. We went in to Vierzon. One part of it. And when we went into Vierzon they had a toilet. That toilet was there and it had six in. Nothing at the back. And it was only from here up to here and there was a Frenchman in there with his girlfriend and she was leaning on the top talking to him. When we went in André Postal-Vinay, went there, I went here and the Aussie joker he was here. And the Aussie joker turned around and said this French girl instead of being this way she turned around and went this way you see. And when she went around the Aussie said to me, he said, ‘She’s not going to see what I’ve got,’ and instead of going like that he went like that [laughs] So, when you think a lot of things that happened etcetera its quite humorous and when you think of it, but it could be serious. But that’s what I was saying. Even in Marseilles. Even when they pulled the curtains back when we were at Dr Rodocanachi there was young girls going to school and when they were going down there opposite where the Germans were living she stopped and we could see out this window view it over there. And she opened her bag that she had and she took a brown paper bag out of it and she split it right open. I can still see her doing it. And then she got into the gutter, lifted her dress, took her pants down and done a poo. And when she got up she got the brown paper bag, put it over the top and pressed down the edges. So when you, and I’ve seen others even in Marseilles where a girlfriend’s with her boyfriend and they go around the corner. He wants to go to the toilet he just swings around the corner, takes it out and just wees on the wall. So in a lot of cases it’s surprising what really happens when you don’t know much about it. So when you’re in that position then you’ve, whoever’s taking you it’s their life at stake not yours. Because if they get caught and you get caught you only go as a prisoner of war. They get shot, or. And some of them with some of the books they had. The lady in America. She wrote to me and did it and some of those jokers that were caught they tortured them with chains. Those small chains like that and that’s what they lashed them with. And not with whips. So when you look at a lot of the things. Even their fingernails and everything like that you know, eh. It’s, you can’t really understand. The only thing I really understand from my time, previous times until the present and with human beings. The human begins have done nothing but kill one another. Even when you get back to Alexander the Great. So, yes that’s the sort of issues that I look at and I cover but I always look at those people that helped me. They couldn’t have done a better job and yet they lost their lives. And a lot of them even if they got caught even their wives and children were taken and shot. So, yes — and Cole he was one joker that was there with the Patrick O’Leary Line well he was of them that turned jokers in. And Roger Legionaire. He was another. He turned them in. He turned Patrick O’Leary in in 1943 and that’s when the Resistance Line started to fold up. And the little old lady that used to live in Toulouse who used to be his helper the Germans wouldn’t have anything to do with her because they reckoned she was a cranky old lady but she took over running the line after Patrick O’Leary was caught and the Germans didn’t even know. So when you look at it it’s all that help that you get from all those. Even the joker, the Tartan Pimpernel from Scotland. He had a church outside Paris and when the Germans came in he locked the church up, took the key out and gave the key to the people next door to him. And he says, ‘I’ll be back after the war to open the church again.’ And that’s what, you know when you see those jokers and what — he used to come in with us and he’d bring, he used to be our minister for the faith and he used to bring different things in for us. That’s how we used to got a lot of the issues. And he’d bring something special in for one or two of the guards that he would know and I would see him give him that and the guard would let him in. So it all works on faith and what you know. And you still end up the best of friends. Yes. And yes I’ve — no I’ve only been back once to France by them. And when I got back to Monsieur [unclear] that time I was in in 1995 I went back there for the government because they said there was no Resistance movement in France during the war. And when I got to, in there he came over and he said to me, ‘You know that German that came in and spoke perfect English with machine guns and that if he finds out he’s only going to shoot us all. Well,’ he said another joker came back three months later. He was an older German and he had a machine gun and a sergeant with him and he said to these people in village Les Moines and Monsieur [unclear] ‘Have you see those six airmen or anything?’ And he says, ‘No.’ And then he was looking down at their shoes and the other bits that were around. And what they had in their shoes was the laces off our parachutes. So it just shows you what can happen which could get you into a lot of trouble if you don’t know much about, etcetera or anything. But this joker said, ‘You won’t be hearing from me again. That’s the finish of it. We won’t be coming back.’ So it just depends who it comes back and who it is. A lot of Germans that were in there in the First World War quite a few of them were very, very good with a lot of people that they were. Doctors and everything like that. They helped a lot of people get away and it’s those jokers when they look at what was going on. Even when you look at the White Mouse, even when they married and her husband and when they married in Marseilles etcetera and everything and they were in Czechoslovakia. And they were having, I believe it was their honeymoon. I’m not quite certain but they turned around and when the Germans went into Czechoslovakia they had pregnant women there and were taking the foetuses out. That’s what made her as tough as what anybody could be and yet you couldn’t meet a better lady. She did everything that went around and everything you know. Nothing was too much trouble. She was caught a couple of times but got out of it. Patrick O’Leary helped her once when she was in Vichy France and the gendarmes had her. And Patrick O’Leary went in and said that’s his wife. Prove it. Showed, you know what he had so they gave him to her and she got out. And she’d been in there two days and they were going to send her away. He took her out as his wife and she went back to doing the job she’d originally done. And all the other things that she did when her husband was caught in 1942. He was only a vegetable in the end when they tried to find out where she was. And lived but he never let on. And on the 18th of October 1943 they shot him. So they sent her, Patrick O’Leary sent her back to England urgently in case she did something silly after hearing he’d been killed. So they sent her back to England and she went on a special course and then they sent her back in charge of the Maquis — south east of France. And when they went down there there’s one thing about the Frenchmen they don’t like a woman to be in charge. So when she went down there and they met her. They’d done anything, yes. And they said alright, and she said, ‘Oh yes,’ and she said, you have a joker around here that has been turning some of our men in from the Maquis and we don’t like them.’ They said, ‘Yes he’s married and he’s got a young son.’ He’s quite a nice joker. And they said, well. And she said, you, you and you are going out to see him. And they went out where they were holding him and when she went in she said are you Mr so and so and so and so and he says yes and she pulled out the gun and went bang bang bang bang. Shot him dead. The Maquis then said they would follow her wherever she went and that’s exactly what they’d done. They did. She would go in and do them from Grenoble and all down through that area. Down to Nice and down that area. She would take two or three hundred men or might be four hundred men but she would go against a German garrison of four or five thousand and they’d go in, just about shoot them all up and then they’d vanish. They’d be gone. Thirty, forty, fifty mile away, or a hundred mile away. And then they’d go into another. And that’s what the Germans didn’t like because she was killing more of them and she was hardly, and they were hardly killing any of her men. But she was a woman that didn’t like anyone to be cruel. And yet when you look at her and what she did to some of them it was either him or her and as a lot of people say, when you go to war, a joker would say to you, ‘I couldn’t shoot that German.’ And I would say to them, ‘Well if you didn’t shoot him he’d shoot you. So what’s the difference? It’s war.’ There’s a difference between war and peace. You can get away sometimes with murder in war but you won’t get away with it in peace. So when you look at all these things and war, even now, even in war with everything that happens look at all that comes out eventually from war that’s present day. Look at all those people that got burned and that New Zealander turned around where they could do those skin grafts and everything like that. Because some of those people right at the beginning, you know and you saw it and everything it was it was just scarred. They looked terrible you know, when you. Especially when you get some of that excess fuel burning. Yes. So, other than that no. I’ve, well —
[pause]
MS: What do you think about the way Bomber Command got treated after the war, Pat?
HH: Got?
MS: The way Bomber Command was treated after the war. Do you have —
HH: Terrible. Especially what Bomber Harris and what he had done and then even king George the VI’s was one of them that was against when they bombed Bremner, well not, yeah and they blew that city to pieces. And it had more objects of the past etcetera than anywhere in Germany. But it didn’t make any difference when you look at it. Because look what Germany did to Britain. Look what the Germans would have done to us if, if Hitler hadn’t had changed his methods of the war with his different planes with the different bombs and everything that he had. Or that he didn’t completely try to control everyone. It’s something I don’t think we’ll ever know but I will say this. If it hadn’t have been for Bomber Harris then yes he should have, after the war he should have been recognised for it. Yeah. I’ve always done that and when they did that one in 2012 I was going to go see if could get over to that service for him even though he came after me. Why? I was crook [laughs] Yes. But I thought if ever anything else sort of came up and I could and it was possible then I would apply because all my crew are dead now. All the people that I knew in the camp are all passed on. All the people, the majority of them that I knew in the Resistance movements and that, of Patrick O’Leary and all those others. They’ve all passed on to this day and when you look, you know, at what, and then Patrick O’Leary he went over to Korea afterward. Yet looking at the joker he doesn’t look like he would be able to do anything. The way he just walks along, etcetera etcetera etcetera. Yeah. No, I’ve looked back at it and I look at a lot of issues. I see a lot of people that even I’d had some time in camps that you couldn’t even trust. You’d have to be careful or otherwise you’d be shot yourself. It’s one of those things that it doesn’t matter what country you belong to or what country you’re in, or If there’s a war on or anything then there’s going to be a lot of people who are going to save their own necks if they can get away with it. So I’m just pleased that I’ve been through what I have been through and I’m still sort of going on. Although this Christmas hasn’t been the best was it? You didn’t hear about Christmas did you? I have a pacemaker. And I had to get it checked on the 30th of December this year. I’d had it since the 13th of June 2013. My daughter said, ‘Take this stuff up to George for Christmas,’ the next day. And I said, ‘Oh yeah I’ll do that, and then I went in. So I picked up my doctor’s prescription for pills. Put it in my pocket and I went here, went up, went in [unclear] Street. I went up Victoria Avenue and there was Newton Street over on the right. I went over there and I completely blacked out and I went across the left hand lane. I was lucky. No cars, no people, no lorries, no buses or anything were there. I hit the fence. I don’t know that. I had blacked out. Went along that and stopped in a little alleyway and then I woke up and this was right up here. That’s the only injury I got. My car is a complete write off. You wouldn’t believe it. And I’ve been down to Wellington here. They flew me down there. I got a new pacemaker so, and they found my old pacemaker had packed up. Just went wrong and I didn’t know it and that just shows you that if you’re completely blacked out and got your belt on you won’t get hurt.
MS: Pat, can I just ask you do you still have your logbook?
HH: No. I haven’t got my, no, I never got my logbook. No. Well, I haven’t got it because I never got it back from England. I got all other things. Flying boots and suits and that, but, and personal things and photos and a lot of photos were not even mine. So [pause] What about the —
MS: Do you still have all those things, Pat?
HH: Hmmn?
MS: Do you still have all those items? Have you still got them, your boots?
HH: No. They’ve all gone but I had my uniforms and everything and they eventually went. I gave them to the joker that was a squadron leader here and he was in charge of the museum out at Ohakea. And he had a plumbing business in [unclear] Street. And he was in charge of the brevet. Oh I just can’t think of his name at the present, yes.
Other: Tony [Pirod]
HH: Oh that’s it. Tony [Pirod]
MS: Ok.
HH: Yes. And he said to me why haven’t you joined it? When I went in one day ’48. I had some letters given me by Nancy Wake, she was an Australian in Newcastle, and she’d asked me to give them to the special New Zealander coming out in the air force from England. To give them to the Brevet Club to give to him because they were having a meeting. So I went up and I gave them to him and he said to me, ‘Ah yes. Oh that’s alright.’ He says, ‘Ok I’ll do that. I’ll give them to him.’ Now then, he says when [unclear] was in an insurance company now he says, ‘When you come in here and talk to me again you call me sir.’ I said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ He says, ‘You call me sir,’ he said, ‘I was an officer in the air force.’ I said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ I says, ‘The war’s over.’ And he said, ‘That’s what I’m telling you. Oh by the way,’ he said, ‘You haven’t joined the Brevet Club. The Air Force Club.’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘When are you going to join it?’ And I put my hand in my pocket. I took it out. I said, ‘Have a read of that.’ And that was the one for the Royal Air Force Escaping Society, to join it in 1948. I said, I’m going to join that because it’s something to do for people that have helped us and we can help them. And for you at the present you can stick it. I’ve been to Christchurch and down there quite a few others already. I’m not a member of the Brevet. But I’m a voluntary member down there. They joined us up. And they had one joker that came in when we were down there. I always remembered he was a squadron leader and he came in. I was talking to the president and everything down there and he said, yes, and the president of the club says, ‘No ranks or anything down here. We don’t have any of them.’ The joker said, ‘Well I was a squadron leader and I like to be called sir.’ And he had a handle in front of him and we all had a handle and outside this office which was on the south east corner of the Christchurch Aerodrome they says, ‘Do you? You like that?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Yeah I do and I want to keep it too.’ They said, ‘Have you finished?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ They said, ‘Come with us will you. Bring your beer.’ And we went out and around the back they had a round thing around and there was a big pond that was about that deep. They went out there etcetera and everything and while we were all out there the president said to the joker, you and you and you. ‘You know what to do don’t you?’ One grabbed one leg, one the other, one the other arm and one the other and they chucked him in to the centre of this pond. And when the joker came out he said, ‘I see what you mean,’ [laughs] But that’s what I say in many cases when you get a lot of them in that it’s, it’s friendship really that you’re going about. I don’t care if I care if I go in to a place and etcetera etcetera something like that and someone comes along and says this or that or something else. I say oh yes that’s alright. But I go out to Ohakea now and again and when I go out there I have a talk to them and everything. But what surprised me at Ohakea when I did go out there when they had the air force nationals on and we went into the sergeant’s mess, the number of women and the number of men who were warrant officers and flight sergeants. In our day when we were there we had only to say, ‘bloody,’ and we were out for a week. They were using every swear word going. Even the women that were serving the beer. And I just looked at it and the other joker with me, he said, ‘Well, I’ve just about heard everything. Things have changed.’ So I expect we have to put up with the change. Sergeant. Flight sergeant. Yes, I was a sergeant all my trips until I got back to England and I was made a flight sergeant from then on. And I was a flight sergeant when I came back here and when I got back here the Venturas arrived and Squadron Leader Hogg wanted me to be his gunner because we were going up to the islands. And the warrant officer was going to be his navigator so he says we’re going up there Pat and when we used to go in he wouldn’t let me salute him and we would sit and have a cup of tea and everything with him, you know. And we were getting on. And then he said well, then it came through. Everybody going to the islands in 1943 had to have a medical examination to see if they were fit. So many were coming back and hadn’t done anything. So he said to me, ‘You’ve been for your medical yet Pat?’ I said, ‘No. I’ll go later on.’ He said, ‘Righto then.’ So I said, I went out and saw him one day and when I came in all of a sudden this pilot officer that come in that was going to be the navigator he, he came out and he said, and the doctor said, ‘I’m sorry to tell you sir he won’t be going with you. He’s not allowed to fly.’ So he says, ‘Oh Pat’s here,’ he says, ‘Give him, take him in and check him will you because he’s going with me to the islands.’ I went in. I wasn’t in there very long and he came out and said, ‘You’re grade ten. You’re not allowed to fly.’ And I was flying around with drogues and everything going when I was out here and in the armoury. And that finished that so when that happened then there was a whole lot of people then coming back from England that had been over there for a while as instructors etcetera and everything. And so I went to Wellington and they said right, I was essential industry and I went back on to the railways. So yes when you look at all the different things that went on at different things like that it’s, it takes you a while to get used to war years. It takes you a hell of a lot longer to get used to peace time because in wartime even and more particularly if you’ve been a prisoner of war you’ve got to be a trouble maker all the time. You’ve got to do something even if you go into solitary confinement. It upsets them. They think their job, guards are not doing their job right and everything. Yes, it’s a — I had one joker who was, when I was in Fort de la Revere, he came in and he said to me you and you, and Derry was lying on his bed and he said to me, ‘And you. You’re the biggest trouble makers around,’ and this was this corporal. The joker with the Alsatian dog. And he said, ‘I’ve had enough of you and I’ve got into a lot of trouble through you two and everything,’ and he spat at me. So I gave him a good New Zealand spat and he went and told his commanding officer and the commanding officer came in and I went under arrest. And he said he never spat at me and Derry went into the hearing and Derry says, ‘Yes he did spit at Pat.’ And the CO says, ‘Well if he says he didn’t spit at you he didn’t.’ Sixty days solitary confinement I got. I went in at eleven stone six and I came out at six stone eight. But the only thing that keeps you going from going mad I’d look back on my life when I was a kid. And the jokers used to work around. They used to get big books like that, about that thick and they’d to cut the inside out of it and they’d put tucker in it. And where the guard was above the prison outside they would run up the stairs run around and come around and everything. They’d do that three or four times. When they came up the third time and do it they’d open the book and chuck some tucker in. And that’s how you worked in with each other. And yes I’d look at a lot of those jokers and what they did. And we all, we still had a laugh even right to the end. Yes.
MS: Can we just confirm Pat so you were in 101 Squadron?
HH: Hmmn?
MS: You were in 101 Squadron?
HH: 101 yeah.
MS: 101 and you were a flight sergeant?
HH: Yes.
MS: And you did nine ops?
HH: Nine ops. Yeah.
MS: Nine ops. Where did you go on those operations?
HH: Well at Kiel Canal, at Kiel Canal, Karlsruhe, Bremner was one. It was only a short one we had for there. And then we went down through the Ruhr and when you went down through the Ruhr it was as bright as going down the Ruhr in the middle of the night than it is here. And they had all the searchlights and everything for miles and miles and miles, you know. So, yes and all those other ones down south and around there that I went to. The nearest ones I went when we went was down the Ruhr. And then all the others were down towards the south east or the south west of Germany itself there. I got all the names up somewhere in there but other than that — no. I, and the last one of course I wouldn’t have forgotten that one [laughs] and yes and the crew you couldn’t have got a better crew. With the English jokers I was with they were exceptional. The only one that I had the bit of trouble with was the Aussie second pilot. He wanted to be the boss of everything. And he died the year before last over in Aussie. Yes. He’s [pause] so when you look at it and Mickey Allen. The other four after we went to St Hippolyte as a prisoner of war the others went and that four hours that we were deaf and dumb and they were trying to find out this and that that gave them the four hours to get with their joker over the Pyrenees and then into Barcelona. And those four got right over to there. But the unusual part about it is I tried to get Mickey Allen. Saxon that came back with me I tried to get him later on and he lived at Stoke on Trent. But never heard of him again and all the others that were in it that were in our crew they never heard of Mickey Allen and that again. So whether it was just too much in the end or whatever happened or whether he went on night fighters and was killed I don’t know. And now I’m, when I look I think of that time. The way the world was going. That’s why we, a lot of people joined up. Being in New Zealand we, freedom to us, freedom of speech and everything is a big issue. We like to do a lot. I know today that a lot of the issues that we did years ago they pass laws today to stop it. But in those days when you got it and the populations weren’t that big everybody sort of worked in to help one another. There wasn’t a lot of money around and when I went back on to the railways, when I first went on to the railways before I went overseas my wages at that time was one and a penny farthing an hour. So that’s only about fifteen pennies. So yes it was big money to us at that time because everything was quite reasonable. It’s only since we’ve seemed to have got into dollars and cents that we seem to sort of, and I should add to it the little card. The fantastic — that you can book everything to. That has a big bearing on life today. Because you’ve only got to look at your TV and see how many sales all the big companies have practically every week. So when you look at it you’ve got to change with the times. You’ve got to go with the times because a lot of the issues that you did in your day are irrelevant today. And with the issue that changes a lot to me was when I asked a young lad a while back, ‘Isn’t it marvellous that they can send something into space and they can land it on Jupiter or they can land it on a rock in space. Don’t you reckon that’s marvellous?’ And this nine year old kiddie said, ‘What’s marvellous about that?’ So things have changed appreciably. Yes. So as it is I just go along and I do what I did in the air and what we did for those people who were injured during the war for us. That’s why I do a lot for a lot of people around here and they gave me a citation through the mayor here for helping people etcetera etcetera. And he gave me a big copy of it. I’ve got it hanging in the room there and I was one of six that got it. And that’s what it’s all about. It doesn’t matter who it is or what it is you’ve got to help. You might not get anything back but you’re not looking for anything. You never had anything much when you first started. And when you wanted to get anything for yourself years ago you used to save up and then get it. Today you don’t have to if you don’t want to because then they’ll turn around and they’ll take the twelve and a half percent off. So, yes it’s one thing I think and something that you’ve got to do. You’ve got to go along with the times and it’s also working that way that we got a lot of people in the governments that are a lot younger than in our day. So I just believe what they say goes in one ear and out the other.
MS: We’re about to run out of recording time so we’re going to wrap the interview up now.
HH: Ok.
MS: I just want to say thank you very much indeed.
HH: That’s ok. Yeah.
MS: It’s been a real pleasure talking to you today.
HH: Yeah.
MS: And the interview concludes here.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AHicktonH170113
PHicktonH1701
Title
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Interview with Pat Hickton
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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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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
Format
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02:10:38 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
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Miriam Sharland
Date
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2017-01-13
Description
An account of the resource
Pat Hickton was born in New Zealand. His mother passed away when he was young and he spent his childhood in a number of foster and children’s homes until he started working on the railway. He volunteered for the RAF and began training as a rear gunner. His aircraft was shot down and he and his crew evaded for a time with the help of the resistance until they were captured and became a prisoner of war. He managed to escape and make a home run withe the help of the Pat O’Leary Line.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
New Zealand
Andorra
France--Perpignan
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
101 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
escaping
evading
Ju 88
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Oakington
Resistance
sanitation
searchlight
shot down
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/275/3428/PHughesAM1507.1.2.jpg
dc0f50c199ecb3d1a768a5afff785dff
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/275/3428/AHughesAM151001.2.mp3
1e4c41fe15e110071c21f1366db28182
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Hughes, Angas
Angas Hughes
Angas M Hughes
A M Hughes
A Hughes
Description
An account of the resource
29 items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Angas Murray Hughes (b. 1923, 417845 Royal Australian Air Force), his logbook, prisoner of war identity cards and dog tags, two memoirs and 21 photographs. Angas Hughes flew 32 operations as a bomb aimer with 467 Squadron from RAF Waddington. One of the aircraft he flew in was Lancaster R5868, S-Sugar, now at RAF Hendon. He was shot down in September 1944 and became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Angas Hughes and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-01
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Hughes, AM
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: This is an interview being carried out at the Riseholme College for the International Bomber Command memorial. The interviewer is Clare Bennett and the interviewee is Mr Angas Hughes, who was with 467 Squadron, and it is the 1st of October 2015. Well Angas, um, an Australian who, um, joined the war at the age of eighteen. But what was your home life like in Australia? What did you do as a youngster?
AH: Oh, as a youngster, I naturally I went to school but in the beginning we were partly brought up in the first of the — or last of the big depression but fortunately I came from a family that, er, didn’t suffer that much during that time. I after, after leaving the primary school I went to a college and I passed my examinations there and, er, for a short time I worked at the Imperial Chemical Industries that led eventually, on my eighteenth birthday, I joined the Air Force Reserve.
CB: What year would that be?
AH: It was 1941 and I was then — eventually I was called up on I think it was 12th of June 1942 but in the meantime between ‘41 and ‘42 we were on the reserve. We went to, um, a high school under the RWAF and doing navigation. We did exercises on, on maps etcetera until we joined up in, er, until we were called up in 18— 1942.
CB: What were your feelings about joining up? You know, was it adventure? Was it because everyone else was doing it. What, what inspired you to join?
AH: Well I think times then were a little bit different to what they are now and it was all king and country in those days. And, er, my father was in the, er, First World War and, er, I thought it was my duty to, er, join up and I was a little bit, er, dubious [?] with Biggles at that time and the Air Force was the one for me.
CB: And your family were happy for you to join or did they discourage you in any way?
AH: Oh, they tried to discourage me but, er, at the age of eighteen we had the option to volunteer so I did. They weren’t too happy about it which I think all parents were the same.
CB: So you embarked at eighteen on a ship and — for England, is that right?
AH: Yeah, we trained in Australia. We flew in a — navigation school was down at Bowen [?], the original ATS was at Victor Harbour, and from there we went to the navigation school at Mount Gambier flying in Ansons. And then we went to the bombing and air gunnery school in Port Pirie flying Fairey Battles. And the last one was at the Aeradio [?] School in Nhill, Victoria, flying Ansons there. And by that time we, we had finished our training in Australia and eventually we were posted overseas. We were on our way to Canada but when we got to — we went across the, er, Pacific. It took about six weeks to get across there. We landed at San Francisco. We went by Pullman up to Camp Myles Standish at Taunton, Massachusetts. We stopped there for about six weeks and eventually we caught the, er, Queen Elizabeth from New York to Greenock in Scotland which took about six days to get across.
CB: Were you worried at that time on that crossing, U-boats etcetera or was it just youth and —
AH: I think it was just youth and also it was such a fast ship that that was fairly safe. We had no escort or anything. And from there we went to, er, Brighton, down on the south c— down on the coast. We were there for a few weeks and eventually we finished up at Whitby Bay doing a six weeks commando course with the RAF Regiment and from there we were posted to, er, West Freugh Scotland for bombing, and then to an OTU at Lichfield where we were crewed up. From there we went to — we were there for three months at, er, Lichfield. Then we went to Swinderby, Scampton for a month training on Lancs, eventually to, er, 467 Squadron at Waddington.
CB: And your other crew members, were they Australians?
AH: Six, there were six Australians and the flight engineer was an English— Englishman or Welshman, his name was Taffy [slight laugh], Taffy Barnes [?]. I don’t know what his Christian name was. [laugh]
CB: So you started on what amounted to thirty-two ops so what were the sort of raids that you did?
AH: The first one we was with S for Sugar. We went to a place called to Portiers down in the south of France and, er, from there on I did Germany, ops on Germany and also on various places in France, mainly flying-bomb sites in France, and marshalling yards.
CB: And you were a bomb aimer at this time?
AH: I was the bomb aimer all of the time, yes.
CB: And you were happy with that or did you —
AH: Oh yes. I was there. I had no choice then. [laugh]
CB: Didn’t you yearn to be a pilot or anything?
AH: No. No, I wanted to be a navigator right from the beginning so bomb aimer was, was fairly close to — well we were navigators as well as bomb aimers so, er, I used to always plot the course myself as far as — to know where we were anyway, plus the navigator, I was able to assist him along the line.
CB: Was this in, er, Lancasters?
AH: This was in Lancasters, yes.
CB: Did you fly in anything else on the bombing raids or —
AH: No, I only flew with Lancs on bombing raids. On training we flew on Wellingtons and St— and Stirlings for training plus the original Oxfords and, and Ansons.
CB: So you, you flew in, er, Stirlings?
AH: Yes.
CB: Because they were notorious. What did you feel about them?
AH: I never like them myself. The pilot didn’t like them. None of the crew liked them but fortunately we were only there for a month. [laugh]
CB: So it was a relief to get on to Lancasters.
AH: Oh yes. They were a beautiful plane. Plenty of — they were fairly easy to fly apparently or the pilot said that they were fairly easy to fly. He had done flying before the war. He was much older than what I was. He was the oldest of the crew.
CB: How was old was he? Do you remember ‘cause you was what about twenty at this time?
AH: I was nineteen, twenty, yes I was twenty ‘cause I had my twenty-first birthday after I was shot down. Dusty would have been twenty-nine to thirty.
CB: He was the pilot?
AH: He was the pilot yeah. And, er, on our thirty-second trip we got shot down on the way to Karlsruhe. We were at eighteen thousand feet. That was out last trip actually I believe. We had the gunnery — the gunnery leader of A Flight of 467 squadron on board. I think Clarkson [?] had done sixty-two missions.
CB: As the bomb aimer, um, it’s obviously your responsibility to drop the bomb where it should be dropped and you have to take over the plane, not flying obviously, but you have to give the pilot the orders to drop.
AH: I gave the pilot instructions where I [unclear]. Also the, er, bomb aimer right from the beginning he would assist the navigator by map reading where he could and giving points and also the direction of searchlights over, over various, er, targets and that, dodging the searchlights, which, er, stopped the flak getting too close to us.
CB: ‘Cause you would have to fly straight and level for the target point wouldn’t you? What, what did you feel when you saw the flak coming and, you know, the lights and —
AH: Well your, your mind was mainly on the target and bomb site. It was — I suppose the fear was there but, er, you didn’t actually feel it. You had a job to do and if you didn’t do it probably that, er, that might have been the end.
CB: You obviously had confidence in your — Dusty the pilot. You were a good crew together?
AH: Ah, yes. We had a terrific — the seven of us were, were all great friends. When we went out we all went out together and we were very — all just like a group together all the time.
CB: A band of brothers if I can pinch an Americanism?
AH: Mm?
CB: Band of brothers?
AH: Yeah that could be the term to use, yes.
CB: Do you remember before you were — the flak got you, do you remember near misses or the — you know, any —
AH: Ah yes. We had — I remember once at — we went to a — it was about our seventh op I think — it was an oil place at Gelsenkirchen in Germany. We nearly got the chop there that night and with the fighters but fortunately we were lucky to get out of it.
CB: Did the gunners have to fire or was it manoeuvres or —
AH: I think it was mainly manoeuvres we got out with the rear gunner. He could tell where — or he would have instructed the pilot as he, as he tried to knock him out of the air.
CB: So we come up to the, the operation, your thirty-second, how come you did an extra two? Do you know ‘cause the usual —
AH: I don’t know. It’s just that we — well, I always thought with the tour was thirty but they must have made it longer or — I’m not sure, but I knew that was gonna be our last, that to have the gunnery leader on board.
CB: Mm. So as you neared your thirtieth operation you didn’t think, ‘Oh this is it, this is our last one,’ and then you’re given two more?
AH: No they hadn’t told us.
CB: Right.
AH: They didn’t tell us that it was on the thirtieth trip it was our last. They may have even extended the length, the number of flights for the tour. I’m not sure.
CB: So what happened on this, on this fateful thirty-second operation?
AH: Well we were just flying at 1800 feet. Everything was very quiet.
CB: And Karlsruhe, I believe, was your target?
AH: Karlsruhe. That’s it. Just out of the blue one of the engines got hit and the wing was on fire. I had no idea that there was flak around or anything. We couldn’t even see the — I didn’t even see the flak from the front. So we just had to, er, get ready and bail out. It was at mid— about midnight I think from memory. And eventually I — I didn’t meet any of the other crew. I was on the loose for about approximately three nights I think from memory.
CB: So your, your parachute deployed with no problems?
AH: Oh no. The parachute opened alright and, er, I eventually got down to the Rhine and there I was caught walking along the Rhine by one of the, er, German’s equivalent of the home guard in England. And from there on I was caught in jails and I had my twenty-first birthday in a German jail.
CB: In a Stalagluft?
AH: Er, no. It was a kind of a jail.
CB: Oh right.
AH: And then eventually we went to the interrogation camp up at Frankfurt. I think everyone went there. And then I got posted to Stalagluft VIIB which was over near Poland. I think it was in — I’m not sure if it was in Poland or on the Polish border. And from there — we were there until January and then we moved on the long march to, er, south of Berlin to a place called Lucken— Luckenwalde.
CB: How long were you in the Stalag?
AH: We were there from — well I was shot down on the 27th September I think it was and then we moved out of Bankau in, er, January and we got liberated by the Russians in April then. I think it was April.
CB: What was life like in the Stalag? Were you with any of your crew mates?
AH: There were a couple, a couple in there but where I was just in with some Canadians and some English and even some of the boys from — pilots or the glider pilots from Arnhem were there.
CB: What was life like?
AH: Oh, it wasn’t rosy but, er, it was nothing like “Hogan’s Heroes”. [slight laugh]
CB: Did you know of any attempts to escape by — you know, tunnels, or was there talk of escape or —
AH: There was talk of tunnels and — but, er, where we were there was no point of escaping because the Russians were coming one way and —
CB: How did you know they were coming? Was it —
AH: There was a wireless on in the camp.
CB: So you knew that they were on their way and —
AH: Yeah, we were told that and eventually you could, you could hear them. Or you could see them in the distance, many miles, there were flashes and that but I [unclear] good night.
CB: So on this January day the Germans come and say, ‘Get your things, you’re going lads.’
AH: ‘Pack up. You’re on your way.’ And we just left.
CB: Were you expecting this march? Or what were you expecting?
AH: Yeah we were expecting it but we didn’t know when. We were told one day and we were told another day and then bang! It happened. Well it’s a lot — several of the boys got a — tried to escape on the way. There was no point escaping through the snow and the ice. You had nowhere to go. A lot of them were killed and a lot of them died.
CB: What did you do for food? Did you find any of the population giving food or anything?
AH: No, no, they had no — very little food. I’ve got a, I’ve got a map which shows the amount of food that we, that we had. Occasionally we’d have, have a — some bread and some, er, kind of a porridge mix. Very little really.
CB: And how long was it that you were walking, do you think?
AH: It was about three weeks roughly.
CB: Where did you sleep?
AH: Well we slept in barns and in with the cows and the pigs and they — anyway it was quite warm actually in there with the cattle but, er, we were mainly in the barns, as they call them, cow sheds or — I don’t know what they called them in Germany.
CB: The guards were obviously have to walk with you. What was their attitude to this and —
AH: The older guards were quite good. The younger ones were the, er, were the ones you had to watch. I think the younger ones were ruthless while the older ones were the — out of the German army. I don’t think they were touched with the Nazis as much as the younger ones.
CB: Did you know where you were walking?
AH: We didn’t have the faintest idea. We crossed the, er, Oder at a place called Breslau, or near Breslau. I think it’s called something else now. It might be called Wrocław I think now. I might be wrong there. And then we eventually finished up in this place called Luckenwalde. I don’t know if I pronounced that right but —
CB: I think Luckenwalde is about right, yes. So you walked all the way? There were no trains or —
AH: We walked. The last — I don’t know how long it would be but we were on a train in the, in the end. That was the — I don’t know how long that would have been, we were in it about a day, I suppose. We were, we were just in carriages, we were in carriages just like a cattle truck, all closed up each side.
CB: Food and water provided?
AH: Oh no, just, er, just space.
CB: So you got to Luckenwalde and then, um, it was another camp I presume?
AH: Oh, it was a big camp?
CB: And had the other marchers, marchers, or the men had they joined and everyone arrived at Luckenwalde. Was that it or did you join the other people?
AH: There was, I think there was every nationality in the world at this Luckenwalde. It was a huge camp. A lot of Russians were there. There were French. There were Americans and a lot of Australians and a lot of the other Air Force people too, English people.
CB: And how long were you there?
AH: We got there — oh heavens — it would have been about February, about the beginning of February, and we were there for — ‘till April when the Russians liberated the camp and just after that the Americans came to take us so they must have broken through there. But the Russians wouldn’t let us go and eventually the Americans took us in, took us away in, er, June. That would be ‘45, June ’45. So we were there approximately a month under the Russians.
CB: How did you feel at this point? Were you frustrated with the —
AH: It didn’t matter that much because we used to go out of the camp. I went through the records what the Germans had left there. I kept — I’ve got my records and a few of the other boys got theirs too.
CB: So from, from there the —
AH: We just woke up one morning and there was no, no Germans there. They’d all gone. [laugh]
CB: And the Americans just — what did the Americans do with you then? Was transport arranged?
AH: Well, the Russians wouldn’t let us go originally and then, er, when we were actually liberated by the Americans the second time we went to a place called Halle Leipzig by truck and then we caught planes to Belgium. We had a night in Belgium. They supplied us with some money. The only things we went to was the pubs and, er, the next day we flew back to England. Then we went to — under the auspices of the Australian Government, the RAF there, and we went to down to Brighton and I eventually got back to Aus— to Australia in December.
CB: A long time. A long time after being liberated.
AH: Well they looked after us quite well for a while there. Anything we wanted we could have virtually. [slight laugh]
CB: So you’re back home in Australia and what did you do after the war?
AH: Oh I went back and did — finished my accountancy and I, er, got registered by the Australian Government as a tax agent and I had my own practice in Adelaide and I finished up in — I retired in ‘83.
CB: What do you think of the war and the aftermath? Did it affect you?
AH: It was hard. I found it hard to settle down. Some could settle down quite easy and I found it hard to settle down and — but eventually I overcome that I think.
CB: What is your, what is your attitude to how Bomber Command was treated after the war?
AH: Oh, nobody knew much about Bomber Command, especially in Australia because we were Australians in England and it was mainly — and Australia was mainly Japan.
CB: Do you think people didn’t understand what you’d been through?
AH: I’m certain they didn’t. I don’t even think the Australian Government knew. I think they do now but at that time, er, I don’t think they realised what the, er, what it was like in England in those days.
CB: How did that make you feel?
AH: I just had to take it. I couldn’t do much about it in those days.
CB: And your Bomber Command medal. Would you have liked a medal?
AH: Well, looking back I think there should have been a Bomber Command medal but after, after seventy years we got a clasp. [slight laugh]
CB: Do you think that was, you know, better than nothing or was it just too late?
AH: Well, it was too late for a lot of them unfortunately because, er, I was one of the younger ones but a lot them would have been over thirty —
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHughesAM151001
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Angas Hughes
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:28:00 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Clare Bennett
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-01
Description
An account of the resource
Angas Hughes was born in Australia and served as a bomb aimer with 467 Squadron based at RAF Waddington. He describes initial training in Australia as a reserve and after call-up in 1942. He was transported by ship to Scotland via the USA and Canada. He flew all the operations on Lancasters and was shot down over Germany on the thirty-second operation. After about three nights he was captured near the Rhine and spent his twenty-first birthday in a German jail before being transferred to an interrogation camp near Frankfurt and eventually to Stalag Luft VII. After about three months the camp was evacuated and the long march to Luckenwalde began. He gives a detailed description of what the long march entailed, arriving at Luckenwalde, after about three weeks. He describes hearing and seeing signs of the Russian advance before the camp was liberated. However, it was the Americans who took them away. On returning to Australia Angas took accountancy exams and set up his own practice in Adelaide.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Luckenwalde
Poland--Tychowo
United States
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
467 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bomb aimer
Dulag Luft
Lancaster
prisoner of war
RAF Waddington
searchlight
shot down
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/279/3432/PJamesHGW1705.2.jpg
71d2ab07fe058905a10dc98b67cb30c5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/279/3432/AJamesHGW170412.1.mp3
9d1d8c09fc266f63e0a189b1e0d8ad09
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Title
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James, Harry George William
Harry George William James
Harry G W James
Harry James
H G W James
H James
Description
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Three items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Harry George William James (b. 1923, 133759 Royal Air Force) and two photographs. Harry James served as a rear gunner with 166 Squadron at RAF Kirmington.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-04-12
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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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James, HGW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 12th of April 2017 and I am in Newbury with Harold George William James who was a rear gunner and we’re going to talk about his life. What are your earliest memories, Harry?
HJ: My first memory is, I was born in a two bedroomed thatched cottage, at West Street, Burghclere, and my first memory is sitting on a step there when we moved about fifty yards further down West Street into a three bedroomed house. Now the people that moved out of the three bedroomed house, their names were Ball, Mr and Mrs Ball, and they, Mr Ball was a retired as a farm worker, my father was a farm worker and retired as a farm worker, and I was sitting on the steps at this house we were moving from to ‘cause I thought they was still living there, and my first memory is sitting on the step crying! And then moving on into the three bedroomed cottage, which incidentally at one time or another was a workhouse! [Laughter]. It dated back quite a long way. Yup, and then my next really clear memory is when I was five years old, I started school and I was dragged to school by my eldest sister. I was kicking her, sitting in the ditch, [laughter] that is my clear, clear memory and then of course, then of course it was schooling, then. My mother was born in Herefordshire and her father, funnily enough her father lived into his eighties, early eighties, my mother died at eighty nine. But I was a bad traveller, now, funnily enough, apart from flying, I’ve always been a bad traveller. I can travel quite comfortably in a car while I’m driving, but as, I haven’t held a licence now for twenty years. When I was seventy three I had a, something go wrong in my eye and it sort of threw a curtain up in front of me and I, retinue [sic] of the eye, and I decided then had I been driving and not walking, could have caused an accident, so those days – I don’t know what they do nowadays – but those days you renewed your licence every three years, so when the three years was up on me seventy third birthday, I haven’t held a licence since.
CB: So where did you go to school, Harry?
HJ: Hmm?
CB: Where did you go to school?
HJ: Where did I go to school? Primary, from five until eleven, Burghclere Infants School, [pause] eleven ‘till fourteen, Newbury Modern. That school’s not there now, it got bombed during the war. [Laughter] It was up, it was up by St John’s Road, or near St John’s Road, in Station Road actually, overlooking the railway.
CB: Oh right.
HJ: But it got bombed during the war. Sold it to the church, which is now St John’s Church, that was further up New Town Road, the old one. But I suppose, where’d I get to?
CB: You say left school at fourteen.
HJ: I left school at fourteen, yep. Now, getting away from that for a moment, there was a funny thing about when I was at school. When I was at school, eleven to fourteen, I sat next to a lad named Brookes, and he is still alive – he’s ninety two – his birthday is in June, he’ll be ninety three in June, and he lives, [laugh] I don’t know the exact number but I know where he lives, in that block!
CB: In the other block?
HJ: Downstairs.
CB: Is he really. Amazing.
HJ: But we’ve knocked into one another on and off for all our lives, but I’ve lived here for what, I think I’m in my twenty ninth year, you know – it was brand new when I come in. He’s lived there, from June ’89, I came, no, he’s lived there, I came here in May ’89, and he’s lived there about six months after me.
CB: Extraordinary, yes. Just in another block, nearby.
HJ: Another block, yeah. And he’s the only tenant there. We’re the two oldest tenants here [laughs]. Well I left school at fourteen and immediately moved to an uncle and aunt living in Hinckley, Leicestershire. My fourteenth birthday was of course on the 27th of December that year and I started work in the January, as a mate to a plumber. The idea was, if I was suitable, I would get an apprenticeship six months after, but that never worked out quite because the war turned up, or was a racing certainty, but the reason I didn’t get the apprenticeship, was I was on ten shillings week as a plumber’s mate, but I was called an improver after six months and I went on to eight pee an hour which was over, over two pounds a week [laughter] whereas I would have still been on ten shillings, plus the fact, plus the fact that if you were working away from home you never knew what time you could get back home! Actually when I was fifteen I appeared as a witness at Leicester Assizes, purely through work.
CB: Leicester Assizes?
HJ: Yeah. It, I worked for, my original employer was “Ewan H, Jones, 182 Coventry Road, Hinckley, Leicester for Dependability, Service and Satisfaction.” [Laugh] Well he was a comparatively young bloke in his middle twenties. He had a Diamond T wagon that was done out in red and gold and this is where the slogan came. But we, the plumber I was mate to, we were working at Chocolate Box, the Oadby Road, in Leicestershire, doing a bathroom conversion and er, we were taken there by the guv’nor in his car and then we were collected whatever time he had in the evening. This was on a Monday and it was really cold, it was January, and it was really cold, and we were still working, you just carried on work ‘till you were picked up and the woman we were doing the conversion for, she came upstairs and said, told us to pack up and come down by the fire. And that’s when there was a programme on the wireless “Monday Night at Eight O’clock” I think it was called, something like that. I know that, I was at Leicester Assizes, I was asked which came first, which came second and which came third on a programme. The bloke had a, the QC that was asking me, had a Radio Times in front of him, I hadn’t a clue which came, but the reason for this was on this particular Monday night we didn’t get picked up ‘till after eight o’clock and we then stopped at a place called the Red Cow on the way home and we didn’t get home ‘till ten o’clock, but the guv’nor had recently completed a job at Foldsworth Mill, in Leicestershire, about six miles out of Hinckley and there was some lovely timber there as didn’t belong to him and he set back that Monday night and picked the timber up. So he got accused of stealing the timber by the owner of the mill and he cross-sued the owner of the mill for defamation of character, so we had three days at Leicester Assizes on that and he finished up getting awarded five hundred pounds against the mill owner in the end, and had the timber as well, and that’s as true as I’m sat in this chair! [Laughter]
CB: No wonder he was successful.
HJ: So, then as I say, things, it was a racing certainty in ‘38 that we were going to war, it was a racing certainty, it was only a matter of, it was only a matter of time. So, as you well know war broke out in the September wasn’t it, 3rd of September ’39 wasn’t it, yeah, hmm. So, not long after my seventeenth birthday, well about the April after my seventeenth birthday, I knew I was going to have to sign up on the dotted line and I decided that a I didn’t want to carry a pack on me back, b I couldn’t swim so I didn’t want to go in the Navy. I saw an advert for gunners in Bomber Command so I took a day off work and went to the Recruiting Office which was then in the London Road, Reading and signed on the dotted line and then, then I got, a while after that, I think in the Oct, I got notification from recruitment that I had to go to Uxbridge for three days for medicals and educational purposes and that, and I was selected for aircrew duties there and eventually I joined the Air Force and got sent to South Africa for training. And then I became a gunner, and I always favoured the rear turret, I never flew in anything else bar the rear. I did thirty three trips for 166 Squadron off Kirmington in Lincolnshire. We had our ups and downs, we wrote off three aircraft, that was [indecipherable] and when I was screened after thirty three, you could be compelled to do two tours, one of thirty and one of twenty but I went into, when I, the screening period, you had six months screening definitely, I went into drogue towing at a place called Aberporth in South Wales. I could write a book about that, if I was capable of writing a book, oh dear, but that was a hilarious time [much laughter]. Oh dear. I came off like with a bit of ear trouble, and the, mind you by then I had the old Tate and Lyle on the sleeve [laughter].
CB: Warrant Officer you mean. Yes.
HJ: But, there was a, Aberporth was just a grass ‘drome. I believe it has a runway on it now, but the catering officer was a warrant officer and he’d been called back, he’d just retired when the war started, he’d been called back, they wanted, he, he was naturally first one out, and as I was a warrant officer, by then, I got told to do catering officer, [laughter] that was an hilarious time, I’d sit trying to get the books up to date in a [indecipherable] with a couple of dozen bottles of Guinness by the side of me. Once a month I would have two girls come up from [indecipherable] Swansea, and sort the bloody books out. Until the, all the unit transferred to Fairwood Common, I was the catering officer, what knew I do about catering [much laughter] was only [indecipherable]. It was hilarious. You could only get it in the Air Force.
CB: Yes, yes.
HJ: Yeah, but every Monday I used to get a, have to get the necessary paperwork and get a three ton harry, driven by a corporal WAAF, to take me to get bread for the week and then to have a request to get booze for the two messes, Roberts Brewery and Hancock’s Warehouse; [laugh] it was hilarious like, down there. I eventually got demobbed, again at Uxbridge, in October 1946, and then owing to the fact that you had to get a green card to get a job immediately after the war, and then into the fifties, I had a job lined up and they wouldn’t give me a green card for it. They said I had to take a six month course so I took a six month course and then became a plumber, a government course on plumbing, and I went to work for, and travel with, cor blimey, I’ve forgot the name of it [pause].
CB: Was it a big plumbing company, was it? He’s just looking up his notes.
HJ: Oh, I’ve forgotten the name.
CB: Well we’ll put it in in a bit. What were you doing for that company?
HJ: Hmm?
CB: What were you doing?
HJ: What was I doing?
CB: With this company?
HJ: As a plumber?
CB: Yes.
HJ: Just working on the tools, normal plumbing work, you know, lead work, and lead piping, and rolled joints, and then, then I got invited into the local government, to run the works section for water. In other words I was Water Foreman to start with, and I had so many men under me that did the mains and up to the stop cock, put in new connections, run new mains round housing estates and that sort of thing. Then I became, in 1960 I became the first Area Superintendent for the Thames Valley Water Board, at Newbury and took on first Lambourne, then Hungerford. I had, I had the Newbury area which included Thatcham and Bucklebury Common, and I worked at that for a number of years and then 1960, my wife was seriously ill, and before they could do, she had a heart operation before they could do open surgery, so she was operated on through the rib cage and she had a cut right round, a hundred and eighty stitches inside and a hundred and eighty outside! So I gave up, er I don’t know, about ’62 I suppose I come out of the public water supply and went in to, partly looking after me wife and partly doing some work, more or less self employed. And then, of all things, I got divorced. Twenty nine years ago this November [laughs]. So I’ve been here twenty nine years, I came here when I was sixty five, sixty five and about four months I think and I’ve been here ever since. And I was a very fortunate man as far as illness is concerned. I went virtually sixty years without an illness. Well I had one illness, in sixty years, I had flu once and believe you me, I’ve only ever had flu once in my life and it put me in bed for a fortnight with doctor the first three days the doctor came in twice a day.
CB: Amazing!
HJ: But, um, I haven’t worked since I’ve been here. Well, I say I haven’t worked, I did a bit part time work, you know, what you do. I am on income support by the way.
CB: Right.
HJ: But two to three years ago, my luck ran out as far as illness is concerned. I forget what, I was in hospital for two weeks about three years ago, I forget what that was about, but since then I’ve had three mini strokes, the last one was last July, that’s why I’m a bit on a, the, I can’t walk very well since the third one, it affected me knees and I, if I’m not careful, I get a bit of a [indecipherable]. I am not, I am not registered as alcoholic but I am registered as a very heavy drinker.
CB: What kind of lemonade do you like best? What type of lemonade do you like best?
HJ: Whisky! [Laugh]
CB: Oh, there’s a bottle down beside the chair. That’s nearly empty.
HJ: I’ve got another two! [Laugh]
CB: It’s always good to have a supply, isn’t it, yes.
HJ: Mind you, I don’t drink a bottle a day now, [chuckle] a litre will keep me going for three to four days!
CB: Right. Well you’ve got to have some, you’ve got to do something in your life, haven’t you. Shall we just take a break there for a moment, stop just for a moment. So after joining and medical at Uxbridge, what did you do?
HJ: When I was called up, forget the exact date of that now, but it would be in ’41, late ’41 I think, the first place I went to was flats in London that’d been taken over by the Air Force. Viceroy Court was where I was first at, that was Regent’s Park, and you walk from, across from Regent’s Park Canal up to the zoo and you fed at the zoo [laugh]. The Air Force took over the bottom part of the, it was the catering side of the zoo, but, as their kitchen, so you, if you wanted breakfast you had about half a mile to go: so you didn’t have breakfast. But and then I had a bit of eye trouble – lazy eye they called it those days – in the right eye, I think it was the right eye, and I had to have some eye training. This eye training was you’d look in to, you’d have two lenses to look in to and in one would be a cage and in the other a lion, you had to put the lion in the cage. And there was a girl sat opposite you looking at the, the, oh, anyway she’d take notes and once your eyes were back to normal then you, and then it was out to South Africa.
CB: Before you went to South Africa, you must have gone to Initial Training Wing.
HJ: Hmm?
CB: Before you went to South Africa, you went to an Initial Training Wing, where was that?
HJ: The initial training was six weeks at Viceroy Court.
CB: Oh.
HJ: That was, after that, being as you were going to be trained into aircrew, you went from AC2 to LAC, and I was only an AC2 for six weeks, I was then LAC until I passed out as a gunner.
CB: Where did you go?
HJ: To, it was known as Rhodesia those days, buggered if I know what it’s called now, but still, Southern Rhodesia, I was originally at a place called Hillside, which is just outside Bulawayo, and I actually trained at a place just outside Gwelo, which is half way to Salisbury, which is Zimbabwe now i’n it, or something like that named after the bloody [telephone ringing] ruins.
CB: So what training were you doing there, what training were you doing?
HJ: I was, originally I had to try and train as a pilot but I wasn’t, hmm, and then they wanted me to go as a navigator but I failed the, but I wouldn’t, I wanted to get back to England before the war ended, so I took a shorter course of training as a gunner and I became a rear gunner and back, back to this country and then you, in this country, when you come back to this country you had to go through further training and then OTU and all that.
CB: Where did you do your gunnery training?
HJ: In this country? Er, let’s see, when I came back to this country, first I went to Hixon, oh, then from Hixon, up to, to Seighford in Staffordshire [coughing] [pause].
CB: So you went to Hixon.
HJ: That was on Wimpeys.
CB: Yup. Where was the OTU?
HJ: Hmm?
CB: Where was the OTU?
HJ: What was?
CB: Where was the OTU? [Throat clearing]
HJ: OTU. [Pause] In Staffordshire, I know it was.
CB: Okay.
HJ: Partly, probably partly at Seighford. The, and then Heavy Conversion, two to four engines.
CB: Where was that?
HJ: Somewhere in that area, I don’t know. And then it was to 166 Squadron in Lincolnshire – oh the Heavy Conversion was somewhere in Lincolnshire too. Mm. I forget where that was. But er.
CB: On to Lancasters.
HJ: Hmm?
CB: On to Lancasters.
HJ: Oh, from the Wellingtons onto Lancasters. We did one papering trip on, dropping leaflets on Paris, in the old Wellington [coughing] [laugh]. Five of us went and four of us came back [cough], one got shot down, fortunately all the crew baled out, buggered if they weren’t back. They were picked up by the French Underground and took out through Spain and they were back in England in about six weeks.
CB: Were they really?
HJ: But as I say that was a, dropping leaflets on Paris.
CB: Crazy.
HJ: But I did drop a leaflet, [laugh] through the back of the turret. You know what a clear vision panel is, fuck all there [laugh] in the rear turret. When on point threes, you had two point threes on your right hand side, two point threes on your left hand side and then you had two more at your feet with your clear vision panel you could bale out, provided you remembered to open the door and get the parachute from behind you, you could have baled out.
CB: Because you weren’t wearing the parachute were you?
HJ: But, that’s where you had to dress up. Do you know what the normal dress was?
CB: So what were you wearing?
HJ: Hmm?
CB: So, what were you wearing – clothes – what clothes did you wear?
HJ: I was just going to tell you: on your feet you had silk, woollen socks and then flying boots. On your gloves you had silk woollen gauntlet, three gloves, and then you had silk vest and whatever you wanted put on in between and then your battle dress blouse and then you had a kapok suit, a waterproof suit and then your Mae West and then your parachute harness: and that was your dress. So you could sweat like hell or freeze like hell in the air [laugh]. But, ‘cause, almost always, from briefing you had quite a period before you actually, you went directly from briefing to your own aircraft but you waited at your aircraft until you got the signal to get on, get into the aircraft and then the signal to taxi out and you taxied out in, let’s see, most of the time I was on P, so O P, O P Q was three dispersal with their own ground crew doing the three kites. Well, you start off A B C, C, D, E and that, and that was P it was P – Peter those days, it’s er, I don’t think it’s that now, God knows what it is now, but it was O -Orange and that sort of thing.
CB: P – Papa, it’s now P-Papa.
HJ: But yeah, so as I say, that’s more or less.
CB: So when you went, you did thirty three ops, you did thirty three ops but you haven’t got your log books so, tell us about the ops you went on. The ops, you did thirty three, you did thirty three ops
HJ: I did thirty three, yup. The reason for the odd three was that, I was, funnily enough I flew mostly with colonials. When I was at 166 for instance, the skipper, the navigator and the bomb aimer were Canadians; the wireless op, Frank Perkins, was Australian; the mid upper gunner was Newfoundland, rear gunner was me of course, and then when we took on with Lancs, and we took on a flight engineer and he was English. So that was the seven of us. Three Canadians, one Newfoundland and one Australian and two English, I think that adds up to seven. Actually, mind you, all this time I was single, I didn’t get married until, well, after I was demobbed. But I shouldn’t ever have got married, but there again I wouldn’t have the family I have got now [laughs]. I’ve got one daughter, she’ll be seventy in December, I’ve got two grandsons, the youngest is forty, he was forty a week ago, the oldest is forty three I think, and then I’ve got three great grandsons and one great granddaughter, the granddaughter is the oldest at eleven. The eldest of the grandsons was eight last week, the second grandson, which is that one, he’ll be eight next month, and the youngest grandson is five. Great-grandsons I mean, great grandsons.
CB: Stopping just for a moment. So crewing up.
HJ: To get together as a crew [microphone thumps] you’re just a given number of each each trade in a crew were just thrown together and you walked round and round chatting, and you gradually made a crew, yeah. First and foremost you, first and foremost you, when you were walking around there could have been, for the sake of argument twenty pilots, now they would start making their crew, they’d pick navigator, you just kept walking round and chatting and gradually discovered you’re in a crew! But hmm, as I say, my skipper that I did most of the trips with, was a Canadian, Shorty Blake, he was a short-arsed bugger [laughter] when we were on Wimpeys he had to have blocks put on the pedals [laughter].
CB: On the rudder bar, he means, yes, blocks on the rudder bar.
HJ: He was a, when I first knew him he was a sergeant and we got on quite well, and then they decided that all pilots would have to be commissioned. So, when you were flying you used to get five days leave every six weeks, not necessarily in that order, you could go ten weeks, but you always [emphasis] got the, provided you lived of course, you always got the equivalent of five days every six weeks. Believe this or not but it’s absolutely true, when Shorty Blake was getting his commission, his wages automatically stopped until he actually was commissioned and then his commission dated back to when his wages were stopped, and we had five days leave coming up and we’d already agreed that he and I would go and have leave together and we were going to stop with his great aunt and his uncle at Wood Green, and he had, he had no money so I drew every penny I could get, and I finished up with ninety eight pounds something, for five days. After three days we were broke, [laugh] we were coming home from the West End, of London, when his uncle was going to work in the morning, having about four hours in bed, and that was supposed to be five days rent [laugh]. Mind you, you always worked it so you got a weekend in and made it seven. So he decides to go to Canadian Pay Accounts. We totalled up how much money we had between us, and we had enough for a pint of bitter, so I sat in the pub with a pint of beer [laughs] while he was at Canadian Pay Accounts, and he managed to draw a hundred pounds. We still had, still had a few days, three days of our leave. We got back to camp and we had about two or three buttons between us, we’d worked our way through nearly two hundreds pounds! Oh dear!
CB: Huge amount of money in those days!
HJ: Mind you, a lot of that went on women. [Laugh] It was bloody hilarious. What you’ve got to bear in mind is, you didn’t know how long you’d got – if I’d have known I was gonna live ‘till ninety three! [Laugh] I doubt it though. I remember on that particular leave I remember we picked up a couple of bloody girls one evening and we went home with them and they opened up a bloody shop and sub post office [laughs] we walked in the back, behind, and we’d only met them what, a couple or hours or so before or three hours before we could have hit ‘em over the head with a bloody [indecipherable] for all they knew!
CB: It was their shop was it? It was their shop?
HJ: Yes, well it was one of their shop, yes, one was, sub post, what they call a sub post office, yes, she opened it, but this bloody, yeah, you wouldn’t believe it really, we could, it was a, they were probably.
CB: What ages were they?
HJ: Twenty eight to thirty and we were down around twenty one! [Laughs]
CB: Tales of the unexpected!
HJ: But I say, you didn’t know whether you were going to be alive the following bloody week or not, so you didn’t kid. I was going to say you just didn’t care, but naturally you did care to a certain extent, but you took your enjoyment as and when you’d get it. Oh dear. It was crazy, life those days.
CB: Where did you meet the women? Where? Where did you meet them?
HJ: We used to go, it could have been anywhere, Baker Street or Oxford Street, or somewhere that. We spent the evenings -
CB: In pubs.
HJ: In pubs, yes, by and large. Well, it was blackout and all that, you know; there was no street lighting, if there was a lamp post on the pavement it was likely to walk into one, ‘cause it was full blackout, during the war. So, by and large if you wanted go to pictures, they turned out by about half nine, so from that on it was pub, but I’ve never, to be quite honest with you, I’ve, the last time I went to the pictures, my daughter was about seven years old and I took her to see “The Dambusters”, and my daughter in December will be seventy, [laugh] so I say about sixty three years ago! I’ve got a television in the corner, and the only reason I, don’t worry it doesn’t work. I had it converted, but I had so many worries running, so I just use it to put me fruit on! But I’ve never been one for watching telly and I haven’t got a wireless, but I have got books; I do quite a lot of reading. I enjoy reading, but I don’t do much now because I’ve got double vision, and when you’ve got double vision there’s no cure for it.
CB: No. Just stopping for a mo. Where did you go on the ops?
HJ: Well, first and foremost, the majority, the majority of bombing ops were to the Ruhr Valley [paper turning] – Happy Valley – that includes what, Dusseldorf, Duisburg, Cologne, is it Cologne? Yeah, I think, Bochum, those sort of places, but as far as we were concerned it was the Happy Valley, well depending where you were bombing there you could get fired at half hour in, and half hour out. In other words, a good hour [laugh]. Mind you, of course, anti-aircraft fire wasn’t particularly accurate. It’s fired visually, but the shell has to be set at a given height to go off, at a given height or else it’d explode back there, and to get the given heights which wasn’t all that accurate, particularly at night, because Bomber Command never flew in formation, they always streamed. You do, either do a three flight raid or a five flight raid. You, most of the time they always called it a thousand bomber raid on the BBC and that. But I’m not saying the very first one because they checked, the very first thousand bomber was probably a thousand bombers because they put everything they could get into the air on that one, but after that so-called thousand bomber raid was no more than about seven hundred, thereabouts. When you consider a two flight squadron could only put twenty aircraft into the air, so for a hundred aircraft you’d want five squadrons, for a thousand you’d want fifty and I’m bloody sure there wasn’t fifty in the RAF, but a three flight squadron you could put thirty into the air. 166 was a three flight squadron, A, B, and C. I was in B flight, which included three on our dispersals, O P Q, and we were P. I can still remember the names of most of the crew.
CB: Who were, who were they?
HJ: Skipper – Shorty Blake.
CB: Nav?
HJ: Do you know, do you know, I don’t think I ever called him anything other than Shorty. But the navigator, Canadian, Frank Fish. His father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Canadian Army, doing this medical effort, you know, when putting masks on, that was his job in Canada, the navigator’s father.
CB: Gas masks.
HJ: But let’s see, I’ve got to the navigator. Frank Russell was the bomb aimer, Canadian. [Pause] Er, Frank Perkins, Australian, was wireless op. Johnny Cole was mid upper gunner – a Newfoundland. [Pause] No, the flight engineer, his surname was Stewart, for the life of me I can’t think of his first name now, but his surname was Stewart. And then of course there was me, in the tail turret. I think that’s seven, isn’t it.
CB: How often did you shoot at aircraft?
HJ: How often did you fly?
CB: How often did you use your guns?
HJ: Now what you’ve got to bear in mind is, a rear gunner’s job was not to shoot down enemy aircraft, it was to bring your own aircraft back home if humanly possible. One of the reasons for it is a Browning 303 would fire one thousand one hundred rounds a minute and you only had a thousand rounds to each gun. So you only had a, if you fired you had to be more or less certain that you’ll, there was no other way. Normally, you’d, when you were on Lancs, normally you would pick up a fighter and watch him. If he knew you were watching him, they rarely ever, they’d look for something bit easier. But almost always you’d, the fighter would be either on your starboard or port wing at approximately five hundred yards perhaps, and you, it was as safe as houses until he turned and looked at you and then went over and they’d skid behind you. But with the Lanc, as soon as he started to go into his firing position you automatically ordered the pilot to go into a corkscrew. Well it was originally a dive towards the aircraft. If the aircraft was on the starboard side the corkscrew was dive starboard, roll, dive port, roll, climb port, climb, you know starboard, climb port, roll, and climb and theoretically you’re more or less back on the course you set off on. [Pause] But once you ordered the pilot to corkscrew, he immediately threw the aircraft into the original dive, whether it was port or starboard, and then of course the pilot was in complete control. Up until that point - when you’d spotted a fighter - the gunner was more or less in control, the pilot obeyed whatever the pilot, gunner wanted him to do, but the second you said ‘Go!’ then he was in full control and naturally he was in control when he levelled off which theoretically on the old course and he’d consult the navigator and that was it, so it was an adjustment of course, navigator would give him alter course three or four degrees port or couple of degrees starboard and between then the gunner only, to all intents and purposes, the rear gunner’d gone to sleep, [chuckle] but he didn’t.
CB: Why did you always want to be a rear gunner? Why did you always want to be the rear gunner?
HJ: I never, ever had a fancy for the mid upper, I’ve only ever stood in the mid upper position when the kite’s been on the ground. I never, ever, the mid upper gunner was virtually surplus. ‘Cause as I say you never, well it would be once in a blue moon that you had somebody diving on you, ‘cause they prefer to be more or less on a level with you. But, it wasn’t a bad life.
CB: How often did the plane get damaged?
HJ: Ah, now, you were lucky not to pick up a hole or two each time you flew. Probably we, out of the thirty three, possibly about three with no damage at all. The second you landed and taxied to your dispersal, the second you were in dispersal and switched off, the ground crew were there and they would go over and if you didn’t have a hole or two in you they reckoned you’d only gone as far as the North Sea!
CB: Never been to the target.
HJ: And if you had quite a bit of damage they’d moan like hell ‘cause they had to repair it! But provided you treated your ground crew right, the ground crew were exceptional. I wouldn’t be at all surprised that if you got the back of the ground crew up, you didn’t last. I’m not saying they did, they, I’m not saying they did it deliberate but I’m convinced that there was more than one kite went down because they skimped on the maintenance and they’d do it deliberate if you were bloody minded to them. They’d do the maintenance, but they wouldn’t do it as thorough as they’d do it normal. But that’s something which is impossible to prove one way or the other. But it wouldn’t surprise me. But if you looked after ‘em, in other words when you got a bit of spare time, take them out for an evening out, all expenses paid by the crew. No more, if you did the complete tour, which was minimum of thirty from the first, you wouldn’t take them out more than about four times during the third, you know, three or four times, but providing you give them a good night out now and again, they’d look after you. But if, if you were a bit toffee-nosed with ‘em, whether they would be as thorough, I don’t think so. Of course you know the Air Force suffered more losses than any other, such as Army battalion or Navy.
CB: In relation to the numbers, yes.
HJ: Somewhere around about fifty odd thousand I think, aircrew were lost, every man a volunteer, aircrew rules, every man was always a volunteer: there was no conscription, but there was never any shortage.
CB: What about the morale of the crew? How was that?
HJ: Morale was, now morale was top class, there’s no doubt about that. Even when we became, when I was on 166, we became what was known as a crack squad, a crack crew and we did quite a lot of sea mining at Skattegat and Stettin Bay. Stettin Bay was a bloody long haul: ten hours thirty. But when you were on, only five crews used to go on the mining effort but by and large they would try and give you top cover. For instance, if you were mine laying, well if I say we were one of five on mine laying, you always took off half an hour before the main force. If you were going to do, if you were going to the Baltic, they put on a thousand bomber raid to Stettin, well, they called it, well it was called, as I told you, about seven hundred made up the so called thousand, but it was always announced as a thousand bomber raid by the BBC, but, but er, [sigh] only once did I ever know somebody that nerve broke, and the way they get treated, or the way he got treated, you wouldn’t do it. He was, because his nerve broke and he wouldn’t, wouldn’t fly again he was cashiered and drummed out of the service. If it, if it was a sergeant his tapes were taken off and just one stitch back and then gets dropped, and that was before the whole of the squadron. All of the squadron was paraded to see it. I only ever saw one. There was no excuse for that sort of thing, because it’s just human nature broke him, not everyone had the temperament to – you had to be miserable bloody fool like me, see.
CB: So that was in 166 was it? That was in 166. In 166, in your squadron. The LMF man was in your squadron was he? [Rumbling sounds]
HJ: Yup.
CB: And what was he? Just thinking.
HJ: I think he was a bomb aimer to be quite honest with you, he was in the front. Certainly he wasn’t the skipper and certainly it wasn’t the navigator, I think it was the bomb aimer. But by and large you only, you were only really close to the three, three crews that was on your dispersal. ‘Cause you were dispersed into woods and all sorts of things. It was nothing to have half, three quarter of a mile to walk to the mess. So by and large, you were only on nodding terms to quite a lot of the actual squadron, but to the three on dispersal, you were all good friends, ‘cause the next dispersal site might be half a mile from you. So you, you only stuck and once you finished you weren’t kept on the squadron, you were within forty eight hours you were moved to a dispersal or a permanent posting dispersal. I went drogue towing, down in Aberporth.
CB: Just going back to this experience of the man. What was the reaction of the squadron in the parade?
HJ: What was the?
CB: What was the reaction of the members of the squadron?
HJ: What was the reaction? [Pause] I’m really not, you only knew the reaction of more or less the ones that you were close to on dispersal. Course what you’ve got to bear in mind is, like when I was at 166 originally, there was, of the original crew, when it crewed, before any operation there was only two commissioned. That was, they were both Canadian, the bomb aimer and the navigator, the skipper was Canadian, he was only a sergeant, and then the rest of us were non-commissioned. [Tearing sound] But then they commissioned all pilots so we actually had three commissioned and four non-commissioned. There was talk at one time, which was silly really, that they would commission all aircrew. That never worked out, never, it wouldn’t have worked, I mean it would have put too many in the officers mess. Well by and large they would have had to enlarge the officers mess. If you were a three flight you would have a minimum of about three hundred and thirty crew members ‘cause you always had a couple of spare, but if we were all commissioned, with seven man crew, you take seven times, for the sake of argument, seven times thirty two. Plus there would be the ground officers. It worked the way it worked.
CB: What sort of damage did you see of other aircraft?
HJ: You could have, now, I’ll give you two incidences on the aircraft I flew. In one instance we had a starboard, whatever, engine taken out by a bomb, in the second instance we had a five hundred pound delay come into the cabin, from an aircraft above!
CB: Whereabouts? Where?
HJ: It came in behind the navigator, between the navigator and the mid upper, but all it needed -
CB: By the main spar.
HJ: Mind you, it was a five hour delay anyway, you could have, if the old propeller had wound out, but the propeller was on a spindle like that, and the little propeller and it didn’t come live until that was completely out. So all you did was you wind the bugger back in! [Laughs] There was hopes that [indecipherable]. But, er, no, we brought that bugger back, ground crew well. [Laugh] But when you were on sea mining, once the mines were on the aircraft they’d never take ‘em back off, they, the ground crew, wouldn’t have that. So if something wasn’t quite right where you were gonna mine, you could wait about two or three weeks to do a trip. But you usually dropped a mine from about eight thousand feet, check so as that the parachute opened immediately and it’d go down and as I say most of the mining we did was into the bloody Baltic, Stettin Bay. But course there, the, Stettin was only just inside the Baltic so the travelling was, wasn’t like the Atlantic or something like that, it was comparatively narrow, perhaps no more than, well most of the mining was done probably no more than three four hundred feet. But the mines that were dropped on parachute, the first ship over activated them over, the second ship over – bang! [Laughs] That was a bit dodgy, the ship [indecipherable]. ‘Cause if they were in, following one another, sees the first ship goes in no trouble at all, everything’s all right, the second one goes bang!
CB: These were acoustic mines, yeah.
HJ: But on a bombing raid we always carried a four thousand pounder, and mostly [emphasis] all the rest was incendiary, four pound incendiary, incendiary containers and they would, the incendiary containers were rigged so that they’d open about a thousand foot up and scatter so that they covered a, and then you had the, but from a bombing point of view, the, when you had markers put down, they were TIs, either red, green or various coloured.
CB: Target Indicators.
HJ: And the Master Bomber or his deputy or Master Bomber on the second would, you’d pick him up on the radio when you were nearing there and bomb the reds and yellows or bomb the yellows or he’d tell you what colour to bomb. But the object of bombing was not to bomb a particular place, but do as much damage as could be.
CB: To the whole area.
HJ: Yeah. In other words if you could blow the whole of the town up while you’re there, various bombs [indecipherable]. It was, but of course poor old Bomber Harris, he, course Bomber Command got blamed for everything immediately after the war and it’s only comparatively recent that they’ve come out of the dog house. It’s only comparatively recent that they’ve built the Bomber’s Memorial, Green Park I think it is.
CB: Yes. You’ve got your Bomber Clasp, haven’t you, you’ve got your Clasp. You’ve got that.
HJ: When that came. Yeah. I’ve got a Clasp. The Clasp is, where the medals are, it’s on the right one up there.
CB: So your crew was a mixture of commissioned and non-commissioned.
HJ: Well, all, all went together, not a problem, no problem. To be quite honest with you, towards the end, the Australian wireless op, Frank Perkins, he bought a clapped out bloody car! Mind you, that was run on Air Force petrol [laugh]. But they could trace that, ‘cause the, it was the colour, but it was a clapped out old car going on a hundred octane.
CB: So that blew the engine.
HJ: So prior to that, we could go a bit further afield but aircrew had to walk, ground crew had bicycles! [Laugh] Aircrew weren’t trusted with a bicycle [indecipherable] [laugh]. That’s the, the Clasp.
CB: The campaign medal, yes.
HJ: But no, aircrew weren’t, we had a sergeant who was in charge of the ground crew for the three aircraft. He used to go out on the tiddly most nights. He used to ride a bike out and ride the bike back and where he come off the bike he spent the night, the rest of the night, and it was nothing to see him coming cycling in about eight o’clock in the morning. [Laugh] He come off, he come off where he was, bit of a strong thing there coming up, but they had Special Police as much as ordinary Police Forces and this was, the Special in that particular area was a small bloke, and he, partly deformed, he come across this ground crew sergeant passed out in the middle of the road and he told him after, he could only roll him onto the side of the road. He said if he could have carried him he would have carried him to the Police Station! If he could’ve got him to ride, brought him around and but he said for safety’s sake he rolled him to the kerb, well to the grass verge.
CB: Now there were always a lot of WAAFs on the airfield.
HJ: Hmm?
CB: There were always a lot of WAAFs on the airfield. How did you liaise with them?
HJ: Now, we had a, [pause] the, as far as squadron life was concerned, the WAAFs you really came into contact with was in the Parachute Section and they had the job of packing chutes. Mind you, at least once during the tour you had to pull your parachute and pack it yourself, but I’ve never seen a man that didn’t pull it twice after they’d packed their own chute, pull the bugger [indecipherable] they didn’t trust their own packing, that’s for sure! I know I never did! But it worked where they had these little sandbags, you know, they fetch ‘em out and hauled them over but when you consider how much silk there is, well they weren’t a hundred percent silk, they were only a part silk, you know, a mixture of cotton and silk I suppose, but when you consider how much there was and it finished up as no more than what. But when I was at Aberporth, that’s when you really came into contact with the WAAFs. Now in the sergeant’s Mess at Aberporth there was a particular WAAF girl, cook, she was about, no more than twenty, I know I took her out once or twice, she had the biggest breasts I’ve ever seen – they were colossal! Whoar! She had, you know these white foldover doings cooks had, she’d have nothing else on and every now and again when she was bending down, one or the other of these colossal tits would pop out. [Laugh] I stood behind her time to tuck it back in! [Laugh]
CB: So not only did you get two black eyes but you couldn’t hear anything either!
HJ: Oh gawd, you know she loved this [indecipherable]. Mind you, [pause] I must admit that to my certain knowledge, I put at least one WAAF into the family way, because the son by me has seen both my daughter and my late wife, but I was always out.
CB: Where did you meet your wife? Where did you meet your wife?
HJ: Where did I?
CB: Where did you meet your wife?
HJ: One I got pregnant in Aberporth, she was a corporal, Joyce Humphries her name was, she lived at Ystradygnlais, six miles out of Swansea. She was at Aberporth and she drove the Monday delivery wagon that I used when I joined in the catering office, I’d take to get the bread and get the booze, so we’d spend more or less all day Monday together, either in the summer sat out on the hills or on the way back having a swig out of a, out of a glass of stout. Wife.
CB: Where did you meet her, your wife?
HJ: Probably, in Newbury, yes. Got tired, I got tired running I think, just, I’d known her quite some time, on and off, and I suppose after, I suppose really speaking, I eventually got her pregnant and decided to make an honest woman of her. Hmm, yes. My daughter was born in December and we were married in June. [Laugh] But in 1960 she had her operation, but had this valve put in her heart and she lived another forty years after that. She died, I think she’s been dead somewhere in the region of sixteen years. Mind you, we divorced twenty nine years ago this November. I don’t know why, I don’t know why she divorced me, probably get me money, cost me a fair bit.
CB: After the assessment.
HJ: If the war had continued, I would almost certainly have gone back for a second tour. You could be forced on to your second tour by them just calling you in, from whatever you were doing. For instance, when your tour was finished, I went to, oh, near Aviemore, in Scotland, yes, near Nairn I think, and from there you chose what you wanted to do, on what was available. So they, If you wanted to go into office work, you could go and if office work was available and you were suitable for it then, but I decided to go on to drogue towing and I got posted, originally for a short time, to Valley and I was only at Valley for no more than three weeks, and from there I went to a little place also on Anglesey, called Bodorgan I think it was. And from Bodorgan I went, I was only at Bodorgan about a month and then I went direct to Aberporth, and I was at Aberporth to within a couple of months of getting demobbed. From Aberporth I went to somewhere in Worcestershire. I got demobbed from, I got demobbed at Uxbridge but I went from this place in Worcestershire to Uxbridge, to get demobbed, that’s when me number came up. I was on a, aircrew were on special release, they were on G Reserve, not paid Reserve. But I was on G Reserve, possible that, if necessary they could call you up, but if, if a war had broken out, serious war broke out, anything up to perhaps ten years after I was demobbed, they could call me up on this G Reserve without me having to, without waiting for the number to come up.
CB: Okay. When you got to Aberporth –
HJ: Well, now it was a lazy life: you didn’t start ‘till nine in the morning. You just go to flight and by half past nine, ten o’clock you knew whether the, either the Army or the Navy wanted a drogue towing. Nine times out of ten they didn’t so you had the rest of the day off. You just caught bus and go into town [laughs].
CB: But what was your job?
HJ: What was? [Bumping on microphone]
CB: You were in a Martinet there?
HJ: Was a Naval aircraft, single engine –
CB: It was a Martinet.
HJ: Martinet, that’s it. Your position was immediately behind the pilot and you had a square out the bottom and you just threw the drogue out through the square and it had sufficient cable on it to clear the tail by a few feet before it, and it drove itself, probably about ten foot long, when it was fully adrift, and then you just let out a thousand foot of cable, and then you had a little propeller outside to bring it back in and you wound the propeller down into wind so it, and that would bring it back in and you’d wait ‘till the connection and that, it had a cord connection from the cable to the drogue cable, and then you cut that with a knife when you flew over where they, skipper’d take it down to about forty, fifty feet perhaps bit lower, and then you’d cut it right in front of the arrow doors and it dropped on the apron.
CB: Of the airfield.
HJ: But the only part that was damaged was this bit of cord, and of course that’s no problem at all, probably no more than six inches when it was, of cord, and that’s no problem, not that way, but it was sort of doubled for when you would, pull it. But oh, at Aberporth there was an Army camp - Artillery I suppose - and also a private, not private, a government development attached to the Army camp, and I expect you’ve heard of this, they were doing a nose instantaneous job to go with Blue Streak, I expect you’ve heard about Blue Streak.
CB: The rocket.
HJ: Well I actually dropped fifty of these nose instantaneous efforts; they were about this high.
CB: Couple of feet.
HJ: ‘Bout so big round.
CB: Four inches.
HJ: The skipper’d line the wing of the aircraft up against the headland, put his thumb up and I had let it go through the [indecipherable] these scientists were watching, [laugh] taking photos of it and nine times out of ten the bugger went straight into the sea [laugh] and didn’t explode. And we did fifty of those, about twenty five drops, ten, but you should have seen it. They were brought by armoured personnel and they jumped out of the back of the wagon and stood, rifles on guard, just handed them over to me and we just sort of sort of walk off, no guard at all! It was, but it never come of anything, Blue Streak, I don’t think.
CB: No.
HJ: Instantaneous. The pressure built up on the nose as it fell, that was the idea of it. Pressure building on the nose.
CB: And explode above the water.
HJ: And the pressure, nine times out of ten they went straight in. [Indecipherable] probably eight out of ten the people were [indecipherable]. They could, they could explode almost as soon as you dropped on the water. And you were dropping them off, I, probably from six thousand feet.
CB: Oh, as high as that!
HJ: Yes, ‘cause theoretically you’re not allowed to fly under six thousand feet, so could have been, didn’t matter the height you dropped ‘em from, could have been eight thousand, ‘cause as I say they were only supposed to go off hundred feet above the water.
CB: Right. In 166 three aircraft were written off. What was that?
HJ: One was written off, let’s see, one was written off because we lost a bit of the wing, and the wing was, a bomb caught the outer side of the wing, took about six foot off and put the wing as a whole out of alignment, so that became a write off. Then there was excessive damage between the rear turret and mid upper turret on another one, bloody great hole in the side of the kite, so that caused, well, as far as we were concerned it was written off, whether they got round to repairing it, was a major repair based on that, but as far as the squadron was concerned it was written off. And the other was a tailplane, aileron damage. That was, it was written off as far as the squadron was concerned, it could have been taken but a lot of these, a lot of the Lancs were made in Canada, women used to fly them, via Iceland, no, yeah, Iceland wasn’t it, and they’d refuel there and fly them into wherever they were needed in England. Whats’er name lost her life on that, didn’t she. Before the war she did long distance.
CB: Amy Johnson.
HJ: Amy somebody.
CB: Johnson.
HJ: Johnson. She lost her life and they never did find what happened to her.
CB: No.
HJ: I don’t know whether it was a Lanc, could have been anything she was flying it from north to south.
CB: What caused this aileron damage? What caused the aileron damage?
HJ: Usually aircraft fire, anti-aircraft usually ground fire.
CB: Flak?
HJ: Yeah, but if it caused enough damage that it couldn’t be repaired by, immediately by the ground crew, it was virtually, as far as the squadron was concerned it was taken out of action and transported wherever they wanted it, going for scrap, transported for scrap.
CB: Okay, what was the most memorable thing about being in the Air Force in the war?
HJ: What a nice lazy life it was, I suppose! It was a lazy life, I tell you that. You could only commit one crime, well, oh, I don’t think you’d get away with murder, but I think you’d have got away with almost anything else. The major crime was if you refused to fly and then of course you got court martialled and out of the service. But [pause] I think, I think really, the camaraderie of the crew. You see every man in the crew trusted all the others. There was no, you were all convinced each crew member could do its own job. You didn’t, certainly was no criticism of anything, you were just, just admired one another I suppose, as whatever their job was. God help, God help anybody that said, said that your, for the sake of argument, wireless operator was no good, ‘cause as far as you were concerned he were the best, I say wireless operator but we had a lazy bugger! He’d often go to sleep. [laugh] He kept, course as far as the wireless operator was concerned, he was supposed to take both, two broadcasts an hour, Group broadcast and some other broadcast, but this Australian we had, Frank Perkins, he’d put his feet up and go to sleep and crib off another fellow after landing, [laughter] you could see him writing up his log at the debriefing!
CB: How many, did you keep in touch with your crew after the end?
HJ: By and large you, I only kept in touch with the wireless op. By and large, once you’d finished, you preferred to let it go – you knew you wouldn’t be seeing them again. Oh God. As I say, I was always with colonials, I mean except, as I say, when we took on a flight engineer, he was the only other Englishman. So you knew full well, by and large, that you wouldn’t see them again, so there was no point really, plus the fact you didn’t know how long the war was going to go on, what you’d be doing. But whereas English could be forced to a second tour, a second tour was always a minimum of twenty, the first was a minimum of thirty. And as I say, I got three extra in, simply because on three occasions I was there and it was required. The reason I got spares often was because we was sea mining and quite often, as I say, anything up to three weeks were standing, I think three weeks was the longest we went between actually having the mines put on the aircraft and going on a mining job, but it, it wasn’t really. But as I say, you had the utmost of respect for all your crew members and God help anybody who criticised them. But oh, Frank Fish, who was the navigator, never ever flew without being airsick. He always carried a little bucket with him, and he was always airsick.
CB: Do you know why?
HJ: Hmm?
CB: Do you know why? Was it nerves?
HJ: He wasn’t continuously sick, you know, he just, but almost always, even if you only went cross country, he was just as likely to be sick, but once he’d been sick he was all right again. As I say he had his little bucket.
CB: Amazing.
HJ: Which he kept down by the side of him.
CB: The HCU was in Lincolnshire. The HCU.
HJ: The heavy conversion, that was done in Lincolnshire, just prior to joining the squadron.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AJamesHGW170412
Title
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Interview with Harry James
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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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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02:09:38 audio recording
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2017-04-12
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Harry James grew up in Berkshire and after school began training as a plumber. He joined the RAF and carried out thirty three operations as a rear gunner with 166 squadron. He discusses his crew, who were of different nationalities, of how the majority of their bombing operations were to the Ruhr Valley and his duties as a rear gunner. He tells of his family, early life, his many escapades at various places in the RAF, as well as his crew and the relationship between aircrew and ground crew, and the WAAFs he worked with during the war. After the war Harry returned to plumbing in Berkshire.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
Zimbabwe
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
Poland--Szczecin
Zimbabwe--Gweru
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1941
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
166 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
dispersal
ground crew
ground personnel
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
love and romance
Martinet
RAF Kirmington
RAF Uxbridge
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/281/3434/PJeffreyS1604.1.jpg
f8f06ac3c4f2638cbf3035d20977df0f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/281/3434/AJeffreySE160613.1.mp3
b1e7a38c64e687b9a1f552904a6bb1df
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
Jeffrey, Stanley Ernest
Stanley Ernest Jeffrey
Stanley E Jeffrey
Stanley Jeffrey
S E Jeffrey
S Jeffrey
Description
An account of the resource
24 Items concerning Stanley Ernest Jeffrey (1139581 Royal Air Force) who served as a mechanic engineer groundcrew with 102 Squadron at RAF Topcliffe and RAF Pocklington. Collection contains air force documents, engineering course training notebooks, photographs of aircraft and people and includes two oral history interviews.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Stanley Jeffrey 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
2016-05-18
2016-06-13
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
Jeffrey, SE
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HB: This is an interview between Harry Bartlett on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre and Mr Stanley Ernest Jeffrey, a former Flight Mechanic in the Royal Air Force, 102 Ceylon Squadron from 1941 to — 1946. Interview is taking place on the 13th of June at xxxxx Oadby.
HB: That’s the introduction, Stan.
IJ: Yeah. That’s the introduction.
HJ: Yeah.
HB: One of the things we’re interested in Stan, is before the war, I mean obviously you were born somewhere, where — you know, what was your family life before the war?
SJ: Well, I lived in King Street in Oadby and Cross Street in Oadby and I worked at the Imperial Typewriter Company from the last day of the old year 1940 —
IJ: No. 1930 something. Would it’ve been 1934?
SJ: 1934. I left school 1934 of course. Sorry.
HB: Which school was that Stan?
SJ: Oadby School, there was only two schools in Oadby then, the Senior and the Junior. So in the Junior School, in the — when I started school at Junior School in Oadby and then moved to the Senior School in nineteen, [laughs] I get mixed up with the dates — [laughter].
HB: Thirties.
IJ: Thirty-four.
HB: That would be about in the thirties, yeah. What did you do at school? What were your main interests at school?
SJ: Well we did — more or less all schools — the usual school, you know, nothing in particular, that was, what can I say, well we just started school at four, started school in the Junior School at four, from the Junior School we went to the Senior School, that’s on the Leicester Road, Oadby.
IJ: Did you have any interests at school?
SJ: Well not really. We just —
HB: What, what did you enjoy most at school Stan?
SJ: I think I had the schooling really, the teachers were very good to us you know ‘cause we weren’t well off you know, all the kids at school the majority of the time. Yes it was quite nice at school, I enjoyed my schooling really.
HB: So what, what family did you come from Stan?
SJ: There was my mum, dad, I had a brother Aubrey, he died recently.
HB: Oh.
IJ: Ten years ago.
SJ: Ten years ago he died.
IJ: And Aub wanted to go in the Air Force but he had to go down the mines.
SJ: Yes, my brother was very disappointed because he had to go down the mines instead of being in, what he called ‘being in the war’.
HB: What did mum and dad do, what did dad do?
SJ: Dad was — worked in shoes, pressman in shoes.
HB: Was that local or in Leicester?
SJ: Er, it — he was local for a start and he was also at Leicester and mum, she was in the hosiery, and the boots and shoes. [laughter] They both had different jobs, they got work where they could you see.
HB: Yes. So as we get to your leaving school, how did you come to work for Imperial Typewriters?
SJ: Oh, there was a fella, he was the printer at, at the cartwrighter’s, he were a printer and he got me the job.
HB: Oh right.
SJ: He got me the job. He knew me. Me mum went to see him and he got me the job. So I did start school at the last of the old year, 1934 at the Imperial. I worked there until I got called up in — yes, I worked there ‘till I got called up in nine — when were it? I’m getting mixed up with —
IJ: Nineteen forty-one, was it?
SJ: Yeah, in nineteen thirty-four until I got called up in nineteen — oh God.
HB: I think it says on your Service Record early, something like, February 1941, something like that. About February 1941.
SJ: Ah. Yes I think it was about 1941.
HB: Where was, where was Imperial Typewriters at that time?
SJ: At the East Park Road.
IJ: In Leicester.
SJ: In Leicester, East Park Road in Leicester, yeah.
HB: And did er, and did you just go into it or did you go into some sort of apprenticeship?
SJ: I went in as a runabout, I, I were fourteen you see. You started as a runabout and you worked your way through various jobs til I become a foreman.
IJ: Well you did later on,
SJ: Manager yeah,
IJ: Not long before you went into the Air Force.
SJ: That’s right I worked up myself to be a manager at the Imperial —
IJ: But that were after you come out the Forces Stan.
HB: I was just, yeah, I was gonna say, so Imperial Typewriters was an important
SJ: Yes
HB: part of your life before the war.
SJ: Yes
HB: Um, what interests, what interests did you have outside of school before the war Stan?
SJ: Well I didn’t have very little interests.
IJ: Did you go night school Stan?
SJ: I went night school, night school but apart from that there well, there was nothing much in the village then. We had the picture house built, I remember that being built you see and that livened us up a bit, [laughter] somewhere to go at night time. Ahh, but that even closed down, that didn’t last, it lasted a while.
IJ: It were going when the war were on weren’t it?
SJ: Oh yes, yeah.
IJ: So it was after the war when it closed.
SJ: Yes it closed in about, ooh, well after I’d met you and that.
IJ: Oh yeah, yeah, because I mean it was till open when Jan were little, cos we used to take her pictures. So I mean, I think it might have been the sixties when it closed.
SJ: Yeah, as I say it was there for a short while really because as I said, it closed down and it were a shame really because we had do nothing else in the village, there were nothing until the pictures were built in Oadby.
HB: You were doing a bit, you were doing a bit with the Scouts weren’t you?
SJ: You what?
HB: You were in the Scouts weren’t you?
SJ: Yes, yes for a short time. That’s where I met that fella again, who got err, who crashed.
IJ: Hmm —
HB: Yeah, yeah in the, in the, in the accident.
SJ: Yes I met him again. That were funny that was meeting him because you see well when err, when you were detailed to a certain aeroplane and that, perhaps sometimes it had to go in the hangar for a major inspection and perhaps you used to have to follow it in and work on it in there and that’s where I met this fella who, you know, who got shot down yeah.
HB: Yeah, yeah the crash at the um, where the memorial is now yeah. The,so that, that you know, you’ve obviously been called up, when you’ve done, when you’ve done all your training, and you were you know, what was the process, what was, how did they sort of send you out? Did they just —?
SJ: No, well you see, you went to what were called to the school do you see? You went there from errr, I know I come away from there September 1941,
HB: Aha
SJ: yeah September. You had about seventeen, seventeen or eighteen weeks training and then you moved out to a squadron and that’s when I was posted to 102 Squadron in September 1941, I do remember that yeah. And I was with them all through the war years.
HB: So when, when you were posted out, how, how did you feel, how did you feel about going to, you know being posted to 102 Squadron?
SJ: Well it was great really because you felt as though you were doing something towards the war you see? You looked after the engines from you know, and you were, it were nice when we was made, in the latter, that latter part of the war, they made the Ground Crews the same as the Air Crew. The Ground Crew was to a certain aircraft, I was on EEs then, in the latter part of the war.
HB: And from that you formed friendships —
SJ: That’s right
HB: Through that?
SJ: That’s right yes, you went, you were posted to any aircraft to look at in A Flight, I was in A Flight. There was A, B and C Flights with about eight aircraft in each, in each Flight and I was posted to A Flight and I was with A Flight all the while.
HB: Yes. When, when you were working on the aircraft you obviously, you know, you’ve, you’ve done the work, you’ve got to get them ready for the operation. What was that process, getting them ready for the operation?
SJ: Well for a start the aircraft was always out on the dispersal point and you, you were detailed to this one aircraft, EEs towards the latter part of the war, so you went, you went out 8 o’clock in the morning you’re out there doing your inspection. It really [unclear] and sometimes it was about perhaps a 16 hour inspection, a 32 hour inspection [unclear] so the bigger the inspection were the aircraft.
HB: Yes.
SJ: You see, so you had a detailed inspection to do every day and err that, well then sometimes the Air Crew used to come out and they used to have a look over the aircraft and you know, have a chat with us and such like. That were quite nice, quite interesting really that were.
HB: And that, and this is where the bond, the friendship grew?
SJ: That’s right yeah yes, yes we formed quite a lot of friendships with the air air, you didn’t call them sergeants and such like, they were mates of yours really yeah, on our Squadron anyway. I mean you used to come out, perhaps have a fag with them, and a chat, and when they went on operations you always used to have to sign the form 700 which was my work form to, to say I’d done the engines you see and you’d go in when all the Air Crew were ready for Ops, they’d run the engines up, the pilot would, they’d sign to say they were satisfied with the engines and then I’d come out and shut the door and then you’d see, see ‘em off on the Ops. You used to have to sit there at night waiting for ‘em coming back which was quite, it were nice, all the EEs and them in the circuit you know they’re OK, we’d know we’d got ours back you see. And as each one come in we saw each aircraft in.
HB: So did you actually manage the aircraft as they left and as they came back, when they came down onto the ground?
SJ: Yes, seen, seen, seen ‘em off and seen ‘em back, oh yeah. And sometimes, well, well I used to stick a bit of chewing gum on the undercarriage for ‘em, it got a habit, yes I used to [unclear] , that were the good luck charm for ‘em.
IJ: Oh crikey.
HB: On the EEs?
SJ: Yeah on the EEs, yeah and I used to get a bit of chocolate for that [laughter] , from the aircrew and that yeah.
HB: And did, obviously you were there for a long time you know, from 41 through to 46 um.
Doorbell
SJ: That’s all right, it’s only —
HB: It’s all right I can pause —
HB: That’s just a short break in the interview ahh while a friendly neighbour delivers one or two bits and bobs to Stan. Um, we’ll just go back Stan to obviously the length of time you were at Pocklington and er what not. You you had the same aircraft?
SJ: Yeah.
HB: Umm, what was —
SJ: We didn’t from the start we didn’t from the start. You see, what at one time the the Flight Sergeant used to ‘right so and so Stan, Jack you’re on E today, you’re on A ’ he said. And then suddenly it got to it that the same aircraft, the same aircraft and the same ground crew which was, it were more interesting, better for you, you felt as though you were part and parcel of the —
HB: It, it strikes me, from the way you’ve spoken previously that it must have been, quite, umm I won’t say emotional, I would say difficult, to —. You’re looking after the aircraft, you’ve formed these friendships with some of the Air Crew and you’re watching them disappear,
SJ: Hmm.
HB: and obviously there was a possibility that they weren’t going to come back?
SJ: Yeah, yeah. Well we never thought about that, we always thought about them coming back. I never lost an E, in all my, no I never lost an E, not err, not in the latter part. For a start I’d say when you were on any aircraft you see, I did, one aircraft, E, I did lose one aircraft that, he come down shot up with a hundred, hundred holes in.
HB: Phew.
SJ: Yes, he managed to land it. I forget his name now, but he rose in the ranks to Squadron Leader, I forget his name you see. And er, and er of course you saw a lot of that really, you know, crashes and. You used to be fetched out to crashes you know. I mean one crash I did [unclear] , there were seventeen on it, they took the ground crew up and they crashed you see. So we had to sort that out and I didn’t know at the time, it were night time, I didn’t know at the time but the pilot was still in there. When they come in the morning they had to report the pilot still sitting there you see. Yeah, they’d missed him yeah. But anyway, yes we and we also, it was one time perhaps we were stationed in the farmhouse and the farmers and that and the family looked after us through the, oh yeah, perhaps had breakfast with him or something. Oh yes, they were big on breakfasts and that with the, on crash duty yeah.
HB: Hmm. Difficult.
SJ: It were nice, I enjoyed the time there. You see I’d been there all the while with the same fellas and it were quite nice ‘cos you, you formed a bond with them you see and also the Air Crew, and as soon as they’d finished operations of thirty ops they’d take the Ground, they’d take us out for a meal.
HB: Mmm.
SJ: Yeah, I’ve been on one or two [laughter]. As I said I never lost an aircraft in my time. So, yes, before, yes they’d take us out, take us down in the car to Pocklington to the pub and have a meal, come back and sitting on top of the car roof coming back, [laughter] had a good time, all singing and shouting the ground crew and that, we were all one yeah. I think I had about four, four meals. Yeah yeah, I didn’t lose a ground crew, it were quite nice up there for me
HB: Hmm.
SJ: thinking back. It was, it were Hank and Tom and all this lot. One were a tailor, one were a tailor in, err somewhere you know. One were You got to know what they did you know.
HB: 102 Squadron had a range of nationalities in the air crews. Um, was that reflected in the Ground Crew as well, or just —
SJ: No there were some, we did have a group that’d come one time come, perhaps about half a dozen engine and aircraftmen, yeah. We did have that at one time, but normally we had, it were just the lads, you know, the lads who‘d been there on the same aircraft and that and you see you formed this er loyalty and that to the aircrew you see.
HB: So you had, you had four dinners, that’s four crews,
SJ: Yes we had four —
HB: How long, how long would it have, would the aircraft —?
SJ: We had thirty ops
HB: taken the aircraft have taken to do thirty ops?
SJ: They’d done the thirty ops, they’d done the thirty ops and they took us to the local pub yeah. They didn’t err, as I say I never lost a ground crew in the latter part, which was quite chuff really. We all got er, we formed that bond [unclear] for thirty ops and that and seeing them off and back, yeah.
HB: So as you’re coming to the end of your time at Pocklington and then you moved to um err, where did you go after Pocklington?
SJ: Bassingbourn.
HB: Bassingbourn. So you’re coming up to the end of the war, what did you, how did you feel about, at what point did you think this, this ain’t going to last much longer?
HB: Well when the war were over, we were only too pleased it were over and it weren’t the same, it weren’t the same in the Air Force after the, after the war had finished. Well we’ve done it, let’s get out, you know. That’s kind of how it was yeah. Because it, as I say, you formed a bondship with the Air Crew, each Air Crew you see after their first two or three ops you know and that, yeah.
HB: Hmmm. Cos, I mean, in what, about the early part of 1945 you know they were moving towards D Day and all that sort of thing you know. Did you know much about that on the airfield?
SJ: No, no we just carried on you know, every day you did, did the same thing,
HB: Yeah.
SJ: look at the aircraft, see it’s OK but it wasn’t the same as before. You’d think it’s finished, it’s over and done with.
HB: And when when did you and your Ground Crew sort of think to yourselves, or find out. that you were coming towards the end of it?
SJ: Well I think in the latter part, you see and they took, they took us about the second, the second week after the war finished, they took, they took us for a trip over Germany to look at all the bomb damage so we had, we had a quite a good trip out to show us all the bomb damage, yeah. What we’d done. That’s when you started knowing it were over, you know, you’d done your bit, let’s get out.
HB: Hmm, yeah.
SJ: You understand what I mean.
HB: So they, so you were actually in an aircraft, was that your own aircraft?
SJ: Yeah, that’s right it were your aircraft. EEs were our aircraft, we looked after that.
HB: And they, the pilot flew you out over Germany. What was you, what was you f —That must have been a bit of a strange feeling Stan?
SJ: It were nice though.
HB: You see —
SJ: It were nice the way, ‘cos they flew low. Matter of fact I looked up at wotsit Cathedral, cos it were that low going on and all the people were waving to you, you could see all that.
HB: How did, how did you feel when you actually saw what they’d done, the effect of the bombing?
SJ: Yeah, I thought, well I mean when I went out I were in the rear turret, so I had a good view I did. Cos it, it weren’t you know, they were all in their positions, some were sitting in the wotsit, but they gave me the rear turret seat so I was first off and last on ha ha.
HB: [laughter] Was that because of the chewing gum on the aeroplane?
SJ: [laughter] Yeah, I had a good view you see of what happened. All the bomb damage you see.
HB: Hmmm. When, when when you came to actually coming out of the RAF um how did you feel about the sort of attitudes towards Bomber Command, that sort of thing?
SJ: Well, it was, to me, to me I never bothered with me medals because I was that disappointed with how we were treated, you know, Bomber Command, I never bothered. I didn’t get a medal and that. I were in five and a half years and I never got a medal.
HB: And yeah, did you? You say you were disappointed, um what?
SJ: With the attitude of the higher ups, how Churchill treated us, you know. He done nothing, he done nothing really. They did too much damage. What, what killed Churchill was when the last bombing raid on Essen, is it Essen? Where, where they killed, they killed a lot of people and they said it weren’t defended, but it was, it was. Because, err how was it, [pause] they said it, they hadn’t ought to bomb that because it wasn’t a proper bombing raid or something like that.
HB: Hmm right.
SJ: Yeah. They shouldn’t have bombed it, like that. But it was, ‘cos there was, there was a, err they were still using, they were still bombing err us as well as them you see. I won’t say it were tit for tat but we we thought we did a good job you know, to end the war, really.
HB: And that and that feeling towards, you know, as you said, Churchill and the higher ups, um did that affect, did that affect how you looked at the country after, when you came out of the RAF, did that did that affect how you looked at things?
SJ: I don’t think I gave that a thought you know, I’d been, I’d done my bit and I was satisfied what we’d done and that was that.HB: Hmm.
SJ: Yeah.
HB: Hmm. At what point in this, in this time at what point did you meet Iris?
SJ: Did?
HB: Did you meet Iris?
IJ: Yes.
SJ: That was nineteen forty —
IJ: I was sixteen weren’t I,
SJ: Yeah [laughter]
IJ: When you met me and?
SJ: Yes. I met Iris about, oh after I’d been in the Air Force
IJ: Yes.
SJ: for a couple of years or more.
IJ: Yeah that’s right.
SJ: Came home on leave once and I was introduced to Iris at the De Montfort, the De Montfort Hall.
HB: Aaahh.
IJ: Yeah, so that’s when we got together, we had a dance and that were it weren’t it?
SJ: Yeah, yeah. We got married two years after. But it weren’t —
IJ: 1944 we were married.
SJ: 1944 we got married, 1944 yeah.
HB: So you’ve met Iris, you’ve got married, you’ve come to the end of it, you’re coming out of the RAF. Um I think you said earlier that you went back to back to —
SJ: Imperial.
HB: Imperial Typewriters?
SJ: Yes because your jobs, your jobs was er spoken for, you were reserved yes. If you went back, you went back to the same job and everything yes and that’s when we err
IJ: What?
SJ: I had about six weeks leave. I didn’t want to go back to work for six weeks, I thought, well you know, and then I went back, went back after six weeks leave and err I think was it, weren’t it Iris?
HB: Did you, did you just pick up where you left off or did you —? Was your engineering stuff in the RAF useful?
SJ: Yes it seemed a bit tame after, seemed a bit tame after being with the lads.
HB: Hmm.
SJ: I missed the lads when they come out of the forces, yeah. Well you’re bound to after all them years, ain’t you with them?
IJ: Well It’s like the college lads and girls, I’ll bet when they come out they miss all their mates unless they keep in touch with them.
HB: So your, when you actually got back to Imperial Typewriters, um you’ve got your job that’s been reserved for you, you know you sort of start work, the lads that you’ve been with, particularly the ground crew, um how did you, how did you feel about keeping in contact with them?
SJ: Well we kept in touch with one, Eric.
IJ: Yes Eric.
SJ: I kept in touch with him ‘cos he lived near, where were it? Where did he live?
HB: Kettering?
IJ: No.
SJ: About er twenty five mile away.
IJ: I forget where.
HB: I kept in touch with him for quite some time.
IJ: We used to go and see them, haven’t we?
SJ: Yes we used to go and see them, yeah.
HB: Was he the one from Northampton?
SJ: That’s it Northampton.
HB:Right yes I think we mentioned him last time.
SJ: Yes from Northampton, kept in touch with him but he died didn’t he, he died.
IJ: He died yeah.
SJ: I went to see his wife afterwards didn’t I but that’s — when he died —
Iris: She kept in touch for a bit, she sent us Christmas cards and that didn’t she? Then the daughter rang to say that she’d died.
SJ: Yeah.
HB: Did you ever, did you ever get any messages you know about reunions or getting back together or anything like that?
SJ: No, no there was nothing, I’ve never heard of a 102 Squadron reunion at all. Since I’ve been in touch with them they’ve been talking about them now but you see I can’t get up to them at the present time. I’d love to get to one, you know. I mean I’ve been invited ain’t I to —?
IJ: Yeah, oh yes you’ve —
SJ: I’ve been invited, they’ve been in touch, they say I can go to the home at Pocklington.
HB: Hmm yeah.
IJ: We’ll perhaps be able to do that if it —
SJ: I hope to be able to do that one of these days, I might see if I can get back there.
IJ: Well if we can get that wet room done, I mean hopefully if we can get in, we can go there while they’re doing it, you know for at least a week.
SJ: That’s what we’re thinking because they’re going to do the wet room for us you see. They say there’s going to be a bit of a noise for a week and I’m hoping to try, if possible to go for a week whenever they start. It could be six months or more.
Iris: That’s if we can get in.
SJ: Yeah.
HB: That would be really nice.
SJ: They tell me I can because I was on that Squadron for a long while.
HB: Well, yeah I mean, 1941 to ’46 it’s —.
IJ: You were there.
SJ: Yeah.
HB: That’s why, I mean I’m, I come from an era where you know we didn’t have that situation, so it’s hard to think that guys who were together as a team, as a group working every day, you know in war time conditions, um it comes to an end and there doesn’t seem to be much happening afterwards.
SJ: No there was nothing, you think, it were funny really. It took a little while to get used to being back in Civvy Street, as they say, it took a while yeah really. I mean yeah [laughter] you felt like, at one time that I’d like to get back to the lads you know, no disrespect, no disrespect to the wife of course but you miss the lads.
HB: How long, how long before that sort of faded away?
SJ: [pause] Oh I think it took a year or two before it finally, you know because well, you were back in Civvy Street then, which is entirely different to being in the Forces really.
HB: What did you think were the biggest differences at the end of the war when you when you came back to work?
SJ: Well there were the lads and you were, you were all together you know even when you were bombed and that you know.
HB: You got bombed did you?
EJ: Oh yeah, yeah we all went running down the shelter, it were that full of water and we got wet through.
IJ: Where were that Stan?
SJ: Pocklington.
IJ: Was it in Pocklington?
HB: Three foot, three foot deep in water?
SJ: Yeah, yeah [unclear] were full of water yeah. We got err once or twice, as a matter of fact when we got married, that were 1942 when we got married, 1944 sorry, when we got married, and err one aircraft bombed and it took err it damaged another aircraft right at Barnby Moor yeah right at — oh yes, it it bombed this aircraft, I were on leave at the time, come back yeah.
HB: So, so you were [cough] excuse me, actually on the airfield when you got, when it was bombed?
SJ: Yeah, yeah.
HB: Err obviously by the enemy, [laughter] um, so yeah that, hmm yeah so that’s, is that when they were out on operations or had they followed them back or was it just an opportunity?
SJ: Ah well, sometimes they followed ‘em back you know.
HB: Hmm.
SJ: Sometimes they followed them back and one time there were quite a bit of damage done because all the lights were lit up and the aircraft were bombing the airfield.
HB: How many times do you reckon that happened to you?
SJ: Not many times.
HB: Right.
SJ: No not many times it were only about once or twice that were but we had plenty of air raid warnings you know as they were after all airfields you see.
HB: Hmm. Well bearing in mind the time and you need to get something to eat Stan, I think we’ll call it a day and I’ll, I’ll pass this over to the guys at Lincoln but thanks ever so much you know for what you’ve said before and all the photos, it’s absolutely brilliant really because as I say —
SJ: Even so I don’t feel as though I’ve done much.
IJ: Stan can’t quite remember, it’s changed a little bit this last month or two, he can’t he can’t remember quite so much now.
HB: Stan what you can remember is is remarkable and as I say it’s an aspect, that you know the Ground Crews and the way the air stations worked,
SJ: Oh yeah,
HB: And all that. These are things that —
SJ: We did appreciate the grounds crews and they appreciated us.
HB: Yeah.
SJ: They appreciated —
HB: I’m going to turn the tape off now, or the recording, it’s not a tape any more.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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AJeffreySE160613
Title
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Interview with Stanley Ernest Jeffrey. One
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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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:40:43 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Harry Bartlett
Date
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2016-06-13
Description
An account of the resource
Stan Jeffrey was a flight mechanic at RAF Pocklington. He discusses the camaraderie between the ground and air crews. He would stick chewing gum to the undercarriage as a good luck charm. Shortly after the end of the war, the ground crew were taken on a flight over Germany to see the bomb damage. He worked for Imperial Typewriters before and after the war.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tina James
102 Squadron
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Cook’s tour
flight mechanic
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
military service conditions
RAF Pocklington
superstition
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d1312998e636d40c61cbd74768886b69
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/288/3443/AKroeseFW170829.1.mp3
f87c89b9ef839dbc0503dcb2f14574d3
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
Kroese, Frederik
Frederik Kroese
Frederik W Kroese
F W Kroese
F Kroese
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Frederik Willem Kroese (b. 1924), a memoir, a cartoon and an empty packet of V cigarettes. Frederik Kroese was a member of the Dutch resistance. He acted as a courier and helped airmen evade capture.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Frederik Kroese and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-29
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Kroese, FW
Language
A language of the resource
English
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Netherlands
Great Britain
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
RVDP: I am Ron Van de Put, IBCC volunteer, about to interview Mr Frederik Willem Kroese who took part in the resistance as a member of team oft hulp aan during the Second World War. Mr Kroese was, among other things, involved in making and disseminating fake IDs, secret messages, transporting arms and ammunition and helping aircrew escape from the Germans and cross the border to safety. Mr Kroese, thank you very much for agreeing on doing this interview. As a start could you tell us a little bit more about yourself?
FK: Yes. Thank you, Mr Van de Put. I was born in 1924 and when I was sixteen the war started in my country. I awake one morning in May 1940 when the bridge near my home was blown up and when the Germans came in. I was too young to do something at that moment but it was not so that from the first day the Germans were in the Netherlands everything was wrong. Every time it became a bit more worse. That there were things the Jews couldn’t do, as a people couldn’t do [railway man?] and so and so when the war went, got farther we more remarked that we had to do something and as a little group we couldn’t fight to Germans but what we could do was to make more — less safe the Germans in being in our country. And so, giving them little stitches. When I was in the third, third year of the war I got a message on Friday to report on Tuesday at the office with a small bag with clothes and toothpaste to go to work in Germany and that was, for me, the moment that I thought — no. That will not be. As you don’t know directly a place to dive, to hide yourself I first went to a friend who was sure as he was following a course for the school teachers he was safe not to be called up by the Germans. I got there but it was a house near the school, my secondary school, where two hundred Germans lived and I was at four metre from them to hide me. The things I did there was pulling potatoes and making coffee and other things. Quite boring. So, I was glad that a man who brought us two hundred copies of a secret volkpaper said to me, ‘Would you come to my place there in the resistance and you could do good work. ’ I said, ‘Oh yes. Please.’ And I went there. Afterwards, I realised me, that the man who asked me that was the son of the particular, particular secretary of Her Majesty Queen Wilhelmina but in war we were just friends. We became friends to fight to enlarge the [pause] to make it the Germans more danger. More difficult to do what they intended to do. So, I started in 1943 at the place [Oldpaten?] and what we call landgoed [?] near my native town.
RVDP: So, an estate.
KR: An estate.
RVDP: Yes.
KR: And seventeen hectares and I could do interesting work and work which made the work of the Germans difficult. First, I became head of the correspondence and connecting group. There were thirteen what we call couriersters. Girls between seventeen and twenty-five who were selected to bring reports from all very little towns to me so that I could bring them farther so that the BBC in London got acquainted with it. After, in the Netherlands, there were the interior forces of the Netherlands and they were divided into sections. The armed section and a non-armed section but there was not a sharp section. When needed I had to go take rifle and to go to join a group. But first was the most of the work was reporting things that happened in the surroundings. And for instance, we had a house very close to the railway at Amersfoort so that we could report what goods were transported by the Germans on the, of the railway. For instance, tanks and other for the Atlantic Wall. That gave us the intention to say if we blow up the railway it would restore the interest of the Germans to bring tanks by the railway to the Atlantic Wall. So, we did. But the Germans were very angry and said, ‘If, in the future, there’s a new attack the house that’s nearest to the point where the railway is blown up — the house will be burned and the inhabitants will be shot down. ’ That was a difficult point for us for it means that the inhabitants of the Netherlands, our friends, nearly became our enemies as we were suspected if a Dutch man who was very close to the Allies saw one of the resistance men he thought, ‘not my home.’ So it was very difficult to go on with the job as the people were anti-resistance man. Became anti-resistance man to save their home and their children. We thought about this two days but then came to the conclusion we must go on otherwise the resistance movements ends and that was not the intention. Certainly not. So, we changed the place where we made the attack. Very good hidden by bush and so and but it was near a house with two parents, forty five, forty three and four children — four to seventeen. And one and a half kilometre farther there was a small house with two people — eighty-five and eighty-three. It doesn’t mean that it is not verschrikkelijk.
RVDP: That’s ‘terrible.’
KR: Terrible. But war is terrible and the choice is to choose for the less terrible thing. So, we thought two people older than eighty can better die than six people in the glow of their life. We then found that the Germans got a bit of [unclear].
RVDP: They were more skilled in something.
KR: They were skilled in repairing the railways.
RVDP: They got better at it.
KR: Yeah. So it first took two days. Then one day. Then at least only one morning. So we made a decision that it was no more worse to blow up the railway as the damage we caused was not interesting enough for what we intended. That was one of the things I could do. But as I said I, we got news to the BBC and when we asked for dropping of weapons we had contact with the BBC and at thirteen hours Dutch time we got messages from Radio Orange and at certain time I heard, ‘The apple juice will not be eaten very hot.’ And we thought, ‘Ah that’s for us.’ Tomorrow at about 11 they will drop a container with weapons in the surroundings of [unclear]. In our surroundings. Unfortunately, it happened that a keen German general also knew a great deal of the [pause] of the [pause] —
[Recording paused]
KR: I was looking for the word. The code. For the German General Guderian knew quite a lot of this code. Therefore, I myself think that about sixty percent of the droppings came in German hands and not reach us. That was very bad but we couldn’t help that. In such a container was found with the weapons was a little book in six languages and at the end several voorbeeld.
RVDP: ‘Examples’.
KR: Examples how to deal with them.
RVDP: So, a manual.
KR: A manual.
RVDP: With which you, the people who used it, the contents — knew what to do with it.
KR: Yes.
RVDP: For demolition. Arms. Ammunition. A manual.
KR: Yes. And that also when we had such a dropping [unclear] of one of our other points and that was Baron von Hagren from [unclear] on an estate of twenty-two hectares where they had to bring the weapons. I did that in bags at the end, both ends of the bicycle and the question was do you go by the main road that’s thirteen kilometres or do you take second or third plan roads so you could perhaps avoid meeting Germans but that was twenty-five kilometres? Well, in short, I decided. I didn’t know if I was lazy but I decided to take the shortest way. And all again good. I came to Mr Van Hagren and I gave him the weapons. I had a message for him but he didn’t want it — to receive from me. He said, ‘That fall on the floor.’ I said, ‘But if the Germans here in the surroundings, he only sees that something is dropping then I, if I put it in your hands — ’ ‘Drop it.’ I think it was that if he was caught by Germans he could swear on the grave of his mother I didn’t receive any paper form or anything from this man. Okay. From my own [pause] wandering I found that the second part, going back was more difficult as due to the hunger winter we had lots of people came from north to the west. That means from Svala to Amersfoort on their bicycle with potatoes, with food. And so, and I had an empty case and people said, ‘How this man has not received anything from the farmers? ’ So, I said to Mr Van Hagren, ‘Next time I need six to eight stones to put in my luggage to be able to drive my bicycle as hard as the people with food.’
RVDP: So, people could tell it was loaded.
KR: Yeah.
RVDP: You had bags full and you wouldn’t stand out.
KR: Yes.
RVDP: Because that’s what you’re telling us.
KR: You musn’t —
RVDP: It was important not to stand out. To keep secrecy.
KR: Yes. That is what I say. If they remark you it’s not good in war. Never put your hat in the light. One of the main things for the resistance movement was to be as close as giving less names as possible and less addresses as possible. Important is that. So few people as possible should know anything from you and from your comrades. All must be done in secrecy. I preserved it when I came by bicycle out of the woods and the German came and asked me my bicycle. I had a band on my arm that I was part of the [unclear] of the town but that wasn’t important for him. I had papers in German and Dutch that I needed my bicycle. That too wasn’t important for him. So, I must walk. And in that case the resistance movement is in alarm for our courier which is not back in time and will he stand not to give addresses or names so that other people will be in danger. It was spare time. That means not to be allowed later than 8 o’clock in the evening on the streets and I came back at 9 o’clock in the evening but everyone was happy nothing happened and there was no name has fallen. Okay. That’s one of the securities that there was. Then another thing was, what we did, I spoke about the girls from seventeen to twenty-five who came from certain directions to give me the information. We could not allow that many times a day she would say, ‘Oh I have — my tyre is no good. I am later.’ So, we had made a decision that the bicycles of our girls must be perfect. So, we went to a salesman in the village. Asked him which people has bought, in the last months, a new bicycle. Then shifted it if it was a good Dutchman or a bad Dutchman and after that we went there. I think that was the man that asked me to join the resistance was in uniform, a German uniform. I myself had a police uniform and we went to a place where we knew they must have a new bicycle and I said to the man why we came, let me say it was a farmer. ‘Listen. This man is a German who needed a bicycle. If you tell me where your good bicycle is I will try to avoid that he goes there.’ So, tell me and we shall see if it happens, if it works.’ ‘Okay.’ As Henk was not a German but a Dutchman he, so he heard what I said perfectly what place the bicycle was but we played a game and so three or four minutes he was looking at a hay farm but I, in the farmhouse, in the stables and then suddenly after about four minutes he said, ‘Well’ and he went directly to the place he had heard that a good bicycle stand. We needed only the tyres so we threw the rest of the bicycle in the [unclear] of the estate. The water of the estate. Okay. So, worked our connections service. Another point. There came at the end of the war the Spitfires fired at German motor moves on the roads and they wanted to make a place to hide between the trees. And the German commander came and told us that he, or as he told the community, we were not a partner, that he needed three people to dig the roads. When he came back, he said, sorry. He heard there were no volunteers so then he [throwed?] and said, ‘Be sure that tomorrow you have three persons. Otherwise the secret police, our secret police, the Gestapo [ Gubz?] from Almelo and they will do their work.’ And we will know that that was very very awful work so we must prevent that the Gestapo should come. So, we gave the Germans three men to dig the holes. We could do that as not every German was em fanatic Hitler follower. Not SS and SA but he was a German who was called up for service and perhaps hated Hitler but he had to do his job and so he made us not too dangerous. We had the, previously, that our estate was apple trees and once in a fortnight we gave the Germans a bottle of apples. And so he was confident and we were confident. Therefore, I myself admired the work of the communist who had to do to hide people in a house in a row while we worked with estates where you much more easily could hide some people. Some events that I especially remember were [pause] at the end of the war pilots were very young. Eighteen. Nineteen years. Didn’t know too much. You know again there were too Britons which was in my home and I played chess with them also and gave them food. And I came above to take the plate back from the food and I saw that all the [unclear] soup was in the —
RVDP: So, he hadn’t eaten everything.
KR: He hadn’t even. He didn’t like it. And I said, ‘are you aware we are in the hunger of winter?’ ‘Tell her I don’t like it but don’t throw it away.’ Okay. Another was there were two Americans and a German car stopped before the house and as I say, ‘away. Away,’ and one of the Americans went to the window and pushed the curtain aside and I said, ‘are you mad?’ ‘I want to see how the enemy looks,’ he said. He didn’t realise the risk he gave to the people who hided him and tried to save his life so that he couldn’t became slachtoffer.
RVDP: A ‘victim’.
KR: A victim of the Germans. And so, it was different questions. The Australian, Eric Blakemore wrote to me many things for the happy memories of chess. And another from London wrote to me when I asked when they should go back the last lines to write a short sentence to me and he said, ‘know yourself to be true though canst be false to any man.’ That has astonished me. I thought, have I been untrue? Have I made a lie? What happens? But it should be something from Shakespeare or so and I don’t know exactly what he meant with it but he wanted that was his meaning. How he behaved himself. Okay. We had. I gave, as I say, the pilots and their helpers food so they must have a food card. Well another of our groups from the [pause] from the —
RVDP: Shall we pause for a moment?
KR: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
RVDP: Okay. Please continue.
KR: The resistance that were different groups with different tasks for when aeroplane was shot down. Our first work was — are we earlier than the Germans to find the people. And it’s the place where they were shot down a safe one. We couldn’t find. And poor German inhabited. The first thing was to take away the parachute and to give them new clothes. Or clothes anyway. Beyond that they should, for living, have food tickets and rations and an identity card. Other groups gave us the possibility to have blank tickets so that I could give them an ID card with stamps and so, and as I was and tried to be, to keep for myself some of these things I still could show my — the girls and school people how I worked with them. So I could show them a blank identity card and could show them how it worked. When it was full, our rations too, we had a group who made an attack in the evening at night at one of the burgh houses where the official guards were and they took them away for us so that we could give them to the flight people who were shot down, to keep them alive. When we sent them back they were some on a bicycle. Some we must hide other way. And we had an example that three Canadians were hidden under a beetroot car and some farmers said, ‘All full loaded,’ but they didn’t realise that underneath three Canadians must be able to breathe and to stay alive. It was so we had, I told you I played chess with them. We talked. In the meantime, we had good contacts but when there were about forty we had a group and there was another group again who sent them over the river and to hope that they were in the south of France where it was free already so they could join again.
RVDP: So, you had to make sure, when an aircraft was shot down, that you, as the resistance, were the first to make sure that the crew, if they were still alive, were safe.
KR: Yes.
RVDP: You took them with you in other clothes of course and you would hide them.
KR: Yes. Yes.
RVDP: And the resistance had all different teams and groups to make sure you had all the supplies you needed like the tickets for the rations, the food, the blanks, the blank cards.
KR: Yes. That was all. That was all good. Organised.
RVDP: Okay. And so, you hid them.
KR: Yes.
RVDP: Until let’s say, there were enough saved.
KR: Yes.
RVDP: To take them across the border.
KR: Yes.
RVDP: Which was done by another team.
KR: Yes.
RVDP: How long did it take normally for you to get enough?
KR: I thought that about six, seven weeks we needed but that was due to circumstances. So when it was perhaps more dangerous that we didn’t wait until we had forty but it was about thirty or so. But I know that my group certainly made twice the group over the rivers to free the Dutch ground. I don’t know how many places there were in the Netherlands but other groups did about the same. So I’m not able to say if it were one hundred, one thousand or five thousand. But we did our work so far as possible and as good as possible to save too — as much aeroplane soldiers were shot down we could bring alive to the border again. That was one thing that we, yeah, to a bit of resettlement and we did it. Organisation was good. I mean of course, the people we helped were thank to us that we did it so that was a good connection. And I must say that afterwards that was not so nice. We did not keep connections. But I think that comes through the circumstances. When I was in the resistance I didn’t find that I did a special thing to remember. So I must say that recently the official groups who organised the remembrance of seventy years. Seventy-two years. And so, the war was over and the end of the war in our country — the 4th of May. I was expelled to tell, or my daughter was expelled to tell why her father was allowed to lay a wreath on the monument in Amsterdam. And that’s the reason that at this moment we must give up from the dark what we still know what happened but then we didn’t. I never thought it is important or am I important. No. It was for our queen and our country we did it and to help as much as possible and dis-arrange the Germans. That was the work we did and why we did it for. And that’s still the reason that there’s not so much in remembrance. I reckon that I tried to save some of the things I worked with but not many people should have done it. And I have difficulty that I, for, for years I broke my neck and people thought oh that’s his end and throw away a part of the papers for that’s not interesting if you don’t know what it means. It is not interesting. And therefore it’s merely the sake of remembrance that I can tell but I’m happy now. I am happy that I have done it. So, I didn’t realise we did in the war. Now I realise it that how grateful the allies should be that, that our work we did in the war. But we didn’t do it to become in the lights. We did it to help where we thought it was our duty. For we were an ally too. Yes.
RVDP: Yeah. I think it was, as you just said very important to help our liberators liberate us.
KR: Yes.
RVDP: Of course that’s what you as part of the resistance did.
KR: Yes.
RVDP: And like you just mentioned the Remembrance Day, our Remembrance Day and telling your story and making presentations at schools. That’s all, that’s also, the Brits say because it’s important to remember.
KR: Yes.
RVDP: Lest we forget. And as we Dutch say — opdat we niet vergeten.
KR: Yes. But we finally realised it should be so important after sixty, seventy years that is and there were people now going to the schools and telling about what they find out about what I’ve seen. That they were born in 1944. I must say that it’s not really — and that is what they heard or what they think of it could have been. And then it is often more interesting or — they have done so much hero things. I can’t see what it was to me. I tell my story. Not from a book. I tell what I remember. That means what I perceived. What we did. What we had. What happened. And not to romanticise it and say if it should have been so it was nice. That’s not my story.
RVDP: No. From you it’s the real story and all those other people who didn’t really live through the war, weren’t born then and make presentations now. It’s more like hearsay. From you it’s the actual story.
KR: Yes.
RVDP: And that’s what makes it so very, very special. This interview.
KR: Yes.
RVDP: So, thank you again for telling us your story and it’s, it’s wonderful. So, thank you very much indeed.
KR: Yes. I regret that since six years I have the illness of Parkinson. So my ability even with —
RVDP: Balance.
KR: My balance.
RVDP: Yeah.
KR: Is not so good so I am —
RVDP: And it’s because of the Parkinson disease.
KR: Yes.
RVDP: Yeah.
KR: I couldn’t do all I should like to do but what I can I will do and I am eager to do it. So if I could please you with anything further and with some help I can certainly do it.
RVDP: Thank you again Mr Kroese and you are a really very remarkable man. Like you already told you were born in 1924. You lived through the war. Did all these things you told us about. You have broken your neck four years ago. You are suffering from Parkinson disease but still you are here.
KR: Yes, and I think —
RVDP: You must be very very strong and you were able. And thank you for that.
KR: Yes.
RVDP: To, to —
KR: I think —
RVDP: To get still — yeah. Sorry.
KR: I think that I broke my neck as part of the Parkinson that I had. Small amounts of not knowing for it was when I went in after walking with the dog in my garden. And as I live now only fifty years I can’t, it can’t have been, couldn’t be I didn’t know why it was. So, I say it’s a part of the Parkinson that has been.
RVDP: Okay.
KR: But I say at the moment to people and veterans the years between ninety and a hundred are the nicest years of my life and I’m so happy I can do these things now.
RVDP: Yeah.
KR: I like to take part.
RVDP: I’m very happy to hear that and I wish you an awful lot more years of enjoyment.
KR: Thank you.
RVDP: So, thank you again for this interview.
KR: Thank you for yours.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AKroeseFW170829
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Frederik Kroese
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:59:37 audio recording
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ron van de Put
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-29
Description
An account of the resource
Frederik Willem Kroese describes his work for the Resistance in the Netherlands following the German occupation.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Mal Prissick
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
England--London
Netherlands--Amsterdam
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940-05
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending OH summary
evading
memorial
Resistance
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Larmer, Lawrence
Lawrence Larmer
Laurie Larmer
L O Larmer
L Larmer
Description
An account of the resource
17 items concerning Flying Officer Laurence O'Hara Larmer (1920 - 2023, 430037 Royal Australian Air Force). Lawrence Larmer volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force and trained in Australia and Canada. He flew operations as a pilot flying Halifax with 51 Squadron from RAF Snaith. The collection consists of one oral history interview with him, wartime photographs of aircraft, aircrews and targets, his logbook, route maps, and an official certificate.
The collection was donated by Laurence Larmer and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-12
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. 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
Larmer, LO
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: This interview is for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive is with Laurie Larmer 51 Squadron, Halifax bomber during World War II. Interview taking place at Laurie’s house in Strathmore in Melbourne. My name is Adam Purcell it is the 12th of November 2005, 2015 in fact. Laurie we might start with an easy one, can you tell us something about your story before the war growing up what you did, before you enlisted?
LL: I was born in Moody Ponds eh in 1920, September 1923 and eh in 1931 or ’32 an old uncle of my father’s, my father was a painter and paper hanger by trade, during the depression there was obviously not that much work about but eh he managed and in 1931 or ’32 an old uncle by marriage of his died and he owned a hotel in South Yarrow and he left in his will that dad was to be given the lease of this hotel at a certain rental for as long as he wanted. So eh dad without any experience in the hotel business eh we moved into South Yarrow on the corner of Tourag Road and Punt Road and eh he ran this hotel until the old aunty the widow eh realised that the rental had been set in her husband’s will and she couldn’t do anything about it. So she did the next best thing as far as she was concerned, she sold the hotel. My father then moved to another hotel in Prahran and eventually in 1935 he went to a hotel in Ballarat and I went to school, St Patrick’s College Ballarat and I stayed there until I finished my schooling in 1940 eh in 1940 eh I got a job in the Department of Aircraft Production at Fishermans Bend where they were building the Beaufort bomber. Not on technical side, eh in the pay office actually I saw a lot about aeroplanes and what have you and eh in September 1941 I got called up for, I turned eighteen and got called up for a medical examination and eh it was for the army but to avoid going into the army you could volunteer for the navy or the air force. I volunteered for aircrew in the air force and was accepted. Did another medical exam, much stricter medical exam for the air force, aircrew actually, naturally and eh I then went back to work at Fishermans Bend until I got my call up sometime in 1942 and I went into the air force. So that is my pre-service history.
AP: Actually I might close that door if we can ‘cause it is noisy outside [pause] still there but it is not as loud. Okay where were you and how old were you when you heard war was declared and what were your thoughts at the time?
LL: I was, we were at Ballarat on the 3rd of September 1939 I was not quite eh not quite sixteen. I turned sixteen I turned sixteen a couple of weeks after the war was declared like most people I thought or hoped that the war wouldn’t last long and that I wouldn’t be affected. We were so far away that eh it all seemed a bit remote as far as we were concerned. And I certainly didn’t anticipate at that stage. I knew the talk was that kids of eighteen would be called up and I knew then or I thought then, the war would be finished before eh I got eh called up, but it was not to be.
AP: I guess you covered why you joined the air force based on some sort of experience with aeroplanes em why did you move in that direction in some sort of with aircraft. Was there some sort of inspiration that this was going to happen ?
LL: No I think that, I didn’t want to go into the army, the army just seemed to walk everywhere eh the eh hand to hand fighting didn’t sort of attract me. The navy didn’t attract me, I think there is a sort of glamorous feeling about the air force at that time. The Battle of Britain had just been fought and won and the eh airmen were eh I don’t know just a little bit different, and they seemed to just attract me a bit more than the other services.
AP: Can you tell me something about the enlistment process, were there interviews or tests or how did that all happen?
LL: The tests for the army of course was fairly simple, as long as you could stand up and breathe they accepted you for the A
army and that was only for home service. The fellows who wanted to go overseas volunteered for the AIF the call-up was actually for the militia because we didn’t have compulsory service for overseas, eh compulsory callout for overseas service. Eh the air force medical was much stricter, I always remember it was done in eh a place in Russell Street on the corner of Little Column Street were where Preston Motors were for many years after the war [cough] and eh we had eye tests which were particularly hard, they tested your heart and your blood pressure and all that sort of business which seemed a bit unusual for young fellows of eighteen, sixteen, eighteen we were at the time. I passed that and there was a delay of course of some months till they caught up. We were then to be trained under the Empire Air Training Scheme. That was sometime before I was called up, and I actually didn’t go into the air force until December 1942 so it was about twelve months after I volunteered for the air force I got my call-up to report to the service.
AP: Was there anything the air force gave you to do to sort of maintain the interest.
LL: We had to do school, night school, I went to the Essenham High School for two nights a week for about eight or ten weeks eh and we did maths and a few things like that. I can’t recall all the subjects we did, it wasn’t a matter of doing exams or anything. It was just to refresh us from our school days. Did a bit of geometry and angles and things like that, probably preparing us for navigation.
AP: Did you find that sort of training useful, did it help you when you got to your initial training school?
LL: It must have helped at initial training school. I was pretty good at maths even although I say so myself. This always confused me, I was never able to explain it. Two months, after two months at Summers which was the initial training school eh they came out one day, we were all there, they said ‘The following will train as pilots’ and they read a list of names. ‘The following will train as navigators’ they read a list of names and eh ‘the following will train as wireless operators’. And the balance for gunners. How they picked us I don’t know. I can only assume I must have done very, excellently, excellent at maths and those sort of things. Those picked to train as pilots and navigators stayed at Summers for another month. We did a bit of navigation and meteorology and a few things like that. But I, so I think that going back to school, the night school probably helped to refresh an interest in these subjects and it obviously paid dividends as far as I was concerned.
LL: What memories do you have of Summers, of ITS what was a typical day, what things did you do?
AP: Eh a lot of it seemed a waste of time we both knew an aircraft, they didn’t talk about an aircraft, they talked about Morse code and that was terribly important, I couldn’t take a word of Morse code couldn’t take a letter, I couldn’t understand it. Then a couple of nights later, the Aldis lamp I couldn’t even see that, it didn’t register at all. There was no way I was ever going to be a wireless operator and it wasn’t because I wasn’t trying, I just could not, couldn’t get the dots from the dashes in the Morse code. We seemed to do a lot of marching and eh, it was probably very necessary teaching us air force rules and regulations and all that sort of business. After a while you would say, ‘when am I going to see some action, when am I going to do something, when am I going to learn something about flying?’ Particularly once you had been charged to be a pilot you wanted to get on with it. Instead of that we did an extra month eh and then after that extra month I was posted to Benellah.
AR: Benellah was the– ?
LL: Elementary Flying Training School.
AR: What happened there apart from elementary flying training?
LL: Elementary flying training field, the first month we were there. Obviously the weather or something had held up the courses before and we were dragging the chain a bit. For a month we were known as tarmac terriers. We used to hold the wing of the aircraft because of the strong winds and of course Benellah which was a very open aerodrome no runways or anything it was just big one big huge enormous paddock eh and we’d hold, one fellow on either wing, the wing of the aircraft and we’d hold it till it got round there cause the wind would get under it, the aircraft was such a light aircraft, the Tiger Moth and then we would wait till they took off. You turned your back and you would get splattered with little stones and pebbles and that eh. And there would be fellows waiting down the other end when they landed to wait and hold them there and take them round. It was quite an interesting process, we had for half a day and the other half day we did, school, eh lectures on gunnery and eh basic flying without getting in an aircraft eh and navigation and a few things like that, meteorology particularly which was good. That was interesting even although we weren’t flying we saw these aircraft and we knew only in another couple of weeks and we would be there, then we started. We were allotted to an instructor, Jim Pope was my instructor, he was a sergeant a lovely bloke eh we then continued our lectures for half a day and fly for the other half. The next day it would be alternative, you know, flying and then lectures. It was good, I suppose after about eh it’s still sharp in my log book there, must have been twelve or fourteen hours or something went over to Winton one day which was a satellite ‘drome a bit further up the highway with another instructor. After we did one or two circuits and landings he said, ‘take me over there, pull up over there.’ Pointed to a spot where he wanted to go, he said, ‘now’, he said, ‘you are on your own, do three circuits and bumps and then come and pick me up’. I thought ‘goodness gracious me, here I am on my own’, you know, I was ready to go solo. And eh I wasn’t nervous it was just the excitement of it and you know you were concentrating on remembering all the things he told you to do and all that sort of business. I did three circuits and landings and went and picked him up and he said ‘that was good, alright son.’ Then we did eh, I don’t know whether we went back to Benellah, we stayed there, that’s right and he put me out of the aircraft and took another student and eh that was, that was. Then I went back to the normal side of the pad. The next day we done a bit further advanced flying eh cross country, and a few things like that. We were there altogether three months. Normally it would just have been two months, two months flying, but we did three months actually.
AP: What did you think of the Tiger Moth?
LL: Lovely, they were a breeze now you look back on it, in those days it was a pretty big aircraft, here you were sitting in the back seat. There were two seats, one in front, the pilot sat in front there, two little cockpits. Very basic, they had a control column it was just a stick that stuck up, a throttle which you pushed here, it was very, very basic. But we were told nobody had ever been killed in a Tiger Moth, whether that was true or not I don’t know that was, that was and it was good. I remember one day we had to do a cross country, this was sort of a bit scary I thought anyway. A mate of mine we had to go from Benellah to Ochuga [?], Ochuga [?] to Aubrey then from Aubrey back to Benellah. A mate of mine came up to me Tommy Richards he used to live at Clairbourne [?] and he said, ‘you doing this cross country this afternoon?’ I said ‘yes’. He said ‘so am I’ he said, ‘stick with me I know the road.’ He knew the way and then we flew back along the river and then down the highway you weren’t supposed to do that, you were supposed to go that way and the river might have gone down here but we had no problem. Before we left we had the whole thing planned out, had a little map on our knee and had it all. We got full marks for our navigation but it was only that Tommy had lived at eh, where did he, Clairbourne.
AP: You were talking while they were about no one had crashed a Tiger Moth. Did you encounter any accidents or high jinks or near misses or things, did you know- ?
LL: No, not while I was there, no, no. The biggest problem I reckon and they warned us about it was low flying, we used to [unclear] go down low and then we will frighten this farmer down there. There might have been electric wires going across you know. And we had hanging down the wheels, they weren’t retractable wheels on a, on a eh Tiger Moth. We did a bit of low flying everybody did but eh no I didn’t go as low as some of the blokes did you know. They used to try and be real smart and fly at ground level almost but nobody while I was there.
AP: You go from FTS, next step is a service Flying Training School?
LL: Service Flying Training School we got some leave and got a telegram to report to the RTR expenses troop and eh the smarties knew where we were going. There is always a smarty in every crowd all lined up they call and he’s here and he’s there and we are going to Sydney that means we are going overseas. ‘How do you know we are going to Sydney? That’s where the bloody train’s going.’ ‘Oh right oh we are going to Sydney’, and we went to Sydney. We went to Barfield Park and eh there they kitted us out and eh ‘Don’t think because you are here that you are going overseas, you could be going to Queensland.’ Somebody said, ‘well that’s strange what did they give us Australia badges to put on there’ and then they said, ‘you have got these Australia badges but don’t put them on until you get overseas.’ That’s in case we are going overseas, I don’t know. Well we were there about three or four weeks I think eh and we did nothing and that was pretty awful. And what they do, they were waiting for a ship eh [cough] and eventually they got us all lined up one day with the kit bags we put on a train and we went to Brisbane and put on this ship there the Metsonia and eh [cough] we sailed out down the Brisbane River and out we just got outside the harbour and looking over the side we could see a submarine. ‘Goodness me I hope it is one of ours’ or was one of the Americans ‘cause we didn’t have any submarines at the time and eh we headed, they didn’t tell us where we were going. We had a fair idea it was Canada. We went to New Zealand first and picked up some New Zealanders and then went up the west coast of South America and eh North America and landed at San Francisco. At San Francisco they put us on a train, we went to Vancouver eh got off the train there and put us on one of the Canadian Pacific Railway trains. We went to a place called Edmonton in Alberta. Eh that was quite strange because we didn’t know exactly what was going to happen from there on in. There was a big heap of us there and after three or four or five days I suppose eh we got another posting. I was posted to a place called Dauphin which was in Manitoba which didn’t mean much to me at that stage. Manitoba is actually the central province of the whole of Canada. Dauphin was about ah, suppose it would be about a hundred and fifty mile north west of Winnipeg which was the capital. Then the train went through, there was nothing in Dauphin apart from the air force base and the little village really [cough]. And so when we got there eh we found that we were going to fly Cessna Cranes which was a twin-engine, little twin-engine aircraft, lovely aircraft to fly, lovely and eh that was where eh he made the point there before in crashes in Tiger Moths. I had an Australian instructor, there were a couple of Australian Instructors on the station the rest of them were Canadians. The Canadians were lovely people. The officers were friendly, they didn’t muck around with formalities and that, it was real good. Eh this Australian instructor I had was a Sergeant Lawley, Lawla, Lawley I have got it down, there we are. He didn’t want to be an instructor he wanted to get at the overseas and he was a most unfriendly fellow, but you know I was coping with him and eh one morning we got up and he and another trainee pilot had been killed night flying. It could have been me and eh and that was about the first experience I’d had with anybody sort of eh death, you know. I was nineteen years of age and you were not used to it. Anyway they gave them a full military funeral eh which was good. Then I got a Canadian instructor and then it was real great after that it was wonderful and eh I sailed through the rest of the course. And I graduated in September ’43 as a sergeant pilot, I reckon we were pretty good.
AP: So then comes a boat across to the UK presumably.
LL: Yeah, we got a bit of liberty and went down to New York and Washington which we could ill afford and eh we went to Halifax in Nova Scotia and caught a, and got a boat to, I can’t remember the name of the ship we got to England we went to England in [loud background noise].
AP: We might just wait for a moment I think [laughs].
AP: So we were talking about a boat across to UK, you were just about to embark at Halifax.
LL: The interesting part about that trip was the ship that we went on, I think it might have been the Aquitania. It was a big ship, a lot of Americans on board [doorbell interruption; laugh].
AP: Anyway let’s get back to the boat [laugh] the Aquitania.
LL: And eh there were a lot of Americans from the mid-west not only had they not been on a ship, they never even seen the ocean. A lot of those kids, they were sick all over, oh! it was awful and what we did because we were too fast for a convoy we went on our own. But they zig-zagged all day, that way and then that way all during the daylight hours eh because it takes a certain time for a submarine to line them up to fire a torpedo at them and that’s what. That didn’t worry us but it was most unusual and when it got dark we went whoosh straight ahead. And eh we lived in pretty awful conditions, it was wartime we had hammocks and had a long table that came out from the deck, from the side of the ship and if there were six blokes at the table, three either side you had to find your accommodation so one bloke would sleep on this bench there another back there. Two blokes one would sleep on the table and the other three would be in hammocks above. That’s how, and we couldn’t have showers, we couldn’t shave properly it was pretty awful. We landed at Liverpool and eh went eh got on a train, went to Brighton. We got off the train at Brighton and there was a fellow there, he was a Wing Commander Andy Swan, he was a Scotchman in the RAAF. He had apparently been in the Black Watch for many years before the war done his time, retired, came out to Australia to live and the war started. He applied for a commission and got a commission, they sent him back to England, he was ground staff what we call a shiny bummer ISD interested in special duties. He was a wing commander and he was a dreadful man, dreadful fellow. He saw us, we had been five days on the ship, unshaven, unwashed and feeling very, very lousy and he berated us on the Brighton railway station, platform. Eh he had us smartened up within no time at all, we were going to do this and what a disgrace we were. Anyway the following morning eh, no two mornings later we had a general parade in the hall and there was the padre there, the Church of England padre a fellow called Dave Bear, you might have heard the blokes talk about Dave Bear he was a marvellous fellow he put everybody at ease you know. He said ‘there are three religions in the services, RC’s odds and sods and the other buggers’, he says ‘I am one of the other buggers, if you want anything just come and see me.’ He had a sign above his shop, his store ‘abandon rank all ye who enter here’. And that is what he was like. He used to give advice on a charge or anything like that or help you to write letters home or whatever you wanted. He was a great bloke, didn’t make any difference what you were he was just a wonderful fellow. He virtually did sort of a lot, undid a lot of the evil things this Andy Swan had done. They tell a story of the fellow who finished his tour and is on his way back home and Brighton is what they called 11 PDRC, Personnel Dispatch and Reception Centre. So any Australian airmen who went into England went through Brighton and when they were going home they went through Brighton and they knew and this fellow had taken the stiffening out of his cap which we all used to do, made us look a bit racy. Swan pulled him up in the street one day and said, ‘where is the stiffening in your cap?’ ‘I lost it over fucking Berlin’ whoops and kept walking. And then after we had been there for a while I got posted. I think the first posting was to a place called Fairoaks which was just near Windsor Castle, pre-war it would have been the King’s private aerodrome. This was just a way of sort of getting us back into flying again and there we flew Tiger Moths for a while. Eh back to Brighton then went off and done a PT course and then we went off and did some more flying eventually I had been up to Scotland, I was flying up there at a place called Banff eh BANFF [spelt out] was out from Aberdeen, from Inverness, out from Inverness the Scotch people were lovely eh and eh got a posting then to eh Lichfield which was 27 Operational Training Unit. The OTU was where you formed a crew. Lichfield was an Australian OTU in that all the aircrew were Australian so we got I got an Australian crew. It was an interesting thing we had the pilots in the centre, the navigators in one corner and the wireless operators and the bomb aimers and the, and the gunners in another corner [cough]. They said, ‘alright, pilots you have got to go and pick a crew.’ It was as simple as that, I didn’t know anybody who was a navigator but a bloke came up to me, ‘you don’t look a bad sort of a bloke’, and he was a wireless op, he was a bomb aimer, a fellow named Bill Hudson and eh Bill had been a used car salesman in Sydney before the war. Eh he had all the fun in the world and he said ‘stay here’, he said, ‘I will get you a navigator, I know a bloke who is a good navigator.’ He didn’t of course, he went off and he brought back a bloke and he introduced him ‘This is Ron Harmes, so wait there,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you a couple of gunners’ so he went off and got a couple of gunners. I said to him, ‘I am supposed to be picking this crew.’ And he said ‘I got it for you skipper don’t worry about it’. Then he got a eh, he got a wireless operator so eh, here we were we had a crew and I had nothing to do with it, we turned out to be good mates, we all got on very well together. A couple of them were different they eh, but we all sort of mixed in and did our job and eh. And eh there we flew Wellingtons, they were a big, heavy lumbering aircraft they really were. They had been used as a bomber during the early stages of the war but they couldn’t carry enough bombs and eh they couldn’t carry great distances, like a lot of the British aircraft the Whitleys and those sort of aircraft, eh Hampdens, twin-engined aircraft and that eh, just hopeless and the Germans had stole the marks on them because the Germans before the war, once the Nazis got in control they said, ‘who cares about the Geneva Convention, we will build the type of aircraft we need to win a war.’ The British they didn’t, they kept, the wing span couldn’t be more than a hundred feet. That is why when they eventually got the Lancasters and the Halifaxes and wing spans more than a hundred feet they couldn’t fit in the hangers because they had built the hangers to take aircraft with wing span of less than a hundred feet. The Germans it didn’t worry them they had aircraft with wing spans greater than a hundred feet. It was a silly situation but that was the way they operated eh and eh we flew these Wellingtons for a while and we were lucky and Bill was a good bomb aimer and we got highly commended for our bombing activities at training. Then eh I don’t know how many hours we did there, it’s in the log book there, we were posted to a place called Riccall eh, which was a Heavy Conversion Unit. I had been flying Tiger Moths and Cessna Cranes, and Ansons and Oxfords and what have you, you know. Then on the Wellington then boom, four-engined aircraft, it was like eh, like riding a bike and then getting driving train or something it was just sort of an enormous thing really. There we picked up our flight engineer. There weren’t any Australian engineers so we got an Englishman he was the only Englishman in the crew, good bloke too. I don’t know how many hours we did there but that is all in the log book. Then one day they said ‘right Larmer, your crew is posted to a squadron.’ ‘Oops, yeah okay, when do we go?’ ‘This afternoon’ [laugh]. So there we were on a train and eh they met us with a truck. We thought, by this time I got commission and eh they picked us up in a truck. Another crew arrived at the same time as us, this was an English crew. It was an English squadron but this other crew was an English crew, I only had the one Englishman and I, we were the only Australian crew on 51 Squadron at the time. There had been some there before and eh, we went to the orderly room, they told us where we were billeted told me what time dinner was in the officers’ mess and all that sort of business and report to the, you are in B Flight report to B Flight Office at nine o’ clock tomorrow morning. That I did and eh the squadron leader what was his name, Lodge he had nothing doing today. He introduced me to the other blokes, other pilots that were there. The bomb aimers had reported to the bombing leader and the navs to the nav leader and what have you eh, and then he called me back and said I will get you an air test, eleven o’clock. I got the crew and we done and air test at eleven o’clock. I don’t know what the point of it was, they had just done some repairs to an aircraft. Anyway we just hung around then for a couple of days. They said if you are wanted for flying, for an operation your name will be on a list in the officers’ mess. That was up at five o’clock at night you know, a couple of, we had been there about three days, and I got the list five o’clock you know. The following crews will report to the briefing room at 0600 hours tomorrow and my name was there. I went down to the officers’ mess and they said, ‘yes we’ve seen it’, so they knew, all the crew knew. And that was it were there, ready for our first operation which was a bit strange. Nobody took any notice of you, we were just another crew there and nobody sort of put their arm on your shoulder and said ‘you will be right son.’ Just eh, you were briefed, you had a meal and boom, off you go. They said, ‘you go and get dressed, you go and do this, you go and pick up your parachute, you do this, there will be a truck will take you out to your aircraft which was at your dispersal point.’ And that was it. Then eh we did another daylight and then a couple of nights later, a couple of nights later there was a list up eh one morning that there was a briefing at two o’clock and I was flying second pilot with an experienced crew. My crew weren’t going on it, just me and this other pilot went with another crew and he was in C Flight, I was in B Flight. That was a bit strange I had nothing to do except sit next to the pilot and you saw everything that was going on, the rest of the time when you were flying you were doing something, you were busy, you didn’t have time to be worried or frightened or anything like that. I don’t think I was frightened actually on this particular night. But you could see all the anti-aircraft shells exploding all around you and what have you. We got back and we were just taxiing around to a dispersal and we heard this other aircraft calling to eh traffic control V-Victor or J-Johnnie or whatever it was. ‘V-Victor overshoot.’ They had come in a bit high and they were overshooting, the second pilot, the other bloke that had arrived the same time as me, he was still a sergeant. The bomb aimer used to sit next to the pilot on take-off and landing and eh the pilot would open the throttles but then he would have to control, take the control column. So the second dickie used to hold the, hold the throttles open, apparently this bloke didn’t . He’d opened, the pilot had opened it, got onto the thing, the throttles came back, they only got, anyway it crashed, they were all killed, eight of them it was. Nothing was mentioned at debriefing, and the next day at lunch time I said ‘did somebody, what are the funeral arrangements.’ He said ‘what?’ I said, ‘the funeral arrangements for those blokes that were killed.’ He said, ‘there is no funeral, there is a war on son.’ Stone me you know these blokes that were killed in our back yard just across the road from the end of the runway. They buried them, slight, you know quickly eh but they didn’t get any military funeral or what have you it was just ‘there is a war on son.’ And that was it.
AP: Living conditions at Snaith, how, how and where did you live?
LL: Well we were billeted away from the station, of course everybody had a bike eh we were somewhere down near the local village and [cough] just had living accommodation there and as an officer and aircrew we got eh sheets which normally you didn’t get in the air force. Eh in the mess we got, we could get fresh milk and eh before and after a raid we got a meal of bacon and eggs which were luxuries in wartime England. The rest of the time eh the billets were pretty ordinary but you know you got used to them. I could never front breakfast, on one station we were on, this was just after the war we were at Leconfield and one morning for breakfast they’d have kippered herrings and the next morning would be baked beans on toast, they were, I could cop the baked beans on toast but not the kippered herrings, they were. We used to have to wait for the NAAFI which was the restaurant or café opened about eh half past ten or something to get some breakfast [cough] but basically the living conditions were pretty crude eh but that was wartime England you know, they, they couldn’t produce their own food, it all had to be imported and there were much more important things to eh to bring in to the country. But you know we survived, we complained about it mainly because we were eh used to Australian food and Australian conditions. But basically it was pretty good.
AP: Just sort of routing of that for a bit, what were your first impressions of war time England, what did you think, presumably this was the first time you were overseas?
LL: Well eh it was quite a shock, it took a bit of getting used to. When we got there in the November eh it was eh they had two hours daylight saving. Naturally you know that was to eh, you couldn’t have a shower, in Brighton the Australian Air Force had taken over two hotels, the Grand and the Metropole eh and they were eh big, real big hotels. They had stopped the lifts working, if you were on the third floor you walked up and down to the [cough] you could have a bath but the water could only ever come to a certain level. There were all those sort of restrictions you ah you put up with really. You got used to them I suppose after a while mainly because you saw the English and eh they were, they were probably worse off than we were, you know they were on rations and we didn’t have, when we used to go on leave, they used to give us the ration to give to the people we were staying with or wherever we were staying would want ration tickets. But eh you know you couldn’t drive a car, there was no petrol available for private, well there was for doctors and things like that but basically there were all those sort of restrictions. There were blackouts and we had a pretty miserable sort of an existence we found but you got used to it after, well a couple of years I was there, just over two years, just on two years, it was you got used to these sort of things. We were pretty well received the Australians they liked us, they thought we were colonials still but I think some of them still do probably. But eh we went, we were well received on the squadron eh mainly because they didn’t know how to take us. They were eh, we didn’t salute officers, we’d salute wing commanders and above but eh you were supposed to salute squadron leaders and you were supposed to salute flight lieutenants. If you were acting as a flight commander something like that, those sort of thing you know used to rile us. We used to go out of our way [emphasis] not to and that really used to get them going. They didn’t like us at all, and they didn’t know how to discipline us really, they were frightened, and we used to tell them we were subject to RAAF control from and they had headquarters in London and they would have to go through them, but they didn’t know really [cough]. But we survived I suppose.
AP: What sort of things did you do to relax if you weren’t on operations. Where did you go on leave, even not on leave, just when not on duty?
LL: Eh, not much at all, you used to hang around. When we were on the squadron and eh you see that there was nothing going today or nothing going tomorrow day, tomorrow eh you’d go to the pub in the village or you would stay in the mess. They might have a few drinks in the mess eh but eh basically we didn’t do anything with, we didn’t play tennis or cricket or any of those sort of things. I don’t know how we kept fit but we did [laugh].
AP: What sort of things happened in the officers’ mess, what did it look like first of all? What went on there?
LL: Eh very sort of strict, you didn’t sit at this table because this was where the senior officers sat and eh you as a new bloke could sit at that table up there you know. A couple of nights after I had been there a couple of days after I had been there I sat at the wrong table and they told me you know. I couldn’t say that it made any difference where you were sitting but that was what the sort of thing. This is where the senior officers sit. Not you know, when I got on the Squadron I was a pilot officer you know I hadn’t even graduated up to flying officer eh and that sort of thing sort of got to you a bit. I, I went into the flight office one morning, used to go in there, the flight commander you know, used to give him a sort of half salute. He was pretty good Colin Lodge, Plug Lodge they used to call him and eh he was on leave. I had been having a drink in the mess with this fellow I can’t think of his name now, eh he was a flight lieutenant and I had been drinking with him in the mess having a couple of beers with him. Eh I went to the flight office the next morning, I walked in and he is sitting behind the desk and eh I said ‘hello.’ And he said ‘you haven’t saluted.’ I said ‘I don’t have to salute flight lieutenants.’ And he said ‘I am acting squadron leader.’ I said ‘well you haven’t got the bloody rank, not showing it.’ Stupid stubborn you know, he said ‘I am acting flight commander and you are supposed to salute me.’ Oh I probably was supposed to salute the acting flight commander but I, as I say I had been having a drink with him the night before. And he said ‘go outside and come in again and salute me.’ I said ‘right ho.’ I went outside and went down the mess and had a shower. He never spoke to me again, never spoke to me again. Just unbelievable you know, that was the sort of thing. Eh we had one, this Bill Hudson I was telling you about the bomb aimer, we came back from a raid one day eh and after when you came back you dumped all your gear and what have you and you go up for a debriefing and you sit around the table, the intelligence officer sits opposite eh while you are waiting to go in, other crews that are there before you there had been a bit of a hold up and eh on our squadron the padres would give you either eh you could have a cocoa, or a tea, a coffee or something like that and eh an over proof rum. Well I had only one over proof rum, it nearly blew my bloody head off that was all. On this particular day, the eh two gunners didn’t drink and the wireless operator didn’t drink so Bill had two or three over proof rums. And we get in there and he was always a bit of a yapper our Bill eh there was a very attractive WAAF intelligence officer she was a flight lieutenant or a flight officer as they call them eh and eh she spoke to me first and how did we find it over the target area and did we this and that, one thing and another you know [cough] eh and then she said to the navigator and what about, did you have any trouble with your Gee box various [unclear] so and so. And then Bill he was looking at her sort of making a play for her, he had no hope and she didn’t wake up you know. He started to tell her about over the target area. Now there was flak coming up and eh and then the fighters and then the anti, the searchlights and he was wondering how he was able to do it. He was telling her this terrible bloody story and we were just about killing ourselves laughing you know and all of a sudden she woke up. It was a daylight raid and Bill had searchlights coming into his eyes you know. She didn’t think it was funny at all, I said, ‘don’t take any notice of him you know, just write down that we dropped our bombs and we got good photos of the target we reckon and so and so’. No. She wanted to put him on a charge eh for misleading and all that sort of business. Anyway I, I talked to her for some considerable time to try and break her down and I thought I had got, anyway I got to the flight office the next morning and the eh Squadron Leader Lodge said ‘what was this with your bomb aimer last night?’ [emphasis] I said, ‘oh no.’ she had reported it, he she demanded he put him on a charge. I had great difficulty restraining him from putting Bill on a charge and eh that gave us a much worse reputation than we deserved, you know. We were a good crew and we were doing a good job but eh just Bill had, had two over proof rums gone to his ruddy head. I will tell you one story it didn’t happen on our squadron eh but we heard about it in York or one of the local pubs or something. Eh after briefing and the mail all that sort of business, and you got out of the aircraft and had about quarter of an hour, twenty minutes and waited around, you put your stuff in the aircraft and the blokes would have a smoke, had a smoke. Just stand around and sort of relax waiting for time as I say, better get ready and so I can get out there, you know what time you had to take off. This wireless operator went up and eh and he said eh to the pilot, ‘I am not going skip.’ He said, ‘what do you mean you are not going?’ He said ‘I am not going’ he said. ‘You’ve got to go.’ He said, ‘I am not going.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I am not going.’ That’s all he said, so they sent for the flight commander and the flight commander sent one of the ground staff blokes off on a bike to get the -. He arrived out in his car and ‘you’ve got to go.’ ‘I’m not going.’ And that’s all he said, he wouldn’t give him any explanation or reason or anything you know, ‘I am just not going.’ Eh so they said, ‘you will be charged with desertion.’ ‘I am not going’, he said. They charged him with desertion, they locked him up eh they got a relief wireless operator and they were shot down and all killed. Eh he was court martialled and he got ten years in a military prison. I understand that he got out eh shortly after the war finished and they gave them an amnesty those blokes [cough]. But apparently from what I heard, what I subsequently found out later on eh that was all he ever said, ‘I am not going.’ He didn’t tell them why or, or that he wasn’t. He’d been, it wasn’t his first flight, he’d been before, eh two or three times before eh he just said he wasn’t going. Now I don’t know if he had a premonition or what but eh he survived and the other blokes didn’t and that was it. There is not much more I can tell you Adam, I think.
AP: There is one other thing, well there is two questions in particular that I have for you but one I have find out is, on your wings here is a little Guinness pin.
LL: [laugh]
AP: I am guessing there is a story behind that.
LL: On one leave we went to, went to Ireland eh and eh and one day there was a tour of the Guinness Brewery in Dublin. We had to go over in civvies but they knew we were airmen because we had our air force trousers and open neck shirt, blue shirt and sports coat which the army, air force store had provided for us. That was the only way we could get into, get into eh Southern Ireland because it was a neutral country. Eh this fellow said ‘you want to, give you this you know, Guinness badge, it will bring you luck, wear it for luck.’ I used to wear it on my battle dress, I just pinned it onto the eh onto the wing after I got rid of the battle dress at the end of the war, that was all.
AP: Been there ever since.
LL: [laugh]
AP: Okay there is another question that I want to ask as well. Was there any superstitions or [? voodoos] on 51 Squadron, rituals that people would do that you were aware of, for luck I suppose?
LL: No one thing they did eh they did, we had to do thirty flights, thirty trips for a, for a, for a tour eh and anybody that was doing their thirtieth trip, you knew but you would never say to the bloke ‘is this your last trip?’ I said it to one bloke ‘is this your last trip?’ [emphasis] He very near hit me. That was a very bad sign, no I don’t think there was, don’t think there was anything like that eh, not that I can recall, no.
AP: Okay. Final question and probably the most important em, how in your view is Bomber Command remembered, what sort of legacy?
LL: We fellows in Bomber Command eh [pause] during the war you didn’t sort of think much about how good you were and all that sort of business but when you saw the figures at the end of the war of the casualties and eh this is a classic example. The casualties there, just the Australian casualties that is eh when you saw you realised they had a loss rate of something round about forty per cent. It was a bit higher for the English, forty two or three per cent you know it was pretty awful and eh Harris was treated very shabbily by the British Government at the end of the war. Harris apparently, not apparently actually he was a brilliant organiser absolutely brilliant but apparently he was a dreadful bastard he used to argue eh and he would refuse. They would tell him a target say on Monday, they would have to get a couple of days in advance obviously to plan up and how many aircraft they would need, which way they would go and all that sort of business. Eh and he would tell them he wouldn’t go, that ‘we are not going to that place.’ You know. Just refused to, he would argue with Churchill, he would argue with the Air Board, he would argue with the Air Ministry eh he was one of those sort of fellows but he was always right. They wouldn’t admit it of course but eh ‘we are not going there, you want us to go there because this suits you after the war you know, so we are not going there, but we will go there.’ They said ‘no we don’t want to go there till next week.’ ‘Well we are going this week.’ You know, and he would plan it and that would be a very successful raid and it would have done the job you know eh. And at the end of the war all the chiefs of all the commands like Fighter Command, Coastal Command and Training Command were all made Marshals of the Royal Air Force, Harris wasn’t they left his as an air chief marshal. He resigned his commission immediately got on an aeroplane and went, took his wife and daughter to South America, to eh South Africa eh I don’t know whether he ever went back. Somebody told me once that he thought years afterwards that they eh had relented and made him a marshal of the Royal Air Force. I am not sure about that I never heard anything about that. Eh and eh that without any publicity the fact that these three blokes got, or four blokes got air, or marshals of the Royal Air Force which was equivalent of a field marshal eh and Harris didn’t. We all felt a bit, ‘is that what they think of us, is that really?’ We had the idea that we won the war, Harris gave us this impression. We are doing this as opposed to the American Eighth Air Force eh, and they were sort of a bit at loggerheads, they didn’t do any daylight, eh night time flights they only did daylights the eh Americans and we did daylights and nights you know, whatever it didn’t make any difference. We went out over the North Sea and fly for hours over the North Sea without any landmarks eh to check your position eh. We reckoned that Bomber Command had done an enormous job and they had, there was no two ways about it eh and a lot of us sort of felt well, the bulk of Bomber Command felt let down, eh really. Fighter Command got a lot of publicity early in the war Churchill went on with this ‘never was so much owed by so much, many to so few’. Eh but their work finished in September ’41. And they didn’t really do anything further until eh the invasion. They went over with, a bit of protective force for the invasion forces but basically they didn’t do anything. Eh we never had any fighter escort, never, the Americans had fighter escorts they used to take them over there and then meet them on the way back but we never had any. So as far as Fighter Command was concerned they did nothing [emphasis] for three years during the war. Bomber Command flew in operational flights from the day the war started or the day after the war started until the day after the war finished, really. So that was a bit of a let-down, really. And then eh persevered it took seventy odd, sixty, seventy years before we got a little clasp that said Bomber Command, the Bomber Command Association like the old boys of Bomber Command like their association in England, they tried for years to eh get some recognition and they eh tried to get us awarded the eh congress, eh the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal, CGM, eh they eventually knocked it back completely to ‘no’, said logistically couldn’t be done and all this sort of business and they went on and had a million reasons for it. And then they said well eh ‘we’ve got these ribbons.’ But no what does that show eh I’ve got a ribbon France, Germany Star which shows that I was in operations, but doesn’t show that I was in Bomber Command. So they said ‘we will give you a Bomber Command [doorbell interruption]. That’s typical.
LL: I rang our honours and awards section in Canberra week after week after week and I’ve given up. ‘Well’ they said, ‘your application is on hold.’ And I said, ‘why would it be on hold?’ ‘I don’t know why Mr Larmer but it is on hold.’ I said, ‘well get it bloody off hold.’ Eventually she then came back a couple of days later, ‘no, no it’s ok.’ I said ‘there couldn’t have been any bloody doubt about it, you know. You have got the exact figures and you have a copy of my log book’ and all that sort of business. ‘We are sorry about that Mr Larmer.’ ‘Now’, I said, ‘now how long is it going to take?’ ‘Oh it shouldn’t be very long now.’ Anyway eh I’d been waiting, oh, from the time I applied it was seventeen months and a mate of mine said, ‘why don’t you get onto John Find?’ I said, ‘no, no John Find couldn’t do anything.’ Anyway the next thing I know I get a ring from John Find’s producer. And eh I said ‘who told you?’ ‘Mr Bill Burke a friend of mine’. I said ‘Oh no, I said I told him I wasn’t, didn’t want to.’ And she said, ‘John would like to speak to you about it.’ Anyway he spoke to me and he sort of eh said, ‘are you serious, you know you have been waiting seventeen months?’ and I said, ‘yeah’ I said, ‘it doesn’t have to be fairly long, because I am ninety years of age, if it don’t get it soon it doesn’t matter.’ And he said, ‘no we’ll get it.’ And eh anyway he rang me back the next day, she rang me back the next day she said ‘John wants to speak to you again.’ He said ‘I have been speaking to the assistant minister eh, and eh he said within six weeks.’ And I said ‘ I don’t know what you drink in that place, but if you believe him, you know.’ I said ‘they won’t have it in six weeks.’ Two weeks later I got it, we got it you know. He rang me and said ‘Oh Mr Larmer your clasp for your Bomber Command clasp is coming through, you know it will be sent it down to you in the next week.’ Two weeks it took and I spoke to John Find afterwards to thank him and I said ‘I, I can’t understand it you know’. He said ‘Laurie they are frightened of us, we can give them bad publicity’, he said, ‘they don’t want any.’ He said, ‘we could have made them look very foolish.’ He said ‘and that is what we were prepared to do’, he said, ‘and they know it’, he said, ‘it is an awful way to exist.’ He said, ‘you couldn’t embarrass them but we could.’ Isn’t that terrible really and that was the thing. I wasn’t so much the fault of the people here in Australia, the people in England hadn’t done anything about it. It took an assistant minister here to get onto somebody in England to get them. They only had to put a fifty or sixty or a hundred of them in a box you know, it wouldn’t be as big as that, to get them out here and that’s what happened. So you know that’s what happened. Overall eh we reckon that Bomber Command and probably we are a bit unreasonable but I reckon we got a bit of a, you know rough end of the pineapple. Because eh towards the end of the war all the operations in the last two years of the war all the operations with Bomber Command all the news on the, on the BBC was six hundred of their aircraft went to Nuremburg last night, ten of our aircraft are missing. That was another thing, ten of our aircraft, but it was seventy men. Even meant you know you go on a raid and say three out of their aircraft went to Dortmund and they did bomb the railway yards and whatever they might have done you know. Five of their aircraft are missing that was thirty five men and that, that sort of eh took a bit of getting used to. Eh I could see their point from a psychological point of view everything was done to protect the morale, or build up the morale of the British people eh but eh it gave you the impression that aeroplanes were more important than blokes [ironic laugh] probably in war time they had plenty of blokes but were short of aircraft you know. There you are, alright you have heard all of that?
AP: I think we have heard all of that. Thank you very much it has been a pleasure for the last couple of hours.
LL: [laugh]
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ALarmerLO151112
Title
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Interview with Lawrence Larmer
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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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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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01:09:51 audio recording
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2015-11-12
Description
An account of the resource
Lawrence Larmer was born in Australia in 1920. After completing school he went to work on the Beaufort aircraft in the Department of Aircraft Production. He was called up in 1942 and volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force to avoid the army. His initial training on Tiger Moth aircraft was followed by further training in Manitoba, Canada. He graduated as a sergeant pilot in 1943 and was posted to Great Britain. He describes conditions at 11 Personnel Dispatch and Reception Centre, Brighton. At 27 Operational Training Unit, RAF Lichfield, he crewed up before posting to 1658 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Riccall. His first operational posting was to 51 Squadron at RAF Snaith. Lawrence Larmer discusses in detail the process of crewing up, of relations between personnel on the station, officers’ living conditions, and a case of desertion. He also discusses his views on Sir Arthur Harris and recounts his experience of applying for the Bomber Command clasp.
Contributor
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Hugh Donnelly
Mal Prissick
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1942
1943
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Canada
Great Britain
England--Brighton
England--Staffordshire
England--Yorkshire
Manitoba
United States
England--Sussex
Conforms To
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Pending review
1658 HCU
27 OTU
51 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
coping mechanism
crewing up
debriefing
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Heavy Conversion Unit
mess
military discipline
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
pilot
RAF Lichfield
RAF Riccall
RAF Snaith
superstition
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/294/3449/AMarshallAH161012.1.mp3
97bb1339dd8d17f832ee3984a665229f
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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Marshall, Alfred
Alfred Higgins Marshall
Alfred H Marshall
Alfred Marshall
A H Marshall
A Marshall
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Alfred Higgins Marshall (1861844 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-12
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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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Marshall, AH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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Hello. My name is Pam Locker and I’m in the home of Mr Alfred Higgins Marshall of [redacted] on Wednesday the 12th of October 2016. And Fred, can I just say first of all thank you very much indeed on behalf of everybody for agreeing to share your memories with us.
AM: You’re welcome.
PL: So, if we start by just maybe perhaps you’d like to just talk a little bit about your, your young life and how you got to be in Bomber Command.
AM: Well, initially I’ve no idea. I mean, I took the what they called the school leaving certificates in those days and the schools didn’t open and I went to see the headmaster and he said, ‘You will be coming back to school won’t you?’ I said, ‘No. I’ve got, it’s about time I contributed something to the family because in two years’ time I’ll be in the forces.’ So that was how it started. And as I say, you know war broke out. My Dad and I joined the LDV et cetera and we stayed in that. After that I went to, it was an air force training place, thing which was about navigation. And I think that was the first inkling that I had. But also in 1938 seven of us went on, went camping at Middleton in Teesdale. And four of us went into the RAF, two went into the navy and one became a doctor, he went to university. And that had a bearing on me as well. And out of those four I was the only survivor. And the two lads that went in the navy one was shipwrecked. Well, he was, his boat was sunk in the Mediterranean. He was a prisoner of war until he was liberated in 1942 when the, you know, in the North African campaign. And I had lots of other friends who went into the Bomber Command or went into the air force as it was then and unfortunately most of those died. I mean, I left and I went to, when I joined up that was in, my dad took me to Newcastle. Of course initially what I wanted to do I wanted to go into the Merchant Navy. My parents wouldn’t agree. So I stayed on and I went to Newcastle with my dad and he said, ‘Do you want to volunteer for the air force?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ So I went and volunteered for the air force, told my mother and she went berserk. And I mean really he was thinking of the war being the same as the First World War. Because he went right through from 1915 to 1918. And he, I mean the conditions that they had were horrendous. So he didn’t want me to have that so he took me to volunteer for the air, for the air force. And I was, that was on December the 13th [laughs] On January the 1st I was enlisted in to the air force. And then I was on, they sent me home for about a few months and then I was called up. And as I say I went away with from Birtley with two lads. Two other lads. Neither of them survived. I was the only one. And from there on it just took off and I drifted into Bomber Command. That’s how I got there. In Bomber Command we had, well actually I did part of the first tour on Wellingtons. And then we tried, we converted on to Halifaxes and picked up a mid-upper gunner and an engineer and then continued. Finished the first tour. Then continued, because we’d picked two boys up, five of us were entitled to nine months rest period which we didn’t do. We discussed it over a few pints of beer and we agreed that we would carry on for the sake of the other two lads. So we carried on with the second tour consecutively. And that’s it really. I mean I can give you the details of what we did et cetera. I mean on the first tour, as I say the first part of the first tour was on Wellingtons. And what we, 100 Group were on Special Duties and 192 Squadron were investigating enemy radar. And B Flight was Wellingtons — A flight was Wellingtons, B Flight was Halifaxes and C Flight was Mosquitoes. And we also had on our squadron an American reconnaissance unit. So it was all, it was all very hush hush. All our correspondence was vetted before it went off so what the family got at home I don’t know because you weren’t allowed to tell anybody anything about what we were doing. It was so secret. And the logbook shows SD Operations. Full stop. And as I said the first part of the tour on Wellingtons was immediately off the Dutch coast and maybe about five ten mile off the Dutch coast and the idea, the rear of the aircraft was packed with special equipment and we had a special operator interpreting whatever we found. If he found a signal we phoned it inland and I mean it was, it was seemed to be quite easy to us because that area was where the German night fighters were based and it’s strangely enough we went through it completely. Never saw a night fighter. But there were two of us flying from each end and the other crew always were attacked by night fighters. So, well the book that was issued at Lincoln, you know when we went down to the erection of this there was a chap called Donaldson there. Wing Commander Donaldson. Well, he was our wing commander so he flew on the opposite leg to us. And this was all night flying. And they were attacked by night fighters. We weren’t. So they put us on daylight and we flew daylight with a Spitfire cover. And then after that we converted on to Halifaxes and because of their longer range we were then involved in most of Germany. I mean actually we were supposed to be the last Bomber Command Wellington to operate. And I’ve got a photograph to prove that. But we weren’t because the crew, the last crew to operate on our flight the skipper was cashiered because he came back, couldn’t get his undercart down and pancaked on the runway which was forbidden. So he was cashiered and they were the last crew that flew on Wellingtons. So that’s it. It’s a long story that.
PL: Can we just clarify this because it’s a fascinating, it’s a fascinating story. The role of your crew. So you would navigate in —
AM: Yes.
PL: And the, all this kit, this electronic kit that was at the back of the plane.
AM: Yes.
PL: Were they finding out where radar was operating from?
AM: It was mainly radar but it was, it was mainly the V-1s that, which were starting at that time and we wanted to locate where they were being fired from. We were also, when we were flying in daylight there was a V-2 went up from The Hague and we, we witnessed that and it was, it was unbelievable. I don’t know whether we were the first crew to see a V-2 or not. But when we were on the, on the station there was a terrific bang and it was one of these V-2s which had exploded at a place called Dereham in Norfolk, and then we heard it coming because it was travelling faster than the speed of sound. So you heard the bang and then you heard the thing coming. It was weird. You couldn’t understand it at the time but that’s, that’s what it was.
PL: So then you would take that information back or —
AM: We took the information back.
PL: And that was your role.
AM: Every trip we went back. Every crew was interviewed or interrogated by the intelligence people.
PL: And so presumably you could be sent anywhere where they thought —
AM: Well, I mean we were mainly on the, on the Dutch coast. The northern, off the Frisian Islands. Down. Up to Denmark and places like that. But you were limited in the time you could fly in a Wellington, you know. I mean I’ve got to say a strange story but the nearest thing that we took that we had, we took a WAAF officer on leave to Cambridge. And we landed at this ‘drome at Cambridge and immediately the engines cut out because the bomb aimer was supposed to check that the nacelle tanks were full and we were switched on to the nacelle tanks for landing and he didn’t do it because the ground crew always did it. And we landed, just landed and both engines cut out because there was no petrol. [laughs] So that was the nearest escape we had.
PL: So that was just, so you were already landed and stopped.
AM: We, the wheels just touched down and both engines cut. Which could have been disastrous if it [pause] but we laughed about it.
PL: Was there a bit of an exchange in the aircraft with that?
AM: Yeah. So —
PL: A little bit of an exchange in the aircraft over that incident.
AM: Well, we had a good laugh about it. I mean of course you didn’t really criticise each other. I mean you were flying as a team. I mean there was never any animosity or anything like that.
PL: So, so what year was this that you started?
AM: Well, it was 1941 that I volunteered. That was, and that was, and this is January the 1st 1942. And then from there I went to ITW. Elementary Flying School. Then we were transferred to Canada to do our training. Came back and did the, we went on to, from there you went on Advanced Training Wing which was in Llandwrog in North Wales. And then we went from there to Wing which is an Operational Training Unit. And from there you would normally go and convert on to either Lancasters but we were transferred straight from the squadron, from the ITW straight to the squadron. So we missed that course out and we eventually had to go and convert later on that year on to the Halifaxes. Which we did at Marston Moor.
PL: So how old were you when you first joined Bomber Command?
AM: Twenty, well I was eighteen when I first joined up. And then when you went into Bomber Command it was maybe nineteen forty — end of ’42.
PL: And this, this particular squadron, were you, did you volunteer for that squadron?
AM: No.
PL: Or were you chosen in a particular way? Was it just random?
AM: You were selected mainly on the, on the operations that you did at the Operational Training Unit. And they selected the best crews there because it was all Special Duties and it had to be so accurate. Because on one of the operations if you had to, well, we dropped you heard about dropping silver paper. You know. And we used to carry out spoof raids because you might be, you might be going to a target down here and so the main force would go there but they’d send a spoof raid which was mainly 192 Squadron, well 100 Group and you used to throw silver paper out which when they picked it up they thought it was a pukka raid because these strips of silver paper were half the wavelength of the [pause] It was all clever stuff. And if you were a minute early or two minutes late on your datum point you had to write an explanation. I don’t know how that happens so it was really, you know you had to be we were chosen to go to that squadron because of our ability at OTU. I mean, my skipper I mean he used to volunteer to fly with the main force and go just as a passenger. He was an Australian and he did that just for experience.
PL: So did you stay with that squadron for the whole of the war?
AM: Yes. Until, until the war against Germany finished and then we were transferred to — actually what we, what we had to do then, I mean we could, I could have volunteered for Transport Command or something like that. But we’d done our tour. We were entitled to a rest period. And so we took the rest period and then eventually we ended up as, in Canada. No. I beg your pardon. I’m ahead of myself now. We were — they sent, they sort of give you a ground trade. So although I was a warrant officer navigator I was an AC 2 equipment accounts. And all I did was write my name on the top of the paper and passed out [laughs] I didn’t answer any of the questions. Just passed. And from there I was sent to India. Of course they, they couldn’t get, they couldn’t find employment for all the people who were being demobbed so they sent them to India. And I was out there for eleven months and I did nothing except draw my pay.
PL: So quite an experience.
AM: So it was. It was quite it was quite interesting out there. I mean it was an experience which I would never had otherwise but, otherwise. But in general, I mean you know I’ve attended lectures about, from historians about what Bomber Command did and how ineffective they were and how barbaric it was. Well, I accept that in the early days it was like tally-ho. And they used to go off. They were given the target. Many of them didn’t find it because they didn’t have the electronic equipment or radar equipment to navigate properly. It was all on DR and maybe didn’t find the targets. With their resources they got shot down and their losses were tremendous in the early days. They were flying Blenheims and Wellingtons and things like that. But, and Arthur Harris, I mean, I mean I think really he did an awful lot towards the war. I mean a lot of people said it was barbaric. Well, not once were we, when we were briefed when we were going was it said, ‘You’re going to bomb civilians.’ It was always a strategic target and the one, the thing that comes to mind is Dresden. I mean at that time Dresden was already twenty miles from the Russian border. And we bombed Dresden during the night. The Americans did it too. But after Stalingrad, the Battle of Stalingrad the Germans retreated and were regrouping in that area. And as I said this New Zealand crew went to Dresden and it was a fire attack. But what we, our brief was that we were to disrupt the reorganisation. That was the brief. It wasn’t that we had to destroy Dresden. And it was really these fire bombs there. You see Harris’s idea was instead of just haphazardly one aircraft followed by another aircraft flying in a stream the ground forces ARP could cope with it. He said you’ve got to fly in a stream and you’ve got to be through that target in ten minutes so that the concentration was too much for the ground forces. And the only thing that comes to my mind in, I mean they changed the method of bombing. And that was if you had a conventional bomb it went into the ground and it dug a hole and that was it. I mean there was a terrific explosion. But they then developed these four thousand pound bombs which were tin cans really, strapped together. One thousand pounds each strapped together to make up and I mean and they hit the ground, blasted and demolished the property so therefore civilians must have been killed. Also, I mean I listened to a lecture in Newcastle by a chap from Exeter University and he’s written several books on this and he castigated Bomber Command for being inaccurate et cetera. Well, when you were bombing you didn’t bomb the target you bombed the flares which the Pathfinders put down. And there was one raid at Essen where Germans put dummy path, dummy flares down and all the bombs of our thousand bomber raid went in to that field. So after that they developed what they called the master bomber technique. And the master bomber used to fly lower than the main force and identify the target. So when the Pathfinders came along he could tell them where they’d gone wrong. So where you had red, green and yellow so if the red ones were the wrong ones you’d tell them where to put the green. And so you then really bombed the target. And I think that was more precise then what the Americans did because the Americans flew in daylight and they flew in formation. And I did go on to, when I was at Marston Moor went on to the B12s and the equipment that they had for navigation was abysmal. I mean it couldn’t be compared with what we had. But the armament that they had was terrific. And they, when I was working actually I worked with a chap who was a colonel in the American Air Force and he said ‘we carpet bombed.’ And they went through the target and dropped their bombs to make sure that they hit something. Whereas we were bombing specific things. And that’s the, that’s the thing which never came through from any of these historians. So —
PL: So, talking, talking about the way Bomber Command has been treated since the war do you think that that was a political decision?
AM: Well, it was political as far as Churchill was concerned in so much that he was all in favour. I mean the thing that you’ve got to remember that German civilians did not know there was a war on. I mean because Hitler controlled the whole of Europe and the people in Germany, there was no blackout or anything. And it was only the air force who let them know that there was a war on. And we flew all those years, long before the D-Day landings without any back up from anybody. And it was just to keep the war, keep the people, in the German’s minds that there was a war. And they got the biggest shock of their life when Berlin was bombed. And they started it and we finished it. And that’s my view of the of the air force because they were really, what was written about them was so far from the truth it was unbelievable really. Otherwise you wouldn’t have done it.
PL: It’s taken a long time to get recognition.
AM: A long time to — ?
PL: Get recognition.
AM: Oh it has, I mean, I don’t know how it came about but for years I mean you used to read the papers and they used to say it was a waste of time, the German people were as strong as ever but they weren’t. They couldn’t have been once the bombing came because we were doing it at night time and the Americans were doing it during the daylight because all they were doing was map reading. And it took, an example is that in 100 Group the main force was stood down because of some leakage of information. So they had an operation just to keep them on their toes and the American Air Force, 8th Air Force acted as Pathfinders. And as I said before they had no navigational equipment and they marked the whole of Northern Germany [laughs] And we just bombed, because with, there was a system called Gee which was, you had two stations — one in North Africa and one somewhere up in Iceland. And they sent out beams and where they intersected you could navigate. You could set them up and you could navigate within four hundred yards which was amazing really. And a lot of people did drop their bombs on Gee. And that was amazingly put on our aircraft on 192 Squadron. We had Gee. We had H2S which is your own transmitter which sends out transmissions and you can really see and it shows you rivers, coastlines, towns et cetera. But the German night fighters could home in on this and shoot you down so there was generally H2S silence, you know from four degrees east. So you couldn’t do that. But H2S was great. You could, because it was just like map reading like the American’s did. And then we also had another system called Loran which was like the, it was for Transport Command really. And it took, you took two position lines. In DR navigation you’re flying along a path and to find out where you are you take a reading or a compass reading on a certain point, wait a few minutes and take another reading and then you transfer this line and where those two lines crossed that’s where you are. But that was only accurate within, you know, because the aircraft flies like that and it was accurate within about twelve miles or something like that. But as I say Gee you could navigate within, well say four hundred metres. Which, I developed a system with my bomb aimer and we could get further west, further east than the majority of crews because the Gee system, it sent up signals and when you, what they called strobed them it became like a, like a hillock and the others on the other side so if you kept those two together you could navigate further. Because Germany were no idiots. They were clever as well. I mean they used to jam the radar and the Gee by putting up what they called Grass or Railings. And if you lost that signal you couldn’t find it again. So, I mean but we were too clever for our own good and we went to Potsdam. And the winds were two seventy five mile an hour. And that’s, and then the Met men said, ‘When you pass through this point you’ll pass through a front and the winds will veer to three forty at forty.’ But I got to the point and I was getting readings of two seventy. So I had to alter my flight plan and waste eight minutes. So we wasted eight minutes. As a result we ended up ten minutes late on the target. And strangely enough the chap that I worked with when I was at BOC he lived in Low Fell, he was over the target at the same time. There were two, two of us over the target. We got coned by the blue searchlights and we put the nose down and the speed went off the clock and the gyro compass toppled. So we just flew on the P6 compass and ended up, well I thought it was Lisle but the wireless operator read what they called a pundit, which is a flashing light and he gave me that and I said, ‘Well that’s near Paris.’ So we didn’t know what to do so we just flew on until I thought well we’ve got to get rid of H2S. I’ll switch it on and I’d altered course north because we were about to hit the coastline. And the skipper said, ‘Oh. That’s the Thames Estuary.’ ‘That’s — sorry but you’re wrong. It’s le Havre.’ It’s going the other way. So we map read back there, back from there on Gee. But they were the sort of —
PL: So did you have a gunner with you? Were you, were you able to defend yourselves? Did you have a gunner with you?
AM: I had two gunners. I had a mid-upper gunner and a rear gunner. And, in that sort of thing [laughs] I mean they could be looking at a Perspex screen and you could see a dot on it, the odd dirt. Is that an enemy aircraft? And there was only once that we ever had to take evasive action from night fighters. But another thing not known is that a lot of, I mean you’re supposed to fly at a certain height within a stream five miles wide but a lot of people flew just above that to avoid the flak. We never did that. We always went through the flak because if you flew above the flak you were liable to be attacked by night fighters who could home on to you. And we lost more aircraft through night fighters than what we did through flak. So we took the option. And I can remember we, there was a chap flew with us. We went to Dortmund and we went through the flak. We got hit, turned on our backs and we came back and although you thought the aircraft had been blown apart there were three tiny holes in the aircraft. One took the top off the skipper’s knuckle. One came in beside the wireless operator’s leg. Another just missed the rear gunner. But they were only three tiny holes and you’d thought the plane had been blown apart. And I mean that was the sort of, that was one of the few times that we had any, that we got involved in anything like that. We were more than fortunate but I think it was a lot of good management as well because we never had any speech on the aircraft other than commands. Others they used to have Joe Loss playing the music. I flew with one, one crew as a passenger and they were, they had Joe Loss on and it was like, it was terrible. I couldn’t, I couldn’t bear it really. But we only spoke, you know, on commands. When we had to. So that’s the story.
PL: So you were obviously a very tight crew. Did you fly with the same crew throughout?
AM: We flew with the same crew throughout. And you lived as a crew. I mean we had, both the Canadians got promoted. They got commissions. I was recommended for a commission twice. And on the first time I refused to go forward because there was a superstition that you don’t accept a commission while you’re on operational duty. So I was, when we finished the tour I was recommended to go forward again. And I got turned down which, what they was said was that it was because they were over staffed on officers in the navigation section. A lad that was flying with us who refused to fly with us again because we went through the flak got a commission. But that was just the luck of the draw.
PL: So, tell me about your last, your last flight.
AM: The last flight was on —
PL: You knew that was going to be your last flight did you?
AM: Not really. It was in April. I think it was April the 24th and the war finished on May the 8th. I can tell you where I went to [pause] April the 24th to Dortmund. That was the last flight that we did. I’ve got Donald’s signature so many times in there. He was quite a good bloke actually. I mean he’d gone right through from the Battle of Britain. Right through the war and survived. Lovely bloke though.
PL: So tell me a little bit about what happened next.
AM: Well, we were sent on an indefinite leave after the war. And then as I said you know we were regraded to a ground force then on equipment accounts. I ended up in a place called Kankinara which is in India. Which was like an old jute station. Oh the pong was terrible. I mean we were living in absolute luxury. But outside, I mean there were just hovels. There were people living in, about forty people living in a room this size and I mean they had meat hanging up, you know. It was covered in flies. And bowls of currants — you went like that [clap] and it was flour. And that was the sort of conditions that they Indians were living under yet we were living in these palatial places which obviously the people of the East India Company had lived in. But I mean it’s strange in Calcutta. I mean the temperature used to get up to about eighty but in the morning there would be a white frost. So we were wearing blues, you know and then you’d change in to khaki.
PL: So, did you experience any of the, any of partition of India?
AM: Yes. I was in Bombay at the time when they were fighting for independence. And as I say I was in fact I was trained as, in. I worked in the services thing. But I went to, I went to Bombay I was in pay accounts. And all, all I did was go through a list of things which had thumbprints on it and stamp them and say yes. But we were then, because we had been in aircrew we knew because of all the riots in Bombay et cetera of course they used to throw stones from vehicles et cetera. And we were, used to go, what they called garrey guards and we used to have sten guns and we’d go back and we were going along this road and we got through. And when we couldn’t get through because the streets were absolutely jammed full of people we turned to come back and there was a tree being felled across the road. So we jumped out and all of about forty of them were trying to get through a door about this size [laughs] and they were saying, ‘Sahib,’ but I mean so we did that. We sort of transported the civilians back to their place where they were living and that’s the, that’s the only involvement we’d got in that. But it was definitely there and I mean they had to bring tanks in eventually. But eventually they did get their independence.
PL: So then you went home. So then you went home.
AM: I did.
PL: And what happened then?
AM: When I came home, well I got married in 1945 and while I was out there could have gone on to British Overseas Airways but I promised not to fly again [laughs] And I came home and it would, it’s a pity because I enjoyed flying. But I came home and they were bound to give you your job back. Well, I went back to BOC and I worked there. Eventually went in to the purchasing side. Became purchase, I was there for, including your war service, thirty years. Got my watch to prove it [laughs] And then, but our eldest son who was taking his what they call O levels now, and it meant that I was going to have to transfer down to the London area. Nobody was very happy so stayed in this area. And eventually I went to Hartlepool and my daughter wouldn’t move down to Hartlepool because she said, ‘You didn’t move for our Neil.’ [laughs] So that’s right I was going to move to Shotton Village, a nice estate, and you wouldn’t. You said, ‘I’m not moving.’ [laughs] So, and that was it. So I stayed with BOC and then eventually they moved me to London which wasn’t a particularly good move. And from there I went from BOC to Foster Wheeler. I then transferred. I got into the off shore industry. Then I went to Charlton-Leslie which was, it was a part of the BT Group and they were in to the offshore and that was just about collapsing. So I transferred and went to NEI and I was working in the nuclear industry. And then I retired at sixty five. So I’ve been retired now twenty eight years.
PL: So did you keep in touch with the rest of your crew?
AM: We used to meet. Well, actually rather strange. I mean when we picked up an engineer he was Geordie. He came from Newcastle. I thought great another Geordie in the crew. But he was the strangest lad. I mean I can remember him, we were at the, we used to report to the flights and the NAAFI wagon used to come around. And he said to me, he said, ‘Can you buy me a cup of tea and a wad.’ I said, ‘Oh that’s ok. I have some.’ So I bought him a cup of tea and then at lunchtime he says, ‘Can you lend me a half a crown to get a packet of cigarettes?’ I said, ‘But you’ve got a pound note in your wallet.’ He said, ‘I don’t want to break into it.’ [laughs] And we used to go out for a drink and there were eight of us with pints of beer. And Taff, Welshman he used to drink rough cider and after he’d had two he was legless [laughs] And, but Green who was the engineer, we got wise to him and said, ‘Right. You’re first shout.’ So he stopped coming out with us. So we lived as a, not as a seven man crew but as a six man crew. It’s unfortunate because he missed an awful lot. And unfortunately I think they’re all dead now. I’m the only survivor. But you asked about meeting. Well, the two Australians went back to Australia obviously. But the bomb aimer, the mid-upper gunner and the rear gunner and myself used to meet down in Tring because my eldest son lived in Tring and the, Taff was a Welshman. Came from Newport. Chas the bomb aimer came from Cheltenham. And Pete from Leicester. And that so that’s it. When we went down to visit Neil we always got together. And we did that for years didn’t we? We used to meet every year and it was good to meet up again. And we used to have a meal together and then just disburse. And then after that well Chas died. Lung cancer actually. And then we were, we had another meeting and Taff, he bought, he always had a desire to buy one of these luxurious cars. He bought it and within ten minutes of where we were meeting he had an accident. And he damaged his chest et cetera. Well, he died subsequently and then there was only Pete and I and as I say we used to meet and we went to Elvington to see this Halifax. And then after that it just died but as far as I’m concerned I think the, well Laurie Mottler was about ten years older than what we were. So he would be a hundred and something if he was here. And Gibby was older than us so I think they all must be dead now. And that brings us up to date really.
PL: Well, Fred, that’s an amazing story. Thank you very much indeed.
AM: I don’t think you’ll print all that.
PL: Is there, is there anything else that you’d like to talk about?
AM: I don’t know. Not really. Except that I was appalled by some of the stuff that was put in the newspapers about Bomber Command. I mean we were portrayed as being sadists, didn’t care but it wasn’t like that at all.
PL: Well thank you very much indeed for your interview.
AM: That’s the first time I’ve told that story for a long, long time.
PL: It’s a wonderful story. Thank you very much indeed.
[recording paused]
PL: So we’re recommencing the tape and Fred you were just telling me about —
AM: Well the raids on Dresden and Chemnitz, in that area they were tactical because the German army was regrouping after the defeat at Stalingrad. And to avoid them regrouping we bombed them and it was for that reason that we were briefed. It was nothing to do with scaring the population or killing civilians or anything. And because it was so near, it was only twenty miles from the Russian Front they gave us a Union Jack.
PL: But this was, where was it you bombed? It wasn’t Dresden.
AM: We went to Chemnitz.
PL: Yeah.
AM: And I mean we only carried a token bomb just for the cover up to show that we were in Bomber Command. They didn’t want people to know that we were on Special Duties. And that was one of the things that we did. I mean we only carried maybe five hundred pounds or a thousand pounds of conventional bombs or these aluminium fire bombs. But —
PL: But you wore —
AM: But that was interesting that.
PL: A Union Jack badge.
AM: Yes. Well you hung it around your neck.
PL: And you hung it around your neck.
AM: Yeah. And that was it.
PL: And that was in case —
AM: Well, it was sufficient to show that you were British. To get through the Russian lines. So —
PL: And you were telling me about the New Zealand crew. Some New Zealanders.
AM: The New Zealand. Well, they were only in our billet for a short while. I mean, for example I mean there was seventeen. Was there fifteen or seventeen in our billet? And there was, the only people who survived were the C Flight crew. There was a navigator and a special operator in our billet. There was a lad called Tommy Campbell which was sad really. He was a Canadian and he flew as a spare bod as we called them and he used to throw Window out. And he’d done twenty nine operations and they put the number up to thirty three for a tour. And he did thirty two and they put it up to thirty six. And on his thirty fourth operation, well they got hit by flak. And the chap who was one of the special operators asked him to jump and he wouldn’t and he had to push him out of the road and jump. And Tommy stayed and he was killed. But he was afraid to jump. And that was at a place called Rheinau. So there was those were missing and this New Zealand crew, so and out of the fifty or something there were only five of us left. So that was the odds that were, you know. They said there was fifty percent loss in aircrew in Bomber Command. And it comes always back to that figure. I mean I went, we had three lads from Birtley. I was the only one that survived. The lads that I went camping with I was the only one. But it always came back to this tremendous figure of the loss of people who actually operated. Because I think there was only a hundred and ten thousand operated but there were about three hundred thousand trained and they didn’t operate at all. These are facts which don’t come to light really.
PL: Thank you Fred. Thank you for that additional piece of information.
AM: What?
PL: Thank you very much for that additional information.
AM: Oh, you’re welcome.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AMarshallAH161012
Title
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Interview with Alfred Marshall
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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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:51:47 audio recording
Creator
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Pam Locker
Date
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2016-10-12
Description
An account of the resource
Alfred Marshall volunteered for the Royal Air Force and was called up to serve with two others from his home town of Birtley, neither of whom survived the war. He flew operations as a navigator with 192 Squadron from RAF Foulsham including Special Operations. He discusses the use of navigational aids including Gee, H2S and Loran and describes flying through and being hit by anti aircraft fire. He also speaks of the strategic aims of the bombing of areas including Dresden and how this has been perceived. He finished his service in India and later worked in the off shore and nuclear energy industries.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
India
England--Norfolk
England--Yorkshire
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942-01-01
1945
100 Group
192 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
fear
Gee
H2S
Halifax
navigator
perception of bombing war
RAF Foulsham
RAF Marston Moor
superstition
training
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/299/3456/PMcCredieJ1501.2.jpg
65b66e10d1346350936c2a2992ea9edb
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/299/3456/AMcCredieJ151012.1.mp3
9f439848621d77a4eaa9d17bf9ee984d
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
McCredie, John
John McCredie
J McCredie
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with John McCredie (1921 - 2016, 418236 Royal Australian Air Force), his log book and documents. He flew two operations as a pilot over France during training and was later posted to India.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John McCredie and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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
2015-10-12
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.
Identifier
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McCredie, J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: So this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive is with John McCredie who was a pilot during the Second World War. The interview is taking place at John’s home in Hawthorn in Victoria. My name is Adam Purcell and it is the 12th of October 2015. So John we might start from the beginning. Can you tell me something of your early life growing up? [unclear] That sort of thing.
JM: Well I was born in Princes Hill. I should say that my military career was a bit frustrated by having a mother whose brother had been shot. Had his face shot away in World War One. And she didn’t want me to have anything to do with the military. So I went through school being unable to join the cadets. But on my eighteenth birthday I took the liberty of enrolling in the militia. My piece of resistance. I joined the Melbourne University Rifles. War broke out three weeks later. I did my first military camp at Mount Martha with the MUR. I did another camp at Mount Martha with the MUR in which I was promoted to sergeant and was sent on to an officer’s training course in the militia in Seymour in June I think, 1941. It was there that I ran into these fellas back from the Middle East who had rather a scorn for chockos getting commissions and I thought my God what has happened now is if I take a commission I will not be allowed to join the AIF. I can’t, in any case I’d been pressing my parents to join the air force for a long while. So, on my eighteenth birth I wrote from Seymour and demanded that I be allowed to enrol in the air force which seemed my way of avoiding the inability to transfer. I also, I think it’s a bit of history that everyone in my generation was pretty influenced by Kingsford Smith, Hinkler, Amy Johnson, The Centenary Air Race and then the Battle of Britain.
AP: Of course.
JM: So that flying seemed to be very much the way to finish the war. I got my parent’s permission. Got on the air force reserve — I think in August ’41. Came the Japanese and all service transfers were put at a stop. You weren’t allowed to transfer from the militia. And so I had the good luck of having my old battalion commander Colonel Ralph in charge of — Colonel Balfour I should say. Being in charge of a unit called, Lines of Communication, which dealt with inter-service transfers. So I went along to see the colonel and we had a chat about old days. And then I explained my dilemma. That I had qualified for a commission. I didn’t want to take it because I wanted to get into a voluntary service and I wanted to join the air force. And he said, ‘Well, you’ve just done a commando course at Wilson’s Promontory.’ Which I had. He said, ‘We’re enrolling the 6th Independent Company next month,’ I think he said, ‘And I can have you commissioned in that.’ And this was a Friday and I said, ‘Do you mind if I think of it over the weekend, Colonel?’ He said, ‘No. My boy.’ So I thought of it over the weekend. I didn’t really need to think. I’d got the idea at Wilson’s Promontory that if you took a commission in the commandos it tended to be considered a one way ticket. And I’d like to think that I had a return ticket. The possibility of a return ticket at least. And so I came back on the Monday and confirmed to him that I wanted to go into the air force. And that’s how I got transferred. I not only got transferred I got an accelerator transfer. So that I got in ahead of an old school mate who had agreed that we’d both joined up together and then had gone in ahead of me. So that was rather satisfactory. Anyway, I did my training. We all probably wanted to be fighter pilots but you had to show that aptitude and I don’t think I quite had it as a flyer. So I was put on twins and I went through training in Australia. Temora, and Point Cook. From there half of our course at Point Cook was transferred to England because there was a shortage of, supposed shortage of air crew in England and a shortage of aircraft in Australia. So that was all. I got to England. Spent three months enjoying myself rather than [laughs] I should say rather than doing nothing we spent time in Bournemouth, Whitley Bay, Brighton and then I was sent to a place called South Cerney for familiarisation. Did this on Oxfords. The same aircraft I’d flown in Australia. Had the good fortune and this is the vital thing in war — to have good fortune. I had an instructor who saw the crash coming before I did and dived. We just missed a crash at night in midair and that was a lesson in alertness. We did a night flying course at a place called Cranage where I met up with a lot of interesting people. A chap who’d been in the French Foreign Legion. Two Dutchmen. And a couple of people. An American I think. A strange way that Americans somehow got into the RAF. Anyway, after that I went to Harwell which was the Heavy Conversion Unit. Sorry. Not Heavy Conversion Unit. The OTU. And at this time of the war Churchill and Roosevelt had met at Casablanca and there this other question of supply and need came up because Churchill obviously went well briefed on what aircrews were doing nothing in England. And Roosevelt went well briefed on what aircraft didn’t have crews to fly them in the Indian theatre. So Harwell was turned into an OTU. More or less for sending people to the Far East. And it was my good fortune to be sent there at that time of the war because it was close to a one way ticket on Bomber Command in early 1944. So that is roughly the story of my relationship with Bomber Command. On, if you want to ask questions about that.
AP: Yeah. That’s alright. Well, I think we will definitely. It’s a nice overview of everything. This happened in my last interview too. I asked one question and ten minutes later he said, ‘And that’s how I got on a boat to come home.’ Like, well, we’re finished. Anyway, so yeah a little bit more detail I suppose. You were accepted in to the air force. You were still in the militia at this stage.
JM: Yeah.
AP: I think. Was there a time difference between saying, ‘Yeah you’re in the air force,’ and actually showing up at the ITS? Was there? Like how long did that take?
JM: Well, what happened was you applied for the air force which I did, I think in about, well it was after my eighteenth birthday. After my twentieth birthday which was on the 13th of August. They put you through a few tests like holding your breath under water or something and then made you breathe in and out. And did a couple of other things. Touch your toes perhaps. And then said, ‘Oh, you were on the air force reserve so you’ve got to do —’ and I was working in the National Bank at that time. So after I finished the officer’s training course which went for about two months I went back to the bank and then there would be this business of going in to a place on Flinders Street and learning the Morse code. What else? Aircraft recognition. Perhaps we, we were given something on that. Did they have link trainers there? I didn’t think they did. No they can’t have.
AP: So just your basic. Your basic. So you did that at sort of night school, sort of, sort of thing.
JM: Yes. Yes.
AP: Rather than, rather than they sent you something and you worked through it at home.
JM: No. No. I frankly forget how often. I think it was once a week.
AP: Something like that.
JM: I trotted in there and then I was called up again in the militia on the 7th of [pause] No. Sometime in November. And the bank fought too.
AP: Oh really.
JM: They said, ‘This man’s on the air force reserve. You can’t have him in the militia.’ And the militia insisted on having me and so I went back into camp and that was an interesting time because the MUR at that time was a polyglot unit taking in chaps AIF people and all that sort of thing. And I found myself having refused a commission they made me a wing sergeant major which was very funny. I had a little man as my orderly room corporal who later became my boss in the Department of Foreign Affairs.
AP: Connections.
JM: Such is life.
AP: Yeah.
JM: The – so that was a funny episode in my life.
AP: What, what memories, if any, do you have of your Initial Training School. So we’re talking air force now.
JM: Well we did all these things that some of which were of interest and some weren’t. I think we got sorted out into the sheep and the goats. Whoever were the goats I don’t know. You did these aptitude tests of various sorts. They somehow decided some people ought to be pilots. Some people ought to be air gunners. Some people ought to be wireless operators. Some people ought to be navigators. The eggheads seemed to get the navigation job. The [pause] I think most hoped to be a pilot ‘cause it’s, being a pilot is like being the driver of a car.
AP: Very much so.
JM: You’re the person who doesn’t have to worry about other people. The way that passengers might have to worry at the way you drive.
AP: Certain, certain control, control freak, you could say. Yeah [laughs] I understand. Where was your ITS. Was that at Somers?
JM: I went from Somers.
AP: Yeah.
JM: I did the ITS there. Oppy incidentally was my flight commander. He took us for drill. Oppy wasn’t considered a good class master but he was a good drill master.
AP: Oppy being the cyclist.
JM: [Procurement?] officer.
AP: Yes. That’s right. That’s what I thought.
JM: Later became a minister in the government in Canberra.
AP: Yeah.
JM: Again the oddities of coincidence — I once sold a car to him in Canberra [laughs] when I was on posting to somewhere. I advertised the car and Oppy came along and ‘opped into it.
AP: Alright. So you’re, I forget what you said, you were at Point Cook which was Service Flying Training School.
JM: Yes.
AP: I think. The other one was — where did you do your initial training?
JM: Elementary Flying Training.
AP: Yes.
JM: Was at Temora?
AP: Temora, that’s right. Temora, ah yes. Ok. I have to ask every pilot. Tell me about your first solo.
JM: What’s that?
AP: Tell me about your first solo.
JM: It took a long while. It took me ten hours and fifty minutes if I remember and a couple of my mates, Chumley and Ingalls, did it in about six hours. That frustrated me a bit. But before I went I can tell you a story that I think is of interest. I had an instructor called Lionel Watters and he’d been a Broken Hill coal miner. Led miner I suppose. He was a rough diamond I think you could say. A huge man and he was a very good flyer. He’d been an amateur flyer before the war and had taken to instructing. He wanted you to do things. He told you how to do them and came down like a ton of bricks if you didn’t do them properly. So we were doing stall turns on one occasion and well that story is one I’ll leave for a non-recordable [laughs] I’ll tell you another story however. That we were practicing emergency landings. What you do in a Tiger Moth for an emergency landing is select a nice field. The instructor turns the petrol off and says, ‘Now you go and show me how you’d land it.’ And before doing that he had said, ‘Now when you descend in gliding fashion the engine cools and every five hundred feet you should warm the engine.’ And so we’re about three thousand feet and he tells me, ‘Ok. Land it in that field, McCredie.’ So I start gliding and I glide and I glide and I glide and he said, ‘It’s rather cold up here today don’t you think McCredie?’ I said, ‘Oh not too bad.’ He said, [stress] ‘No. But your bloody engine’s feeling the cold.’ And he rammed the throttle on and flew away. And I suppose I can safely tell this tale about that he had a girlfriend nearby living on a farm and every day he’d like to convey a message to them that he was flying around. And this time he dove to about five feet [laughs] and that was the end of my lesson for the day.
AP: Beautiful. That’s, yeah there’s a number of stories of that sort of shenanigans, shall we say, in Tiger Moths.
JM: Yes. So from there my friends Chumley and Ingalls went on to singles and I went on to twins at Point Cook.
AP: Point Cook. So you’re flying Oxfords at Point Cook.
JM: Pardon?
AP: You were flying Oxfords at Point Cook you said or Ansons.
JM: Oxfords. Airspeed Oxfords.
AP: Airspeed Oxfords.
JM: Yes.
AP: What did you think of those after the Tiger Moth? What did you think of those after the Tiger?
JM: Well, no fun at all. We did make fun. From, from Point Cook we flew at satellites. The first two months were at Werribee, the third month was at Lyra, I think and the fourth month was at Little River. Now by the time we got to Little River we had become bored with Oxfords but we were sent on cross countrys’ and it became the norm when you were sent on a cross country to try a bit of low flying. So this is strictly illegal.
AP: Of course.
JM: Having been influenced by Watters and his girlfriend I had found a little driveway near, I think, a place called Lethbridge. It was very nice to drive along and frighten the occupants. And I was not alone in doing this and I was lucky enough not to be the one who came home with a bit of a tree in his undercarriage. Sticking out of the fuselage or something. But that was [pause] so we had — it’s funny how those training memories are not as evident as later memories.
AP: [They might?]
JM: I carry, I had a, you flew with a pair and I had this fella who I think was more inept than me as a pilot as my pair. And some of his landings were quite hair raising. But that poor fellow was killed in training in Europe sometime later. In England sometime later. And one can say that without being surprised he probably should have been scrubbed.
AP: That was actually going to be my next question. With all of these. Particularly with all of these antics going on. Low flying and mucking around because let’s face it you were twenty years old and you’ve got an aeroplane so you’re going to go and fly it. Were there accidents and things that you saw?
JM: Well that one of the person hitting the tree at Point Cook it’s the only one I remember in training. In Harwell somebody came in and crashed on landing. But, and certainly at Harwell we had these ancient aircraft because we were going to India, or most of us, we had one of the last two units flying Wellington 1Cs. Those going on to ops in Europe had the, went through OTUs on Wellington 10s which were very much upgraded and could fly at the proper height. But the 1C could only — well in icing conditions I did two what are called, what the [pause] two little flights over France which were called training flights. And on the second one we iced up. The aircraft couldn’t climb above eight thousand feet. My navigator, bless his heart, took us back over a place called [unclear]. And [unclear] happened to be quite heavily defended so we had the sound, I don’t know if as a small boy you ever ran along a picket fence with a stick making a noise.
AP: Many times. Many times.
JM: Yeah. So you know that noise. Well that’s exactly what it’s like listening to the flak hitting a canvas covered aircraft like the Wellington. And we came home with a couple of holes but fortunately they didn’t hit or injure somebody. But I did have another incident at Harwell where again it was luck. Because I’d given some cheek to my flight commander which he got back to me in briefing when he decided he’d take people through fire drill. He said, ‘McCredie. You tell us what you’d do in fire drill.’ And McCredie got up and stuttered and stammered. Anyway, he made me repeat the words after him. And there was the luck of the game because about not very long later I did have a fire and that meant landing on, calling, ‘Darkie. Darkie. Darkie. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.’ And finding Silverstone answer and having to go down there at night on one engine which was, you know, was something. I had to bail my crew out. The same navigator who took me over [unclear] I found crouching behind me when I landed.
AP: Oh really.
JM: So when I caught up with him again and we were forming crews on Liberators in India and he wanted to join up with me I said, ‘I’m sorry Tom.’ But, but that was, I had similar luck again in, when we were in India. Things were a bit dicey. The Japs had got right up to the border. The second Imphal line which was the border with Burma. The Indian National Army which comprised deserters from the British forces in Singapore were with the Japanese. There was this fear in India that things could erupt internally in spite of Ghandi’s passive resistance thing with the influence of the Indian National Army. And the four Liberator squadrons were sent on this around India show of force. In formation over Madras, Nagpur, Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta. Just to show the natives what they would be up against if we decided to have some sort of armed resistance. So on the first of these I had what was called a runaway prop.
AP: Oh dear.
JM: And with a runaway prop you just can’t go on flying. You know the, you know the problem?
AP: It’s the pitch. The pitch changes and yeah —
JM: Yeah. So I had to fly around with four hours on three engines but I’d noticed all the emergency things you do when you have anything like an engine misfunction. I had the, I suppose you could say good luck to survive an assault on an armed boat and so on. That was on the 1st of January 1945. We’d bombed the bridge in Burma. We’d been told Japanese were supplying their forces by sea and if you come across any shipping it’s likely to be doing this. Attack it. So we had a rendevous at a place called Kalegauk Island after the raid on the bridge. And so I saw someone going in on this boat and I went in and followed him. The first chap got shot down and I lost an engine but I had this totally new experience of losing an engine and it, well it was the luck of the game. We moved quickly enough to [pause] we had a fire. My boys reported the fire to me and I boldly told them to put it out.
AP: Do something.
JM: That’s right. [laughs] it’s funny in the way. The thing that’s reported they don’t put it out until they were told to [laughs]
AP: Initiative boys. Initiative. Alright.
JM: Anyway. I’m sorry if that’s —
AP: No. Listen, it’s all, it’s all part of your story and that’s still very valuable to get anyway. I can, I can assure you. I’m sitting here rapt. So getting to the UK. I suppose you finished at Point Cook. You have your wings ceremony at Point Cook so you’ve got your wings.
JM: Yeah.
AP: At that point. Then you go to the UK. How do you get from A to B?
JM: Yes. We got on the Nieuw Amsterdam on the 6th of March 1943. We crossed to San Francisco. The Nieuw Amsterdam was, had brought troops back from the Middle East before picking us up and I must say those troops didn’t do a favour by the wildlife they brought into the bedding.
AP: Oh dear.
JM: So I was travelling with my friend Ingalls who was on singles, I mentioned earlier but he was going to Europe too. Both of said enough is enough. We slept on deck for the rest of that voyage. We, we had a commander called [pause] a troop commander called Major Crennan. He was the son, I believe of Archbishop Crennan who was a catholic prelate somewhere. And Crennan later became part of the Royal Commission into Petrov. Part of the council for it. I think. Which was interesting. But he had no idea of discipline and he thought it would be a good idea if air force trips needed to be exercised so he would order us to march around the decks in military order and this sort of thing and there’s always a minstrel associated with military units and we had a minstrel on board who wrote a little verse. And what I remember of the verse went something like, in part, went something like, “Oh tell me quick what lunatic, what fiend of devilish notion, marched us thrice like bloody mice around the bloody ocean.” And this was distributed in a pamphlet that they’d brought out on board the ship which had some very witty things in it. And Crennan, I must say, to do him justice stopped behaving like a bloody lunatic [laughs]
AP: So you got to San Francisco.
JM: We got to San Francisco. We then had this devious crossing of America by train from Oakland to a place called [pause] oh dear. The name is going to elude me. But somewhere in Connecticut. And this was an American army base. And the trip across had taught us a few lessons I suppose. Such as don’t leave watches in your tunic pocket which you hang up in a Pullman carriage overnight because the Pullman porters seem to have very adhesive fingers. We got taken for Austrians and told what good English we spoke. People still do.
AP: They do.
JM: In America I’m told. Yes. We read books and I remember being introduced to Ogden Nash. Have you ever read Ogden Nash?
AP: I’ve never read Ogden Nash but the name rings a bell somewhere.
JM: Yeah. Well, you should look up on the internet a ballad of Ogden Nash’s called “Four prominent bastards are we.” “Your banker, your broker, your Washington Joker.” Four prominent bastards.
AP: Fair enough.
JM: Poor fellow who got taken down by them ended up saying he was a self appointed bastard and he was out to get it back. So that was part of my education.
AP: On your way across the US.
JM: On my way across. Apart from, no it was interesting to see America for the first time in its vastness and its variety.
AP: You didn’t have a chance to go on leave at all during that trip or it was straight across and get going?
JM: Well I had the misfortune to develop a carbuncle on the back of my neck so I spent the ten days we were at — Miles Standish was the name of the station.
AP: Rings a bell.
JM: At Miles Standish. I spent ten days in hospital there and had to fight to get out to join me fellows on the Louis Pasteur which we used to cross the Atlantic. And so apart from my first night there at which we attended the American mess and saw them doing all their modern antics which they were into. Not rock but whatever the dancing style of the time was. A bit ahead of us. So they had women in the mess and that sort of thing. So that was interesting insight. In hospital I had the interesting experience of having fellows who were very much against the Roosevelt government alongside me. They were southerners who felt that Roosevelt didn’t represent them. And —
AP: Fairly, fairly eye opening for a twenty year old I imagine.
JM: Yeah. And the interesting thing was I remember this fella saying, ‘And you’ve never had a hamburger?’ And I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘We eat meat pies in Australia.’ To which he replied, ‘What’s a [accent] meight pie?’ [laughs] So, so I had that experience of America that —
AP: Fair enough.
JM: Perhaps some of my fellows didn’t have. Then the crossing in the Pasteur was not luxury. Pasteur was shaped a bit like a canoe and it had latrines at each end. And the movement of the ship was like that. So that there would be an overflow from the latrines right through the mess decks. Mess deck comprising people in hammocks above tables. And our mess deck was right in the centre.
AP: That’s often the case.
JM: So we would be wading somewhat.
AP: So when was —
JM: And I won’t tell you what we were wading through.
AP: It was quite literally a mess deck.
JM: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. I suppose a fair few more people on there like more crowded conditions as well than crossing The Pacific.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: On that one as well.
JM: Yeah. So your hammocks your head lay between two pairs of feet. As people have probably told you.
AP: Lovely. And that took what a week or two weeks or something.
JM: Oh about five or six days.
AP: Five or six days.
JM: It was the height of the submarine campaign. Early ‘43. And we were on the alert and my friend Ingalls and I did regular eight hours on — four hours on, four hours off duty on the port. Rear port. Twelve pounder. So that was I thought I should have qualified for an Atlantic Star for it [laughs]
AP: That’s probably reasonable [laughs] What time of year was that?
JM: That was [pause] that was April.
AP: April. So that’s —
JM: Yeah.
AP: So it wasn’t too cold. It wasn’t like the middle of winter or anything so it wasn’t too —
JM: No. No.
AP: Too cold in the North Atlantic.
JM: No. But we saw a bit of the middle of winter in places like Utah. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. I imagine. Not much fun. So your ship would have come in Liverpool or Scotland or something like that.
JM: Liverpool.
AP: Liverpool.
JM: Yes. And then we did this trip to Bournemouth by train and I remember writing home to my parents. Remember I had just picked up the card I had sent a few days ago and I wrote and said when you make your post-war journey to England which they had planned or they’d hoped for I said do it in April because, “Oh to be in England now that April’s there.” Because a magnificent sight. You looked in wonder at scenes you’d never see in Australia of little villages tucked away behind green fields and church spires coming up. It was very exciting for a generation brought up on English literature.
AP: And that was, that funnily enough was going to be my next question. Your first impressions of England as a, presumably this is the first time you’d travelled overseas.
JM: Yes.
AP: So, so for a yeah a young bloke to be travelling.
JM: Yeah.
AP: In places that you’d only ever read about.
JM: No.
AP: That would have been —
JM: No. No.
AP: An experience, I imagine
JM: What I, my mother was a very keen reader and one of the books I had remembered reading was, “In Search of England,” by HV Morton if you’ve ever heard of it but that took you around all the memorable places in England. So, yeah. Brian Ingalls and I spent a lot time visiting some places on HV Morton’s recommendation.
AP: Excellent. So you were in Bournemouth for some time. I’ve heard, I’ve heard a fair bit about Bournemouth because pretty well every Australian went to either Bournemouth or Brighton.
JM: Yes.
AP: Depending on what time they went there. At some time that unit moved to Brighton.
JM: Yes.
AP: I can’t remember exactly when that was but impressions it sort of depends on when you arrived and how long you were there as to what happened but a lot of not much seems to have happened. It was a sort of holding point.
JM: Well yes you were wondering why you’d been sent to England. And we did odd parades. Church parades which one did one’s best to avoid. I remember we were put up at a place called Durley Dean which — strange memory but my first residence in England and Brian Ingalls and I, I remember from there visited Salisbury to see the cathedral. And we visited Oxford. And I can remember going to see the “Maid of the Mountains.” And a pianist called Solomon gave a concert which the only thing I remember about it was his name. But one, neither Brian nor I drank at that stage so we were more interested in — oh we went to a place called Poole. I remember that particularly because of our train trip home. We had two young girls in the train apartment with us and we’d got chatting with them on the way and the train, the train went into a tunnel. As we came out I looked at Ingalls doing exactly the thing that I was doing.
AP: Excellent. Subtle. No [laughs] Lovely. Did you, did you have any impression of wartime England? Like what was your first sort of thought?
JM: My favourite story is, again it was Ingalls, we were at Whitley Bay. We were spent to an RAF commando course and had a corporal trying to control these air crew. Australian aircrew. Which he wasn’t very, well he was cooperative. We would say, ‘Look corp, we’ll march in proper order of parade and you just take us to someplace where we won’t be seen and we’ll all have a smoke.’ And that was our commando course. But from Whitley Bay Ingalls and I went in to have a look at Newcastle. And I think it was a Sunday and we were looking in this window and there was a bun in the window. And it, we must have been looking longingly at it because this old lady came up to us and said, ‘You boys look hungry.’ We said, ‘You don’t do to well on air force ma’am.’ She said, ‘You come home with me.’ She took us home and boiled eggs for us and there was an egg rationing in England and she gave us her week’s ration of eggs. That’s a story I’ve never forgotten. So it, I also, we had family friends the sister of whom lived in a place called Cawsand in Cornwall and she ran a boarding house there. So when we had leave instead of joining the Ryder Scheme which a lot of people did I would go and visit her then. I’d get to know something of the Cornish people. Met this family that rejoiced in singing the [pause] what is it? The Cornish, Cornish Floral Dance. Is that it?
AP: Doesn’t ring a bell. I’ve been to Cornwall once but it was about —
JM: Yeah.
AP: About twenty years ago. So I was quite young.
JM: Cawsand was a delightful place. The bus doesn’t take you there. You have to walk across fields with your kit bag over your shoulder. To get there on one occasion I I had to stay in the Salvation Army place in Bristol and I have to say that was the most uncomfortable night I have ever had to stay in my life and that includes sleeping in bedbug chapoys in India. No. No. Very unpleasant.
AP: So you’ve, you’ve been sitting there at Bournemouth for a while. Travelling around.
JM: Yeah.
AP: Next step I guess, oh next step was —
JM: The next step we went to Whitley Bay.
AP: Whitley Bay. That’s right.
JM: And we were there when the Fokke Wolves shot up Bournemouth.
AP: Bournemouth.
JM: If you’ve heard about that tale.
AP: I’ve heard about it. I’m aware of it but if you know anything about it.
JM: Yes. Well —
AP: Sorry. You were at Bournemouth or you were at Whitley Bay? You were actually at Bournemouth did you say or were you at Whitley Bay?
JM: We were, we’d been sent from Bournemouth to Whitley Bay to do this commando course.
AP: Another one of those.
JM: We heard all about it when we got back.
AP: It’s another one of those lucky things
JM: Yes. So but from Whitley Bay we visited Edinburgh. That was lovely except it was still British double time. It was still daylight when you took the girl home —
AP: Yes [laughs]
JM: From the local dance.
AP: I have heard a number of people lamenting that fact. Yes.
JM: Yes. That must have been practically, we must have been there about June the 21st I think.
AP: The longest day. Yes.
JM: And then from Whitley Bay I don’t remember [pause] yes we did go back to Bournemouth because we learned about the air raid then. And then we were moved to Brighton and Brighton was a place that one was very easy to dodge church parade. We were put up at the Metropole Hotel which was right next to the Grand Hotel which was the hotel that Maggie Thatcher was in when the terrorists attack on it. And the Metropole was a sort of twin hotel. We were on the fifth floor and had to go up to five floors of stairs.
AP: Stairs [laughs]
JM: And it was a Victorian, a Victorian hotel without lifts if I remember rightly. But no, Bournemouth was an enjoyable experience because plenty of entertainment and I remember seeing, “No. No Nanette.” That’s the only thing. We got up to London on leave and I saw a lot of plays in London which were very [pause] of course and went to places that weren’t plays like seeing Phyllis Dixie who was the strip woman and who noticed it when you moved from the back row to the front rows after the interval. And then after that there was the — they were great, great times times in Brighton. One had got used to being in England by then and knew one’s way about. Church parade was easy to dodge because we marched from the Majestic to a church through with about seven changes of direction so every time the platoon or whatever it was, turned a corner, the last three would drop off and head for, head for somewhere to have a cup of awful wartime coffee. Which was preferable to listening to sermon.
AP: Excellent. Now acclimatisation I think you said was next.
JM: Hmmn?
AP: You said after, after you’d been to Brighton for a little while.
JM: Yes.
AP: Your next unit was Advanced Flying Unit I think.
JM: Well one took leave and I think we took leave in from Bournemouth and from Brighton because there was nothing to do. You might as well have a couple of days off.
AP: Any — apart from seeing plays and things in London what else did you, did you get up to there. General impressions of wartime London I think is what I’m interested in.
JM: Yes. Well I didn’t drink so I I was more interested in seeing what I could of the entertainment side. My friend, Newman, this was from OTU that Newman excelled himself. He went to a place called the Gremlin Club in London and they started playing a tune called, “You’ll never know.”Do you know the tune?
AP: I don’t know the tune. No.
JM: “You’ll never know just how much I love you. You’ll never know just how much I care.”
AP: Ah yes.
JM: And so on which Newman sang beautifully. And he got up and sang it at the Gremlin Club and sang it and was invited to come back anytime and perform for them [laughs] but I never had that distinction in my visits to London.
AP: Fair enough. Where was your next posting? Where was your next posting after?
JM: South Cerney, near Cirencester in Gloucestershire. And that was where I mentioned I had the good luck to have this New Zealand instructor who was so quick.
AP: Oh yes.
JM: That he saw what was coming in time. What else do I remember of that? We — I got into a bit of trouble for deciding to shoot up the flight club because the CO of the place had annoyed me once which was [laughs] I don’t know why I was so stupid when I was young but one does things. So I got put on a charge for that.
AP: But was that —
JM: It didn’t do me any good.
AP: So I imagine flying in wartime England there would have been aeroplanes everywhere.
JM: Well that was the problem, you see.
AP: Very congested. Yeah.
JM: South Cerney. Moreton in the Marsh. Other places all doing the same thing quite close to one another. All inexperienced pilots learning about the hazards of flying in England.
AP: It would have been a bit different as well when and I know from my own flying, you know, you’re doing navigation in Australia. You take off. There’s one town. And you, you know, you write that time down.
JM: Yeah.
AP: And then you fly and then the other town, the next town appears.
JM: Yeah.
AP: Whereas in England there’s a town there, and there’s one there and there’s one there and they all look the same.
JM: Yes.
AP: How was that to adjust too?
JM: Well, I [pause] yes I, you had your wireless contact of course which was only good when you were within five miles of base. It was not high frequency. So mostly you learned to identify the surroundings but the RAF had a wonderful TM. Have you heard about TM?
AP: I have heard of TM. Yes.
JM: So —
AP: Pilot Officer Prune.
JM: Every month it would come out and they would award the Most Highly Derogatory Order of the Irremovable Finger. The MHDO. If you’ve heard of that. I remember one of their stories of the CO of a training unit who was caught looking — had landed at the wrong airport and was caught looking at the notice board of the of the, in the officer’s mess to try and find out where it was. So he was awarded the MHDOIF.
AP: Yeah. It was not, not an unusual thing I imagine. Getting lost. I do —
JM: I don’t think I ever heard of anyone who did that. As I say I landed once at Silverstone purposefully.
AP: So you, when you went to OTU did you know before you got there that India was the ultimate destination or did it sort of happen after you got there?
JM: Well the funny thing is I, I went through life until five years ago when I read my letters home for the first time that I had written in May 1943 that we’d been given the option of volunteering to go to India and I had opted to do so. So I’d reassured my parents that being overseas didn’t mean I wasn’t going to fight the Japs. And I’d put my name down to do it. Now, for something like forty years they laboured under the illusion that I’d only found out when I got to Harwell. But that’s memory.
AP: So that, that letter was written before you got there.
JM: That letter was written in May 1943.
AP: And when did you —
JM: And I only read it about five years — my sister gave me my letters that I’d sent home.
AP: Fantastic. Ok and so then you went to OTU just after that was that. Was that the idea?
JM: I went to OTU in, I suppose, September ’43.
AP: Ok. So, so that, that was the process?
JM: Yeah.
AP: Ok. So you already knew when you got there.
JM: Yeah.
AP: So I suppose for you the OTU process for you would have been a bit different to the — let’s call it the standard.
JM: There was, there was no certainty.
AP: Of course not.
JM: That when you got to Harwell that one would go to, I think that was the point too. Because some of them were sent to a place called Melbourne, Yorkshire. On, I think, Halifaxes.
AP: Yorkshire probably was. Yes.
JM: From Harwell. Anyway, I went to India.
AP: How. What happened at OTU? What sort of training did you do on the ground? What sort of stuff?
JM: Well the flying was just getting familiar with operational flying conditions. Doing a lot night flying. Doing two nickels over France as I mentioned. Doing low level flying over water. Doing, I suppose, cross countrys’. I don’t just — but a lot of night flying. That was the emphasis. And then by this time I had found the delights of alcohol. So a typical night would be after supper we’d have a beer at the mess and then someone would say, ‘I think I’ll go along and see what is on at the New Inn.’ This was in Hampstead Norris which was a satellite of Harwell. So we’d trot along to the New Inn. And someone would say oh there’s a dance on so we’d find our way to a dance hall somewhere in the wilds of England. And so that, yeah I found myself deceived very badly by a beautiful English girl called Bridget Belinda Barnes. I remember it to this day because we had danced and I asked her for her name and she told me and I said, ‘That’s a mouthful.’ And she said, ‘Well my friends call me BB.’ I said, ‘Well do you mind if I just call you B?’ So we got on sportingly and then she got on a bus to go to Newbury where she lived. But she said, ‘You must come and see me tomorrow,’ and she gave me her address. And I thought this was terrific. To get to Newbury you had to bicycle so I got found of these English monstrosities that was, you know, to go push them on the level seemed like climbing a one in ten gradient. And the trip to Newbury is over the Berkshire downs. It was December. My gloves were quite inefficient so one would get down to the downhill business and put ones hands in ones pockets and go down. No hands. And then have to push up the next hill. So I got to Newbury which was about eight miles away and reported to the — and of all things Bridget Belinda Barnes had invited all her boyfriends to help in a bazaar [laughs]
AP: Very good. That was a long cold ride home.
JM: It was a long cold ride home. And I didn’t even go to the mess for a drink with my humiliation heart.
AP: Can’t trust them. So you said you started drinking by this stage. Was there anything particular that brought that on?
JM: I got sick of writing letters home, I thought, well someone told me that cider was a reasonable thing to drink if I didn’t like beer. And Gloucester is near Somerset. Full of Bulmer’s cider and so I went to the mess and drank cider. Pint of cider per pint of beer with my friends. And they wouldn’t come near me for days afterwards. It could have quite an explosive effect.
AP: Fair enough. Was that OTU?
JM: No that was at AFU.
AP: AFU. Right. Oh of course.
JM: Yeah. And so I I decided that beer couldn’t be as distasteful as that. And had no problems thereafter.
AP: It’s the English wartime beer. Did you, did you do the, I guess, familiar crewing up thing at OTU? Was that? How did that happen?
JM: I think, I think they were bestowed on us at OTU. In India we selected our crew and that’s where I came not to select my former navigator.
AP: That was. Yeah. So that’s I guess that’s a very significant difference from Bomber Command.
JM: Yeah.
AP: In a lot of cases. Obviously at OTU it’s I guess, you could say, it’s the tradition put you in a hangar and sort yourself out boys.
JM: Yeah.
AP: So ok but bestowed on you. That’s a bit different. Well we might as well go on to India while we’re here and enjoying having a chat. You’re at OTU. You finished the course. How did you get to India?
JM: Well we were sent to Blackpool awaiting a ship. And that was a piece of entertainment too. Yes. One used to go to the Blackpool tower of a night and you’d have a table there to which everyone had to supply a drink and by the time you became the last person probably propping the bar having to buy about a dozen drinks. But I hoped to meet some gorgeous woman there and don’t think I ever had any. No I never had any success that way but on my last night I decided I’d escort this damsel home and I suggested she might like to go into an air raid shelter with me and she said, ‘In there with you. You must be daft.’ [laughs] That was my last night in England [laughs]
AP: Fair enough.
JM: So the ship, this is where the ship to India. This is where my good friend Newman did the dirt on me. Because Newman at this time was a warrant officer and I was only a flight sergeant. And he should have been in charge of the mess deck but he somehow manoeuvred it so that I was put in charge of the mess deck. And the problem with that was that when you hit a storm in the Mediterranean if you were in charge of the mess deck you were responsible for its orderliness inspection time. And as half the occupants vomited during a storm in the Mediterranean I had the problem of ordering people to clean it up which nobody would accept my orders [laughs]
AP: Oh dear.
JM: No. No. But it did have its advantages. We travelled to India and there was a commando unit on the ship also which challenged us to a boxing match. And as nominations were being made for who’d represent the air force I was able to nominate my friend Clem Walker instead of me to undertake our appropriate weight. The opponent promptly laid Clem Walker out. So that was a bit bad. We got off the ship at Bombay. Learned that our air force issue uniforms — pipe stem trousers were just not worn by anyone in India so promptly re-equipped ourselves at our own expense. Found places like Worli where there’s wonderful swimming pools where we were allowed entry. And that was great fun. We were entertained, being non-commissioned by a very kindly group of people. I don’t know whether they were YWCA or who but they brought some little Anglo-Indian girls into the afternoon tea to meet us. This is one of these occasions of being unable to make contact. The shyness was on both sides I suppose. We’d have had this somewhat racial attitude. And the little girls would have been so hesitant and lacking in self confidence that it was just, just hopeless. But if you were officer class you had an opportunity I think to meet the upper class Indian women in a way that British non-commissioned people, British other ranks we were called, BORs, and you just never had the opportunity of meeting the more companionable I suppose, more self confident Indian females. So what else in Bombay did I see? There was a racecourse. I never went to the racecourse, but some of my friends would come home and say, ‘Oh you should have been.’ Edgar Britt just gave us a tip for all the races of these Australian jockeys. Edgar Britt and a fellow called Roberts. And another fellow called Scarlet there. All the races were fixed apparently because the jockeys knew who was going to win [laughs] yeah.
AP: So you flew Liberators operationally. Am I correct?
JM: Hmmn?
AP: You flew Liberators operationally.
JM: Yes. Well from Bombay we went across to Calcutta at the height of the Bengal famine. That was unbelievable. Stepping off the train in Worli. Step over bodies. There were beggars with Elephantiasis. Do you know what Elephantiasis is? Our mess was, in the open air and after things had been cleaned up you would see these old women come along picking through our rubbish picking bones. Just [pause] and India’s population then was about four million then. The population of the same subcontinent now is about a billion and a half. So imagine —
AP: My sister —
JM: What problems they have.
AP: My sister actually lives in India. She’s in New Delhi now.
JM: Who’s that?
AP: My sister.
JM: Yeah.
AP: And she, yeah, founded and runs an NGO to develop education in certain parts of India so yeah I hear stories like that quite, quite frequently. Yeah. I think it’s a very different world. So tell me what you first thought of the Liberator the first time you saw one.
JM: Well I first went on as a second pilot to a man called Joe Morphett who was a flight commander. It’s one thing that convinced me that I was lucky to be an NCO because when I got my own crew we all slept in the same basha together. We became absolutely a glued team. But Joe Morphett — I never saw him except when we flew. The same with the navigators of that crew. The navigator rather. And I think there was another officer in the crew. Never got to see them outside the aircraft and it just convinced me that NCO, all NCO crews were a good thing. But I did seven or eight ops with Joe. On the last one Joe had [pause] Joe was an interesting man. I learned afterwards researching things that he’d been a schoolteacher. He had a degree in engineering and he had given this — we had a CO on 355 Squadron a man called Dobson who was a no-hoper in my opinion. He was, again like Crannon, a man who liked to discipline people if they fell out of line. So he, we had two aircraft blow up on the squadron on landing and this was considered a shameful thing. We had a situation where he was only getting about four of the aircraft of the unit’s twelve aircraft — how many aircraft did we have on the squadron? We must have had sixteen aircraft I think. And twenty four crews. And we’d get about four or five up on an operation because the rest weren’t serviceable. And he decided to apply discipline. So this didn’t work. We had the squadron minstrel like the one on Crannon’s ship come out with a rhyme that went to the tune of “St Cecilia, the squadron is a shambles. There’s no ops any more. Eighteen NCO lined up outside the CO’s door. They’re handing out the 252s and reprimands galore. On 355 old Barney” and it went on. And Dobson disappeared for a while and Joe Morphett took over the squadron. And Joe got up and gave a pep talk to the whole squadron on what they should be doing. He said. ‘Your petrol consumption is dreadful. We are having aircraft land at other posts because they’ve run out of petrol on the way back. Now this is unacceptable. There are ways of flying when you come back from a target if you fly the right way you will use much less petrol. And the right way to fly is to fly on the step.’ And what, “On the step,” means is you start off at the target at ten thousand feet and you very gradually lose height at cruising speed so that by the time you are near home post you have minimised your fuel consumption at the appropriate cruising speed and are ready to land. And so that was that. The next op we fly out with Joe Morphett. We were flying. We were bombing a place called Maymyo which is a bit of a hill station on the Burma route. The Burma road route to Chonqing and on, in our briefing we’d been warned that Mount Victoria which I think is one of the higher peaks in Burma had to be avoided. Somehow, coming home, Joe said, ‘Jesus we’re going to fly in to a bloody mountain.’ And you have a thing called the gate on a Liberator. If you go through the gate you increase your flying speed and your power and Joe went through the gate to get over this place. So we get back over the Sundarbans which, the delta at the mouth of the Ganges Bhramaputra system and an engine goes. Quick as a flash I said, ‘Perhaps it’s a pump Joe,’ and I put on the emergency pump and the engine came good again. Then the rest of the engines went. I put on all the emergency posts. To cut a long story short Joe said, told the crew to abandon. Somewhere into Bengal by this time. And he said to me, ‘This goes for you too Mac.’ So I released myself and kept going. There I find a blockage. The wireless operator, my friend Ron Vine is there and there is someone in front of him who won’t move. So I went back to Joe and said, ‘Anything I can do to help, skip?’ He said, ‘Get out.’ [laughs] So I went back and by this time Vine had booted Melville, the flight engineer in the bum, and Melville had descended. Subsequently breaking his leg we learned. Vine and I got out at God knows what height because we were within very short walking distance of Joe’s crashed aircraft. The man who’d been so determined that people wouldn’t run out of [pause] it was one of those ironies that you. Anyway, that was, I did one more op at Phulbani and then was sent to HCU. Heavy Conversion Unit at Kolar which is near Bangalore. Lovely climate but not much else to recommend it. Bangalore’s an interesting town but, you know.
AP: So ok so you parachuted from an aircraft?
JM: Pardon?
AP: You jumped out of an aeroplane you said.
JM: Yes. Yes.
AP: Where did you land and how did you get back?
JM: Well yes, that’s interesting because Vine and I, of course, landed within feet of [pause] this was about 4 o’clock in the morning. Vine and I landed within sight of one another. Must have been moonlight because Joe had seen the mountain and it was the 1st of April of all dates. And so we found our way to the village. It was the second village from where we — we went to the first village nearest. We knew roughly where the aircraft would be. The first village we woke everybody up and finally found someone who was able to direct us, who knew where the aircraft had crashed. So we walked over about another four or five hundred yards of paddy. We got to the next place and there found Joe had been taken out of the aircraft by the local people. Put under a tree. A mango tree. I couldn’t eat mangos for years after that but there was Joe with a great triangular piece rolled back across his scalp and a great chunk taken out of his thigh and after painkillers so we found the medical kit from the aircraft and tried to inject morphine without much success. Anyway, Joe said take it out and finally we persuaded someone to go and get help. And so we —eventually help came at about I suppose about 3 o’clock in the afternoon. And on April the 1st in Bengal. That’s not very — May the 1st it was. May the 1st and that was that’s a hot season in Bengal and if you’re inland in Bengal you get the worst of things because you get the humidity and you get the continental heat before the monsoon hits it the heat becomes absolutely unbearable. But there it was [pause] I suppose it was by 3 o’clock we got help. Someone came with a wheeled the [unclear] which Joe was put on to and the medico was able to give him an injection which helped. And so we wheeled to, the squadron transport had somehow been invoked in the meantime. Or some military transport had been invoked and it was waiting for us about two miles along this track that we walked, behind Joe. The medico had bought some supplies for us because Vine and I had not taken food or drink from them. We were afraid. When you arrived in India you were warned never to eat anything or drink water because dysentery and cholera were such a threat. So we were absolutely parched. And the medico, Indian medico had brought along water and he brought some boiled eggs. Well I wouldn’t take even his water. I tried to eat the boiled, hardboiled egg. And have you ever tried to eat anything when you have no saliva?
AP: Very difficult. Yes.
JM: Anyway, we got to the end of this trail. Joe was to be put into the ambulance or whatever it was. He turns to the medico and says, ‘Can I bale out now doc?’ which I think is one of the wonderful heroic remarks.
AP: Indeed.
JM: So Joe Morphett was his name. He got the DFC in the Middle East and he got a bar too. His DFC on that occasion. And Vine and I were put into hospital with heat exhaustion. We came out in a few days. We were, Vine was a wireless operator. He’d been my W/op in Harwell actually. So we came out of that and then I did one more op with a man called John or Johns. WO Johns and I learned more about flying Liberators from him. Sorry Joe but I did. Than I did in eight ops with you. Anyway, after that we were posted to, or a few of us and my friends by that stage, you change friendships in the air force. You move, made new friends and Clem Walker who I’d given the job of representing us in boxing on the ship, and Butch Smith, a Londoner with a cockney accent and I were sent to HCU at Kolar where were we converted on to Liberators as captains in our own right. And it was there we chose our crews but I was a bit slow in getting around to a crew because I had to find a navigator and dodge the one I didn’t want to find. And I landed up with this Australian. A real rough diamond. Old Greg. He was considerably older than I was. He’d been on Wellingtons on air sea rescue in Madras for a while. And Greg reckoned he should have been first pilot but he got lined up with me as first pilot. So that, that was a bit tricky to start off with but we managed to find a modus vivendi eventually. He was a rough diamond as they say. My last meeting with Greg was in Calcutta. I was having a forty eight hour leave and learned he was about to depart for Australia on a banana boat having finished his own tour and I went to see him off. And he paid me a compliment of saying, ‘McCredie if it had been any other bastard I wouldn’t have stuck it out.’ [laughs]
AP: Fair enough.
JM: That was a funny relationship with Greg.
AP: Do, do any of your subsequent ops stand out in your memory at all? Any of your —
JM: Hmmn?
AP: Do any of your subsequent operations stand out?
JM: Well, the time, the time I was shot up stands out of course. I mentioned that earlier so we did long operations. Fifteen hours and forty five minutes took place. Called [unclear] on the isthmus of [unclear] . Quite a long way down. The name eludes me for a moment.
AP: That’s, that’s a lot longer than most Bomber Command operations.
JM: Hmmn?
AP: That’s a lot longer than most Bomber Command operations.
JM: Yes. Well —
AP: Fifteen hours.
JM: The Liberator was designed for that. We carried six thousand pounds [coughs] Pardon me. I’d better have a drink [pause] We carried six thousand pounds to this place. The Lancaster for instance had a maximum bomb load of twenty thousand pounds. The Liberator’s maximum bomb load was twelve thousand pounds. But where we, when we flew at six thousand we could have two bomb bay tanks of fuel.
AP: Bomb bay tanks. Yeah.
JM: In place of the bombs so that would carry us comfortably for a sixteen hour flight. But if you went with no bombs as some people did on reconnaissance. My friend, my CO, Killarney later became a Pathfinder in South East Asia and he did one flight, I believe of twenty one hours in a Liberator.
AP: Nuts.
JM: A reconnaissance flight but —
AP: When you’re, when you’re flying as a pilot for fifteen odd hours you pretty much can’t leave your seat can you?
JM: Yes. Well you have a co-pilot.
AP: Of course.
JM: So it, it’s when you’re young it seemed to me, for instance my logbook inferred that within three— or two days or three days I I did two flights to Bangkok from from Bengal which were both over thirteen hours. Taking off on each occasion in daylight and landing in daylight. You made up for the sleep in the afternoons. Indeed the siesta was the common practice and then somehow about 5 o’clock you’d head, if you weren’t flying the next you’d head for the mess.
AP: Very good. What was, what was a tour? How long was a tour in India?
JM: Three hundred hours.
AP: Three hundred hours. So it’s an hour’s based thing.
JM: Three hundred hours or a year’s service. A year on the squadron active service.
AP: Yeah. Go on.
JM: So, what — my two nickels counted as operational service. The seventy odd hours I did at Phulbani counted as operation service. So by the time I reached three hundred my crew was not finished. So Clem Walker and I and Butch all said we’ll fly on. It was that stage of the war and we didn’t see much to stop us flying. And so I ended up with three hundred and seventy odd hours.
AP: Of operational flying.
JM: Yes.
AP: Wow. So what happened at the end of your tour? What’s next?
JM: I was sent on to Transport Squadron. Clem Walker and I were sent on transports to New Delhi where we, 232 Squadron — it was 99 Squadron in Dhubalia which was where I did the bulk of my ops. I don’t think I mentioned that squadron. 232 was the transport squadron I flew on for six months and we did milk runs to Bombay, Colombo, Calcutta. I went to Pegu in Burma on one occasion. Cocos Island and then I did one trip back to Australia as a second pilot. When I went to the transport squadron I was a second pilot for a couple of months. That’s when I did the trip home to Australia.
AP: What aircraft was this?
JM: Hmmn?
AP: What aircraft? What aircraft?
JM: Liberators.
AP: Liberators as well. Yeah. Ok.
JM: So managed to get home to see my parents. And [pause] but Cocos Island was the first time you had to fly there you wondered if the navigator was on the ball because there was a point of no return. But we did a few trips there and my old squadron, 99 Squadron was posted there after the end of the Jap war because it was participating in the Javanese campaign. We were helping the Dutch get back into Indonesia so when I visited Cocos Island I’d meet up with old mates from the squadron. That wasn’t very good for the passengers on the way back the next day [laughs] But Cocos Island was interesting. Huge crabs would come on shore at night. But transport flying was something that I must say never appealed to me. You felt like you had a purpose when you went on a bombing raid but and you got back to base if you were lucky but if you —
AP: Did you, did you fly at all after the war? No. Not at all.
JM: No I went back to — I took up the government’s offer of a university education and I’d worked out that Australia was going to need a Foreign Service. My sister had written to me and said Dr Everett had introduced this. ‘You should try and qualify for it.’ I managed to get myself into an honours arts degree at the university and applied for the cadet course in my first year. Didn’t even get an interview. Applied for it again in my second year. And then I had the thought I would go and talk to my professor who — Professor Crawford had worked in the Foreign Service. He’d been First Secretary in Moscow during the war. And I went along and saw him and said I’m just wondering if it was a better idea to write and tell them I’ll apply again when I finished my degree. He said, ‘That’s a very good idea.’ So I, I’d laid the foundation for his giving me a good recommendation the next year and managed to get into the Foreign Service which was an infant service in those days.
AP: I guess, summing it all up, what were your thoughts on your wartime service. How did it affect you? How did it affect your subsequent life?
JM: It well the first year at university was very difficult because I had all sorts of unfulfilled ambitions such as I wanted to play football again. And I managed to get into the university blues which were the B grade amateur team in those days and got myself injured in a way that upset my studies for a while. And it was a very much a party year. First year back so I had a bit of trouble settling down and it wasn’t until I saw myself being on the brink of being thrown off the course that I could really get down to, and apply myself, full time, to study.
AP: Sure.
JM: Which was essential.
AP: I suppose that’s, that’s pretty well the end of my list of questions. So we’ve been talking for an hour and three quarters now, believe it or not. And that’s absolutely fine.
JM: I hope your ears haven’t suffered too much from the bashing.
AP: Oh my ears. No. Not at all. I mean I have been watching the clock but it’s, yeah, it’s gone. Gone very quickly so thank you for very much. Really.
JM: Well I hope that’s helpful anyway.
AP: I think it will be.
JM: What are you going to do with all this?
[recording paused]
AP: We’ll be able to fix it later. Alright. Carry on.
JM: Yes. Well as an after, this shouldn’t be an afterthought because my squadron commander on 99 Squadron Lucian Killarney was an outstanding man by any classification. His idea of running a squadron was that everybody had to work together. The first thing he did was bring the ground crew together to explain that he understood perfectly the conditions which were very difficult in the Bengal climate. He understood there were problems with catering. We couldn’t always get what we wanted, ‘But what every squadron needed was to have serviceable aircraft and that’s on you people on which we all depend. We can’t do our job without you.’ Now I’d like to pay this compliment to Killarney as a leader as so distinct from the man Dobson on 355 squadron. Killarney managed to get twelve aircraft in the air on almost every operation and he did that by leadership. By explaining and getting the ground crew onside and it’s been my privilege to see something of him after the war and to know that he ran his furniture company with the same diligence and consideration and the quality of his furniture reflects that.
AP: Excellent. Excellent.
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AMcCredieJ151012
Title
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Interview with John McCredie
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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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:45:19 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2015-10-12
Description
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John McCredie grew up in Australia and served in the Militia before he volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force. He flew two operations as a pilot over France during training and was later posted to India. He later returned to Australia to continue his university education and went on to join the Australian Foreign Service
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Burma
Great Britain
India
India--Bengal
Victoria
Victoria--Mount Martha
Victoria
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1943
1945
99 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-24
entertainment
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Harwell
RAF South Cerney
sanitation
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/309/3466/AMunroL150604.2.mp3
e4a1c8a20e21add227fdb978e901cb8a
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Title
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Munro, Les
Les Munro
John Leslie Munro
John L Munro
John Munro
J L Munro
J Munro
Description
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One oral history interview with Squadron Leader John Leslie Munro CNZM DSO QSO DFC (1919-2015, Royal New Zealand Air Force). Les Munro trained as a pilot in New Zealand and Canada and completed 58 operations with 97 Squadron and 617 Squadron from RAF Woodhall Spa and RAF Scampton. His aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire on the way bomb the Sorpe dam and he returned to RAF Scampton still carrying his bouncing bomb.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-04
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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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Munro, L
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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NB: Right. It’s quarter to five on the 4th of June 2015. I’m in the house of John Leslie Munro in Tauranga, New Zealand. Excuse the pronunciation. Tauranga in New Zealand. Um I wondered if we could start off by just finding out a bit about your life before you went into Bomber Command.
JLM: Yes. I was born to — my father worked on a sheep station at Dorman which was sixteen miles from the town of Gisborne. I was born and brought up and spent all my younger life in the Gisborne district. After I only spent two years at high school because of the slump. We were being brought up in the slump. My parents could not afford to keep me at high school any longer so immediately on leaving high school in 1936 I went to work on a small dairy farm on which I worked for about eighteen months and from there I went to a larger farm which was a mixed sheep, you know, sheep cropping, mainly maize and dairying. And after about two years in that — working on that farm the owner left to work for a rural department and left me in charge. I was in. When war broke out I considered that I should actually do my part in, in supporting the king and country and democracy and freedom and democracy and that sort of thing. Ah and I um postponed enlisting because my younger brother had put his age forward and he actually spent his twenty first birthday overseas and that upset my parents quite considerably and I respected their feelings about the matter and postponed my enlistment until I passed the age of twenty one. So, as soon I was twenty one I enlisted in the air force. And because I’d only did two years course at high school of which neither was in– covered mathematics they said I wasn’t suitable to be a pilot but I could be a gunner or a wireless operator if that was suitable to me. But I didn’t, I didn’t agree with that and they said, well I said I wanted to be a pilot and the air force said, well, alright you can do a correspondence course in mathematics and trigonometry [struggles over word] and if, if you pass that we’ll accept you as a pilot and that’s what happened. I did the correspondence course and it was very very hard to do trigonometry and that I just couldn’t follow for a while. And eventually I passed and I went into the air force at Levin which was a brown place, just a parade ground sort of experience. And on the 5th of July 1941.
NB: Right.
JLM: Yeah.
NB: What made you go for the air force?
JLM: Well I’m often, I’m often asked that and I think, I think the idea that I wanted to be a pilot. I would be in charge of my own destiny. I think that was what drove me to that. The other thing is that the second farm I worked on, the homestead was up on a hill and the commercial air, commercial planes used to fly past. I’d watch them flying and I think I got a feel for flying, for flying planes, myself. Yeah.
NB: So, once, once you enlisted having got your qualification what was the process they put you through for training?
JLM: Well as I said earlier I entered the air force on the 15th of July 1941 at a place called Levin. I only had about six weeks there and I was transferred to New Plymouth to number 2 EFTS, that’s the Elementary Flying Training School on Tiger Moths.
NB: Right.
JLM: Spent um, flew there. I got my uh went solo after about six and a half hours’ training which apparently was recognised as being fairly good in those days. Ten hours was recognised as the normal period in which to gain your pilot’s licence to be able to go solo. And I gained my pilot’s licence, well, not licence but go solo and after six and half hours and [pause] — I’m not sure, I haven’t got the dates with me. After about ten weeks I think it would have been we were sent on leave and I left New Zealand on the 20th of October 1941 for Canada.
NB: Right.
JLM: I was sent to Canada. Number 4 SFTS [Service Flying Training School] where I trained on twin engine Cessna Cranes.
NB: Right.
JLM: Just as a point of interest is at that stage the Americans weren’t in the war and we travelled to Canada on the SS Mariposa which was a cruise ship and we were, we actually were transferred as, or transported, as civilians.
NB: Right.
JLM: We had two to a cabin with a server. A steward waiting on us in the cabins and the same on the, on the dining room tables. We were waited on by stewards and we were treated as civilians all the way over which was a quite significant in the sense that if we had been on a troop ship we’d have been about — I don’t know how many to a cabin and all that sort of thing. Yeah.
NB: And did that take you to —
JLM: And went to we arrived at San Diego and berthed there for a couple of days and then we sailed again through San Francisco. We debarked — disembarked at San Francisco.
NB: Okay. And then how, how did you get into Canada from there?
JLM: Hmmn?
NB: You went up to Canada from there?
JLM: Yeah. I, we caught the train at [pause] what’s the name of it? No gone. Caught the train at, there’s another town is there? Across the estuary or somewhere from the town of San Francisco, the city of San Francisco up to Vancouver.
NB: Right.
JLM: And then over. Took the train from Vancouver. Again I think we had to change to Canadian Railways of course and went over the Rockies to Saskatoon.
NB: Oh right.
JLM: To the [pause] yeah, which is in Saskatchewan.
NB: Saskatchewan. And how long was your training period? And was there a difference in climate or —
JLM: Ah yes. At that stage we were in the middle of winter and the ground, the ground was covered in snow. The only evidence you knew about habitation was the plumes of smoke. Smoke coming up from the chimneys of the houses and that sort of thing. But yes, we were, I’d never seen, well, no, I’d never seen snow in my life I don’t think and — but the ground was covered in snow although there was no problem. We were still able to fly there. The runways were still capable of being flown from. And we’ve carried on there until the 28th of February of ’42 when we were granted our wings and appointed officers. Pilot officers to start with and we, you know we awaited our — were awarded our wings. If that’s the right way of putting it.
NB: Yeah. So did you return to or come from there straight to the UK or did you have —
JLM: We had a fortnight’s leave.
NB: Right.
JLM: And three of us, I think, that used to kind of stick together quite a bit went down to New York and then transferred back up and took to Halifax where we caught the HMS, well not HMS, it was a civilian er Cape Town, the Cape Town Castle.
NB: Right.
JLM: And went to Liverpool. From Liverpool, by train, to Bournemouth where we filled in time for about, er we used to call it a holding pattern. We were there for, I think, about two months and then were posted up to Shawbury in Shropshire and did a refresher course on Airspeed Oxford. Spent a lot of time flying on Link Trainers and then we went from there to er Luff- North Luffenham the operational, the OTU.
NB: OTU. Yeah.
JLM: OTU. Operational Training Unit. There for about um about you see I’ve got these notes [unclear], I haven’t got my logbooks which I can refer to. Um, we were there for [pause] maybe, somewhere about three months I think and we were posted to Heavy Conversion Unit at Wigsley. We were flying Wellingtons at North Luffenham and that was where I had my first brush with death, I suppose, in a way.
NB: What happened?
JLM: It was in the days when they were trying to build up numbers, the bomber numbers. At the time they were experimenting with the thousand bomber raids. I don’t know about experimenting but endeavour to get a thousand bombers in the air at once. And we were on two of the, not necessarily the Bomber Command, the thousand bomber raids but trying to build up numbers to seven or eight or nine hundred bombers in the air. They employed or co-opted a lot of Operational Training Unit planes and in this case, somewhere around about September ’42 we were co-opted to go on a raid to one of the cities in Germany. And then about two nights later and with that, went on, we completed that without incident and about two nights later we were scheduled to attack another city and as is normal custom we were allocated planes which we had to take up for night flying exercises. We had a night flying test and on the — during that test I was most unhappy about the power of the, or the ability of the plane to take up a load of bombs. And I complained about this when I came down. I said, I said, I didn’t think this plane was capable of carrying two thousand pounds of bombs. And anyway, they noted my objection and that night when we took off after flying up the runway at full throttle I couldn’t get the plane to get airborne. I got it airborne — about twenty or thirty feet above the ground. I couldn’t get it any higher. Except at, even at full throttle. So, eventually had to go past the end of the runway and the bomb aimer said, ‘Trees ahead.’ And we just clipped those and we carried on and then I was still trying to get the plane to climb and then all of a sudden, well, not all of a sudden, after leaving the trees behind that I’d clipped I just, the plane just settled down on the ground in the middle of a paddock. There were buildings and that ahead of us and the trees behind and settled down quite smoothly and without any real damage. Well, without it assimilating a crash position and it caught fire and we, the crew and I, the crew all got out and the plane burned out with the bombs exploding at intervals. So that was an indication to me that maybe I might be lucky. And as it turned out that was the first evidence to me, first indication to me that maybe Lady Luck was going to be on my shoulder and so it happened right through the war. I had several instances where I felt that I was quite lucky to, to survive.
NB: Is there a feeling, or was there a feeling among the crews that you banked luck? Or —
JLM: I don’t know that we ever really discussed the situation as to whether we were lucky or [pause]. Don’t — I don’t remember as a crew. My crew, sort of, were such that they never sort of queried, never questioned my ability as a, as a pilot right through the war. There were occasions when they could have said, ‘Well, you know we were lucky there’ or, ‘What did you do that for?’ Or something like this.
NB: So, after you left HCU where were you?
JLM: I went to Heavy Conversion Unit at Wigsley.
NB: Right.
JLM: I was only there for — what? A couple of months and then I was posted to 97 Squadron at Woodhall Spa. On the 12th of December 1942.
NB: Flying?
JLM: Lancasters.
NB: On Lancs.
JLM: Oh, firstly at Luffenham, at Heavy Conversion Unit I flew the Manchesters for seven and a half hours before switching to Lancasters.
NB: Right.
JLM: And of course, when I was posted to 97 Squadron that was all Lancasters. So, I arrived on an operational squadron after about, what? Eighteen months training, to fulfil the reason why I enlisted in the first place.
NB: In the first place. And had you already crewed up by then?
JLM: Oh yeah. Well when we were at the Operational Training Unit we got our navigator [pause] navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator. It wasn’t until we got to Heavy Conversion Unit we picked up our flight engineer and the two gunners.
NB: Was there a mix of nationalities in the crew?
JLM: Yes. Well no. Only two. There was — I had two Canadians. My navigator was a Scotsman. The two Canadians were wireless operator and rear gunner and a flight engineer was an Englishmen. The flight engineer and the mid-upper gunner was English. Both English.
NB: So you were the only New Zealander on board.
JLM: I was New Zealand. Yeah.
NB: Is that why you didn’t go towards 75 Squadron?
JLM: Yeah. No, you didn’t have much option. When you finished your Heavy Conversion Unit, you were just posted.
NB: Right.
JLM: Posted here, there or anywhere. I don’t — they never called for volunteers. They never called for, like they did initially at New Plymouth. They called for your preferences. ‘Do you want to be fighter boy or do you want to be a bomber pilot and because, perhaps due to my conservative nature I think I opted to be a bomber pilot. So, yeah, so when we didn’t get, we didn’t get a full crew until we arrived at Heavy Conversion Unit.
NB: Okay. So, the op that you did when you were at OTU did that count for your tour?
JLM: No, no.
NB: So, you then started your full tour when you got to —
JLM: Yeah. When we got to Woodhall Spa on 97 Squadron we started. That was it, another funny experience in a way. It was the first and only time I felt fear. That was my very first operation which was a mining trip to the mouth of Garonne River down on the coast of France. And when we arrived at the dropping area I was thinking while waiting to get confirmation that we were, what heading I was to fly on and that sort of thing and the coast was dark and no lights to be seen on the coast was ominous and for some reason I was halfway expecting to be shot at and that sort of thing. I’ve never felt, never been able to explain the reason for that feeling fear and that’s the one and only time I ever felt fear. The rest, the other times — there was no other planes around, there were no flak anywhere. Just looked dark and ominous for some reason. And we, I was always too busy trying to get, making sure that the plane was being flown away from danger and that sort of thing in other times or just trusting to luck. I think, probably night flying over Berlin on an operation it was going to be, purely be luck to make sure that you didn’t weren’t hit by flak or caught by flak or fighters on the way in or out.
NB: So, I understand the lack of fear, was that the whole crew? You were all so busy that that was — the fear just didn’t surface while you were working, if you like.
JLM: My sense of fear?
NB: Well, you were saying that you didn’t feel fear normally because you —
JLM: Yeah.
NB: You were so busy. Did that cover the whole crew? Everyone was in that position.
JLM: Oh yeah. Absolutely. Although I don’t — I’m not sure. I’ve never ever — the funny thing I’ve never ever talked to my crew, asked them that, you know, were they scared or anything like that. And straight on — about one of the trips on Berlin. It was a pretty, pretty big raid and we were just sort of getting to the woods on the way out of Berlin and our wireless operator, Percy Pigeon, the Canadian, decided he’d come out to have a look from the cockpit and he looked out and the city was just a mass of fires and flak and searchlights. And to illustrate what I was leading up he looked out behind us at we had come through and he said, ‘Jesus Christ, have we come through that?’ I always say, ‘Well, that’s an illustration of what you don’t know, what you can’t see you don’t worry about.’ Yeah.
NB: So are there any other key points during those operations that stand out for you?
JLM: Not — well on one of the trips on 97, I think, coming back and returning to base. I think we drifted off course a little bit from it. I think it was on a trip to Berlin and coming back and I think we drifted a little bit close to either Hamburg or Duisburg. No, it can’t be Duisburg. It was one of the station, towns there and we were suddenly surrounded by flak and some fragments hit the plane and I got a little bit lodged in my flying boot but I put the nose down and started weaving, increasing speed until we got out of the troubled area.
NB: Now, obviously you were part of the dams raid. How did — when did you move it onto?
JLM: I, well we spent, I think I did twenty one trips on 97 Squadron when I read a circular letter on the notice board from group headquarters calling for volunteers from to form — from people that had, I think they specified that had — just nearing the end of their first tour which I was or just due to commence a second. Calling for volunteers to form a new squadron, to form a new squadron to attack a special target. There wasn’t, a special, I don’t think it just said the target was just something special without any evidence of what it was going to be. So, I discussed with my crew and all but my rear gunner said yes, we would. I was — they agreed that I should volunteer, which I did and posted almost the next day to Scampton where the other crews that had volunteered and, in some cases, had been picked by Gibson too because he knew them. We formed from around about the 23rd. I think I arrived on Scampton on the 23rd of May [means March] whereas some didn’t arrive until the 28th and that sort of thing. It was over a period of two or three days. The squadron was formed. Subsequently called 617.
NB: And your whole crew went with you. Even the rear gunner?
JLM: No. No. He didn’t come.
NB: He opted out.
JLM: No. He didn’t come. So, I got a new — and prior to that period when I of volunteering I [unclear] early stages of when I was on 97 my bomb aimer, when we were up at twenty thousand feet, around that, he started, he suffered from some sort of, either oxygen sickness or something like that and this happened about two, the first couple of high level bombing operations I was on. So, he was taken off operations. So, I had a succession of, of, of bomb aimers coming in to act as my bomb aimer and one situation — one bloke was a naval lieutenant who was studying bombing methods by the RAF. Yeah. I was actually sorry to leave him in a way. So, because I didn’t have a permanent bomb aimer when we volunteered I got, I got a new bomb aimer when I arrived on 617 and a new rear gunner which was Harvey Weeks, a Canadian, and the bomb aimer was Jimmy Clay.
NB: And I’m interested in how the crews — because the rest of you had been together quite a while. Bringing in new people, did that have an effect on the crew?
JLM: No. I don’t think so.
NB: No.
JLM: No.
NB: No. They fitted in well.
JLM: Yes. Yeah.
NB: So, tell me more about the, sort of, 617 preparations.
JLM: Well, we arrived there and before there was [pause] although Gibson knew what the target was I don’t think neither of the flight commanders were aware of it until quite later on. But Gibson [unclear], knowing what the target was and knowing what the range that the specifications for the flying — type of flying, the airspeed and all that sort of thing that was going to be employed or had been developed by Barnes Wallis. He knew and he decided and he decided on advice, what type of training would be required for the type of flight we were going to undertake and what the type of attack was going to be for the release of the Upkeep. And consequently we undertook, almost straight away, I think the first point, we specified and were required to undertake low level flying. Firstly, mainly in daylight and then secondly in simulated night moonlight conditions and then lastly at night. Moonlight, full moonlight. All the routes then took up out to the west of England, up through the lakes country, up to almost the border of Scotland out on to the sea and almost returned down. Turned down the North Sea and back to base. And it was on one of those training flights I had another close call in that we were travelling, it was rather a hazy, moonlight night and all of a sudden in the haze ahead of me I there appeared to be a convoy with balloons flying, attached to the ships by cable. And I yelled out to, we were flying at a level that would have been — would have gone through just above the decks of the ships. And I yelled out to the wireless operator to fire the colours of the day which he did do and in the light of the flares — the colours of the day were just coloured flares that explode. There was balloons all ahead of me attached to the ships by cable and I immediately pulled back on the stick and by the grace of God managed to get through all these without collecting any of the cables. And that was the closest, I believe, was a close call too that I overcome just by pure, pure luck.
NB: Yeah. Absolutely. If you hadn’t seen the — yeah.
JLM: So that was — our training over the next six weeks was all low flying and emphasis on from the pilot’s point of view, was on being able to assess how soon to gain height to clear obstacles that were on the route ahead. And this is where, to start with some of the pilots had a bit of, were a bit inclined to leave it too late to gain height and clipped the tops of trees and a few instances of that happened and they were returning to base with twigs and leaves and that sort of thing in the air intakes.
NB: Did you have any idea what might be ahead?
JLM: No. Not in the slightest. No. Some, there was a lot of conjecture about what the target would be and the closest anyone got to maybe what was involved was the attack on the capital ships like the Tirpitz and de Grasse. Well it wasn’t the de Grasse but attack on capital ships that sort of thing. That was the most common thought, and of course it wasn’t.
NB: So when did you find out the difference?
JLM: The afternoon of the day of the night, the day of the night of the operation when we entered the briefing room. The two flight commanders and the bombing leader and the [pause] who was the other one? Bombing. Navigator. Oh, the navigation leader. They were advised about the day about the day before briefing day of what the target was. And I’m in no doubt that they went into detail at that stage of what was required of our, flying the route in and the actual attack and that sort of thing. The only, only indication of perhaps what might be involved was about the three days. The 11th, 12th and 13th of May with these, the Upkeeps had been arriving on the station and twelve planes took part in trials, or test trials with the Upkeeps down on the Firth of Thames [Reculver] and six out of those twelve aircraft through either flying too high or like here flying too low were damaged by splash from, yeah splash from the bomb hitting the water, hitting the tail of the aircraft. Six of them. Five of them were repaired in time for the operation and one was so badly damaged that it couldn’t be repaired in time. The one that was hit by Henry Maudslay. So he was given another plane. We only had one or two spare planes and he was — we used all the planes except that one that was damaged.
NB: So how many planes went out that night?
JLM: Nineteen went over and only eleven came back.
NB: So, tell me more about the briefing and —
JLM: Well, we when we were called for briefing at a certain time we would be there at four o’clock or some time in the afternoon. And the first thing they did was look at the big boards and all the tapes from base to the target and back again and the tapes that all showed us leading to the dams. That didn’t worry, I don’t think that worried the crews unduly. What did worry them was the fact that the route from the, as we hit the Ruhr Valley to the targets we were in the Ruhr, the most heavily defended area in Germany was the Ruhr Valley and I think that worried the crews more than anything.
NB: Rightly so.
JLM: Hmmn?
NB: Rightly so. So, I mean how long was the briefing and how detailed was it and —?
JLM: I don’t really, I can’t, I can’t remember how long the briefing was. I think it was probably about an hour and a half and we went back and had our pre-op meal and we took off at 19 — 7.28. It was in the — what was that? May. Be coming up to Spring.
NB: Spring. Yeah.
JLM: Yeah. So, there was, it wasn’t — no, from memory now, yes. One plane took off ahead of me and you could see him, so yes you could see them so it was starting to get dusk and then it got dark and you were relying on the moon from a little after leaving the coast at Skegness. Ah yeah.
NB: And what was the sort of progression for you that night?
JLM: Hmmn?
NB: What was the progression for you that night?
JLM: Well, I — our, we had been selected, my crew and all the group of four that had been selected to fly to attack the Sorpe dam and we — our route was almost due east of Lincoln. Crossing the coast somewhere around Skegness there and flying due east again until we hit a point north of, north of the island of — [pause] — yeah. Yeah it would be north of the island of Zeeland, just past the other one there. What was the name? Texel. Yeah. Texel, yeah. And I was, when we turned and then we had to turn right so the navigator said, ‘Right, turn right and due course such and such’ and after we’d been flying for a quarter of an hour or ten minutes. Less than that. Only a few minutes. Ten minutes probably. I thought I could see the breakers ahead and the sand dunes behind it and I gained height to clear the sand dunes and started, had covered the crest of the sand dunes and was losing power, losing height rather, to get down to the water on the other side which was the Wadden Sea. And I saw, suddenly saw a line of flak at come towards me and felt a small thump and lost all communication and electricity as a result of being hit by a twenty shell, twenty mil shell and a hole blown in the side of the aircraft. And that, was the result of that that I couldn’t communicate with the crew so I asked my wireless operator, thinking that he would be the best one to look at any question of restoring the inter-communication intercom and also to check on the rear gunner to see that he was alright. And I just circled around the Wadden Sea on the red while he did that until he came back and said no it was not possible to restore communication. And my thinking then was that okay we need that communication for the navigator and the pilot to be able to converse and for the pilot to accept the directions of the navigator when to turn on the route. And secondly, if by any chance we were able to get to the target area it was imperative that the bomb aimer and the pilot were able to communicate with each other. So, I made the, it wasn’t a difficult decision in many ways because there was very little alternative. I think it was very dangerous for the, for me as captain to carry on. And made the decision to return to base so had the situation of the same gun emplacement firing at us as we crossed the sand dunes on the way out again. Yeah. I thought that was rather significant. But fortunately, they didn’t hit us. There was a lot of conjecture later on, John Sweetman and one or two others. Well, John Sweetman, I think he believed, in his investigation, determined that I was hit by a flak ship but I say my navigator not my navigator, Jimmy Clay, my bomber aimer, was inclined to agree. Whereas my mid-upper gunner who had a bird’s eye view of where the flak came from believed it was a land-based gun emplacement that hit me and that’s what I think happened. So a little bit of a difference of opinion between John, John Sweetman and me on that one.
NB: The net result was the same.
JLM: Hmmn?
NB: The net result was the same.
JLM: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so that was my experience on the dams raid. Yeah. And when I got back we returned to the mess after being debriefed and we got periodic reports that such and such had been shot down and such and such had been shot down. And it was after debriefing when those survivors had come back and returned to the mess — started celebrating and I felt embarrassed that I’d been present during the celebrations because I hadn’t achieved what they had done and I felt, you know, rather embarrassed about that.
NB: I can understand but [pause] so how many ops did you complete in total during your time with Bomber Command?
JLM: Altogether — fifty eight.
NB: And you chose to go for a second tour.
JLM: I did another thirty six, thirty six. I think it was thirty six operations on 617 before the AOC for 5 Group took us, took Leonard Cheshire and myself and Joe McCarthy and Dave Shannon off operations and wouldn’t brook any argument about that.
NB: And then —
JLM: He said he wanted me to take over 1690 Bomber Defence Training Flight. Which I did. Spent a year on that.
NB: Right.
JLM: Flying Hurricanes.
NB: Enjoy it?
JLM: Yeah. I did enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah.
NB: So, I mean looking, looking back were there any real highlights and lowlights of your time in the Command?
JLM: I don’t know about, well, lowlight. The only lowlight really was, well lowlights was [pause] well I don’t know that’s a hard one to answer. Every operation, to a large extent every operation had the same sense, same degree of danger. You were likely to be attacked by a night fighter, particularly on the main, the main operations on 97 when you were on attacking the German towns. Yes, there was always the danger of night fighters and then you also, combined with that was the danger of being hit by flak. And I had, you know the time I was surrounded by flak on my right foot panel and I suppose I was lucky to escape any — apart from little bits of shrapnel, bits lodging in my flying boot. Nothing, nothing really untoward there. I managed to escape from that situation and had one or two other. One, later on when 617 was engaged in the attacking single targets we were taking, at low level, an electricity transfer station, or transformer station in northern Italy which we were due to, which we were bombing with five hundred pounders and because of haze we had difficulty in identifying the target and I think I gradually crept a bit lower and lower and when the bombs went off a bit of shrapnel came and hit my bomb aimer right on the tip of his nose [with humour]. Yeah. So I suppose that was a bit quiet, a bit close. But any highlights. Oh, highlights really was when a raid was successful. You felt a sense of pride. Particularly when we were, I was marking at low level in the early stages of 617 carrying out special operations, single, on single targets. Not like the main bomber force, blanket bombing. When we were, on one or two occasions when we marked the target with the coloured bombs dropped right on them, that was a sense of achievement, I think. Yeah.
NB: And how long did you stay in. And were you demobbed in ’45 or —
JLM: Yeah. I, as I said I spent twelve months on 1690 Bombing Defence Flight and that was where we were a small flight of fighter planes who were attacking drogues in daytime and night-time. Acting as enemy fighters attacking the bombers and the bomber’s pilots — they were training in evasive tactics with the, with the gunners having cameras in their, in their turrets and being able to check on how whether they would have shot us down if it had it been real.
NB: Right.
JLM: I enjoyed that. I did about two hundred and something hours on Hurricanes. I didn’t enjoy night flying because I always worried that okay, acting as a fighter at night time, would I pull out in time without colliding with a Lancaster? That was one fear I had but, I mean I persevered in that type of thing and I got — yep. I thought it was nice to be able to fly in a single engine fighter after a four engine Lancaster. Yeah.
NB: A bit more nimble.
JLM: Hmmn?
NB: A bit more nimble.
JLM: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
NB: So —
JLM: I must say another sense of achievement I think was in Operation Taxable was when the spoof operation on D-day. I felt a sense of achievement to have participated in that although it was — it wasn’t a dangerous mission. It wasn’t. But though the one, there was, that took part in several phases to that, there were other planes operating. And I think 218 Squadron lost four planes, I think. They were further up. Attacking, you know. And we were down by a [unclear] Calais and we flew Leonard, I was privileged to have Leonard Cheshire fly as my second pilot on that operation. We had, you know, we had we flew individual, each crew flew for two, each crew but divided in to one hour just flying these oblong series dropping the — what’s the —?
NB: Radar?
JLM: Radar. Yeah. Dropping aluminium. No, it’s not radar.
NB: Oh, the aluminium foil.
JLM: Yeah.
NB: Yeah.
JLM: I think there was a common name for it [Window].
NB: Yeah.
JLM: No. never mind. Yeah.
NB: I’m in a similar state. So, when you came out did you continue to fly? When you left the RAF.
JLM: Well only to the extent that in Gisborne, I returned home to Gisborne and it was not long afterwards they decided they’d form an aero club and I was part of that. Or part of that decision and I actually lent the club fifty pound, I think it was, as part of, to finance a Tiger Moth and I did five hours on the Tiger Moth and before my — I sort of got involved with a certain woman and I couldn’t get married and we couldn’t afford to get married and also fly too so I gave any thoughts of flying away.
NB: It’s those women again [laughs]. That’s brilliant. Have you got any particular thoughts that you want recording as to how Bomber Command should be remembered? How you’d like them to be remembered.
JLM: Well no, I was and still am very critical of the fact that it took the English peoples sixty seven years before there was a satisfactory memorial erected to remember or to recognise the contribution that fifty five thousand five hundred and seventy three people gave their lives. I think, and as, when it happened, I think that the resulting memorial was I did, did was was a significant reflection on those, the loss of those lives. I think it was what BB, what was his name that started it off and the three blokes, you probably know their names.
NB: Gibb.
JLM: The sculptor and the designer and that I think did a great job. If — if I would have a real difficulty in making any criticism of the memorial as a resulting memorial. I think it’s quite a good one. I think it’s quite a good one. And that led me to the medal saga.
NB: Yes.
JLM: Yeah. I think God you wouldn’t want to see this deteriorate for lack of money. And I, it wasn’t until I, with the boys and my daughter-in-law, visited the memorial in ’13 — what was I leading up to? And it wasn’t until then in company with Anna Marie Fairburn who was communications, one of the leading positions in the RAF Benevolent Fund. It wasn’t until then that I was aware, became aware that the RAF Benevolent Fund had been given the responsibility of the maintenance of that and I really, you know, I thought that was a hell of a big ask.
NB: Yeah.
JLM: And I think in a way, in a way I think that was unfair of the government.
NB: We think the same.
JLM: Yeah.
NB: Thank you for that. Thank you [pause]. Gosh, you must be exhausted. All that.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AMunroL150604
Title
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Interview with Les Munro
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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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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:52:53 audio recording
Creator
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Nicky Barr
Date
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2015-06-15
Description
An account of the resource
John Leslie Munro was born in the area of Gisborne, New Zealand. He only completed two years of secondary education because of the economic slump and in 1936 began work on a sheep ranch and then a mixed farm. On the outbreak of the Second World War, he was determined to train as a pilot. He had to complete a correspondence course first to improve his qualifications. He began his training at Number 2 Elementary Flying Training School, going solo after six and a half hours’ training. He completed his training in Canada. After time on Operational Training Units at RAF Shawbury and RAF North Luffenham, and the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Wigsley, he was posted to 97 Squadron at RAF Woodhall Spa. He volunteered and was accepted for the special squadron being assembled by Guy Gibson. With 617 Squadron, he embarked on further training that would lead to the Eder, Möhne and Sorpe operations. En route to the dams his aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire, losing all communication and had to return to RAF Scampton. Of the 58 operations Munro completed while in RAF Bomber Command, 36 were with 617 Squadron. He was taken off active operational duty to command 1690 Bomber Defence Training Flight. He participated in Operation Taxable, a decoy operation connected to D-Day. Munro recounts several near misses, such as almost hitting the barrage balloons hoisted from a convoy on the North Sea. He was highly supportive of the unveiling of the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park and in particular, ensuring that it would be properly maintained.
Contributor
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Brian May
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
New Zealand
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Rutland
England--Shropshire
England--London
California--San Francisco
United States
California
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943-05-16
1943-05-17
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
1944
1945
617 Squadron
97 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bouncing bomb
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
crash
Eder Möhne and Sorpe operation (16–17 May 1943)
fear
Flying Training School
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Manchester
memorial
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Normandy deception operations (5/6 June 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Scampton
RAF Shawbury
RAF Wigsley
RAF Woodhall Spa
take-off crash
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/311/3468/PNuttingS1704.2.jpg
629966ef5e6ac53d82ae6062e6f210c5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/311/3468/ANuttingS170222.1.mp3
076ea473c2e1d4fc5c8e8075b35f2257
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
Nutting, Sinclair
Sinclair Nutting
Clair Nutting
S Nutting
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Sinclair "Clair" Nutting (b. 1921, J85055 Royal Canadian Air Force).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Nutting, S
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jean MacCartney. The interviewee is Sinclair or Clair Nutting. The interview is taking place at Mr Nutting’s home in Banora Point, New South Wales on the 22nd of February 2017. Now, Clair, you’ve written a book called, “A Piece Of Cake,” which documents a lot of your experiences but even so we’ d like to go through some aspects of those and other aspects that perhaps were not covered with —in as much detail. So, let’s go back to the beginning. You were born in 19 —
SN: ’21.
JM: ’21. And where were you born?
SN: I was born in a place called Radisson. R A D I S S O N.
JM: R A D I S S — Yeah.
SN: Saskatchewan S A S K. period. Canada.
JM: And that is where you spent your, most of your youth.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. And that’s where you did you schooling.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. And you, your family had been in the area there for quite some time.
SN: Yes. They were pioneers.
JM: Pioneers. Yes. And what sort of pioneers? Pioneers in what way? They were farming.
SN: They were the first, among the first settlers as farmers in that area.
JM: Going back how many years would that be, do you think?
SN: To 1900.
JM: 1900. Yeah. And so what was your family farming?
SN: It was what we call a mixed farm of grain, wheat, oats, barley, rye. And animals. Cattle, horses, pigs, chickens.
JM: Right. And so all of those animals — were they raised and then sold or some of it used for home consumption as well? Or a mix again? Or what?
SN: It was rather a mix. They had horses of course were what were used to work the farm
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the cattle and pigs we slaughtered as we needed them. And they were sold on the market when they were ready to sell.
JM: So. Right. So, you sold them as cured stock.
SN: As beef and pork. Yes.
JM: Yes. Yeah. And your father did all the butchery or did he bring in somebody to do the butchery?
SN: No. My father did it.
JM: Right. Ok. And what about the grains? They were all sold. You sent stuff off to silos and that sort of thing or what happened there?
SN: It was, it was a large family farm which included my father, his brothers, my grandfather and they ran it as a unit. It must have been, what? About six sections of land or something like that. It — all of the farms in that area at that time were mixed farms meaning that they were — the people who lived on them were [pause] what’s the word I’m seeking? They were dependant on the farm for their livelihood. For gardens, for grain, for the animals. That kind of thing.
JM: Ok. And so, you would assist in some of the farming duties from time to time when you were a young lad a or —?
SN: Yes. All farm kids that were old enough were expected to earn their keep.
JM: Keep. Yeah.
SN: Yes.
JM: So what sort of things? What sort of tasks were you given?
SN: Oh, there were all sorts of things. In harvest time we would move out with the men. We did all the usual things, I guess. Getting water and wood. Driving horses on wagons and on machines. Binders and ploughs and that kind of thing.
JM: So then again you probably got some sort of basic mechanical, more than basic mechanical training with helping to repair machinery and all of that sort of thing from time to time too, I guess.
SN: All that I wished to have. Yes [laughs]
JM: Right. So, so you were doing this in between your schooling and so what was your schooling? I’m not particularly familiar with the Canadian education system. So would you have gone to school — normal school? The start age in Australia is five. And then through what they call primary school and then transfer to a high school or secondary school. And usually, well, back then, they usually finished about seventeen. Sometimes sixteen. But if they left early they finished at fourteen or fifteen. So how did the Canadian system —
SN: Pretty much the same Jean but this might be interesting. It was during the Depression.
JM: Yes.
SN: And during the Depression they had correspondence courses.
JM: Right.
SN: And I, for instance, went to a country school which had a total of eighteen pupils in all grades from one to ten.
JM: Right. Yeah.
SN: So that was most of my schooling.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And this was caused by the Depression.
JM: Depression.
SN: They wanted to get the kids back to school.
JM: The kids were on the farms basically.
SN: Yes.
JM: I suppose. Yes.
SN: Yes. And I then went into the town for the last, I guess, year and a half I was there
JM: Right. And how far away was town away?
SN: Six miles.
JM: Six miles. Right.
SN: Yeah.
JM: And did you travel in and out each day or did you stay in town?
SN: I boarded with a family.
JM: Right.
SN: For a year and a half during the winters.
JM: Right.
SN: Because it was too difficult.
JM: Too difficult.
SN: To get me back and forward.
JM: Back and forward. Yeah. And was this family friends of the family or —?
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: Yes. They were dear people.
JM: They were?
SN: They were dear people.
JM: Dear people.
SN: Yes. And good friends of mine.
JM: Good friend. Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Yeah. Ok. So. So that, yes, well that in a way is actually quite similar to what country children in New South Wales in particular would have experienced as well because they had, like, one teacher schools.
SN: Yeah.
JM: And you would have had one teacher school there.
SN: That’s right.
JM: Yes. Yes. So, what —
SN: One size fits all.
JM: Fits all. Who had sort of a multitude of different grades in the classroom in one corner and scattered all around the area and he was, he or she would be moving between all the children and helping them with the grade that they were on. So, the teacher was — had a bit of a challenge in those sort of situations as well didn’t they? So —
SN: Yes. I didn’t finish my high school.
JM: No?
SN: I was expelled.
JM: Oh, I see. Yes. Right. Because? You —
SN: I misbehaved.
JM: You misbehaved. Yes.
SN: Yes. What — it might be interesting — when I came back from overseas and was discharged you had to go to the capital of the Province, which was Regina, to be discharged. And I wanted to go to university so I went to see a man called a Registrar who was a small god in charge of education and I was in uniform and I told him my story. He listened, I came back the following day and his secretary came out and said, ‘I’m sorry. Mr,’ whatever his name was, I’ve forgotten, ‘Is unable to see you. He was called away,’ and my face fell. And she said, ‘but he left you this.’ And she handed me an envelope which was a, to the effect that I had fulfilled all of the qualifications for Grade 12 and marks were given me which brought me up to the level to enter the university.
JM: Very good.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Very good indeed. So that gave you the chance to go to university.
SN: That’s right.
JM: After you returned. Yeah. Ok.
SN: That’s right.
JM: We’ll come back to all of that in due course. But so, you, what age were you when you were expelled? Roughly. Do you remember?
SN: I joined up when I was eighteen. I suppose I would have been seventeen.
JM: Seventeen. Right. Ok. So I presume in that year between being expelled and being called up you probably just worked on the farm? Is that? Or did you go and get a job?
SN: No. it was a, it was the end of the school year.
JM: Right.
SN: And I joined up in December of 1940.
JM: Right.
SN: And by that time, because of my birthday, I was eighteen.
JM: Right. So --
SN: So —
JM: So it just happened.
SN: Yes.
JM: Just went through the war in a sequence.
SN: Yes. It did.
JM: Alright. So signed up then for the air force.
SN: Yes.
JM: Any particular reason for the air force or —?
SN: Well the air force was quite [pause] it was, I suppose the, the glamour service at that time. This was where people who wanted adventure or saw the war as an adventure this was where they went.
JM: And so that’s what attracted you. You saw that as an adventure.
SN: Yes. Yes.
JM: And you said, ‘Right.’
SN: That was very good.
JM: If they’ll have me that’s where I’ll go, sort of thing.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. Yes. Ok. Actually, I just meant to just backtrack once before we get in to — so this was in 1940 that you enlisted but just before that how, how much of an impact did the Depression have on your family? Because you were on the farm you were a little bit able to cope. A little bit better than perhaps people in town because you had lots —
SN: Yes.
JM: Of resources at hand, so to speak.
SN: That’s right. That’s right.
JM: In terms of food and, you know, meat and chicken and eggs. And you had milking cows too I presume.
SN: Exactly. Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. So, you were relatively comfortable.
SN: I was.
JM: Yeah.
SN: In terms of the Depression I was — our family came through it pretty well.
JM: Well —
SN: You know there was never a time when I had to think about —
JM: Yeah.
SN: Whether I had any food to eat.
JM: Yeah. Whether there was going to be food on the table. Yes.
SN: Work or what have you.
JM: Yes. That’s right. Ok. So, you enlisted then December 1940.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes, and where did you do your initial training?
SN: I went to Brandon.
JM: Brandon. Yes.
SN: Which was the manning depot.
JM: Where? Sorry?
SN: It was the manning depot.
JM: Right. And where is Brandon in —?
SN: Brandon —
JM: How far away from Radisson is that? I assume you enlisted in Radisson or did you have to go over to the main —
SN: No. No. I had to go to the main, the largest city.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which was Saskatoon.
JM: Right. And then so from there to Brandon how far? Where? What sort of distance is that? Just roughly. You know. Sort of a day’s train ride or half a day.
SN: It’s a day’s train ride.
JM: Right. Ok. Yeah.
SN: Yes.
JM: So you were over there. So your parents were happy about you enlisting were they? Or was your father a bit —?
SN: I think so.
JM: I forgot to check. Did you have any other brothers and sisters? Or —?
SN: I had one sister but she was much younger than I am. She was seven years younger. After I was expelled I, and the fellow who was expelled with me, we got one of the freight trains that went into the city and we went to the army, the navy and the air force and nobody would have us because they said we were seventeen and did we have permission?
JM: So, you weren’t able to get in at that point.
SN: No.
JM: No. So then when you turned eighteen, you said to your parents. How did they feel about that?
SN: I think they were pretty well resolved that it was going to happen. It wasn’t something they — like all parents they were fearful but I think they were resigned that this was what most people, like me, were doing.
JM: Ok. So, you’re off to Brandon. Is that right?
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. And what —how long were you there?
SN: Oh, I would think a couple of months.
JM: A couple of months. Yeah. So, this is early ‘41 basically.
SN: Yes.
JM: Ok. And from Brandon where did you go next?
SN: We went to what was called guard duty.
JM: Guard duty. Yeah.
SN: Which was another couple of months?
JM: Yeah. And where was that?
SN: And that was in Saskatoon.
JM: Yeah. So back to almost near home. Yeah.
SN: Yes. It was back to a couple of hours away.
JM: Yeah. And that was about a couple of months you think.
SN: Yeah. Roughly.
JM: What sort of things did guard duty — what sort of things were you guarding something? What? I mean guard duty sort of implies you were guarding. What did it actually?
SN: It was really part of the training regime to get people sorted out as to what they were to do. It was compulsory. You had two hours on, four hours off, two hours on, four hours off during which you went — in this instance we were guarding, they were guarding airports. Everybody went through this. And you simply went out with your musket and [laughs] patrolled an area for two hours and they checked that you were there and you were awake. And then they — oh there was continuous inspections and little marches and that kind of thing. It was a training thing.
JM: Thing. Yeah. Ok.
SN: Everybody went through it.
JM: Ok. So this is possibly getting to the — just beyond winter so at least out on guard duty.
SN: Yes.
JM: You were not out in the depths of winter. Out.
SN: No. no. There was danger.
JM: Pacing the perimeters.
SN: No danger involved.
JM: Yes. But I mean, but you weren’t out in the cold and snow and all the rest of it though at this point.
SN: No. No. No.
JM: Because as I I say it had become more or less the end.
SN: Yes, it was —
JM: You were pretty well early spring at this stage so —
SN: Yes. Yes, it was spring.
JM: Yes. So, ok. So what, anything in particular that stands out from there. Things that you realised you could do or things that you were being asked to do that you didn’t like doing or anything like that?
SN: I don’t think there was anything remarkable about it.
JM: About it.
SN: It was [pause] I think there were something like twenty four of us that went through this. Nothing.
JM: In that group.
SN: Yes. Nothing remarkable.
JM: Yeah. Ok. So where did you go to from there?
SN: I went to Calgary.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And that was to do wireless training.
JM: Ok. Yes.
SN: Wireless air gunners.
JM: Yes.
SN: And at that time we all got to wear a white flash in our caps.
JM: Caps.
SN: Which separated you from those who didn’t and I was there for — what? Maybe four months or something.
JM: Right. So, would this be, say, around about May? May ’41 to —
SN: I would say.
JM: To October ’41.
SN: Yes.
JM: Or something like that?
SN: Until, until December.
JM: Until December. Ok so we could work back from there.
SN: Yes.
JM: So, December, November, October. September to December. So, we’ll say August/September to December of ‘41 there at your wireless.
SN: Yes. I would say it was a five month course.
JM: Course. Yeah.
SN: That would be my recollection.
JM: Recollection. Yeah. Yeah. Ok. And so all facets of being a wireless op and air gunner all mixed in together. You didn’t — or did you do blocks of wireless work and then —
SN: No. It was all wireless.
JM: It was all wireless. Yeah.
SN: It was all wireless. And I did not finish the course.
JM: Right.
SN: I went —
JM: For any particular reason? Or —?
SN: Yes. I went on leave for, what was it, it was a long weekend and I caught pneumonia.
JM: That’s right. Yes.
SN: In Saskatoon. And they put me in the hospital and I was in the hospital for nearly six weeks.
JM: Yes.
SN: You know. And I was in an oxygen tent for —
JM: Yes. Because you were not a well person for —
SN: For four days because I had — I was lucky.
JM: Yes.
SN: They brought out the first of the Sulfa drugs and that saved me.
JM: That saved you. Yes. Of course. That’s how bad you were.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: So when I finished they posted me.
JM: So, this — when, when was, that was when?
SN: That was from the end of November.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Until the end of the year.
JM: Yes. That you were in hospital.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
SN: In hospital or convalescent leave.
JM: Yes.
SN: It was something like that.
JM: That’s right. Yeah. So therefore, you didn’t actually finish that course. So, what happened there?
SN: I don’t know whether I would, to be very frank. I don’t know whether I would ever have. It was probably a good thing in that I wasn’t particularly — I could do the Morse at speed but I was not particularly — I don’t think I would have been a particularly good wireless operator. So, in any event, at the end of this thing they posted me to Trenton.
JM: Right. Where’s —?
SN: As what we used to call a straight air gunner.
JM: Yeah. And whereabouts is Trenton?
SN: Trenton is in Eastern Canada.
JM: Right. And when would this be? January ‘42?
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. And that was for straight air —
SN: Yes.
JM: Air gunner training.
SN: That’s right.
JM: Yeah. So, what stands out about that training?
SN: It was about [pause] maybe six weeks. Something like that. Well I think I had decided that I really had to make this.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And it was a large course and I came second. I think it was probably the first time I realised that I could do something.
JM: Do something. Yeah.
SN: This was, I think, largely attributable, I covered it in this book.
JM: Yes.
SN: This man I met who was much older than I was and he — I was a little ashamed of being somewhat bookish and that it was a bit sissy to excel. And he said, ‘You know, this is foolish.’
JM: Yes.
SN: ‘You do as well as you can.’
JM: You can. Yeah.
SN: [unclear] you can do that. And I did. And the other thing which is also covered in this book was the rather extraordinary thing of this man who was court martialled and, because he thought that he was operating a camera gun when he was not. He was operating a Vickers machine gun.
JM: Machine gun.
SN: And he shot up a parade of airmen.
JM: Airmen. That’s right.
SN: In a row.
JM: Yes.
SN: And he was court martialled. And as I say in there this was an extraordinary spectacle that I’ve never forgotten. He was a little non-descript fella from Newfoundland whose name was Silver and he, the entire station, it was a big station, was out in hollow square.
JM: On parade.
SN: With the, we were all, yes, we were all on parade and we were all there and the band was there and the group captain was there with a table and the man with the leopard skin drum. The whole bit was the drum rolls, everything.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And this poor little man was marched up and his hat off in front of this table, and the drum rolls cut off by [unclear] this corporal. Cut them off.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: Cut them off.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And threw them on the ground.
JM: Ground.
SN: Marched him off.
JM: Off.
SN: And he got two years in the penitentiary.
JM: Penitentiary.
SN: So, we all remembered that.
JM: That.
SN: And it was for not turning up.
JM: Up.
SN: For an overseas posting. And so, I think, I think we all got the point.
JM: You all got the point. That’s right. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So, then, so this is sort of becoming a turning point. So, after the air gunning. This training at Trenton. Where did you go?
SN: Well I got, as everyone else did, our air gunner badge.
JM: Badge.
SN: And sergeant’s stripes.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And we all went on embarkation leave. And that was a couple of weeks or ten days. I’ve forgotten. But Canada is like Australia in that train journeys were very long.
JM: Long. That’s right.
SN: It takes —
JM: And of course, if you’re right over in Eastern Canada that’s a long way from home.
SN: Yes.
JM: To get back. Yes.
SN: So then, following embarkation leave I came to Halifax and —
JM: So, you didn’t — did you actually get home in that embarkation leave?
SN: Yes, I did.
JM: Or — yes, you did .
SN: Yes. I got home for about ten days I think.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And then we were back to Halifax and just as things worked out we were the last, there were twelve of us marched down to board ship. And we were the last people aboard.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the convoy left that about an hour or two later.
JM: Gosh. So this would have been the end of March, early April ’42.
SN: This would have been early March. Yes. 1942.
JM: Yeah. Probably be about mid-March. Oh yeah. Early March. Yeah. Yeah. That’s ok. Yeah. Early March ‘42. Yes.
SN: Yes.
JM: And so so Halifax. So where —?
SN: Halifax is —
JM: So was this a large troop carrier that you were on? Or a small —
SN: A large convoy.
JM: Yes. But there was a convoy but were the boats themselves — was there large troop carriers.
SN: Yes.
JM: Or —
SN: Yes.
JM: Did you have any sense of whether there were thousands there? Or perhaps under a thousand or —?
SN: There were, they were crowded.
JM: They were crowded.
SN: It was a ship called the Andes. Which had run on the Latin American English run.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Not a bad ship.
JM: Yes. No.
SN: But we were in cabins. They were, I think, seven or eight of us in a little —
JM: A cabin. Yeah.
SN: And the the toilets were at the end of the —
JM: Yeah. Corridor so to speak.
SN: Corridor. Yeah.
JM: Yeah. Ok. So where —
SN: But it was good enough. It wasn’t bad. We could —
JM: Ok. So —
SN: Everybody had —
JM: So where did you land in —
SN: We landed in Greenock which is Glasgow.
JM: Glasgow. Yeah. And so, on the train down to —
SN: We had no, yes, we had no adventures. We had one emergency in the Irish Sea where they shot at, where they put down a sub and the convoys were in lines of destroyers.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And ships.
JM: Ships. Yeah.
SN: Following one another.
JM: You don’t remember how many were in that convoy? In that total convoy.
SN: I haven’t the vaguest idea whatever.
JM: No. That’s ok.
SN: What it is.
JM: So you got there pretty uneventfully.
SN: Yes. Now they may have, I think they sunk something in the Irish Sea.
JM: Sea.
SN: But that was it.
JM: That was it.
SN: So we had really quite a good —
JM: Quite. Ok. So then you’re off in Glasgow. You’re on the train I presume to —
SN: We went by train to Bournemouth.
JM: Bournemouth. Yeah.
SN: Where everyone went and that was a manning depot there.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And you stayed in Bournemouth.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Until you were posted.
JM: Yes.
SN: To wherever you were going.
JM: Going. Yeah.
SN: They were, we were a mixture of pilots, observers.
JM: Observers. Yeah. Yeah.
SN: Everything. And that was a very easy thing. The only remarkable thing again, which was in the book, was that we were quartered in formerly resort hotels and we ate in a different building than the one in which we were housed.
JM: Right.
SN: And we came out this one day and a siren went and we tumbled out on the street and I remember seeing these two Fokker Wulf 190s come in and they came under the radar. Just straight over the —
SN: We were right on the end — Bournemouth is a —
JM: Seaside bit.
SN: Seaside resort. And they came under the radar and they came right up and they bombed. Dropped their bombs and went.
JM: Went.
SN: And they hit the building we were to eat in and I can remember we were all amazed. Standing there with our mouths open. And some of them, finally they were digging around in the thing said, ‘Come.’
JM: Come.
SN: Don’t stand there like —’
JM: Yeah. ‘Come and help us dig.’
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: So, it was a rude awakening.
JM: Awakening to the realities of war. What so now you finally knew what you were about to be part of .
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: Yes. It was real.
JM: It was real. That’s right. So, any idea of how long you were in Bournemouth for? So you would have been there. How long did it — I didn’t — how long did it take to get from Halifax across to — It would only have been a couple of days.
SN: About ten days.
JM: Ten days. Yeah. And so then down. So, we’re probably talking about April. Bournemouth was probably about April ‘42 to — how long do you reckon?
SN: Maybe to June.
JM: To June. Yeah. And so where did we, and so —
SN: May or June. I’ve forgotten.
JM: May or June. What sort of — were they giving you any theory lessons there at this stage?
SN: No. It was — you just had a roll call.
JM: Roll call.
SN: Once a day.
JM: Once a day.
SN: And that was it.
JM: Pre. So did you —
SN: And then you did whatever you pleased.
JM: So, did you go up to London or do anything like that or how did you spend your time?
SN: No. You were not, you were I don’t know whether, they must have told us. No. No one went anywhere. I think you were on call.
JM: Call. Right.
SN: That you would be moving out as soon as it happened.
JM: Moving out soon. Yeah.
SN: And I don’t think anybody was —
JM: Right.
SN: You would have had to have leave.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: To do that.
JM: To do that. Yes. Ok. So, you were, you were just basically sitting around. What did you —play cards or things like that to pass the time? Or what did you do to pass? So just basically sitting around. Effectively doing nothing. How did you pass, how did you and your mates pass your time? Sit down on the —
SN: We moved around. It was quite a beautiful place with many gardens. We moved around during the day to the beach and so on and the pubs at night.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Nobody had all that much money.
JM: Money.
SN: You know that you [laughs]
JM: No. that’s right. Yeah.
SN: You could —
JM: Basically, sit and watch the world go by.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: There was no, there was no, no attempt to discipline or to —
JM: Right. Ok. So, from, so nothing, no particular experiences stand out whilst in Bournemouth.
SN: No, I don’t think there was anything there.
JM: No. Ok.
SN: There was a Palais dance. A Palais de Dance which they had in most places, you know.
JM: Yeah. Ok. So, where, where to next? Was it to Wales next?
SN: I went to Wales.
JM: Yes.
SN: To a place called Stormy Down.
JM: Down. Yeah.
SN: It was a mining area.
JM: Yes.
SN: Coal mines.
JM: Yeah. And over there you were doing —
SN: To a gunnery school.
JM: To the gunnery school again. Yes. And roughly how long was that?
SN: It wasn’t all that long. I would say that it might have been a month. Pretty full on.
JM: Yes. And so, this was where you came. So, you hadn’t done any gunnery training back in Canada so, this would be your —
SN: Yes, I had.
JM: You had. You did do some.
SN: Oh yes. Yes.
JM: When you were at Calgary.
SN: No. No.
JM: No.
SN: When I was in Trenton.
JM: Trenton. Trenton. Ok. So — oh my apologies. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, because that’s where you were second. Second. Had the second highest score. Ok so how were the — what were you using? Different guns here now between what you were using in Trenton? Or —
SN: Yes. We were using [pause] what can I remember about it now? In Britain we were using old Lewis guns which were a pan that sits on the thing and it feeds outside and it seems to me that we were [pause] I’m not sure now what? We did quite a bit of target shooting. Drogue shooting where a drogue is dragged.
JM: Dragged. Yes.
SN: And of course in both places you do a lot of — what do you call it? [pause] Where you do — you shoot at the —
JM: Skeet.
SN: Skeet shooting.
JM: Yeah.
SN: A lot of skeet shooting. A lot of target shooting. That kind of thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And —
JM: As part of this.
SN: Yes. Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: And there was a course.
JM: Yes.
SN: Which you, of benefit and I did very well. I got — they said, “A very good air gunner.” So —
JM: Were there particular competitions or something or —
SN: Yes. They would mark you for —
JM: Yeah.
SN: Target scores. How you —
JM: And you were coming out on top a lot.
SN: Yes.
JM: Right.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. So, do you think you would have perhaps back when you were younger, on the farm, I presume you would have been doing some shooting there.
SN: Yes.
JM: So, do you feel that that perhaps gave you a bit of an advantage having sort of been always shooting moving targets. I would presume a lot of the time they were moving so —
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: I don’t know.
JM: You don’t know.
SN: No.
JM: Yeah. But nevertheless you obviously had an aptitude for it because you were doing very well there with your skeet.
SN: Yeah. Yeah.
JM: Yeah. And you didn’t retain an interest in skeet shooting at any time. You didn’t do it many years down the track. Just as a little deviation here for a second.
SN: Only once.
JM: Yes.
SN: We were on a transatlantic ship with the family going somewhere. I’ve forgotten where but going. I was Foreign Affairs and we used to go by ship.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And they had a competition on this ship for skeet shooting.
JM: Yes.
SN: And I guess there were about thirty or forty people there and I won.
JM: You won.
SN: And they gave me a cup.
JM: Yes.
SN: And the rather wonderful thing about this was that both the kids were there and watched it. The two boys.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So that brought my [laughs]
JM: Increased your standing in their eyes no end. Did it?
SN: Yes. Yes. Yes.
JM: Ah well that’s very very interesting. So, do you remember how many rounds you had to shoot or was it a decent length competition or did they sort of try to keep it.
SN: It was, it was a pretty, a pretty easy one.
SN: Yeah.
SM: Ordinarily if you do skeet shooting you go through about seven stations.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And that means you’re shooting —
JM: Different heights. Yeah.
SN: At a bird at the height it’s going.
JM: Yeah.
SN: As it’s going away from you.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Up. It’s all the way through.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Whereas this one was there. Had to be done from the back of the ship.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And you didn’t have, they couldn’t.
JM: Have variations.
SN: They couldn’t have done any variations of any sort.
JM: Any sort. Yeah. Yeah.
SN: That amounted to very much.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, you really did five and somebody, maybe they were five of you shot five each and you won that.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And then those who won competed again.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: It wasn’t really [laughs] that big a thing.
JM: It wasn’t such a big challenge for you.
SN: No.
JM: Having had all that other experience. Ok. Well that’s all very interesting. Ok. Well you completed the gunnery at Stormy Down. About a month. So, from there. OTU.
SN: I went to OTU.
JM: Yeah.
SN: At a place called Honeybourne.
JM: Yeah.
SN: A beautiful place in the Midlands.
JM: Yes.
SN: Near Evesham and Stratford on Avon. Yeah.
JM: And so how long were you at OTU?
SN: I was there for the fall because I remember we went out to steal apples. I got to the squadron in — maybe in October. Now, I had these. The reason I don’t have these dates here is my logbook was stolen.
JM: Stolen. Yes. I know. From when the book was —
SN: So I don’t have this.
JM: Yes. I know.
SN: I’m really just doing memory.
JM: I know. I’m just trying. I fully appreciate that I’m really testing your memory here but yeah.
SN: In the late summer and early fall I was at the OTU. I would have been —
JM: OTU. So that’s probably —
SN: I would have been there for at least three months.
JM: Three months. Right. So, we’re probably talking about August. September.
SN: Yes, I would say August September.
JM: August September of ‘42 we’re talking about here.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. Ok. Yeah. And what stands out about OTU? Anything in particular. Apart from the fact that there was nice countryside. There were nice orchards where you could scrounge some apples.
SN: Yes. Well they had very nice pubs and you could chase girls.
JM: Yeah. Yes.
SN: And the weather was delightful.
JM: Yes.
SN: And the only thing that — two things happened I guess. One was that you, a lot of OTU is the gunner — each, each — the gunners have their own courses. The navigators. Pilots. Then you form a crew.
JM: Yes. You’re doing your crewing up. Yeah.
SN: And a lot of this was called circuits and bumps.
JM: Bumps. Yeah.
SN: Around and around and around.
JM: Around and around. Yeah.
SN: And one night a German night fighter got in the thing. Got in the — there’s usually four aircraft.
JM: Aircraft.
SN: And they follow one another.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he got in the line.
JM: Line. Yes.
SN: And shot it down. We were in Whitleys which was an old two engine.
JM: Engine.
SN: Bomber. And he got in the line and shot the —
JM: The Whitley that was in front.
SN: The Whitley, as it was landing. Yes. So that was a big thing for us.
JM: That was. Yes. And, but that wasn’t you.
SN: No.
JM: Were you in, were you in.
SN: I wasn’t, I wasn’t even in the circuit either.
JM: You weren’t in the circuit either.
SN: No.
JM: Right. And what was the outcome with that Whitley. Was it —did he inflict injury as well as damage to the aircraft or —
SN: Yes.
JM: He did.
SN: Yes. He did.
JM: So, what? Killed all the crew or —
SN: No. No. I think they [pause] I think one. I think one man was either, either killed or very badly injured
JM: Injured
SN: And the aircraft was of course.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Runway. Smashed itself.
JM: Smashed itself. Yeah. Right. Ok. So at this point your crew. You’ve now, you crew up as well here at OTU.
SN: Yes.
JM: This is when you form your crew. So, your pilot.
SN: Was — I’ll deal with that I think.
JM: Yes.
SN: He was a man called Stonehill.
JM: Yes.
SN: And he was a squadron leader.
JM: Yes.
SN: And he was from Fighter Command.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And I don’t know what he’d done but he was, he was not happy to be there.
JM: No.
SN: That was not what— he didn’t really want to fly this [laughs] box like aircraft. And he was, we thought he was old. Old would be he was in his thirties.
JM: Late twenties or something. Oh thirties. Yes. Yes.
SN: You know.
JM: Yes.
SN: But he was older than we were.
JM: Yes.
SN: And proper RAF type, you know. Had a handlebar moustache.
JM: And all the rest of it. Yes.
SN: Yes. And he’d, and we saw nothing of him because we were, there were five of us including him.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he of course he was an —
JM: An officer. And he was in the officer’s mess. In the —
SN: The other four of us were NCOs.
JM: Yes. NCOs.
SN: In our own mess. Ordinarily someone would have had, a pilot would have had something to do with us but he was, he didn’t want to be there.
JM: No. That’s right.
SN: And he, I don’t think he really knew our names. He, and so, we really saw, we saw nothing of him except we would, you know, get in the aircraft and we’d get out.
JM: Yeah. That’s right.
SN: Except for one. We went to a place called Long Marston which is up, just out of Stratford.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And this was for a, sort of, pre-operational thing to work out with the crew and we flew every day.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Cross country’s and things and we saw one night he came. We were at the flights. The flights is where the aircrew wait to get on, to get off.
JM: Yes.
SN: And he came out of the flights where we were and suggested that we come and have a beer.
JM: And everybody —
SN: So, we did this to wherever it was. We went from the flights and he had he must have [pause] I don’t know how we got there. He had a little Austin convertible.
JM: Convertible.
SN: Thing. And he, I think he either had family or him, beside him. And we sat around with him for an hour in the pub and the only thing I remember about it was that he had a dog and the dog was a Spaniel. And the dog would drink beer. The dog drank beer and we sat and we had a beer and he was friendly. But I don’t think he — he didn’t intend to stay and he didn’t stay.
JM: Didn’t stay.
SN: They took him. They took him back to where he came from.
JM: Back to where he came from. Ok. So, he disappeared down the thing. Down the track. But the rest of you stayed together though at this point. So who was your navigator?
SN: Well we had a little, a little crash. A little accident.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which I deal with there when the aircraft went off the end of the runway.
JM: Runway.
SN: And it broke the leg of the wireless operator, I think. A big tall fellow named Hurst.
JM: Yes.
SN: And the crew packed up then. I think. Now I’m I don’t know which happened first.
JM: First. Yeah.
SN: Whether we had this, this [pause] this accidental crash. Whether we had that and then he was sent off or whether he was sent off when was just finishing up I don’t know.
JM: No.
SN: We never knew. We never saw him. They never said anything. They just called us in and they said, ‘Now, we’re disbanding this crew.’
JM: Crew.
SN: ‘And we’re posting you to other squadrons.’
JM: Squadrons. Yeah.
SN: To squadrons.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. Ok and so and from there you, that’s when you went to 405.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. Ok. And so you were landing. You joined 405. How long, how long were you at OTU? August September ’42.
SN: I was about three months.
JM: About three.
SN: A good three months.
JM: Ok. So, you were posted to 405. What? About December. November. December or —
SN: No. October.
JM: October. Ok.
SN: Yeah.
JM: October.
SN: I think.
JM: ’42.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah. Ok. And so here and a couple of little experiences in 405.
SN: Well we went, I went. When I went to squadron I was on squadron for a long time. Longer than most people.
JM: Yeah.
SN: I came in with my kit and there was a note for me and it said something like “Welcome Clair.”
JM: Yeah.
SN: And when you come to the, wherever the, what do you call it? Not a dormitory. We were quartered in an old college.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he said, when you, “When you come to the quarters come and see me. Stuart.”
JM: Stuart.
SN: And it was Stuart Clark who was from my little town.
JM: Town. That’s right. Yes.
SN: Right.
JM: Yes.
SN: And so, I went up and he and the navigator who was a fella called Elmer [Bulman] from [unclear] Nevada. And they were playing Battleships and so we talked about things and Stuart said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘We need an air gunner. You come with us.’
JM: Yeah.
SN: In our crew.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And I did.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, I was lucky.
JM: You were lucky. Yes. So that’s it. You knew the pilot because you had Stuart there as that.
SN: Yes. He was the navigator.
JM: Oh sorry. He was the navigator. Yeah.
SN: And he went to see the —
[phone ringing]
SN: Excuse me a second while I see to that.
[recording paused]
SN: Yes. And so he went to the pilot and said, ‘Look I’ve got —
JM: He went to the pilot. Yeah. Went to the pilot.
SN: And I was in.
JM: The pilot’s name? I should have it.
SN: Weber.
JM: Weber. That’s right.
SN: W E B E R. So I was in.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. And so then you went off and started to do your ops.
SN: We —
JM: Coastal Command.
SN: We were, what we did first is we —
JM: You got linked with —
SN: We were at Topcliffe up in Yorkshire. We had to do, we had to convert. It was called conversion at that time.
JM: Conversion. That’s right. Yes. Yes.
SN: Which was from, we had, they had been on Wellingtons.
JM: Wellingtons.
SN: And the squadron converted to Halifaxes so it was this period of people getting used to this new aircraft.
JM: Halifax.
SN: So that went on for a time. And then maybe a month later. Sometime in November they they were losing a lot of people with this. Losing a lot of shipping with the subs.
JM: Subs yeah.
SN: And they’d lent us to Coastal Command.
JM: Coastal Command.
SN: To cover during the time the North African invasion force went down.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And so we were sent down to Southampton to do this, this thing and we spent most of the winter there.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: Doing these —
JM: Patrols.
SN: Patrols. Yes.
JM: So you weren’t actually bombing. You were doing surveillance.
SN: It was called air sea warfare.
JM: Yeah.
SN: ASW. I think. And you were looking for, you went out on, it was called a square search and you went out. They were great long things that would go from ten to twelve hours. Went down off the Scilly Islands and Bishop’s Rock and somewhere. A point on the Atlantic or the Bay of Biscay. Whatever it was.
JM: Was.
SN: Depending on what they had decided that day.
JM: That day.
SN: At the briefing where everything is. Where you should go.
JM: Go.
SN: And you flew this course square and back. And you flew fairly low. A thousand feet or something and you looked for submarines.
JM: Submarines yeah.
SN: And evidence of them you see.
JM: Yeah. A bit — sort of a wake from the conning tower.
SN: Yes. There was a great deal of that.
JM: Yes.
SN: It was a separate — Coastal Command it was called. We were lent Coastal Command.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And Coastal Command, all through the war, and Australia. Here as well.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Operated all through the war doing just that.
JM: Yeah.
SN: That was the —
JM: Yeah. So how many [pause] how many missions would you have done in Coastal Command do you think? Roughly.
SN: I can’t remember. You got — what they did is they, they took three of these [pause] ops or whatever you want to call them.
JM: Call them. Yeah.
SN: They took three of these for one op.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Three patrols if you want to call them that.
JM: Yeah. Three patrols were equal to one op in the —
SN: That’s right.
JM: The bureaucrats eyes.
SN: That’s how they did it.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: I don’t remember just what. Just how many there were. There wouldn’t have been all that many. The weather was pretty duff.
JM: Yeah. So —
SN: During that period so you would be stood down quite often, you know.
JM: Down quite often.
SN: And it was, there is nothing more boring than [laughs] [that sort of?] exercise
JM: Yeah.
SN: And I guess we had. We thought we saw evidence of a sub and we dropped our depth charges once. We thought we saw oil on the surface. And when they came up to charge their batteries and when they did this [pause] the oil — they would dive and they would send up several gallons of oil.
JM: Oil.
SN: So that —
JM: Created a bit of an oil slick.
SN: And you’ll see the oil slick.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the object was that the attacking aircraft would say, ‘We got him. We saw the oil,’ and he was — they sunk.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And of course, it hadn’t that at all.
JM: At all. No. Because they were in fact just doing it as part of their diving.
SN: Yeah
JM: Part of their diving process, so to speak. Yeah.
SN: We had one, I guess — two close encounters. One was [pause] one was that, was with, on these patrols they were so long that you had to carry excess tanks for excess fuel.
JM: Excess fuel.
SN: And that meant that you had the — they had of course to change tanks and you had to watch. The engineer had to watch the gauges to make sure that he changed, while one was still operating.
JM: Operating.
SN: To the new one.
JM: The new one. Yeah.
SN: And in this one case he forgot.
JM: Forgot.
SN: Whatever he was doing and the pilot fortunately noticed this and he said, ‘Mac,’ he said, ‘Change tanks.’ And he made a tremendous huge leap and did it and by that time we were down low enough and I wondered why we were this low that I could see the whitecaps on the waves.
JM: Waves.
SN: Yeah. So we were down maybe roof height by that time [laughs] and it sort of laboured its way up.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: And the other one I describe in the book when we attacked the German —
JM: Yes.
SN: E-boats.
JM: E-boats. Yeah.
SN: In the [pause] it’s the harbour near, near Biarritz.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: And they threw up a lot of stuff.
JM: Yes.
SN: And we —
JM: You got some flak out of that didn’t you?
SN: I don’t remember whether we did or not. We might have but it — we probably did because you could see the puffs and things.
JM: Yeah.
SN: But the sailors. I shocked them. They were out sunbathing on the deck [laughs] so we were close enough and I swept the decks of this thing.
JM: Yes.
SN: And you could see great activities going on there.
JM: Yes.
SN: But of course they had enough stuff there that they could have blown us out if —
JM: Out of the sky. But you got away before they managed to get to them. Yeah. So —
SN: Yes because I think you you could say our attack —
JM: Was totally unexpected. Yes.
SN: Was aborted.
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: And depth charges wouldn’t really have done anything.
JM: Done anything.
SN: That much harm.
JM: Much harm.
SN: They told us later.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. So, all up you were doing this for about —
SN: For the winter.
JM: For the winter. Yes.
SN: Yeah.
JM: So, through to early ’43.
SN: Yes. Till maybe it would have been about March.
JM: March yeah. And then you resumed with 405 then.
SN: It would have been March. Yes. It would have been the end of February.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Early March. Yeah.
JM: Yeah. So you resumed with 405.
SN: Yes. So the Squadron. You see we never changed. Coastal Command is — they’re painted white grey.
JM: Yeah you were.
SN: And with us we just —
JM: Stayed black.
SN: Left it and stayed black.
JM: Yeah. And so how long were you back with 405?
SN: This was 405.
JM: Sorry.
SN: The whole squadron.
JM: Yes but with 405 base.
SN: To Bomber Command.
JM: Yes. To Bomber Command because you were down in Southampton.
SN: Yes we were.
JM: With Coastal Command.
SN: We were lent to Coastal Command.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Then we returned to —
JM: Bomber Command.
SN: The end of February we returned to —
JM: Yeah.
SN: To Bomber Command.
JM: To Bomber Command. To —
SN: To Topcliffe which was in Yorkshire.
JM: Yes. So, and so from here you then went on. Started to do some actual bombing raids from here.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: We did, we did several bombing raids from Topcliffe at that time. Maybe three or four or something.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And one of them was Stuttgart which was where I shot down a Messerschmitt 109.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. And any comments in terms of, you know, how close he was before you were able to see him and get, get, you got on to him before he got on to you or was he trying to get to you but your pilot managed to get away. Get at an angle where he was ineffective but you got him or what?
SN: He came up behind and I saw him. And I gave, when he got within range I gave the pilot evasive action and the pilot did it in classic fashion.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And when he was close enough. Six hundred yards. Not all that long. I got a good, a good shot at him.
JM: Yes.
SN: He was coming up like that you see and he, by this time had started to fire at us but he was, he didn’t hit us.
JM: Hit us because the pilot had already started the changing.
SN: He’d already started and he didn’t touch us at all.
JM: Touch us. Yeah. Yeah.
SN: Yeah. And he then went above us and started to turn around and fell.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s how you know you’d had a — you’d scored.
SN: Yes. Yes.
JM: Yes. So it was confirmed hit for you.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: But I couldn’t see where I was until he was —
JM: Coming past you more or less.
SN: Went down. He was off.
JM: Yes. Yes. I see. And so, and so that, was that was Stuttgart raid. And any other things stand out from these raids at this point?
SN: No. They were —
JM: They were.
SN: They were all on —
JM: Sort of routine.
SN: What was called Happy Valley.
JM: Valley. Yeah. Over the Ruhr. Yeah. Yeah. But routine as such and just —
SN: That might have been a period of maybe three weeks or something.
JM: Yeah.
SN: I’ve forgotten.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And then we were transferred to Pathfinder Command.
JM: Pathfinders. Yeah. That’s right. Yes.
SN: Which was down at Gransden Lodge.
JM: Lodge. Gransden Lodge. Yeah. And so, this would have been March.
SN: It was March 13th was when I shot the aircraft down.
JM: Right. Ok. March 13. Ok. So then would that be later March then that you went to Gransden Lodge? That the Pathfinder.
SN: Yes. Or the 1st of April. I don’t know which.
JM: Right.
SN: It wasn’t long.
JM: Yeah.
SN: We just, we just did maybe two or three ops.
JM: Yeah. Ops. Yeah. Yeah. And the decision to move to Pathfinders. What, what’s the story there?
SN: Well 405 was the oldest Canadian bomber squadron.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which had been operating on the [ unclear] maybe a year in Bomber Command in what was called 6 Group which was the Canadian group.
JM: Group. Yeah.
SN: And because it was the, I suppose, and I’m guessing here because it was the oldest squadron and had the most experience it was the one selected to go to the Pathfinder group.
JM: Pathfinders.
SN: And also, I guess because the CO was quite a remarkable guy. A fella named Johnnie Fauquier and he was a force in himself and he —
JM: Yes. Yes.
SN: Because he was brought back.
JM: Back.
SN: As the head of the squadron and we were sent down as a part of 8 Group.
JM: Yes. But was it the commanders that came to you and said to your pilot, Weber and say, ‘Right, your crew’s a good crew – ’
SN: No. No.
JM: You’re going over to Pathfinders or —
SN: No. Oh no. Nobody was asked anything.
JM: No. No. I’m not asked but just said, ‘Right —
SN: No.
JM: Said to Weber.
SN: There was nothing. They just took the squadron.
JM: They just took it.
SN: As it was with Coastal Command.
JM: Right.
SN: Took the squadron.
JM: Right. The whole squadron. Yeah. Ok. Ok. So, and so no one had any choice in the matter. Everyone had to just comply.
SN: That’s right.
JM: Basically. Yeah. Ok. So [pause] so then began your time at Gransden Lodge and — how many — you did a lot of ops in that time.
SN: Yes. Yes.
JM: From Gransden Lodge.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Now I was, it was quite a time from October to January of forty — January of ‘44 I believe.
JM: Yeah. Ok. Well if the squadron moved over in March/April ’43.
SN: In other words I was with the squadron from —
JM: Squadron from —
SN: October of ‘43 to January of ’44.
JM: Yes, but you said that the squadron moved.
SN: Well in that time it was in Bomber Command to Coastal Command to Bomber Command.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: To Pathfinder Command.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. But what we had there before was that you [pause] you moved back [pause] to you had your Coastal Command and then —
SN: We went back to Bomber Command.
JM: You went back to there and that’s when you did your, you said the 13th of March.
SN: Yes.
JM: Was when you did your raid on Stuttgart.
SN: Yes.
JM: And you shot down the Messerschmitt.
SN: Yeah.
JM: And that was when you were back at Bomber Command.
SN: That’s right.
JM: That’s right. And so that’s why you were initially indicating to me that it was perhaps late March, early April that the squadron moved to —
SN: That’s right. Moved to Pathfinder Command. 8 Group.
JM: To Pathfinder Command. Yeah. In April ‘43. So, in fact you were part of Pathfinder from, roughly, early April ’43 right through to —
SN: To January.
JM: To January ’44.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s right. That makes sense. So would you have had leave at any stage? You must have had some periods of leave in between all these bits and pieces.
SN: Yes. We had a lot of leave. We had a week every six weeks.
JM: Yeah. And just before we get into Pathfinders you know, any of the, I don’t, I’m not looking for a sort — because you’ve had so many raids with, or ops with Pathfinders we’ll just pick on a couple I guess but just backtracking up until there you’d had periods of leave and what, did you have a regular places you went to when you were on leave or did you try —
SN: London.
JM: Always London.
SN: Usually. Yes.
JM: Yes. And did you have a particular place there that you always went to for accommodation or did you do different places? Or —?
SN: Different places. Yes.
JM: Right and —
SN: And usually with the, with the crew or at least two of us.
JM: With the crew basically went all together.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yeah. So, so, Weber the pilot went with you and —
SN: No. He was English.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he, of course, went home.
JM: He went home. Yeah.
SN: And I had a particular, my particular pal was a wireless operator.
JM: Yes.
SN: Who was a fellow called Rickard.
JM: Yes.
SN: And the engineer.
JM: Yes.
SN: Who was called MacLean.
JM: Yes.
SN: So either usually the two of us but sometimes three —
JM: Yes.
SN: Would go on leave together.
JM: Together. Right.
SN: And we went to Ireland once. To Dublin. Which was interesting.
JM: Did you have to go in civvies for that? Or —
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: You changed at the border. At a place called Larne. You left your uniform and got, they gave you a civilian suit and off you went. It was the, the, what I suppose the most attractive feature of it was that there was no food rationing and you could get all steak and eggs and bacon and what have you.
JM: Whatever you wanted. Yes.
SN: Yes.
JM: Which made a change.
SN: Which was rather pleasant.
JM: Yes.
SN: For a few days.
JM: Yes. That’s right. Yes. So, it’s what I think a lot of chaps ultimately ended up doing is having a little excursion to Ireland. I think probably just for the sake of getting the food.
SN: Yes. Indeed. Indeed.
JM: Yes. That’s right. So, no other particular events stand out from when you were up onto this point. When you were on leave. Just all, just the usual sort of pubs and shows and —
SN: Pubs and shows and girls.
JM: Girls.
SN: You see [laughs]
JM: Yeah. Yes. Ok. So, looking at Pathfinders. What particular missions or ops do you want to highlight?
SN: I think, I think for Pathfinders, of course, the people who are most affected are the pilots and navigators and bomb aimers. For the gunners and wireless ops it’s really, it’s the same. It’s pretty much the same drill. The only difference is with Pathfinders you are continuously training.
JM: Yeah.
SN: There is very little time off so to speak. There is a training exercise every day you’re not on ops so it’s, it’s a pretty full on thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: I guess there is another interesting thing about it is, of course, it was a pretty impromptu [pause] I was going to say it was a pretty impromptu move and we were moved and quartered in the village. In amongst the village.
JM: Yes.
SN: The huts and things were all in this village.
JM: Yeah. So, houses were basically just requisitioned to be your accommodation.
SN: No. The village was there and the village was operating in the same way.
JM: Yes. But individual houses might have been requisitioned.
SN: No.
JM: No.
SN: They built, they built —
JM: So, you were billeted. The people lived there and you were all just billeted in —
SN: Yes. And we all —
JM: With families.
SN: We all lived in, what do you called them, huts. What are they called?
JM: Nissen. The Nissen huts.
SN: Nissen huts. Yes. We all lived in Nissen huts.
JM: Oh ok.
SN: The masses were in Nissen huts.
JM: So, they built Nissen huts within the village itself.
SN: Yes. We all lived in the village and we walked to the flights.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which was about a quarter of a mile.
JM: A quarter of a mile away. Right. Yeah.
SN: Which was rather interesting. It was an interesting time.
JM: Yeah. For what reason?
SN: Well I think you — these villagers, we went back. We had a reunion there. And they regarded us as their people. You know, they knew us all in the pubs and how many didn’t come back. Who.
JM: Yes. And so, they basically felt a sense of protection.
SN: Yes.
JM: Enveloped you guys in a cloak of protection in a way to sort of provide you with, I guess, some stability or something like that is what they felt they were doing by providing that [pause]
SN: Yes. It was quite —
JM: Extending that friendship for want of a better word. Yeah.
SN: It was quite touching.
JM: Yes.
SN: When we went back.
JM: Yes. Yes. And — Ok. So you were doing regular training as well as going out on ops and what? Any, which ops in particular stand out for you?
SN: Well [pause] it’s like anything else I guess. You — it becomes a routine and it’s what you do and you — I think you become a little callous. And I think it takes, it took me a time after I was discharged. I found it [pause] An uncle of mine spoke to me and said, you know, ‘Have a little compassion.’ You became used to death. And people didn’t come back. And the casualty rate was horrendous.
JM: Yes.
SN: And you were, if you survived it’s what you do and it’s your [pause] you can get, you can accustom people to almost anything.
JM: That’s right.
SN: So, you know, we went out and did it and came back.
JM: Back.
SN: We laughed about it.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Drank to the next man to go.
JM: Go.
SN: That was life.
JM: That was life. And what, what particular — I think there were a couple of particular ops that you mentioned in the book that you might just touch on briefly?
SN: Well I think we, we were first occupied with the Ruhr Valley. With Happy Valley.
JM: Happy Valley. Yeah.
SN: Then we went on to — we did one on Hamburg and we did some long runs. Pilsen, I think. And finally, Berlin. I went to Berlin seven times.
JM: Yeah.
SN: They [pause] we got shot up pretty badly several times and I guess what you remember is that your crew changes. Or ours did. For instance, the man I was telling you about. Stuart Clark.
JM: Yeah.
SN: He had a great friend in the squadron and instead of flying down to Coastal Command with us — we flew, you see. We just packed our stuff up and went. He decided to fly with his friend. You know, why not. And I remember he went off before we did. Went off. He just got over the horizon. Whack. The time of stress with an aircraft is when it takes its first turn because it’s got, not only the momentum of getting in but it has to make this turn.
JM: Turn.
SN: That’s it. And it didn’t and they were all killed. Blown up. So, we had an American with us and when the Americans came over and started to operate he went back to his, or went to — the American air force were happy to have them and most of them went back. And I guess the [pause] we lost crew members and I guess that’s what you remember. Who was the first one? [pause] We had, oh the first one we lost was unfortunately the navigator who was a very nice fella. We were good friends and we used to go to the pub at night. And we were at a place called Leeming in Yorkshire and instead of going around by the road we would cross the airfield and you had to be careful because of night flying [laughs] to do these things, you see.
JM: Yes.
SN: But it made it shorter. Anyway, we came back and I guess all had quite a bit to drink and we were at the top of our — they called them married quarters. They were cottages and we were in the two bedrooms upstairs. I, and Ricky, the wireless operator and Gibby. We got, we came back and we got to the top of the stairs and Gibby slipped and he rolled down these stairs and we got at the bottom and his head was bleeding. So, we got the ambulance and he was unconscious. There was nothing — his head was bleeding and the ambulance came and we never saw him again and I don’t know what happened to him. I presume that he perhaps died. And the other two I think I deal with in here. I might have dealt with Gibby as well. We had a thing which was called [pause] what did we call it? It’s [pause] lack of moral fortitude. LMF.
JM: Yeah.
SN: LMF. And that’s really quite a good story actually. We had two of our crew. One was over Essen. A fellow named Gordon Wood. Toronto. And he, how anybody could think of this when we’re over Essen and the bloody kite was —
JM: Bouncing around the —
SN: Bouncing because of the flak.
JM: Flak.
SN: Threw us [unclear ] and he, and we missed, we went over the —
JM: Target.
SN: Target. And we missed.
JM: Missed.
SN: We were off so we had to go around again. Do another thing. Because the bomb aim has to be straight and level to do this thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And when we started going around the second time he went to pieces and he, the pilot’s name was Tony. And he said, ‘Don’t go in there Tony. Don’t go in there. They’ll kill us,’ he said, ‘I want to go home and marry Mary,’ he said, ‘Don’t do this.’ He wept and so forth at the pilot, Tony. And Mac, the engineer, went down and take his intercom out and then they had to get him up and put him on — we had a little bench.
JM: Bench. Yeah.
SN: Across from the hatch and tied him up on the bench.
JM: Bench.
SN: And he came and we reported this when we came back that we had this man. The ambulance met him and I never saw him again or heard anything of him. Then the other one was — we were — I don’t know where it was. Nuremberg. Hamburg. I’ve forgotten. Anyway, we’d got an American who was a mid-upper gunner and they did a stupid thing. They thought instead most attacks by fighter aircraft come in from the bottom.
JM: Bottom.
SN: And they don’t see because the rear gunner just sees a hundred and eighty degrees so they said, ‘We’ll put a thing like a tear drop in the bottom of the aircraft.’
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the mid-upper gunner will lie there and he had no guns, will lie there with his intercom, on his belly and report these aircraft that he sees. Stupid thing to have done. And he’d been alright before that but he, they only left the thing on for maybe two or three weeks.
JM: Weeks.
SN: And he went bananas.
JM: He went bananas.
SN: And he saw aircraft all over the sky and he gave evasive action and we’re pitching around [laughs] trying to find these until it finally occurred —
JM: Trying to avoid these imaginary aeroplanes.
SN: That there weren’t any aircraft.
JM: Yes.
SN: No one else saw it.
JM: No.
SN: So, he had to be disconnected, and put on the thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And we never saw him again.
JM: Again.
SN: But after the war I learned what happened. And what had happened was they took these people, gave them whatever help they could.
JM: Yeah.
SN: They sent them back to Canada.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And then they gave them a choice. They said, ‘Now we will not discharge you.’ For dishonourable —
JM: Dishonourable discharge.
SN: Put this on your conduct thing.
JM: Yeah.
SN: You will have a choice. You can either join the army or the navy and carry on with the war.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: Or we will give you a medical discharge.
JM: Discharge. Yeah.
SN: You have a choice and it always seemed to me that that was very fair. And nobody ever reported and said these people were cowards. They were medically —
JM: Unstable or anything like that.
SN: Or anything like that. So it was one of the good war stories.
JM: Good things. Yeah.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah. Now around in this period of time though in September ‘43 you discovered by accident shall we say in as much you and your good friend Drew were in London on, I presume on one of your periods of leave.
SN: Yes. I’d forgotten him but he was, yes.
JM: Yeah. And that he was sitting reading the newspaper and reading the latest list of honours and said that, informed you that you had been awarded the —
SN: DFM.
JM: DFM.
SN: Yes. That’s right.
JM: And the, I haven’t got the exact words of the citation in front of me but it was in terms of a, in recognition of a number of —
SN: Yeah.
JM: Ops.
SN: I remember I said something like, he said, ‘Read this,’ and I said something like, ‘Yeah. They’re going to knight me tomorrow,’ or something. And he said, ‘No. You silly bastard,’ he said, ‘It’s you.’
JM: It’s you. That’s right. But did you was it just simply for a sequence of raids or did you actually get told something?
SN: It was a sequence I think.
JM: Yeah. But did you, can you recall.
SN: The citation.
JM: The sequence that they were actually referring to in terms of particular difficulties on those particular raids or —
SN: No. It was a general citation it seems to me. As I remember it.
JM: Right. So were other members of the crew awarded DFMs?
SN: No. Nobody.
JM: So how did they seem?
SN: Only me.
JM: Do you know why they singled you.
SN: I think it was the aircraft that I shot down.
JM: So, going back to —when? So —
SN: Yes. it went back to —
JM: So, it goes back to the March.
SN: Went back to March.
JM: March. When you shot down the Messerschmitt.
SN: That’s right.
JM: In Stuttgart.
SN: That’s right. I think so, yes. I think that was what it was about because I was the only one.
JM: Yeah. Ok. So, so you didn’t get any further clarification in terms of the citation or anything like that. The commanding officers.
SN: There is a citation. Yes. And the citation [pause] I had or I probably have somewhere here but God knows where I would find it.
JM: Yes.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Right. And then you lined up and received your award from King George.
SN: Yes. I went to Buckingham Palace and lined up with a lot of other people.
JM: And did he have any words to you do you recall? Or did he just walk along and just pin and kept walking.
SN: No. He was on a little dais in the palace and you went up one by one, up just a little, maybe that high or something and the king was slightly higher.
JM: He was slightly elevated by about eighteen inches.
SN: Yes.
JM: Or something like that.
SN: He was there.
JM: Yeah.
SN: With a sort of a lectern or table that had the awards.
JM: Yeah.
SN: That were being passed to him by someone.
JM: An assistant on the side.
SN: Yes. And you were — before you went up they put a little tin thing or something on your tunic.
JM: Yes. On your tunic, yeah, so they had —
SN: And you went up. He shook hands with you.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And said something like I suppose, ‘Well done,’ or something like that and hung these on the thing.
JM: Thing. Yeah.
SN: And then you went.
JM: Yeah.
SN: It wasn’t, you know, he was there were maybe, I don’t how many. Let’s say there were a hundred or something.
JM: Yeah.
SN: There were a lot of them anyway.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And that was it, you know. He wouldn’t have had enough time to have said —
JM: Too much to each one. No.
SN: To anyone really because it was a line.
JM: A line yeah.
SN: That went through.
JM: Yeah.
SN: It was a job he had to do. Yeah. That was it.
JM: So then did you have an afternoon tea afterwards and did you talk with any of the other recipients?
SN: No. That was it. That was it. No.
JM: You just received it and you were out the door.
SN: You were told to appear at the palace. You had an order written on the thing. At such and such a time. And you came and they said, ‘Yes, that’s you. Here it is. You go in there. You go there. Get in the queue.’
JM: Almost a sausage line.
SN: Yeah [laughs]
JM: Right. Ok. So so, at this stage we’re getting you’ve been doing the various ops etcetera so you’re building up the number of ops you’re doing. We get towards the end.
SN: Yes.
JM: Did you know you were getting — because by this time, where are we up to? About, January ’44 so this is getting to —
SN: We’re in October I guess.
JM: Yeah. October ’44.
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes.
SN: And at that stage we [pause] our pilot and all except two of us in the crew.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Ricky and myself —
JM: Yeah.
SN: Had completed the magic number.
JM: Number.
SN: Which was forty five.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And so, they [pause] they had done their —
JM: Completed their —
SN: Completed their second tour.
JM: Tour.
SN: And there were the two of us who had not.
JM: So that was you and Ricky.
SN: Ricky. And Ricky went. Ricky decided that he had had enough and he didn’t really want to fly with a sprog pilot or somebody else. So, he said, ‘I really don’t care whether I have that Pathfinder badge or not. I’d rather be alive.’
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, I stayed on to finish and I had three to finish.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And it took a while. November until I crashed because you had to find a crew that was short.
JM: Short.
SN: Of a rear gunner.
JM: Rear gunner. Yeah.
SN: To go with.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, I went with well they wanted to put, yes, they put you on this crew. Their man had [pause] I’ve forgotten — he’d fallen ill, I think. Whatever he had he wasn’t going to be able to fly again. So, I had, this fella, his name was McLennan. Canadian. So, I became their rear gunner.
JM: Gunner.
SN: For these three trips. And because I had been waiting around the weather was duff.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And we went to Berlin three times.
JM: Right.
SN: And in the end, you’ve seen there. So, and they were three bad flights because I guess they were I guess a sprog crew to some degree. We got shot up very badly and we got lost. And then the last flight we got shot up. The second last flight we were shot up pretty badly. And we were quite lucky. It burnt up the wireless operator’s notes and the navigator’s maps. The whole thing. [unclear] and it was pretty well peppered. So, then the last flight —
JM: So, did you use the same plane? Or did you — or the ground crew repaired it enough. Or did you use a different plane for that? For then? This last flight?
SN: They repaired it.
JM: They repaired it.
SN: They repaired it. I’m sure about that but I should say I don’t know.
JM: Right. Ok. Yeah.
SN: That would be a better answer.
JM: Yeah. Yeah.
SN: And then the last flight we, the last flight I made which was the forty fifth for me. I was — that would finish me off and it very nearly did.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And we got, we got shot up again as we came off the target.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And it was the night before, we were attacked by a fighter. The last night. I’ve forgotten if we were or not. Certainly, we were the second, it was an ME110 that very nearly got us. And we were lost. And the Met people had made a mistake in that they believed that a front was going to come in. They knew this but they believed that there would be ample time for people to get back from Berlin before this front came in. It was a heavy front. Well, they were wrong. And the front came in earlier and aircraft at that time when you’re doing blind landings come down in concentric circles.
JM: Yeah.
SN: It’s like —
JM: So, you stacked up.
SN: A for apple and B for Bertie.
JM: Yeah.
SN: X for X-ray and they’re in a line you see.
JM: In a line. Yeah.
SN: And they come down and you have a different altitude so they don’t get.
JM: Running into each other. Theoretically. Yes.
SN: Yes. And they bring them down.
JM: Down. Yeah.
SN: The operator.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Brings them down.
JM: Down. Yeah.
SN: And the last circle, and when they do this they find the marker that makes the, what is it called [pause] when you have a blind landing you’re looking at your instruments. I’ve forgotten the name. It’s in there anyway. You have to pick up this bar and come in.
SN: Yeah.
JM: And if you miss that you’ve got to go around ‘til you get it again because you’re coming down.
SN: Down.
JM: They’re bringing you down on that bar. They have given you your altitude that you should be at.
SN: Yeah.
JM: They’re following you down.
SN: The pilot is just blind flying into this. So, we had been up. We were lost. We were late and we’d been up a long time and they were bringing us in and the pilot missed the bar and we had to go around again. And by this time, we were out of fuel and he knows we’re very nearly out of fuel and I know that we’re in trouble because I can see the treetops going by the turret.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And I did the luckiest thing I ever did in my life. There was a belt about that wide.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Webbing.
JM: Webbing belt. Yeah.
SN: With buckles on it.
JM: Strapped you in.
SN: And it was on either side and I put that on.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Locked it there and that saved me.
JM: That saved you. That’s what saved you. Yeah.
JM: Yeah. So, you came and so having seen the treetops. It wasn’t too long after that that before —
SN: It was just minutes after that. Yeah. And the aircraft broke off, you see. The tail broke off.
SN: Broke off.
JM: Yeah. So, you were saved but the rest were not.
SN: That’s right. Well, the pilot came through but in a very bad state. And I found him. And I think I say there, things were blowing up. We had failsafe stuff. And it was burning. And I was not in a very good shape at the time. It had knocked me out. I was bleeding.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And in a stupor I think.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And he, he was lying with this stuff popping off and I thought I should move him back a little and I took him by the legs and his legs started to come off and the bone appeared. I couldn’t do that. And I got — we had a little packet of stuff and I don’t know whether I shot him with a hypo. Certainly, I had, when they found me I had the packet but what I did with it I have no idea. In any event when they came back they found me wandering around with this packet. This kid found me who became a friend of mine. And they brought the ambulance out it was thick heavy fog, and packed I and McLennan in and he, he was not conscious through this, through all this, I don’t think. Maybe he was but he didn’t seem to be.
JM: Seem to be.
SN: To me. And he and I went in together and it seemed to me that I wasn’t sure whether, I think he, I think he recognised me as we went in. And then I was in this hospital in Ely maybe a week or ten days. I’ve forgotten. And I asked, when I came too the following day, for McLennan. He was a nice fellow. And he said he died when he got there. So, I was the only one who survived.
JM: Yes, and so do you regret having made the decision to have, to complete those other three ops? Do you feel you would have was there what was the motivation in the first place to do, to do the three? Was it simply that you wanted to have the completed tour or what?
SN: It’s, I signed on for to do the tours.
JM: To do the tours. Yeah.
SN: And I wanted it done. Yes.
JM: You wanted to do it.
SN: It was something I wanted to do.
JM: Do. Yeah. So —
SN: And Ricky, whom I met again after the war, who my particular chum he always regretted that he didn’t.
JM: Right. Yeah. There you go. So people who, despite the fact that it was very very difficult for you for those last three. One thing just very briefly. Did, in Pathfinder, did Gransden Lodge, did any of the various squadrons intermingle at any time or did you stay very much within your own squadron?
SN: Completely within our own squadron.
JM: Within your own squadron. Because, I mean Australian, you know, there were various other, you know like —
SN: Yes, we had all sort of people. Australians, British.
JM: Yeah, yeah, but there was a 156 Squadron at Gransden Lodge too, I think, from knowledge but there was never any intermingling or anything like that.
SN: No. De were the only ones.
JM: You were the only ones.
SN: During my time.
JM: Your time, yeah. Right. Ok. Yeah.
SN: And we didn’t. Yes. No. We didn’t. I didn’t know anybody from any other squadron.
JM: Right. No. Right.
SN: You know the top squadron chief, they would have gone to group headquarters.
JM: Headquarters.
SN: And they knew —
JM: What was going on.
SN: Other people from the other squadrons.
JM: Yeah. Squadrons yeah.
SN: But not at my level.
JM: No.
SN: We never saw anybody.
JM: No. Right. And did — so you were in hospital and then I presume you went on leave and went perhaps to rehab. Like a rehabilitation.
SN: No. I went. I got out of hospital and went back to the squadron.
JM: Yeah.
SN: That was in January.
JM: January ’45.
SN: Yes. And I got back to the squadron on Christmas Eve. I think it was.
JM: Oh. Ok. So that was Christmas Eve ’44.
SN: ’43. ’43.
JM: ‘44 wouldn’t it be?
SN: No. ‘43.
JM: Ok.
SN: In January of ‘44 I was posted.
JM: Yes.
SN: From the squadron.
JM: Yeah.
SN: To a RAF gunnery school for gunnery instruction instructor’s course.
JM: Yeah. Ok. That was in January ‘44. Yeah. Ok. And so how long were you there for?
SN: I would think it would be about a month but it might have been six weeks.
JM: Right.
SN: The only thing I can remember about it is that it was a RAF school at a place called Manby. And they spent all their Sunday, or most of their Sunday on the parade square where they were inspection after inspection and I was by that time commissioned. I noticed that they had a most extraordinary [pause] before they started this buggering about.
JM: Yeah.
SN: They called out, ‘Fall out the Jews and infidels.’ [laughs]
JM: Right.
SN: It’s true.
JM: Right.
SN: It’s true. And thereupon the head of the WAAFs who was shaped rather like a large trout and had a moustache bigger than me and was obviously Jewish and she would fall out and the other one who fell out was an Indian. Indian Indian. A little squadron leader of some sort and he, I guess, was a Hindu or — I don’t know what it was. But I thought this is not a bad lark so the next Sunday I fell out with them. And no one —
JM: Queried it.
SN: No one ever queried me. I think they simply assumed well he’s Jewish.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And well that was the end and I had my Sunday.
JM: Well there you go. That was a way to get a Sunday off wasn’t it? And so, what happened after? Did you complete this course? Or —
SN: Yes.
JM: Yes. And what happened after that?
SN: Then I went back to 6 Group which was the Canadian group.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Up in Yorkshire and I instructed. I guess till the end of the year. Something like that. I’ve forgotten how long it was and then I was posted back to Canada.
JM: Right.
SN: To — they had a huge base near Vancouver.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Which was for [pause] for the Far Eastern campaign. Well the Far Eastern campaign was cut short at Hiroshima.
JM: That’s right. Yeah.
SN: So, nobody went anywhere.
JM: Anywhere.
SN: But there were about five thousand of us there and we were all given Joe jobs of one sort or another to keep us occupied. And that was for I guess for six months in ‘44. And then in August I was discharged.
JM: So that was August.
SN: 1945.
JM: ‘45 yeah.
SN: That’s ’45. Yes.
JM: ’45. Discharged. Yeah and —
SN: The only thing that I did during those six months, you know — there were really so many of us was I went over to Victoria to sell Victory Bonds for a month and this was rather fun. The people who were selling the bonds who were business men in the city I guess and were not the always the same people. And they would pick me up and we would go to factories, plants, offices and they would make a little spiel and I would get up and talk for, you know, maybe a minute or two and then we’d go on to another place.
JM: I see. Well that was different.
SN: Yes. That was the only thing I did when I was there.
JM: And this was when you were in.
SN: In this place. At Boundary Bay it was called.
JM: Near Vancouver.
SN: Yes. It was so bad that in the end the last job I had was to teach people who — no —I did do some work out there. I flew in Libs. They had Liberators.
JM: Liberators. Yeah.
SN: On instructing for three months which was alright. We had something to do. But then this last thing I was teaching [pause] what was it called? When an aircraft is is [pause] has to ditch. Ditching procedure.
JM: Ditching procedure. Yeah.
SN: And I had a sergeant and I had three other fellows and I had to give, I thought I was rather badly used and I had to give — I think I had to work two days a week. That was all I did.
JM: Did.
SN: But —
JM: Put a crew through this ditching procedure training. Goodness me.
SN: And there was hundreds of — well I don’t know how many.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Who were doing [laughs]
JM: Same thing.
SN: The same thing but there we were.
JM: And when you are discharged in August ‘45 presumably you then head back to the farm. To the family.
SN: Yes. I went back to the family and I went down and got myself discharged.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And in September, 1st of September I guess, I went to university.
JM: Right. And there you did, what?
SN: I did General Arts. And I was there for five years.
JM: Five years. Right. And?
SN: I got an MA.
JM: An MA right.
SN: In History and English Literature.
JM: Yeah. And where and then what? What —
SN: Well I then found [pause] I met a remarkable man who — I really started out to take law and I should have done that. That made sense. It was a profession. But he was an historian. Brilliant man. World scholar. Wonderfully — looked like Charles Laughton.
JM: Sorry?
SN: He looked like Charles Laughton.
JM: Right. Ok. And what was —
SN: A wonderful voice.
JM: And what was this chap’s name.
SN: He was a history prof. His name was Charles Lightbody.
JM: Right.
SN: And I was quite fascinated by him and he became a friend of mine and I thought well I would do that and so I —
JM: You’d become a historian.
SN: I ended up with an MA and I realised that there really wasn’t anything I could do but teach and I wasn’t — I didn’t think there was really be much of a teacher. So, I, in the meantime had written. There were three examinations which you had to pass for Foreign Affairs. One was a four hour written hour written exam. Or was it six. I think it was six. It was a half day anyway and then you had to go for an oral examination with people. And then you had a third thing. I’ve forgotten what it was and then you, if you were lucky this was across the country and if you made it you were, you got the appointment. They took you in to the Foreign Service. Well I had written this, I guess, in the spring. I heard nothing from them. So, I had to think what I could do. So I applied for some scholarships and got a fellowship which was a scholarship down in New Orleans at Tulane University. So, I went down there. By this time, I was married but I went down by myself to see. And I was only there for a month, six weeks, something, when my appointment came through. But I was there long enough to realise that this was really not my —
JM: Cup of tea.
SN: Cup of tea. I was put, this was for a PhD and I was put to my chore — you had to teach part of the time was the Tulane football team. And Jesus. They [laughs] recruited these people from the villages and towns not because of their academic.
JM: Their academic ability.
SN: Oh no. That was not [laughs]
JM: They were recruited for their football ability.
SN: And I’m teaching European history to these fellas and they’re going [yawn] so —
JM: So, you were very pleased to have your posting come through.
SN: I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t hesitate a minute.
JM: You didn’t hesitate. You grabbed it with both hands and —
SN: That’s right.
JM: So then —
SN: Happily, ever after.
JM: And when did you actually start your posting. So, I presume you had to do some sort of orientation period but when did you officially start with the — so what is this called? The Canadian Diplomatic Corps is it. Or what was its proper title?
SN: Canadian Foreign Service.
JM: Canadian Foreign Service. Yeah.
SN: Really from the 1st of January.
JM: 1st of January ‘46 would it have been.
SN: No, it was after that.
JM: What are we up to?
SN: It was after Christmas. It was December. I think it was December 27th. Something like that.
JM: So, December 27th.
SN: It had to be that year.
JM: Yeah. So, when would this be. About ‘51.
SN: In Ottawa.
JM: Would it be ‘51? December ‘51 or ’50.
SN: It would be December 1950.
JM: 1950. right. Yeah. So, December 27 1950 and it was, did you say, Ottawa.
SN: Yes.
JM: Ottawa. And so that was where you’re —
SN: So, I spent thirty odd years.
JM: So was that a training — your initial training at Ottawa or that was your actual first posting as —what?
SN: It was a training.
JM: Training. Yeah.
SN: It was before the first posting.
JM: Posting. Yeah. And then where was your first posting?
SN: It was really in Latin America and Bogota but before that someone fell ill in Tokyo. And they needed to send someone out to —
JM: To Tokyo.
SN: This guy didn’t come or I’ve forgotten what it was. In any event they needed somebody and the Korean war was on. So, they were able to send somebody out with military you see.
JM: Right.
SN: They didn’t have to go through the procedure of sending them by sea.
JM: Right.
SN: Across the thing. It was a time factor. So, I flew over and I was there for six months.
JM: To — to —
SN: Tokyo.
JM: Tokyo.
SN: Yes. Things happened and I was kept on.
JM: Yeah. So that became your first —
SN: I suppose that it was my your posting.
JM: Even though, yeah, yeah.
SN: But it was a temporary assignment.
JM: Assignment. Yeah. Yeah. So then did you come back to Latin America after that?
SN: I came back to Ottawa. And then by that time they had posted me.
JM: Yeah.
SN: To Bogota.
JM: Bogota. Right.
SN: And I was, you know, in Ottawa for a couple months.
JM: While they sorted the paperwork out, I guess.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yeah. So, Bogota and then and then you say thirty years moving around.
SN: Yes.
JM: Various embassies moving around the world.
SN: Yes. That’s right. Yeah.
JM: Presumably changing roles. Moving up into a higher role most of the time. So, what was your —
SN: Yes.
JM: So were you a —
SN: I went through the usual steps of third secretary. Second secretary. First secretary.
JM: Secretary.
SN: Counsellor. Minister.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And ambassador.
JM: Yeah.
SN: So, it was, I guess, about thirty three years. Something like this.
JM: Yeah. And where were you ambassador?
SN: I was [pause] I resigned or — I didn’t resign, I finished as ambassador to Ecuador.
JM: Right. And did you have any other ambassadorial post prior to Ecuador?
SN: I had another Head of Mission is what we called it.
JM: Right.
SN: I had a Head of Mission post before that. I was Canadian Commissioner in Cambodia.
JM: Right.
SN: Which is where I met Shirley.
JM: Right.
SN: And of course, that was an unfortunate thing in the sense of career in that divorce at that time was frowned on and I was unemployable because my then wife had to agree if I were to be posted and of course that was the last thing she was likely to do. And it was a long dragged out affair and very difficult for Shirley. However, we had this time in — well I went to National Defence College which was our half civilian and half military. I went as our departmental candidate. It was a year’s course for top executives so that was good. And then I went. I was farmed out from the department. I did a couple of years in the planning department of National Defence.
JM: Right.
SN: As their foreign affairs rep or advisor. Whatever you’d call it. And then I did two and a half years I think. A very strange business which was because one of my foreign affairs friends was the deputy and he brought me in and I headed up a research planning division in Indian Affairs.
JM: So what sort of, so this is the —
SN: This is when I had time out for divorce [laughs]
JM: So, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, ok. And that would have been a very interesting exercise as well.
SN: Yes, it was. I learned a great many things.
JM: Yes. I can imagine. Gosh. And then presumably the divorce finally got sorted and you were able to be reappointed as an ambassador then.
SN: The day, the day after, no. I didn’t. The day after our wedding we were posted to Washington.
JM: Washington. Right.
SN: And it was that quick.
JM: That quick. So, when was that. When were you married. What was your —
SN: It was September.
JM: September of —?
SN: Of [pause] We were at Washington for four years. 1978. 1974.
JM: 1974.
SN: We were married.
JM: Yeah.
SN: In September. And the following day —
JM: You were off to Washington.
SN: Off to Washington. And Shirley’s sister was there and my brother in law.
JM: And what was your role in Washington? You were attached to the embassy as what?
SN: As a counsellor.
JM: A counsellor. Right. Yeah. Ok. Yes. Oh well and so —
SN: You there you have —
JM: Yeah. And how do you feel that your air force experiences informed your diplomatic, the way you handled your diplomatic career in any way or or you never really thought about your air force time once you were in as a diplomat. I mean, recognising the fact you had many many roles as a diplomat that you, you know.
SN: Well I think it was useful to me in the sense that the things that I was doing. For instance when I was at national defence. When I was at National Defence College.
JM: Yeah.
SN: For a year and that’s, you know, we lived, at that time there there were only thirty two people and you eat, drink with those people every day for a year and it was useful to me, half of them were military.
JM: Right.
SN: To have —
JM: To have had that close quarter that — A — that background and, B — that close quarter living as you had had to have as part of war service.
SN: Yes. And when I was at plans it was useful because I knew people again. I was accepted. So when I was in Washington I did the political military thing for four years you see so I was always in close touch. So yes, it was useful.
JM: It was useful.
SN: Yeah.
JM: Yes. Well you have had, certainly had an incredibly varied life and when you look back to the fact you started off as a farm lad, for want of a better word of describing it.
SN: Farm kid.
JM: Which is not to put down people who run, who own and feed the nation from their farms but it’s just very different life and lifestyle to — and then, and I guess, as part of that you became a bit of a rebellious child and that rebelliousness came out in some of your early years. In your early air force training and ultimately it clicked and you changed tack and you became — you decided to accept.
SN: Go with the stream. Yes.
JM: Go with the stream and accept the discipline which was probably when you started doing well in your gunnery courses.
SN: Yes.
JM: And that’s when you felt you had a role to play and that was a turning point potentially there. And then as we say you just ultimately going through to then find a totally different course of life and become part of the Canadian Foreign Service for such an extensive thirty three years. That’s an incredibly long time. And were you, have you ever been given any recognition for that length of service from the Canadian Foreign Service.
SN: Oh yes. Yes. Yes.
JM: In what format?
SN: I have no misgivings. I — I’ve been well treated. I have no, it would have been nice to have gotten a little higher up the tree but that was the way it played out.
JM: Was there a system of formal recognition? Awards or anything. Were you given any awards at any time or —?
SN: No. We didn’t have any. We all have a medal or I assume we do. That we get for having served.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And you get a letter from the minister. The PM saying thank you.
JM: Thank you.
SN: And that’s it.
JM: Yeah.
SN: Now, unlike, and this has always been a grievance with, I think some people in the Commonwealth Foreign Services — the Americans, if you become an ambassador you take the title with you.
JM: Yeah. Like a —
SN: You were called that.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And the British usually knight their Heads of Mission and they can carry the title.
JM: Yeah.
SN: And Canadians, Australians or New Zealanders do not.
JM: Not.
SN: Yeah. So that bothered some people and of course it didn’t, it doesn’t bother most people because as long, so long as everyone else suffers with you [laughs]
JM: You’re not on your own in that circumstance.
SN: No. No.
JM: No.
SN: No.
JM: Well I think that you’ve been exceedingly generous with your time and we’ve covered a huge amount of ground there. Simply amazing set of experiences and I just thank you for it Clair. It’s just been really really wonderful and the fact that we’ve got this record now as part to help contribute to the knowledge base about Bomber Command personnel is so important. So, thank you very much for that.
SN: Alright. Well thank you. It’s taken a fair amount of your time.
Dublin Core
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ANuttingS170222
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Interview with Sinclair Nutting
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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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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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02:16:42 audio recording
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Pending review
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Jean Macartney
Date
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2017-02-22
Description
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Sinclair Nutting Grew up in Canada and worked on the family farm before he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 405 Squadron. After the war he emigrated to Australia.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
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Canada
England--Yorkshire
Great Britain
Ireland
Ireland--Dublin
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
Contributor
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Julie Williams
405 Squadron
6 Group
8 Group
aircrew
bombing
crash
Distinguished Flying Medal
Fw 190
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
Halifax
lack of moral fibre
Me 109
military discipline
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Gransden Lodge
RAF Honeybourne
RAF Manby
RAF Topcliffe
training
Wellington
Whitley
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/313/3470/AParkerF171130.1.mp3
635e5f3d0ac87161b2c09a1fa702809b
Dublin Core
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Title
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Parker, Frederick
F Parker
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Frederick Parker (1922 - 2017, 1106402 Royal Air Force).
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-30
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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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Parker, F
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: This is an interview between Harry Bartlett, on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre, and Mr Frederick Parker, who was a member of 1 Group in the RAF during the war. Fred Parker was born 15th of July 1922, his serial number was 1106402. The interview is taking place at [redacted] Loughborough. The time now is 10.50 and Mr Parker has just been telling me about his younger life. It’s the, sorry, it’s the 30th of November. Right Mr Parker, so you were born in Skegness.
FP: Yes. Cavendish Road, Skegness.
HB: At Cavendish Road, and you went to primary school there.
FP: That’s right.
HB: Just tell me again what you were doing, ‘cause you left school at how old?
FP: About twelve.
HB: And what were you doing, before you, before the war?
FP: We were, I was always working either with the lifeboats or looking after them.
HB: Right. And did you do some work on the fish quays?
FP: On the?
HB: On the fish quays?
FP: Oh no, never, none of that.
HB: With the fishing boats? No?
FP: No. I know nearly all of the people, Jack Barron, he was the one that covered everything.
HB: Right. And then you became part of a sort of a group of volunteers building pill boxes.
FP: That’s right.
HB: And where was that?
FP: That was, they were actually building them at Mablethorpe, and the cement and the gravel and the stuff like that, that was transported from Chapel St Leonards. My sister, my sister’s boy, he was only about, what would he be, thirteen, and he was younger than I.
HB: Right. And how old was he?
FP: He was only about thirteen.
HB: [Laugh] Different times, yeah. And you did that up until - when did you actually join up to the RAF?
FP: I went to Lincoln to join up, when I joined up, any record of the date there when I joined up?
HB: I haven’t got a date when you joined up, I’ve got very little information Fred.
FP: Oh.
HB: How old were you when you joined up?
FP: Well to tell you the truth I can’t give you that information because I don’t know it myself. What, I was sent from Skegness to Lincoln, the main RAF station at Lincoln and then from there we were despatched to Blackpool to get our uniforms.
HB: Yeah. Did you do some training at Blackpool?
FP: On the beach, yeah, not the beach, on the Promenade. Learned how to use a rifle and all that.
HB: Yeah. So you did your basic training at Blackpool and then where did you go for your next lot of training?
FP: I went to RAF Silloth, in Cumberland, and there I took over the tow target section.
HB: Right. So you were in the tow target section, at Silloth. And what was your actual job there, Fred?
FP: Putting the targets on, picking them up.
HB: Where were the targets Fred?
FP: The target actually was, when, when the drogue was stopped, it came down, we’d pick it up and we’d count the different colours on it, the different colour and then the tracer, armour piercing, all that, to know, what they’d been, fired at you.
HB: And were these drogues dropped from the air or were they in the sea?
FP: Into the, the tow targets, they were, when I say dropped from the air, [pause] say that again to me.
HB: Were, were the drogues, the targets -
FP: They dropped from the air with a special device called a naseby air gun and what happened was, it was a cushion effect, it had a tube and running through that tube there was a slanted cut and then another two pieces then and when the disk went down the wire to, it hit the drogue and did a cushion effect, like I said, coming forwards, backwards and cut the cable.
HB: Ah, right. So it was towed behind an aircraft, and after, who was shooting at it?
FP: Who was shooting?
HB: Who was shooting at the target?
FP: They were, who were, [pause] it’s got to be, it’s got to be batches of crews isn’t it.
HB: Yeah. So other aircraft would come along and they would fire at the target?
FP: That’s right. They would, no, not fire at it. We would go along and fire at a target similar to the one that I told you about and then, so that we could get the best result, know how far away to start firing.
HB: Right. Ah, right. Yes, I understand. So, what were you doing in the aircraft when that was being towed?
FP: Well, keeping my bloody head down! [Laughter] Because you could see the trace – have you ever seen tracers being fired? Well when tracers are being fired they’re red hot, they’re a rich browny colour and the idea was that, we -
HB: So you just kept your head down in the aircraft? So did you sort of launch the target when you were up in the air or -
FP: Oh no, you got out, you got that far down in the cockpit as possible.
HB: Right. So what kind of aircraft were they?
FP: Martinet.
HB: Martinets, right. So you were up in the cockpit area.
FP: That’s right, just behind the pilot.
HB: Just behind the pilot, right.
FP: Giving him all the messages with a long pencil.
HB: A long pencil.
FP: Anything you want to tell him, you use a pencil. I know it seems silly.
HB: So you’re sort of making it look as if you’re poking him with the pencil, is that what you did?
FP: Yes.
HB: Oh right, what, a sort of morse code in pencil, jabbing him with the pencil. So were you receiving messages in the aircraft?
FP: The idea of tow targets was that we should be prepared for when the Germans came over and then what we did, we tried to make it so that our fellows knew what was happening. Like, we would take them up in the, this is when you’re in the flight, you’d take ‘em up, blind, in cloud and all that kind of stuff, and get this guy or guys to come along and try to shoot you down, but he couldn’t shoot us down because they were terrible! [Laugh]
HB: So did you do that all through the war?
FP: Yes.
HB: From, so how many years do you think you did that?
FP: Oh, I lived in, what would it be, I can’t exactly remember how many years, a good few. About six? Between four and six.
HB: Right. So you must have joined around about 1941 then, round about there.
FP: Yes.
HB: So all your time, spent, initially, you know, in the first part of the war, was up at Silloth, up to, did you say Maryport earlier on?
FP: Maryport, that was near London, that was another one of [unclear]. These bases were kept so that the crew if they were shot down, we could get an air sea rescue job on to them as quick as possible.
HB: So you would go out and search for downed aircrew.
FP: Oh yes.
HB: Right. And yeah, so you were stationed up there. Did you then get moved south ready for D-Day?
FP: No. Lossiemouth.
HB: You went to Lossiemouth, yeah. And what were you doing at Lossiemouth?
FP: Not very much, the, the, just after the Japanese surrender.
HB: Right. So that would be ’40 -
FP: So everybody was making whoopee because the war was going to be over.
HB: So when did you go to France, Fred?
FP: When?
HB: Yes.
FP: I was sent to France. I was sent to France by our country and I went to France but when I came home and finished, you know, in the Army, I went back as a civilian because I knew all the answers and how to get hold of the gear and everything, then they took me on.
HB: So that was for the construction site.
FP: Yes.
HB: So did you end up, you ended up in France in 1945, just after D-Day?
FP: Yes. I was at [indecipherable] La Visinet.
HB: La Visinet.
FP: That’s a name you can’t forget.
HB: And what were you doing at La Visinet?
FP: Hiding from the German people and then we were, one of the many things is back and forwards, back to all aircraft too.
HB: Right. La Visinet, right. So you were hiding from them.
FP: Pardon?
HB: You were hiding from them.
FP: Not hiding from them, just keeping out of the way of them because there were still German people on the main land in France.
HB: Right. So how long after D-Day did you get into France, Fred?
FP: I was sent to France.
HB: Yeah, what, on D-Day, or just after D-Day.
FP: Yeah, D-Day.
HB: Right. So you stayed in, you stayed over, you came back to England, to Lossiemouth, is that where you got demobbed?
FP: I was posted to Lossiemouth.
HB: From France.
FP: From France.
HB: So in that bit, after D-Day, and before you came back to Lossiemouth, what were you doing in France at that point?
FP: What were we doing? Well we, I was with a, this French woman and I spent most of my time with her.
HB: Yeah, did, what were you doing in the RAF, between?
FP: By that time the RAF in La Visinet it was just a few people. The signs of battle by aeroplanes and things like that that, they were long since gone. We had a job feeding our own, the troops on the land and shoeing them, stuff like that you go out and get them and [pause].
HB: So, right, so you came back to Lossiemouth and then you were sent to Blackpool to be demobbed.
FP: That’s right.
HB: And where did you go from demob, when you were demobbed? Can you remember what year that was?
FP: When I was demobbed er, no I can’t remember.
HB: Did you go, you went to demob did you go on leave and go home or did you?
FP: Went on leave, from Blackpool Distribution Centre, where they give you the clothes and all that.
HB: So where did you go after you were demobbed?
FP: I went to Bridge Motor Bodies in London and got a job as a welder.
HB: Right, so you worked down in London for a while.
FP: Pardon?
HB: You worked in London for a while.
FP: Yes.
HB: Can you remember when you went back, what date, what sort of year you went back to France then, after that?
FP: Well it would be, [pause] it was, seven was in there somewhere.
HB: What, 1947 do you think.
FP: Yes. I think so, ’47.
HB: Obviously I’ll look some of this up, if I can, on the record. [Cough] When, what rank were you when you were demobbed, Fred?
FP: I was, I was a Corporal.
HB: Corporal?
FP: The other men were, I had were, was, what was it, [pause] I suppose AC2.
HB: AC2, right. And that was the rank when you were demobbed?
FP: Yes. No, LAC. LAC.
HB: Right, well thanks, that’s really interesting Fred.
FP: It’s not, because I’ve got nothing permanent, haven’t got a good picture for you.
HB: No, no, no, it’s your story, Fred, it’s your story, it’s what you can remember. We all get a little bit.
FP: I certainly am. I certainly am.
HB: Did you actually go into any of the bombers? The Lancasters and the Halifaxes?
FP: Yes. I used to lay on the tail of a Martinet, or a Spitfire, to stop it from -
HB: To stop it lifting, yeah, when they were winding the engine up.
FP: Lifting. When they were revving it up.
HB: And that was all up at Silloth and Maryport, places like that.
FP: We had, we had oh, Hurricanes, Spitfires, Martinets, Oxfords, and all that.
HB: Hmm. So, right.
FP: I’m making hard work of this for you.
HB: No, no. It’s your story Fred. It’s your story, it’s how you want to tell me, and what you can remember. Did you do any training as an air gunner?
FP: No.
HB: You didn’t, right.
FP: No, but believe me I have seen more tracer bullets in flight at close range, [laughter] and I’ve had no training for that.
HB: I mean, can I take you back a bit Fred, I’m intrigued with this long pencil business with the pilot. Just tell me how that worked.
FP: Well, you got a sliding cabin and that’s the canopy as he enter to tell the guy that he want in, you can’t do it when you’re firing bullets, but you can do it by giving him a poke with a pencil.
HB: And then you can tell him what, which way to turn?
FP: You know, you would, couple of sharp pokes and then try and you know, you’ve had enough of it, you’ve got to get out of it, because some of these young guys, they weren’t looking to make, they weren’t looking to do the job properly, they just want to go up there and fire as many bloody rounds off as they can.
HB: Right, and did you do any firing from the Martinets or were they, was that just towing the target?
FP: That’s just towing the target.
HB: Well that’s really interesting Fred. What I’ll do, I’ll end the [cough].
FP: We had a, flight written book, should be around somewhere, every time you took off, you signed the register and you went and did your tow targeting, see, and then come back, and then got the tables ready to do some more. You had to pack the parachute and all that.
HB: Well you’d need a parachute in that job! Did you lose any planes when you were there?
FP: Martinet.
HB: Did you lose any Martinets?
FP: Quite a lot, and nice, good friends. Quite a lot of them.
HB: And the pilots of the Martinets, were they always the same or did they then go on to fly other aircraft?
FP: Well, the pilots were usually officers, but I outranked them. I think they were put on rest, given a light job and then most probably put them back on afterwards.
HB: So they’ve come away from being shot at and they’re flying a plane that’s being shot at! And that was light duties!
FP: Believe me, when I say shot at, you could say that. I don’t know whether you’ve ever, if you’ve ever seen tracers being fired at night time – it’s frightening.
HB: Yeah. So, [cough] you must have, you must have seen a lot of people come through.
FP: And not come back.
HB: Yeah, and get, so they were going from there -
FP: We had a lot of our own, ‘cause we had these Polish aircraft, and they were training and of course we only wanted a bit more of that because they were going up and flying over there and helping us [emphasis] out.
HB: Hmm. Yeah.
FP: But they were mad, they were, the Poles, they were mad. Screaming and bawling and shouting, firing anywhere.
HB: Oh dear, right, yeah. So, you’re flying up and down off the west coast, off Cumberland and I presume you did most of this over the sea did you?
FP: That’s right.
HB: And then you moved south, to go to France.
FP: Yes.
HB: So did you move down before D-Day, or did you go down after [emphasis] D-Day?
FP: Before.
HB: Right, and what were you doing, were you still towing targets down there?
FP: Was I still? Oh yes.
HB: And can you remember where you were based down there?
FP: RAF Silloth.
HB: Right, now, that’s really interesting Fred. If it’s all right with you, I’m going to take a photograph of your medals, ‘cause we don’t take anything away, we, everything stays here, going to take a photograph of your medals, and if I can, if you’ll let me, I’ll take a photograph of you as well. How’s that?
FP: Oh, yeah.
HB: Good man. Right, let me get a, let me just finish.
FP: I’m sorry it’s not been a rapid response.
HB: No! Fred, Fred, you don’t need to worry about that. You don’t need to worry about that. It’s your story and it’s what you can remember.
FP: I don’t want to be down here on what they call a goose chase. Everything I’ve put on there, it really happened.
HB: Yeah. That’s not a problem. That’s not a problem Fred. I’m just gonna finish the interview, it’s 11.20, I’ll just turn the tape recorder off.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AParkerF171130
Title
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Interview with Frederick Parker
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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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:28:51 audio recording
Creator
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Harry Bartlett
Date
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2017-11-30
Description
An account of the resource
Fred Parker was born in Skegness and worked with boats and built pillboxes before the war. He later joined the Royal Air Force and served as ground personnel, where he worked at an air gunnery training unit at RAF Silloth with target tugs. Fred spent time in Cumberland, Scotland and France and he talks about some of the people he came across and the loss of friends. Fred went to work in France and London after the war.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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France
Great Britain
England--Cumbria
England--Lincolnshire
Scotland--Moray
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1944
1945
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
Carolyn Emery
1 Group
air gunner
aircrew
ground personnel
Martinet
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Silloth
Spitfire
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/314/3471/PParsonsCER1601.2.jpg
f30942c1b075659474b5aa7629b82c74
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/314/3471/AParsonsCER160817.2.mp3
8cf12b67c2a559ad9b550a29e665f2d3
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
Parsons, Cecil
Cecil Edgar Robertson Parsons
Cecil E R Parsons
Cecil Parsons
C E R Parsons
C Parsons
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Cecil Edgar Robertson Parsons DFC (b. 1918, 400419 Royal Australian Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-17
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.
Identifier
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Parsons, CER
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: Ok. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Doreen Burge. The interviewee is Cecil Parsons. The interview is taking place at Mr Parson’s home in Ocean Grove, Victoria, Australia on August the 17th, 2016. Now, is it alright if I call you Boz?
CP: Certainly.
DB: Ok. Can you tell me what your birth date is?
CP: 12th of September 1918.
DB: Right. So you’re soon to turn ninety eight.
CP: That’s right.
DB: And where were you born?
CP: In Colac, Victoria.
DB: So not too far from here.
CP: No. No.
DB: And you grew up on a farm or —
CP: Yes. My father had a property near Beeac. Between Beeac and [Kirk?], and that’s where I was born, the youngest of a family of six.
DB: Right. So did you have a cattle farm or sheep?
CP: It was a mixed farm, yes, and we all had horses.
DB: Yes.
CP: All the kids had horses. Dad was a very great cattle man and all the children grew up on horses. I was the youngest of six.
DB: So I bet you could ride well.
CP: Yes. I could. I could ride. I remember riding behind dad in the buggy and I’d always been told that if I looked around I’d fall off. And I did [laughs]
DB: Proved the point to you.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And so can you tell me any more about your family background?
CP: Yes. My mother came from a property near Colac. She was born in the country. My father was born in Gippsland and was on a farm from a very early age, and became a farmer and a very good stock man. And he died when I was only seven so — but I was the youngest of a family of six. So we were very much a country family.
DB: Yes. So your father came from Gippsland.
CP: Came from Gippsland. Yeah.
DB: And moved to Colac.
CP: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right.
DB: When he married.
CP: He came to Colac because my mother’s family had property at Colac.
DB: Right.
CP: And he bought into that family. Into that family’s properties. Yeah.
DB: And so when he died did you all still stay on the farm?
CP: No. We moved in to Geelong.
DB: Right.
CP: Because I was, when he died, he died when I was about seven and I was the youngest of the family of six, and we moved into Colac and then to Geelong.
DB: Yes.
CP: As a family.
DB: So the farm, the farm was sold.
CP: Yes. Sold off.
DB: Yes. And so what — you did your schooling in Geelong.
CP: In Geelong. Yes.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yes.
DB: And your brothers and sisters were all there too.
CP: All educated in, in Geelong. Yeah.
DB: So you haven’t moved too far away.
CP: [laughs] No.
DB: That’s right. And so after your schooling what did you do?
CP: I went to, I went to school in Geelong and after schooling I went to university in Melbourne, and into residential college. Trinity College. And —
DB: So that’s at Melbourne University.
CP: Melbourne University.
DB: Yes.
CP: And at the end of those three years it was 1939 and the war came. And I went to the war.
DB: And so what made you decide to go, go to the war?
CP: It became almost automatic I think at that time. I thought of nothing else but going to the war when I finished my university degree in ’39 and went straight in to the air force.
DB: So you were twenty one then or about twenty one.
CP: Twenty one.
DB: Yes. And what made you go for the air force rather than the army or the navy?
CP: Family. Cousins. Friends. And also I was very much attached to flying. My cousins had been flying, and there wasn’t any other thought of doing anything else.
DB: So you really wanted to be a pilot.
CP: Yes.
DB: Right from the start.
CP: Yes.
DB: Yes. Now I’m just going to stop this for a minute to make sure we can hear you alright.
[recording paused]
DB: So Boz do you recall where you signed up? Was it in Melbourne or —?
CP: Indeed in Melbourne. I was, I was at university at the time.
DB: Yes.
CP: And so that was — signed up in 1940 I think.
DB: And so where was your training, most of your training held? Do you remember?
CP: Yes. Indeed. I went almost straight to Narromine and started flying on Tiger Moths.
DB: So is that in New South Wales?
CP: Yes.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yes. In central New South Wales. Near Forbes.
DB: Ah yes.
CP: Yeah. And that was the main training. This was early on in the war because it would have been in November of 1940.
DB: Yes. Yeah. And so what did your training while you were at Narromine — what did that involve?
CP: It was just an introduction to flying. We flew Tiger Moths.
DB: That would have been fun.
CP: Yeah. It was. It was something I had wanted to do and hadn’t been able to afford to do, and so I lapped it up, it was great fun.
DB: Yes.
CP: And great. I was the fourth course going through so it was early days and they were a wonderful batch of recruits at that time. You know, they had the pick of the, pick of the bunch really.
DB: So how, how had they selected the people to become pilots? Did you have to sit a test?
CP: Yeah. Quite a, quite an interesting interview, and people who were interested in flying particularly so I got first preference. And you needed to have a reasonably good background in education. Well, I’d been to university so I was well up in the education area.
DB: So what had you studied at university?
CP: I was studying science.
DB: So that would have helped.
CP: Oh yes, yes. Very much so.
DB: Yes. Yes. And so after you did the interview that was when you were selected to be trained as a —
CP: And interestingly enough at that time there wasn’t much of a wait.
DB: Oh right, yes.
CP: They were looking for people. And so we went straight into training.
DB: Right.
CP: It was marvellous. And I think I had to wait for about two or three months, that was all, before I was called up.
DB: Yes. And how did your, the rest of your family feel about what you were doing?
CP: Well I only had a mother. I was the youngest of a family of six and, dad had died when I was only about six.
DB: Yes.
CP: And so it was all up to mum really but —
DB: And how did she feel —?
CP: Well —
DB: About you becoming a pilot?
CP: I don’t know.
DB: She didn’t try and stop you.
CP: No. Certainly not.
DB: And did you have, did any of your —
CP: I’d been to university.
DB: Yes.
CP: And, you know I was pretty well on the —
DB: You were pretty independent.
CP: I was independent.
DB: Yes. And did any of your, did you have brothers who -
CP: Yes. I had an elder brother, five years older than me, he was a medico.
DB: Right.
CP: He did medicine and he went straight into the army.
DB: Yes.
CP: At that time. In 1940.
DB: So it was just the two of you who served then or did some of your other siblings —?
CP: No. I had four sisters, and they all went into something or other. Jan, the eldest was a secretary in Geelong and that’s where she stayed. She was a [Frank Guthrie?] secretary. And my brother was a doctor and he went into the services.
DB: Yes.
CP: He finished his medical degree. He was five years older than me.
DB: So did quite a few of your friends from that, from university sign up as well?
CP: Yeah, practically all of them.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. At that time in 1940 it was, everyone was joining the services.
DB: Yes. Yeah. So how long was your training at Narromine?
CP: Five months and then we went on to more advanced aircraft at another place.
DB: So do you remember where that — where you went after Narromine?
CP: I went to [pause] gee whizz I just can’t quite remember now.
DB: Was it in New South Wales as well?
CP: In New South Wales. Yes.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yes.
DB: And then did you then head overseas or?
CP: No [pause] Yes I did, I did. In November of 1940 I got on a ship and sailed to England. Yes. I did indeed.
DB: Do you remember which ship you went on?
CP: No. I couldn’t tell you.
DB: That would have been —
CP: The [unclear] sounds, you know, sounds familiar but I couldn’t tell you for sure.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And there were a lot of you I guess.
CP: A lot. A lot. Yeah. 1940 it was.
DB: And what —
CP: We got to England, you know, at the height of the Battle of Britain. Yeah. A very interesting time really.
DB: I bet.
CP: To be in London.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: Yeah. A different world.
DB: So what sort of experiences did you have when you arrived in London?
CP: Well we pitched in to the very height of the war really. The Battle of Britain had been and London was blacked out. It was an exciting time. It really was.
DB: Very different to being in Melbourne.
CP: [laughs] Absolutely. Yeah. It really was. England was, you know, really fighting a war.
DB: Yes. Yes. And so where, where were you sent to? When you —
CP: We went — I was sent up to Yorkshire and did my training up in Yorkshire. And it was interesting, an exciting to be, to be in England.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: Yeah. Very exciting time. And it was new to me. I’d never been overseas before.
DB: No. Very exciting.
CP: You know. A very exciting time. Yeah.
DB: And what, so which base in Yorkshire were you sent to when you first arrived?
CP: Went to Linton on Ouse.
DB: Right.
CP: Which was a wartime station. Very famous station actually, Linton, and expanding like mad. We had bases all around us you know and Linton itself was a, had been a permanent air force station before the war and had permanent buildings.
DB: Right.
CP: But they were the only permanent buildings we were ever in. We were in Nissen huts most of the time.
DB: And it would have been cold.
CP: Yeah. Cold [laughs] yes.
DB: So you continued training when you got to Linton.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And what, what aircraft?
CP: And then we went on old Whitleys.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. Early on. And I went from Whitleys, very temporarily onto Halifaxes while I was a second pilot, and then I went back to Whitleys as a, as a captain in, at Linton. So I got to know that area very well. But flying during a winter in England in RAF Bomber Command on Whitleys, a very early, early aeroplane.
DB: And what, how did you find flying a Whitley compared to —?
CP: Oh it was, I thought it was marvellous. You know. First time in a big aeroplane. You know.
DB: Yes.
CP: Big twin engine aeroplane.
DB: So what crew did you have with you?
CP: A crew of five.
DB: Right. Yes. Yeah. And were they, were they all English? The crew you were with on the Whitleys?
CP: Mixed. Mixed. But mostly English. Yeah. Just, I had an Australian navigator.
DB: Yes.
CP: And the Australians were just sort of coming in.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: But it was an exciting time, 1940.
DB: Yes.
CP: And ’41.
DB: And how were your crews formed at that time? Were you told who you were going to fly with or did you get to form your own crews?
CP: Well very limited amount. We went to a sort of a base and we were really just thrown together. You know, you didn’t have much choice.
DB: Right.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes. So did you stay with that crew then for quite a long time?
CP: Over a year.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: So you, do you remember when it was you started your operations?
CP: Yes. About September/October 1940.
DB: Ok. Yeah.
CP: Early on.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. Really early on.
DB: So you did some training though for a while.
CP: Oh yes.
DB: And then —
CP: Yeah. I couldn’t tell you exactly but I would have thought probably my first operations were the beginning of ’41. We would be training up until that time.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. But they were, you know they were early operations in Bomber Command. 1941.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: So your first operations were on the Whitleys.
CP: Yes.
DB: Or did you do all your ops on —
CP: I did some as a second pilot on Halifaxes, because they were on the same squadron. On the same airfield. And Halifaxes were — I think somehow or other they must have been short of, short of second pilots I think and they tossed us in there to get air experience really. And then we went back to fly as captains on the Whitley.
DB: Right. Yes. So do you remember how many operations you did on each, each aircraft?
CP: Well I did five as a second pilot on Halifaxes to start with. And then I went back to Whitleys, and I did twenty eight operations over Europe in the Whitley.
DB: Right.
CP: Which is a tour.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. Anything between twenty five and thirty.
DB: Yeah.
CP: And then you got taken off.
DB: And did you have the same crew?
CP: Crew.
DB: Through most of that time?
CP: All the time.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Yeah.
DB: So tell me, tell me what it was like doing your first few operations.
CP: Well the first few operations I did were on Halifaxes as a second pilot. And in fact I didn’t even know where the controls were on the Halifax, you know. You just learned what to do for, you know, raise the undercarriage for the captain, you know. It was, you were really there for experience.
DB: Yes.
CP: To get operational experience.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Yeah. And it was, it was an exciting time. It really was. We were up in Yorkshire then. Lissett.
DB: And do you remember where you flew? Which? What the targets were?
CP: We did everything over Europe. It was a sort of acme of things was to be able to go to the big city. To go to bomb Berlin, you know. And I did that quite early on actually as a second pilot on the Halifax. That was the first trip.
DB: And what did you think?
CP: Oh it was just unbelievable. You wondered what was happening really, you know. You’re so [emphasis] inexperienced and it was such an extraordinary experience, you know. You can’t describe it really.
DB: No. And was the pilot you were flying with quite experienced at that time?
CP: Well I suppose they were very inexperienced. But they were experienced in our view at the time you know. They were a captain of a Halifax, you know. It was just unbelievable.
DB: Yes.
CP: You know.
DB: Yes.
CP: Wonderful aeroplanes.
DB: And did you have any difficult, particularly difficult operations? Or ones that stand out?
CP: I thought they all were [laughs]
DB: I bet they were.
CP: We, very early on I remember we landed at a base back in England that turned out to be what was known as a Q site. It was actually, it was a dummy airfield. We shouldn’t have landed there [laughs] I mean the war was very early on. It was really quite amazing that you survived. But —
DB: And so on —
CP: We landed on I was only the second pilot. I didn’t know, you know, what was happening but he landed on this and we only [pause] we hadn’t even touched down. We were just in the approach and all the lights went out. He had to land, he was, you know he’d committed to land you see.
DB: Yes.
CP: And it wasn’t on an airfield at all.
DB: So what did he —
CP: It was a dummy airfield, you know, but fortunately it was, it was serviceable you know.
DB: So you did managed to land there?
CP: We landed. Yeah. You know. The aircraft stopped you know. No lights. Nothing. Pitch dark. And the tail gunner called out, ‘Christ skipper. We’re in a cornfield.’ [laughs] We’d landed on this dummy airfield. We’d gone through a hedge and stopped and then I mean fortunately there was, it was open country.
DB: Yes.
CP: And we were — no damage done. Flew out to an airfield. At least taxied out to an airfield the next morning.
DB: So you were able to —
CP: Yes. Take off next morning. Yeah.
DB: There was an airfield nearby that you could get to —
CP: Yeah.
DB: And just take off again.
CP: Yeah.
DB: I wonder what the farmer thought who owned the cornfield? [laughs]
CP: [laughs] Yeah. Extraordinary.
DB: So that was, that was one of your early?
CP: That was very early on.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. I then became an experienced captain after that.
DB: And tell me about some of the ops that you did when you were a captain.
CP: Oh we did, we did everything I think. From flying to the big city. Which was going to Berlin. To going to places like on the French coast to St Nazaire. To the aircraft [pause] submarine pens.
DB: Yes.
CP: Used to do a lot of bombing of that area. Oh, you know. We had a very interesting time, you know, quite exciting.
DB: Yes. And did you, did you get to know many of the other people in the, on the squadron?
CP: Oh yes. Did. Yeah. You were living with them.
DB: Yes and what were the losses?
CP: At that time not too many Australians.
DB: No.
CP: And we had an Australian crew but mostly Englishmen. Mostly English people.
DB: And did you have any Canadians or New Zealanders?
CP: Yes. Yes. A lot.
DB: And which, which squadron were you with?
CP: I was with first of all I was with 35 Squadron which was an RAF Halifax squadron. But then I went back to Whitleys and went into 58 Squadron.
DB: Right.
CP: Again, it was again an English squadron. They were all English squadrons.
DB: Yeah.
CP: We were just Australians crews in English squadrons.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. It was early times. It was 1940, ‘41.
DB: So if you started your operations in ’41 do you remember when it was that you finished your twenty eight or thirty? What —
CP: I did them in a year. In about a year. Went through a winter. You were on standby often in the winter time. You can’t, can’t always fly, I mean the weather’s so bad.
DB: So you’d be all briefed and ready to go.
CP: That’s right. Yeah. Get cancelled. A lot of cancelled.
DB: And how did you find that when you’d be all ready to go and —
CP: Oh it’s, you get all keyed up to go you know, it’s a nuisance really. It’s a bit of a mind.
DB: You’d rather just get going.
CP: Get going. Yeah.
DB: Yes. Yes.
CP: You would be all keyed up to go and [pause] oh it’s a long time ago.
DB: And are there any other of your particular operations that stand out in your mind?
[pause]
CP: Oh yeah. Any, any operation which was going to take you to Berlin was something that stood out.
DB: Yes.
CP: Because it was the, it was the furthest to go in most cases and not the best place to go.
DB: No. Well defended.
CP: It was well defended.
DB: Yes. Yes.
CP: Yeah. You weren’t terribly keen about going to Berlin. [laughs]
DB: And what —
CP: I went to Berlin as a second pilot on a Halifax but then I went about three times when I was captain of a Whitley.
DB: So you had a few trips there.
CP: I had. Yeah. I’d have to have a look at my logbook.
DB: And were they flying as far as Milan and going to Italy at that time?
CP: Oh yes. Yeah. Interestingly enough I never went to Italy. I got briefed to go to Italy on a couple of occasions, and we always wanted to go to Italy because it wasn’t heavily defended.
DB: No. No.
CP: And you know it was much more fun to go there where there weren’t too many guns. To go to the Ruhr was like going to the bloody home of arsenal.
DB: Yes. Yes.
CP: That was the most heavily defended area in Germany of course.
DB: Yes.
CP: The Ruhr valley and then Berlin was not nasty [unclear] but it was much further. And you had a lot of flying over the north part of Germany to get to, and then you’d go. We used to fly almost on the coast, on the north coast of Germany. And then you’d fly almost as far as Stettin and then turn down to the right to go down to Berlin and it was a bloody long way.
DB: And defended all the way I guess?
CP: Well, no not too bad really because you could fly over the North Sea for a long time which was a great help. And that was alright, flying over the North Sea, unless you came across a gun boat, and you never knew where they were. And you’d get a bloody burst from that [laughs] yeah.
DB: Yes. That would —
CP: A ship.
DB: A bit of a shock coming out of the blackness wouldn’t it?
CP: That’s right.
DB: Yes. So the furthest target you went to would have been Berlin.
CP: It would. Yeah.
DB: Yes. Yeah. And the closer ones were the French. The submarine pens.
CP: Oh going the other way yeah. Yeah, yeah.
DB: Yes. So you did a few of those as well.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes. So you had the same crew with you for that, for all your ops.
CP: Well except when I went as a second pilot and I was going with a totally different crew but when I started flying as a captain I had the same crew.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And did they all survive the war too?
CP: Yes.
DB: They did.
CP: Yeah. Yeah. We were lucky.
DB: Yes. And so you completed your tour at thirty. Thirty operations?
CP: I only did twenty eight.
DB: Right. Yes.
CP: You were meant to do thirty.
DB: But they were happy for you to finish at that point.
CP: That’s right. It worked out that way.
DB: Yes. And what did you do then?
CP: I went instructing.
DB: So —
CP: That was the normal thing.
DB: Yes.
CP: But I must have come back to Australia, you see. When did I come back? I came back. We were all itching to get back as soon as the Japanese came in you see, my first lot of flying was well before the end of 1941. You see I was flying in 1940.
DB: Yes.
CP: In England.
DB: Yes.
CP: And, you see, the Japs didn’t come in until December ’41. So, and none of us came back to Australia until ’42.
DB: And you were pretty keen.
CP: I’d been very early. Very early on. I was the fourth course to go through.
DB: Yes. That’s early. And [pause] now what was I going to ask about? Oh where did you do your instructing?
CP: In England?
DB: Yes. When you went on to instructing after your ops.
CP: The Garden of Eden. The Vale of Evesham. Down south of Birmingham.
DB: Right.
CP: Oh what a beautiful country. The Cotswolds.
DB: Oh beautiful.
CP: I hadn’t realised what a beautiful part of England.
DB: Yes.
CP: I was there for a year instructing. Oh glorious Berkshire there to Somerset.
DB: So you enjoyed your leave time when you were there.
CP: Lovely.
DB: Yes.
CP: England is a most beautiful place.
DB: It is very beautiful. And getting to see, see it from the air must be very special.
CP: Oh it’s lovely, it’s a beautiful country.
DB: And how did you find instructing after having been flying for so long?
CP: Oh I enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah.
DB: So you were instructing different nationalities. Were there Australians and —?
CP: New Zealanders.
DB: New Zealanders. Canadians. Yeah. Lovely. A lovely life. Beautiful. You know. Interesting people. Interesting. So they were pretty well educated you see. That’s what the beauty of it was.
CP: So they were pretty well trained by the time they got to you.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good.
CP: So at that time had the because I know my dad was trained in the Empire Air Training Scheme in Canada.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
CP: Of course I did that.
DB: Oh you did that too?
CP: Yep.
DB: So did you go from Australia to Canada did you? Before you went to England?
CP: Yeah.
DB: Right.
CP: Glorious. I hadn’t realised what a wonderful time we had. We went to [pause] I was in Calgary for the whole of one winter.
DB: It would have been cold.
CP: Cold. But skiing up in the mountains. What a beautiful country.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yes.
DB: So you did a lot of your initial pilot training in Canada.
CP: I did.
DB: As part of the Empire Air Training Scheme.
CP: Went from Tiger Moths in Narromine to Ansons in Calgary.
DB: Right. Yes.
CP: You know. What a wonderful life you know. It was a wonderful time.
DB: So you —
CP: And you know, great companions.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Doing something different, you know. Flying. You couldn’t get anything better for a young man. I’d just finished university, you know, so I was more mature than most of them and you know and just, it was wonderful.
DB: And so you —
CP: The beginning of the war.
DB: Yes. Yes.
CP: 1940.
DB: And you were with a big — big group in Canada training.
CP: Yes, yeah.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: But I think we were the third, third lot to go through.
DB: Right.
CP: You know. So it was all new. And the courses were pretty well picked, you know. The cream of the lot we were really. We were marvellous, had a marvellous time.
DB: And did you have did you feel the instructing was good there?
CP: Excellent, excellent. Some of them were almost professional instructors, you know. Some of them were American. There were senior Canadian pilots, you know. We got the best of the lot.
DB: Yes.
CP: A wonderful time. And ah, [pause] for a young Australian. I was just, I’d just finished university really.
DB: But you were ready for some adventure.
CP: Yeah. Absolutely. You know.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: You know. I wasn’t young. I was twenty one, twenty two, twenty three.
DB: Yes. There were some younger than that weren’t there?
CP: Oh yes. A lot.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. So did you, did some of the people you trained with in Canada go on to the same squadron as you? Did you keep some?
CP: Yeah. Not a lot but you know, quite a few went through the procedure, you know. I think I had one or two that were on [pause] in my crew that had come right through. Yeah.
DB: So did most of the people you trained with survive the war?
CP: I couldn’t tell you.
DB: No. Did you —
CP: I don’t know. You see, because wars sort of go on don’t they? I came back and went into the war in the Pacific.
DB: Right.
CP: You see.
DB: Yes.
CP: I went through a tour of operations in Europe, and then I came back to Australia just after the Japs came in at the end of ’41. And started all over again.
DB: So where were you based then? Were you based somewhere in Australia or — ?
CP: Came down to Darwin.
DB: Right. Yes. That would have been very different flying.
CP: [laughs] quite a difference.
DB: Yes.
CP: Quite a difference.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: So just getting back to England and Bomber Command your son, Bill mentioned that you were awarded the DFC.
CP: Yes.
DB: Can you tell me how? How that came about?
CP: No. Well [pause] If you stayed long enough you you were bound to get a DFC [laughs]
DB: Oh I’m sure that’s not quite the case.
CP: It almost is but you know. Right you see, I suppose I’d done a tour in England and I had done a bit of flying when I came back to Australia, and so it wasn’t a unique thing for me to be given an award. I became a quite senior pilot very early on.
DB: Yes.
CP: On Australia.
DB: So your DFC was awarded when you were in the Pacific.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes. Yeah. So you’d done quite a bit of flying by that time.
CP: I’d done a tour of operations in Europe.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And so what, what was the actual flight that resulted in the DFC?
CP: No. In the course of time really. Nothing particular. Just having stayed the distance.
DB: Right. Yes. And you were mentioned in dispatches a couple of times too.
CP: I was. That was pretty automatic too. Provided you stayed alive. [laughs]
DB: So that was during the Pacific flying time or was that in Bomber Command?
CP: No, that was England.
DB: Right. So do you remember?
CP: No.
DB: What that, what that flight was?
CP: I honestly don’t know.
DB: No.
CP: No.
DB: So that was one of your trips over Europe though.
CP: Well, probably not a particular one. Probably having survived several I think.
DB: Yes. So were you commissioned? You were commissioned when you were still in Canada at the end of your —?
CP: No.
DB: No.
CP: I wasn’t commissioned until I’d finished a tour in England.
DB: Right.
CP: I did my first tour as a sergeant.
DB: Yes. Yeah. And then you became a flight lieutenant, is that right? At the, at the end?
CP: I was commissioned when I was in the RAF.
DB: Yeah.
CP: And I just progressed to it through the stages.
DB: Yes. So tell me the things that really stand out in your mind from your time in England. What are the sort of important memories for you of that time?
CP: I think my important memories first of all was when I was seconded to [pause] as a second pilot to 35 Squadron which was a RAF Halifax squadron as a second pilot. And I was flying with some very — I was flying with the squadron commander. Quite a senior RAF wing commander, and it was, he was in command of 35 Squadron in Yorkshire and I was sent up there as a second pilot. He was the first really professional RAF man I flew with. He was just a marvellous man. He, he was a squadron commander and he did more flying, I think, than any one else in the squadron.
DB: Do you remember his name?
CP: Yes. Robinson.
DB: Right. Robinson, yeah. And so you did your —
CP: I, you know, I worshipped him. I thought he was a marvellous bloke.
DB: So you must have been very privileged. Felt very privileged to fly with him.
CP: Well I was very privileged to fly with him as second pilot.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes. And he would have —
CP: Wonderful man.
DB: Taught you a lot I guess.
CP: Great bloke.
DB: So do you recall where you went on that flight with him?
CP: Yes. We went to Berlin. My first flight as a second pilot was with Wing Commander Robinson. He was the most unflappable bloke I’ve seen. Wonderful example.
DB: Yes. And that would have given you a great sense of security to go with him.
CP: Marvellous. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. I was very privileged. Yeah, lovely man.
DB: So that’s probably one of your most special memories.
CP: Ah, you know. Stands out in my mind.
DB: Yes.
CP: Great.
DB: Yes. And are there any others that stand out of your operations?
CP: I met some very good Australians. I came back to Australia you see. I did a tour of operations in Europe because I was over there, I was very early on. I was the third or fourth course to go through the Empire Air Training Scheme.
DB: Yes.
CP: So I was in England very early, and I came back to Australia you see, because the Japs didn’t come in ‘till, you know, we thought the war was nearly over, end of ’41, beginning of ‘42 and I’d been over there since 1940.
DB: And you’d done a year of instructing then after your ops.
CP: I did. That’s it. And then came back. To Australia.
DB: And then you were able to come back. Yes. So you came back by ship then. Yes. And there was quite a group of you coming back to continue on.
CP: Yes. Yes. Yeah. In Australia. Yes.
DB: And were —
CP: The war didn’t start out here until the end of ‘41 beginning of ‘42 and I’d been in since 1940.
DB: Yes. So you were ready to come back.
CP: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: Yes. And did you keep in contact with any of the people you flew with in England?
CP: No. Not really.
DB: No. So not any of your crew, your own crew.
CP: Yes. I left them behind. Because they hadn’t, they hadn’t done. My navigator I finished up with in England was a bloke called Wilf Stone, an old Scotch College boy, but he stayed behind. I got sent back to Australia you see.
DB: So he was still flying.
CP: He was still flying in England. Yeah. Yeah.
DB: And did he survive the war?
CP: I think so. I think so. Yeah. Wilf Stones. Funny how I forget what happened to him. He went flying with somebody else, I know. A good navigator.
DB: And what about the rest of your crew that you flew with. Were they —
CP: In England?
DB: Yes.
CP: They were all Englishmen.
DB: Right.
CP: Yeah. Yeah. They were all Englishman.
DB: And did they go on and continue with other —?
CP: Yeah. You lose track.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: And they —
CP: I came back to Australia you see. When did I come back? End of ’42. Yeah.
DB: And how was it coming home?
CP: Oh it was different world. You know.
DB: Yes.
CP: There hadn’t been a war out here when I left but there was very much a war when I came back.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And did you come back to Melbourne before you were sent to Darwin?
CP: Yeah.
DB: So —
CP: Well, I had a month’s leave I think.
DB: Yes. I bet your mother —
CP: I’d been away for a long time.
DB: Yes. Your mother would have been pleased to see you.
CP: Yeah [laughs] yeah.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. All the family were in the services then. My brother was a doctor. He was five years older than me but he was up in New Guinea.
DB: Yeah. And so how much longer were you in the RAAF then when you went and fought from, flew from Darwin? And so how long —
CP: I stayed in the RAAF after the war.
DB: So you were a career pilot for a while then, yes. So is that what you continued doing for very long?
CP: Well I thought I was going to stay there forever. But I then went. Left and I went flying commercially.
DB: Oh did you? Yes.
CP: I went flying up in Alice Springs. Bush airline. Some of the best flying I ever had I think. That was after the war.
DB: So how long did —
CP: I would have, I would have stayed on flying I think but I was getting married then. The family didn’t want a kid when flying. Yeah.
DB: Did you miss it?
CP: Yeah. I did.
DB: Yes. So —
CP: I went farming, it nearly killed me. I loved flying.
DB: So that nearly — that nearly killed you more than flying in the war did.
CP: I think so [laughs]
DB: Where were you farming then? Were you down this way again?
CP: On York Peninsula.
DB: Oh. In South Australia.
CP: That’s where my wife came from.
DB: Right. Yes. So was that cropping farming?
CP: Yes. Yes.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Yeah. I did that for two years. Then I went school teaching.
DB: And was that in South Australia as well?
CP: No.
DB: No. You came back here.
CP: Came back and I bought a farm out here. Just sort of got or had [unclear] my son’s.
DB: Yes. So that’s close by here is it? Yes. Yeah.
CP: That’s where I came from you see. We came from Geelong originally.
DB: Yes. And —
CP: I went school lteaching.. That became my profession.
DB: So did you teach primary school or secondary?
CP: Secondary.
DB: School. So what subjects did you teach?
CP: Fundamentally agg science but I taught physics and chemistry up to leaving level. Up to you know matric level. And I’d done a university degree before the war.
DB: Yes. Yeah. And so did your, do you think your experiences in the war contributed to your teaching later?
CP: Oh certainly, certainly. Certainly contributed to my, my positions as a house master and what not. Senior positions. Because they were better for you. Very much. Understanding people better I think.
DB: Yes. And you would have —
CP: I was quite mature really when I was teaching. I’d been through the war.
DB: And got, got to know many, many different people I think.
CP: Absolutely. Yeah.
DB: Which would be very helpful with teaching wouldn’t it? Yes. And did you do any more flying?
CP: I continued to fly. I continued to fly. See I went flying professionally after the war for a while. I would have gone on flying forever I think but family didn’t want to.
DB: So did you keep it up as a hobby at all?
CP: Yeah. I still fly.
DB: I saw something on YouTube that your son Bill sent me where you went flying. Was it for your ninetieth birthday?
CP: [laughs] [unclear]
DB: And there’s a film of you climbing up into just a two seater plane.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And looping the loop and all sorts of things.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
CP: That was recent. Victor Harbour.
DB: Right. Yes. And what —
CP: I still love flying.
DB: Yes.
CP: It gets in your blood. But I had some marvellous flying in Alice Springs. That was some of the best flying I ever did I think. In old aeroplanes and carrying the mail all over the territory. That was wonderful fun.
DB: That would have been very different to flying over England and —
CP: That’s right.
DB: Over Europe.
CP: Totally different.
DB: That huge expanse of country.
CP: Old planes too.
DB: So what sort of planes did you fly in Alice Springs?
CP: Flew a Dragon, DH Dragon twin engine. Two light twins. Great aeroplane. A dragon and a dragonfly. A Dragonfly was a more modern one. Had self-starters.
DB: You didn’t have to get out.
CP: [laughs] No.
DB: Crank the engine.
CP: No.
DB: And did you have crew with you at all on those?
CP: Mail plane?
DB: Yes.
CP: No. No. No. But we often had passengers.
DB: Yes.
CP: But no you were on your own. Lovely.
DB: So what would you say your main memories are of your time flying in England with, with Bomber Command?
CP: In England? In England.
DB: Yes.
CP: [pause] It was two very different sorts of flying because some of the flying was just in England either instructing or in just flying in England. Was nothing to worry about. Or flying from England over Europe which was very tense. Yeah. So some of the flying over England was beautiful.
DB: Yes.
CP: Lovely. Glorious.
DB: Yes. And how did you feel of that tension that you referred to in flying over Europe? How do you think that affected you?
CP: I think I’m, I think I’m a very fortunate person that I don’t get very tight. I’m able to relax pretty well. And I’ve been in some very difficult situations but I’m very fortunate not to get too uptight about it.
DB: Yes.
CP: But some of the flying over England — England is the most beautiful country. It really is the most beautiful place. But when you divorce it from the flying at, from war flying it’s a lovely place.
DB: Yes. And did you enjoy your, your leave times when you were in England?
CP: I did. I did. I did. It was all new to me but I, you know I had good friends to visit.
DB: Yes.
CP: And relations to visit, you know. And it felt like home, you know.
DB: Yes.
CP: England is the most beautiful place.
DB: Yes.
CP: Absolutely beautiful.
DB: So did one or either of your parents have family in England?
CP: Both did [pause] but my mother’s family more so I think although they were fundamentally Australian. Mum was born in Australia and was brought up in the country. Near Colac. And dad was brought up in Australia, a country man from Gippsland. And — but both with strong English connections.
DB: Yes.
CP: So we had a lots of relatives over there. England is such a beautiful country.
DB: It certainly is.
CP: Compared to the vastness of Australia. But I’ve been fortunate to know Australia. Because I’ve been based as an airline pilot in Alice Springs. You’d hardly call it an airline pilot. A bush pilot. [laughs]
DB: Well that would have been great flying experience to do that.
CP: Wonderful. Real. I’ve had a wonderful flying career.
DB: Yes.
CP: You know. Lovely.
DB: Yes. So you’ve had very contrasting flying experience haven’t you?
CP: Absolutely. Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Because it would be very hard to compare flying over outback Australia with flying over Europe during the war.
CP: Yeah. England particularly. England. What a beautiful country.
DB: And have you been back there?
CP: Yes I have. Yeah. Yes.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. We’ve been back quite recently.
DB: And did you go back and visit your old squadron when you went back. Was it still there?
CP: No.
DB: No.
CP: I went back to Stratford. I was training in Stratford in the Vale of Evesham. What a glorious country.
DB: Beautiful.
CP: Absolutely beautiful. Yeah.
DB: Yes. And so you’ve not had much contact with your, your compatriots from that time since the war.
CP: No. No.
DB: No.
CP: Not at all. No. Not at all. England. England is just the most. It’s a garden.
DB: Yes it is.
CP: Do you know it well?
DB: I’ve been a few times. Yes. Yeah. I went with my father and he took me to his old squadron in — he was in Elsham Wolds.
CP: Oh yes.
DB: And there were a few old buildings left in 1995 when I went there with him. So —
CP: Elsham Wolds.
DB: Yes. He thought it was a beautiful place too. He loved it. He had a lot of visits back there as well. Yes.
CP: Beautiful country.
DB: Yes.
CP: Glorious country.
DB: So before we finish I suppose I should just ask if there is sort of one most important or special memory that you have of Bomber Command. Or your [pause] what’s your overall feeling of what Bomber Command was like for you?
CP: Well, I was, I was there very early on compared to what most of them went through later on. It was much more sort of an individualistic sort of operation when I was there. And I was young. I was young. I was enjoying flying. It was a new adventure for me and I just had the most glorious time in England. Glorious time. I met some lovely people and lovely families. And the war was really on then in 1940/41 and London was so different, you know. It was really a city under siege in 1941.
DB: Yes.
CP: So I feel very fortunate to have had the experience.
DB: Yes.
CP: Lovely.
DB: I’ll turn this off now.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AParsonsCER160817, PParsonsCER1601
Title
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Interview with Cecil Parsons
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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:02:15 audio recording
Creator
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Doreen Burge
Date
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2016-08-17
Description
An account of the resource
Cecil Parsons was born in 1918 in Victoria, Australia. He volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force in 1939 and trained as a pilot in New South Wales and Canada as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme before being posted to England in 1940. He was stationed at RAF Linton on Ouse, flying Whitleys with 58 Squadron and as second pilot on Halifaxes with 35 Squadron. He completed a tour of operations and describes flying operations over Europe, including Berlin and recalls an early occasion when his plane accidentally landed at a dummy airfield. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross before he returned to Australia in 1942 and served as an instructor with the RAAF. He later worked as a commercial pilot and then a schoolteacher.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Canada
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
New South Wales--Orana Region
Victoria--Geelong
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
Contributor
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Carolyn Emery
35 Squadron
58 Squadron
Anson
decoy site
Distinguished Flying Cross
Halifax
Nissen hut
RAF Linton on Ouse
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/168/3481/Rutherford, Les.1.jpg
2a360ecc2c6bd3a2271901a17ad37fe7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/168/3481/ARutherfordL150605.1.mp3
e2df55e7e391691119891be5fff5f9ee
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
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
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-12-09
2015-10-05
2015-06-05
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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Rutherford, RL
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TJ: Right well I’m here today with Mr Les Rutherford at his home in North Hykeham near Lincoln. Can I call you Les?
LR: Yes you can.
TJ: Yeah?
LR: Certainly.
TJ: Where were you born Les?
LR: I was born at Wallsend on, near Newcastle on Tyne.
TJ: Oh right yeah and -
LR: I’m a Geordie.
TJ: Oh you’re a Geordie? Not much accent. Can I ask what year you were born?
LR: 1918.
TJ: 1918. Right. So um brothers and sisters?
LR: Yes I had three brothers and three err and four sisters, yeah.
TJ: And your parents? Did they, so you were born just at the end of the First World War.
LR: Just at the end. Just before -
TJ: Were your parents -?
LR: October.
TJ: Was your father involved in the First World War?
LR: He was in the navy.
TJ: And he survived?
LR: Oh yes, yes.
TJ: Jolly good.
LR: Yes, he survived. Yes he lived to a ripe old age as well. He was ninety seven.
TJ: Good for him. And so where did you come in amongst the siblings?
LR: I was the eldest.
TJ: Oh right so your father definitely survived then.
LR: Yes. [laughs]
TJ: Did your dad used to give you tales of the navy?
LR: Oh my dad was a great tale teller. We were inclined to disbelieve him. We used to think he was shooting a line half the time.
TJ: Really?
LR: Yes we used to laugh at him.
TJ: Yeah.
LR: But some proved to be true actually.
TJ: What, how old were you when you left school?
LR: I was fourteen when I left school.
TJ: And what did you do straightaway then?
LR: I lived with my grandmother who had a general dealers business and she died just a matter of weeks, a week or so before I left school and I’d often helped her in the shop to give her a break you know, and when she died I went into the shop to work. The funeral was going on and things like this and looked after things and then in her will she left the business to my mother. My mother came and took over the shop and I carried on err running the shop from then on. From, from fourteen, I carried on running the shop doing all the buying, selling and all the lot and it was hard work but it was a, it was a good business because it was right on the entrance to the big shipyard, Swan Hunters, in Wallsend. So in the morning we got all the passing trade from the workmen for their cigarettes and things like that and then we had good passing trade and a local trade it was marvellous, it was a very thriving business and then of course when the war began I was called up into the army and my mother said, ‘well I will go in the business until such time as you come home again,’ she said, ‘and when you come home when the war’s finished I will retire and you will take over the business as your own and pay me a pension.’
TJ: What had your dad been doing during those years?
LR: Well my dad was working.
TJ: What did he do?
LR: All sorts of things. He was um, my dad was a miner and he had a very bad accident down in the mines which stopped him doing that for a while and then he was went to work on the engineering works as various different things. So he was more or less a labourer.
TJ: I see.
LR: I think, you know he was basically a miner so when he went there in to the engineering works he was just doing anything that was going.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: He worked on building for a while, and bricklaying but then he went back in to the engineering works again.
TJ: So you got your call up papers for the army.
LR: Yeah.
TJ: What did you think of that? Was it what you would have chosen?
LR: No I would have chosen the RAF but um I wasn’t given any option.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: I was in the second batch of the militia which were, before the war there was a conscription scheme where they were calling youths of eighteen up for a period of military service and they called the first batch up and while they were doing their three months or so the war broke out so they went straight into the army and then I was in the second batch and I was called up in October and straight in to the army. No choice.
TJ: What, you were about eighteen then?
LR: I was twenty one then.
TJ: Twenty one by then?
LR: I was called up a week before I was twenty one.
TJ: Right. Yes.
LR: Spoiled my mother’s celebration party [laughs]. She wasn’t too pleased. She’d made all the arrangements.
TJ: I understand you were a despatch rider. Did that, did that start soon after? Or
LR: That started straightaway.
TJ: Straightaway yeah.
LR: That’s, that’s I went into the Royal Army Service Corps with the 51st Highland Division and after the basic training we went down to Aldershot and there we were allocated vehicles and I became a despatch rider.
TJ: Were you experienced at riding a motorbike?
LR: Oh we’d had motorbikes before the war. Yes, yes I was.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: So it was a natural thing.
TJ: Yeah. And where did you do your despatch riding?
LR: I like motorbikes yes. I enjoyed it.
TJ: Yeah. Whereabouts did you do the, the job? Did you
LR: Well.
TJ: You were in the England, or
LR: In France to start with. We um we went across to France in January of 1940.
TJ: Yeah.
LR: And then we, err I motorcycled across pretty much the whole of the north of France. We were stationed up in the north of France and I was all over the place up there of course on the job and then we moved across in to, on the German border. In Alsace Lorraine.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Near Metz and we were there when the Germans invaded and they moved the division across from there to positions in northern France to try and stem the German advance and then when Dunkirk took place, when they decided to evacuate the army, our division was left behind to fight a rear guard action to try and hold up the Germans while the evacuation took place and then when the evacuation took place they said that any troops left in France then should be given up as lost.
TJ: Really?
LR: Ahum and there were still some boats trying to get in. We were eventually, the whole, pretty near the whole division was, what was left of them, was surrounded in a place called St Valery.
TJ: Ahum
LR: And St Valery is famous for when Scotland with the 51st division, the 51st division was a purely a Highland division with a few Englishmen in it, I was one of them, and they were surrounded in this place and it was obvious they were going to give up the next day. We’d got to surrender. There was no choice and another chap and I decided that that wasn’t good enough and we put out in to the channel on a door and paddled away and we’d seen ships going in further along the coast and they were going directly into the place and then out, straight out and then forming a, and going away across towards England.
TJ: So was the sea choppy?
LR: No it wasn’t too bad.
TJ: Could you swim?
LR: Well I could swim. I’d done a lot of competition swimming and that sort of thing.
TJ: So it wasn’t too frightening.
LR: So, not for me um but this door it wouldn’t hold the two of us and just as we were getting on, on the door this chap informed me he couldn’t swim.
TJ: Oh dear.
LR: Which I thought was tremendously brave of him actually. And so he got on the door and paddled with a piece of wood and I got on the back of the raft and acted more or less as a rudder and a propeller kicking my feet and going away and we eventually got way out to sea and the next morning we were picked up by a -
TJ: Was this in the dark?
LR: This was in the dark. This was about um 10 0’clock about, you know between ten and eleven at night and um the next morning we were picked up by a French trawler and they picked us up and then later transferred us to an English vessel. Now, when they picked us up they took all my, they gave me a glass of hot rum to start with and that put me out like a light. ‘Course I’d had nothing to eat for about two or three days.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And then, they had taken all my clothes off and put me in a bunk and then they woke me up to say they were transferring me, and they wrapped a blanket around me, transferred me to the lifeboat.
TJ: And the other guy as well.
LR: And the other one, I assume. Do you know I never, ever saw him again.
TJ: Really
LR: No and I’ve often wondered how he fared because he was a bit, he had a bit of a job getting up on the, I know they threw a rope over but he was sort of stiff from the, paralysed from the waist down with sat on this raft all night.
TJ: Once you got on the fishing boat did you see him?
LR: No I didn’t.
TJ: Not even on the fishing boat?
LR: Not on the fishing boat no, the um, as I say -
TJ: Ahum.
LR: They gave me, they hauled him up first and then brought me up and they give me this glass of hot rum and it just knocked me right out.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And when I came too, when I was laid in the bunk and this chap was shaking me to say they were transferring me and they transferred me to the English ship.
TJ: What sort of ship was that?
LR: It was a big, a big cross channel type ship.
TJ: Yeah.
LR: With a lot of soldiers aboard which they’d picked up from further down the coast and um I, I contacted, after a while I went off to sleep again and then after a while I found the officer who was in charge of the lifeboat and asked him where my uniform was and he said oh we didn’t bring any uniforms. So I landed at Dover wearing a blanket and a pair of socks which this chap had given me and that’s all I had on [laughs]. Yeah so that’s, and that was the end of that adventure.
TJ: So after that how much longer were you in the army? How long was it before you transferred?
LR: Transferred. We was taken from there up to Scotland up in the Highlands and um I was up there until June of 1941. The um, meantime there was some, a notice had been posted on the unit to say they wanted volunteers for air crew duties and so I volunteered and I actually changed job in June of 1941. We went down to Stratford on Avon and we were initiated in to the differences in the drill and that sort of thing, given uniforms and oh it was absolutely wonderful. We got down there and we were billeted in the Shakespeare Hotel. We had
TJ: Nice
LR: Rooms with two to a room with sheets and beds. Beds with sheets on them.
TJ: Luxury.
LR: Oh absolutely we were sleeping on the floor for a couple of years [laughs] and um and then of course we went to initial training at Scarborough, in the Grand Hotel, afterwards.
TJ: Very nice.
LR: And then from there when we finished that course we were posted to Rhodesia which is Zimbabwe now.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: On a pilot’s course. And I passed the flying moth, the tiger moth flying course which was the initial flying course and then was sent on to twin-engined planes and I was just ready to solo on those when um the chief flying officer sent for me and said they were taking me off flying and when I asked why he said, ‘Your reactions are too slow.’
TJ: Oh.
LR: So I was absolutely devastated of course as you can imagine and I was sent up to Salisbury, this was down near Bulawayo. We were sent up to Salisbury, the capital and we were then billeted in a big hotel and I was in there with about oh I should think fifteen, twenty other men and they had all been taken off flying duties. One of them went around and asked where were we on ground subjects, you know, like navigation and things, things that, ground subjects - not flying and nearly all of us were top of the course or second top of the course and they then decided that because they were short of navigators or observers as they were then, because they were short of observers they, they had decided to take two off each course and put them on an observers course. Now whether that’s true or not I don’t know. But it salved their conscience a bit, made us look a little bit better. Well at least we didn’t fail [laughs]. But, and then of course from there I went down to East London in the Cape err to do the observers course which was, you passed three courses to be an observer. You passed as a navigator, a bomb aimer and air gunner. You had to pass all three courses and we did that successfully and then moved down to Cape Town to catch a ship home.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And came home.
TJ: Did you see much of South Africa while you were there? Did you have much time to go out?
LR: Not as much as I would like to. I would like to. I mean we were up in Rhodesia, up in Salisbury only a short distance in in their terms.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: From the [Niagara] Falls and the Zimbabwe ruins and never got the chance to visit them. I did get one weeks holiday while we were in Salisbury. Two of my friends and myself asked the flight sergeant of discipline if we, if we couldn’t have a week’s leave to see something of the country and he said leave it to me and the next day he sent for us. He said, ‘you’ve got to report down to the station and go to this err, get tickets to the Marandelles and somebody will meet you there and take you for a week’s leave on a tobacco farm’ which we did and we had a lovely week on a tobacco farm.
TJ: Did you? Yeah.
LR: Saw all the process right from growing and curing and all the whole lot.
TJ: Ahum. And did you smoke yourself at that time?
LR: Not at that time no. No. And then of course we went from there down to the unit. I would have liked to have seen more of South Africa. The journey up from, we landed initially in Durban and travelled from there up to Rhodesia. Now that travel, that route is now the scenic route, you know the great scenic route in South Africa that they all go and pay thousands for. That was that route. We went through all the old Boer countries Mafeking, Boer towns like Mafeking.
TJ: Yes.
LR: And places like that which we knew from the Boer war and it took us three days actually to go up there. And it was, it was wonderful.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Wonderful country South Africa actually.
TJ: So I understand yes.
LR: And the people were very, very good to us.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: The English people that is.
TJ: The settlers.
LR: Yes.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Not, not, not the Boers.
TJ: No.
LR: The Boers, well they used to beat the lads up.
TJ: Oh dear.
LR: Gangs of them. There was a union called the [?] which was, which meant the Brotherhood of the Wagon and, particularly in Johannesburg and Pretoria, and they used to watch out for airmen on their own and they would go and beat them up. And this happened regularly.
TJ: Oh dear.
LR: It happened to us. To my friend and myself. We happened to wander in, in, we were on the transfer down from Rhodesia down to East London. We spent a week in the transit camp between Johannesburg and Pretoria and we went, we got in to Pretoria to have a look around and we happened to wander into an area which was, we heard later, was noted for being [?] territory and my friend got slashed across the top of the eyes with a bicycle chain which was quite nasty. And err
TJ: Were you all right?
LR: I got off with a few bruises fortunately but I was, I was ok.
TJ: So let’s get you on the ship out of Cape Town. Is that right?
LR: Yes.
TJ: Yeah. To? Where did the ship go to?
LR: Went to Southampton.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: We arrived in Southampton and went from there. There was a party of us of course and we came back fairly quickly because we came back on an armed merchantmen.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: But we weren’t in convoy coming back. Going we were in convoy but coming back we weren’t in convoy and we landed at Southampton. On to Bournemouth and after a few days in Bournemouth we were sent up to Finningley which is now the Robin Hood airport.
TJ: That’s right. Yeah.
LR: And to start Operational Training Unit.
TJ: Did you get time to go and see your mum and dad?
LR: Oh yes, yes. We did get leave.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Yes. I had a nice pleasing incident actually because a very good friend of mine at home, we used to play in a band together um, he had been in Rhodesia as well and we ran across one another occasionally and we’d spend a lot of time together actually and while we were in Cape Town waiting for transit he came and in the meantime he’d passed the pilot’s course and he came and the day before we sailed and when I got home I was able to, I went to see his mother and she said, “Oh” she said, ‘Roy’s over in South Africa you know. Did you manage to meet him?’ And I said, ‘Not just meet him,’ I said, ‘I saw him just before we sailed,’ I said, ‘And he’s on his way home.’ Oh she was absolutely [laughs]
TJ: Lovely.
LR: Knocked out. Absolutely knocked out. Anyway when we got to OTU and when we got there the navigation officer got us all in his office and he said, ‘Now which half of you are navigators and which half are bomb aimers?’ And we said, ‘Well we’re all navigators and bomb aimers. We’re observers.’ So he said, ‘Oh well,’ and he counted us all up and he said, ‘you half there are navigators and you half there you’re bomb aimers.’
TJ: So it could have gone either way.
LR: It could have gone either way and err the big laugh of that was in my log book, on the results of the navigation there’s all the exam results in my logbook and the remarks at the bottom said recommended for specialist training after further experience. That was in navigation. They made me bomb aimer [laughs]. Rather typical.
TJ: So after Finningley then?
LR: After Finningley we went on a commando course on Barkston Heath for a week to toughen us up a bit and then we went to a Conversion Unit at Wigsley which is just outside Lincoln of course. In Nottingham I think or in Nottinghamshire err we did err I was with, oh excuse me. My pilot was on his second tour and he’d done his first tour on Hampdens and then later Manchesters. Now the Manchester was the forerunner of the Lancaster so all he had to do on the conversion course was not get used to the Lancaster but to get used to four engines and it didn’t take him long at all. And in actual fact I joined 50 squadron on the 1st of February of 1943 and I was there most of 1943 then.
TJ: Ahum so I understand you were a prisoner of war. What year did you, so you crash-landed in Germany.
LR: Yes we were shot down over Germany and I became a prisoner of war.
TJ: Tell us about, I read something about after when you were actually caught [guten morgen]
LR: Oh when I was, oh when they picked me up?
TJ: When they picked you up in the in the road.
LR: Yes well I’d been walking the day before. When I was shot down it was evening of course around about 8 o’clock - 7 o’clock, 8 o’clock time at night and I walked most of that night, or I tried to, I’d damaged of my leg.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: When the aircraft blew up and I damaged my leg and err.
TJ: How many of you got out?
LR: Only two of us.
TJ: Ahum
LR: I thought I was the only one but there were two of us and I walked as best I could that night and towards when it was just getting light I found myself in a small town, a big village if you like, and I was walking along and people were going to work and saying good morning to me.
TJ: Did they not look at the way you were dressed?
LR: Well they didn’t take too much notice. It was dark and I think they were used to uniforms and things like that and it was just a sort of mumbled ‘morgen’ or the way we would do is – ‘mornin’, you know and so I just ‘morgen’ and carried on and I managed to get my way out of there and on to the banks of a river and it was on the banks there were some thick bushes and I hid up in these bushes all during the day and it wasn’t very comfortable because it was, of course it was January err it was December and it was a bit cold and the next night I started to walk again and I was well on the way and I was way out in the country.
TJ: Where were you heading for?
LR: West. Generally west.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: To get towards France but not much hope mind you. I didn’t have much hope but at least you’ve got to try and the main problem was food and water of course. I had my escape kit which was just horlicks tablets. I, I was walking along this road and I heard a voice shout, ‘Halt.’ So I sort of tried the old ‘morgen’ but it didn’t work and it was three soldiers I think it was, two or three soldiers came up, and one of them shone a torch over me and I heard them say, ‘Oh Englisher flieger’ and of course rifles came off the shoulders and my hands went up and that was it.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: I was a prisoner.
TJ: Did any of them speak English?
LR: No. None of them.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: When I got -
TJ: Were they ok with you? They weren’t rough or anything?
LR: Oh yes, yes.
TJ: They were polite.
LR: They were ok. Yes. No violence at all. No.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: No. Not until I got into that place. I got the um they took me to a house and, where they were billeted obviously, and there was an officer sat behind a table. There was a stool at this side of the table which I sat on and he started to question me in very, very poor English so I pretended I didn’t understand him but then I caught, I was sat there and I got an almighty clout around the back of the head and knocked me off the stool, and there was a German stood there and he spoke perfect English. It turned out later that he’d spent a lot of time working in London and he, he started to question me and he said, He said, ‘You stand up when you talk to a German officer.’ and I thought, I stood up and he said, ‘Name, number, rank.’ I told him the rank at that time was flying officer and he said, ‘You’re not an officer.’ So I said, ‘Yes I am.’
TJ: Oh.
LR: “No you’re not,” he said. ‘Where are your badges of rank?’ So, I was wearing battle dress of course at that time and the badge of rank were on the shoulder. He said, ‘No, no, no,’ he said, ‘the badge of rank are worn on the arm.’ So I said, ‘No they’re not. Not with this uniform,’ I said. They’re worn up there.’ He said, ‘Where are your papers?’ I said, ‘I don’t carry papers.’ So he said when the Luftwaffe went over England he said they used to carry papers. I said, ‘Yeah but I’m not in the Luftwaffe. I’m in the RAF.’
TJ: [Laughs] Good for you.
LR: So he said, I might say that by this time I was beginning to get on talking terms with them. Once he’d found, not, not just quite then, he said um, I said what I do have is identity discs so I took out these identity discs to show him and they were stamped on the back – ‘Officer’., ‘So‘ he said, ‘you are an officer.” So I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh right”, he says, ‘you’ll be hungry and thirsty no doubt,’ he said, ‘I’ll go and get you something to eat and drink.’ And he went off and came back with a slice of black bread which was horrible.
Ahum.
LR: And a glass of lager which I’ve often said since was the best glass of lager I’ve ever had [laughs] it was, it was lovely and then from then on he and I got on very well together. He started talking about the rations and things like that. He said, ‘Oh the people, the people in England they’re rationed,’ he said, ‘they haven’t got any food. I said, ‘don’t talk rubbish.’ I said, ‘of course they’ve got, of course they’ve got food.’
TJ: Ahum
LR: He said, ‘But you’re rationed for your food.’ I said, ‘Oh that’s just a precautionary measure,’ I said, You want your pound of sugar, or you want two pound of sugar you go in and buy it [laughs] a quarter or half pound of butter yes, oh yeah, just go in and buy it,’ I said, ‘the rationing’ I says. ‘oh yeah it’s a precautionary measure.’ I said, ‘it’s your propaganda people that are trying, are telling you this.’
TJ: Do you think he believed you?
LR: I had him doubting. I like to think I had him doubting [laughs].
TJ: [laughs] So -
LR: So -
TJ: What sort of thing did they, did they try and get information out of you?
LR: Oh yes. Yes.
TJ: What sort of things did they want to know?
LR: Well while, while I was in, unfortunately the, the central interrogation centre for RAF personnel was in Frankfurt where I’d been shot down so I was sent straight to, to this interrogation centre Dulag Luft and put into solitary confinement. This was a psychological ploy that the Germans employed because when you’ve been in solitary confinement for a while when you come out you’ll talk your head off.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: You know and while I was in solitary confinement the chap came and said he was from the Red Cross and he wished to get news that I was safe to my relatives in Britain so if I’d just give him a few details and so he asked for my name, number, rank which was normal and then he said what squadron were you on. ‘I can’t tell you that’ I said, and then he started to ask me what aircraft were you flying, things like this. And this, he wasn’t Red Cross at all.
TJ: Yes I think you started to suspect he wasn’t Red Cross.
LR: Yes so this was one way of getting but then of course after a while they took you off for interrogation and they started asking me all sorts of questions. I gave them name, number and rank and wouldn’t give them anything else and the [noise off]. Oh that’s the post. They said, ‘Right, well, tell me,’ he says, ‘How was Squadron Leader Parks getting in to his new rank?’ Squadron Leader Parks was a flight commander on the, on the um squadron.
TJ: Your squadron.
LR: My squadron, yes. He’d been a flight lieutenant up to the day before I was shot down. He was now squadron leader. He’d been promoted to squadron leader.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And they knew.
TJ: Interesting.
LR: Yeah. And he then he shot several other little items to me and you know the idea was to shock you into saying, well and in fact he actually did say yeah we know all about you, you know. So I said well if you know all about me then you know I’m not a spy. This is what they were implying that you must be, you could be a spy you see. If you know all about me you know I’m not a spy and anyway I went off and I went back into the cell and then because it was nearly Christmas instead of being in solitary confinement for about seven days or a week or something like that or ten days they let us out early on Christmas Eve and put us, all the prisoners they’d taken, put us in a big room all in together and err -
TJ: Were you all British? Or
LR: Yes.
TJ: Other nationalities? Mostly British were you?
LR: Mostly British yes. Oh excuse me
TJ: So this was about 1943. Is that right?
LR: This was 1943. This was December 1943. As I say it was just before Christmas
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And then shortly after that we were transferred from there to Stalug Luft III. Crossed Germany in cattle trucks.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And that wasn’t a very pleasant experience.
TJ: I’ll bet.
LR: Because you get locked in these cattle trucks and there’s no sanitation or anything like that and most unpleasant.
TJ: How long did that take? That journey?
LR: That took just over a day. I can’t, I can’t really remember.
TJ: No. No.
LR: But you know the time went by.
TJ: Ahum. And then you pitched up.
[New person arrives in room interrupting interview]
TJ: So then you got to Stalag Luft III.
LR: Stalag Luft III.
TJ: Three. And did your heart sink when you saw it?
LR: Well it was more or less what we expected.
TJ: Was it?
LR: Yeah. We were greeted by all the prisoners that were already there. It was a new compound which I said before and they’d sent, I think we were the first, we were the first actual prisoners, new prisoners to go in there. They’d sent a group of prisoners from the other Stalags, from the other compounds to open this one up to get it ready for us for the new influx of prisoners and they were all old hands. A lot of them were people that the Germans suspected of trying to escape and err =
TJ: And yes which we all know from the film The Great Escape which is -
LR: At the cinema.
TJ: Was from that same prisoner of war camp.
LR: The main one was Wing Commander Tuck, you know, the great Battle of Britain flying ace. He was one of them.
TJ: Did he, was he one of the ones that escaped?
LR: No he was one of the ones who was in the camp when we got there.
TJ: Oh right.
LR: He was one of the ones who’d been transferred because of his activities I think. So
TJ: I understand that as you were officers they didn’t give you any work to do.
LR: No.
TJ: So you would spend your whole time trying to work out how to get out and working on escape plans.
LR: Well yes unfortunately the camp that we were in, the compound that we were in was all sand underneath and water. We tried digging a tunnel and we ran into water and we we couldn’t get a successful tunnel going under because of the water.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: But it did have one outcome. A tale which I’ve told a few times. The, we had a wireless. Now this wireless -
TJ: Where did you get that from?
LR: It was made up of parts. We had some very clever men in there you know.
TJ: Sounds like it yeah.
LR: And um it was taken to bits every evening, every day and then at six, oh to get the news at 6 o’clock at night it was assembled in secret somewhere with [?] all over the place.
TJ: Ahum
LR: And we got the 6 o’clock news from the BBC and then it was taken to bits again and the parts distributed among various men so if any part was discovered we could perhaps replace it and they wouldn’t find the whole lot. So this happened. There was a vital part went missing and we had these goons, the Germans, we called them goons, we had them, we were friendly with them more or less and we used to bribe them with cigarettes and soap to bring stuff in for us, odd little items like you know bring an egg in, a couple of eggs or something like this. Some onions or, odd things they’d bring in. So we approached one of these and said would they bring this wireless part in. No, no too dangerous, you know, so I must explain that some of these guards were special. They had, they went around the camp, they didn’t do any actual guarding. What they did, they went around the camp looking for trouble. They would walk into a room and look around to see if everybody, nobody was doing anything clandestine you know.
TJ: Right.
LR: And so we approached one of these and if they found something important they were given a week’s leave and promotion so we approached one of them and said could he bring this wireless part in and he said, ‘No, no.’ So we said you show us where, you bring that part in and we’ll show you where there’s a tunnel. So oh alright. Oh, ‘yes, yes.’
TJ: Bribery.
LR: So off he went see and we bodged this tunnel up, the one that had flooded, bodged it up like the real thing and showed him this when he came in with the part, showed him it, he went off and brought the camp commandant and the camp commandant was a recent addition, of course, to the camp. He was a new one and he came in and he was all cock a hoop oh he was going to find us and the usual sort of palaver and so he was happy, the goon got his week’s leave and he was happy, we got our wireless part so we were happy so everybody was happy all around. [laughs]
TJ: That’s a lovely story isn’t it? And I expect he got his promotion as well.
LR: Yes.
TJ: Yes yeah so I mean life in the prisoner of war camp it must have been a bit boring was it?
LR: I was fortunate in as much as I played guitar.
TJ: Oh right.
LR: And we had a camp band. A very good camp band in actual fact. We had some very accomplished musicians. The leader of the band used to play with Billy Cotton.
TJ: Really?
LR: Before the war, yes. He was lead trumpeter with Billy Cotton and we had some other good, really good musicians and when I first got there I was in hospital with my knee for a while and the same night that I was shot down our wing commander was shot down and his navigator who I was friendly with was in our camp and he was actually saving a bed for me in the room that he was in and he told this band leader that I played piano, which I did, for sing songs.
TJ: Ahum
LR: Sort of pub piano type playing you know, and I’d taken lessons and that but I wasn’t very good. So the band leader came to see me and said you know, he said, the pianist is not very happy in the job, you know, would you take over and I said well I’m not a band pianist, I said. I’m a pub pianist, I play for singsongs and things like that. I said no. I said, but I do play guitar and he said oh we’ve got two guitarists in the band now so he says you know that’s it and then the next day a gentleman came to see me, West Indian and he said. Oh he said I understand you play guitar, you know, and I said yes and he said, band guitar and I said yes. And he said well I’m the guitarist lead guitarist in the band but I don’t like playing in the band very much he’s says I’m more for calypsos and West Indian rhythms and he said if you would like to take over in the band he said I’d happily hand the guitar to you but I would like to borrow it every now and then just to keep in practice you know and I said well that’s fair enough then, that’s good and so I went into the band and that gentleman was Cy Grant.
TJ: I know that name.
LR: Have you heard of Cy Grant?
TJ: I remember Cy Grant.
LR: It was Cy Grant.
TJ: Wow.
LR: And occasionally I would take the other guitarist’s guitar, Cy would take mine and we would go and find a quiet spot to sit and I would show him the band rhythms and he would show me calypso rhythms and we’d have a bit of a sing song together but you know with playing but it was a case of how long you could do that without somebody coming along oh that’s great, can you sing this? Do you know such and such a tune? So it absolutely took -
TJ: When you had, when you played the band did the guards come and watch as well? Come and listen?
LR: Who?
TJ: The guards.
LR: Yes, they did. They did. They used to invite the commandant to the band shows that we did.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Oh he was invited. We used to do, we used to put shows on regularly and we would invite them along and very often some of the sketches lampooned the Germans and they laughed as much as anybody [laughs]
TJ: Really.
LR: Oh aye yeah.
TJ: So they do have a sense of humour.
LR: Oh yes, yes.
TJ: Did you -
LR: A funny sense of humour but -
TJ: Yeah.
LR: They would laugh at some -
TJ: Just out of interest did you have any contact with Cy Grant after the war was over?
LR: After the war was over I went to see him. You know he was touring with oh, Stop the World I Want To Get Off. That -
TJ: Ahum.
LR: That show. He was going to Nottingham and I took my daughter.
TJ: Yeah.
LR: She was about sixteen or seventeen at the time and oh she was absolutely thrilled to bits and I went and saw him there at the, went to the stage door and he came out and we had, we had a good long chat.
TJ: Lovely.
LR: And another incident with that was while I was at work I was telling someone about this and this chap came to me one day he said I was in such and such a station he said, I just forget which it was and Cy Grant was on the station, he said, so I went to speak to him and I went and told him that I worked with you. He said, you know, he told him that I work with Les Rutherford and Cy said, ‘Oh Les how’s he doing?’ and you know all this sort of thing and this chap thought he would say Les Rutherford, who’s he?
TJ: Yeah. That’s great that’s great. Interesting. So we’d better go back a bit um Stalag Luft III and how long, how many months were you there altogether?
LR: I got there in about the January.
TJ: January ’44.
LR: Of ’44 and -
TJ: And you were liberated by the Russians.
LR: We were liberated by the Russians
TJ: When would that have been then?
LR: In April of ‘45.
TJ: Right so -
LR: So just over a year.
TJ: Just over a year.
LR: Just over a year.
TJ: About fourteen months.
LR: And then they held us for a good long while.
TJ: Really? They wouldn’t let you go.
LR: They wouldn’t let us go no. I don’t know why.
TJ: But then were you held in the same sort of conditions? Did they, did they take over the role of jailers?
LR: More or less. More or less. When they, when they took over, they promised us all sorts of things. Oh we were going to get wireless sets and food and all sorts of things but none of it materialised. We still relied heavily on Red Cross parcels.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And um which weren’t very forthcoming in actual fact because I mean the German transport was in chaos so um no we were still virtually prisoners of war.
TJ: So when you did leave, was it organised? Did you all get on coaches and leave the area and -
LR: Coaches? [laughs]
TJ: [laughs] Right. I mean buses.
LR: No.
TJ: Or cattle trucks.
LR: That’s more like it. The um the Russians took us in their lorries to the, to a river. I think it was the Elbe. To a bridge. We got out of the lorries, walked over the bridge and there were American lorries waiting on the other side and the American lorries took us to their camp. It was an old German airfield and we had to wait there till, there were a lot more people there of course a lot more prisoners and we had to wait our turn for an aircraft to take us back home. In the meantime we were living off American rations and that it was absolutely wonderful.
TJ: I bet it was
LR: We got in there and oh white bread. White bread and bacon and eggs things like that.
TJ: Did they have any chocolate?
LR: Chocolate oh yes and films and you know, everything.
TJ: So you were quite happy with that?
LR: We had about, about a week there. We were itching to get home.
TJ: I bet yeah
LR: We had about a week there and then they were flying the Dakota aircraft from there to Brussels and we landed in Brussels and then they said, there some official came, and said if you want to spend the night in Brussels and go and see the town there’s money available to give you, to give you pay. Give you money. But if you want to go home there are some aircraft, a few aircraft waiting on the airfield and they’ll take you. I opted to go home and got onto a, it was a Lincoln bomber actually, the sort of bigger version of the Lancaster and they flew us back to this country.
TJ: Where did you land? Do you remember?
LR: I think it was Cosford but I’m not, I’m never quite, I’m never quite been sure about that.
TJ: Ahum
LR: I think it was Cosford but we had misgivings about what our welcome was going to be because we’d had two or three letters had been published. We used to have a camp newspaper and we used to publish excerpts from letters.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And um some of them were like one in particular I remember was a girl who wrote and said that she was getting married and she said, ‘I’d rather marry a 1944 hero then a 1942 coward.
TJ: What did she mean by that exactly?
LR: We were cowards. We were cowards because we were prisoners of war.
TJ: War.
LR: We’d given up you see.
TJ: Well she obviously didn’t know what she was talking about.
LR: There were several letters in that vein.
TJ: That must have been devastating.
LR: It was.
TJ: For you.
LR: So as I said we wondered what the reception would be when we got back home. We needn’t have worried because we stepped on to the tarmac and there were a crowd of WAAFs waiting for us. It was about, I think about 10 o’clock or so at night. It was still light of course it was June [by the time it got quite dark] and we sort of marched across the tarmac with a WAAF on each arm and went in there to be, to be fed and the other nice thing was there’d been a dance on and the band were just packing up by the time we’d eaten and what not it was about 11 o’clock and the band was just packing up and somebody told them about us being there and they put their gear back up together again and played for another hour so we could have a dance.
TJ: Oh how lovely.
LR: Yeah.
TJ: People can be lovely can’t they?
LR: So that was, that was nice.
TJ: And did you, so you were around Cosford area you think.
LR: Yes.
TJ: And then how long before you were allowed to actually go home?
LR: About the next day I think. Very quickly. The, we had experienced German, Russian, American and now English efficiency and the English was far, far superior to all the others.
TJ: Well that’s refreshing to hear.
LR: There was no red tape. We were given, we were deloused, put a tube put down with powder and stuff and deloused and we were given passes and things and shoved on the train and off home like. Just like that.
TJ: So was that the end of the war for you or did you have to be debriefed or anything like that?
LR: Oh I had to be debriefed. Yes
TJ: Before you went home or did you come back for that?
LR: I think we came back for that.
TJ: How long did you have at home then?
LR: Oh I was home for about six weeks or something like that.
TJ: I bet your parents were pleased to see you.
LR: Not particularly. They [laughs] no don’t get that wrong. On the way home, when I was stationed down here I had an aunt and uncle in York and my aunt was the pastry cook in the De Grey Rooms at York which were very famous reception rooms and I used to stop at York, get off the train and go and see her, go and have a word with her. I used to go down the back way in to the kitchens and she would get a meal on straightaway. The bacon and eggs went on as soon as she saw me and then I would pop back and get the next train up to Newcastle and so this time I did the same. She sat me down for the meal and then she said, ‘How long is it since you heard from home?’ Oh I said I hadn’t heard since about you know about the middle of last year. I said letters weren’t coming through. So she said, ‘Oh you won’t know then.’ Now, I knew then that my mother had died because she was seriously ill with cancer.
TJ: Oh how sad. How sad for you to find out like that.
LR: Yes but at least it prepared me.
TJ: Yes.
LR: For getting, for going home. I was able to get myself composed a bit.
TJ: Yeah.
LR: And, of course, while I’d been away my mother and father were separated. So my father wasn’t there. He was away somewhere else. So -
TJ: A bit of an anti-climax for you coming home then.
LR: It was.
TJ: Not what you’d expected.
LR: And the -
TJ: Not what you’d envisaged.
LR: And the thing was, you know I said we’d had the business?
TJ: Yeah.
LR: Well my mother had appointed two so called friends as executors and they’d fleeced the whole lot and the place was bankrupt so I didn’t have a very good homecoming.
TJ: No.
LR: Really.
TJ: What about your siblings? Your younger brothers and sisters.
LR: Well my younger brother was um, he was killed in the RAF. The next sister down was, she had a mental breakdown. She had epilepsy I think although they didn’t say that at the time.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: In those days and she was in a home. The next sister was just turned eighteen and she’d joined the WAAFs, not the WAAFs, the WRNS and the younger sister was trying to run the business and that was where these executors stopped in and took over. So I had quite a mess to sort out when I got home.
TJ: I bet you did. Yeah.
LR: And I had two younger brothers. I had four brothers and three sisters. That was right. Not the other way but
TJ: And were they still at school.
LR: They were still at school but without any supervision or anything like that they’d been allowed to run wild and one of them was actually on probation. He’d acted as a lookout for some kids that were burgling somewhere and he’d been caught. He was on probation. Well I nearly went mad over this you know. I went, I went up to see the welfare officer eventually. I couldn’t do anything with them. They were absolutely wild. They’d got in with this wild crown. One was ten. One was ten, the other one was eight and they were absolutely wild so um as I say, no one was eleven that was it, eleven and ten, eleven and ten. I went to see the welfare officer and said look if I don’t get these kids out of this environment they’re just going to end up in jail. I said what can I do? Have you got any advice? I said could I send them to a private school somewhere away so they said well you couldn’t afford it. So with the fees for the school but he said but there is a scheme started by the old Prince of Wales for a farm school but it means sending them either to Canada or Australia and he said it means that if you sent them you probably wouldn’t see them again cause in those days the travel wasn’t what it is now so you probably wouldn’t ever see them again so he said it’s up to you.
TJ: So what did you do?
LR: I sent them.
TJ: Where?
LR: To Canada.
TJ: Canada.
LR: And they both did remarkably well.
TJ: So it was a good thing to do.
LR: Yeah the, the elder one, he joined the air force. Went as a navigator in the air force and then became one of Canada’s leading aviation artists. And the other one he joined the air force and actually he was a mechanic with the Canadian equivalent of the Red Arrows.
TJ: And did you see them again?
LR: Well I’ll come to that. And he became a master carver. You know they’re great on these wild imitation ducks in Canada. You know where you’ve got to make them sort of sit on the water and everything like that and he won prizes all over the place and became a master carver and he did some wonderful carvings of birds and things like this and he used to send me photographs of them. And he got married and then divorced and then he got married again and the elder one phoned me up and he said, ‘How do you feel about being best man for George?’ This was the younger one. At his wedding? So I said, “Oh I don’t know I really can’t afford the fares over there at this time. “ He said, well he said if you come over he said I’ll pay your fare over, so.
TJ: What year was that?
LR: 1985. So I said well I will have to talk it over with my wife first because I won’t come without her and we’ll obviously have to raise her fare, you know and we’d only just moved in to this house in actual fact or were in the process of moving. So anyway, my stepson heard about this and said, ‘You must go and I will pay my mum’s fare.’ So both fares were paid for so we were very lucky because we were struggling a bit I must admit. Anyway we went over there and they kept it away from my younger brother. They didn’t tell him that I was going and the day after we got there they’d arranged a party there what they have in a local pub sort of thing a little bit different from ours well they’d arranged a meal there and it was my nephew’s 21s t birthday and they said it was a party for him for his birthday. So they got there, all bar my wife and myself and my nephew and they were all sat down and the elder brother John lent over to him and said, ‘I’ve got some news for you.’ he said, ‘I can’t be the best man at your wedding.’ Well the wedding was the following Saturday and he said oh God why not ,why not and by that time I was walking to the end of the table and he said well I thought maybe this guy could do it instead. ‘Jesus Christ it’s Les.’ He leapt over the table and -
TJ: Lovely.
LR: It was. A very emotional moment actually.
TJ: I bet it was yeah.
LR: It was good. It was good yeah.
TJ: Was that the first time you’d seen him since.
LR: The first time I’d since him since.
TJ: 19
LR: 1946 yeah. Nearly forty years.
TJ: Did you write all this time?
LR: Oh yes I got regular reports from various farm schools about their education and what they were doing and general behaviour and things like that and then when they reached sixteen they were fostered out to families and they took up reputation, took up a positions not necessarily farming but took a job. As it happens they went into the air force and
TJ: And you corresponded all those forty years.
LR: Yeah.
TJ: With them direct. Yeah. Actually to be honest we ought to go back a bit. Actually Les just back pedal a bit to before you were shot down over Germany to your time with Bomber Command. So how many I think they call them sorties don’t they? How many did you fly? Do you have a number?
LR: Yes. I flew, I was shot down on my twenty third.
TJ: Twenty third. Right. And was that a good number?
LR: Yes fairly good. Fairly good.
TJ: And were you always going over, was it always over Germany?
LR: Not always. I did some over Italy.
TJ: Oh right yeah.
LR: And a couple in , a couple in the beginning I did in France over the u boat pens.
TJ: Yeah.
LR: And a couple of mine laying trips as well.
TJ: So, do you keep in touch with old comrades? Apart from Cy Grant?
LR: Well of course he died.
TJ: Yes.
LR: Yes I was, the only one that I was really in touch with was our old rear gunner. But I wasn’t with my own crew when I was shot down.
TJ: Oh.
LR: I was flying, the bomb aimer had got sick and I flew in his place.
TJ: Right.
LR: And got shot down. So, which happens. But my old rear gunner he finished his second tour actually and he went to live down in Budleigh Salterton in Devon, near Exeter and we used to caravan, my wife and I, and we used to take the caravan and we used to take the caravan down there and go and visit him and also when we got rid of the caravan we used to go self catering and we’d make a point of going once a year down to Devon and seeing Frank.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Now when I stopped driving of course I couldn’t go anymore and we sort of just used to get odd phone calls and that was all and then gradually his phone calls began to get odd. His wife died and from then on he began to get bit funny and he began to get dementia I’m quite sure and we were nearly frightened to call him up because we’d called him up and he didn’t know who we were, you know.
TJ: Oh.
LR: He said, ‘Les? Who’s Les?’ You know, and he didn’t know who we were and then quite suddenly out of the blue we got a call from him quite lucid, chatting away quite merrily so we don’t know what to make of it.
TJ: What did you do for work after, after the war?
LR: Well I tried a couple of jobs. Travelling. Took a job travelling the whole of the south of England from the Humber down and that’s how I came to Lincoln. My first wife was Lincoln. We came to Lincoln as a centre so she could be at home and whatnot because I should be travelling a lot. And the travelling, I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t -
TJ: What were you selling or something?
LR: Fancy goods.
TJ: Oh right yeah.
LR: I didn’t get on with it. I wasn’t a salesman.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And then I took a job with Lincolnshire only, with United Dominions Trusts the merchant bankers and I wasn’t doing too bad with that but then they sent for me at head office and said they were going to move me down to Worthing. And I said well I don’t want to go to Worthing. They said oh you know you’ve got to move we’ve made our minds up and I said well don’t I have a say then?
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And they said, oh no you’ve got to go. I said, oh I said, now, I said, when I was in the services they said I had to go away then but since I came out of the services I said I do what I want to do.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And they said well it’s a case of either move or resign so I said, ‘Right, I resign as of now.’ Which I did. So on the way down I was going down the lift with the head clerk and he said I should think again because they’ll not change or anything like that. He says, what has happened is one of the directors sons has come out of the army he says and Lincoln is a rich prospect for him he said and they want him to take it over so I said I’m not having anything to do with that.
Ahum.
LR: So I came back. I was on the dole for about oh I should think five or six weeks. I applied to go back in to the air force. Didn’t hear anything and I was absolutely fed up. Somebody told me they wanted men on machines at Clayton Dewandre’s, a local firm. So I thought right well I’ve got to do something and I went down there. They trained me on a machine and I worked there for the rest of my working life. About -
TJ: What were they making?
LR: Mainly brakes. Power brakes and car heaters.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Mostly.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Power brakes for lorries and things like that before power brakes came in to cars and things.
TJ: So you told me you’ve been married twice and how many children have you got?
LR: I had one.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And my wife had one. I had a daughter Marion who unfortunately died about six years ago and my wife’s son is doing very well. He’s the chief engineer up at the, chief maintenance engineer at the university. He’s got a good job. His wife is a midwife sister at the hospital working her socks off.
TJ: Right. So do you have any thoughts on the way Bomber Command was treated after the war? Did that -
LR: Oh yes.
TJ: Is that something that struck a chord with you?
LR: Yes it did indeed. We were completely ignored after the war. When Churchill made his speech of congratulation, thanking the people he thanked all the armed forces except Bomber Command and all the chiefs of staff all got knighthoods and what not. Sir Arthur Harris got nothing and we were absolutely ostracised and people called us gangsters and, you know, air gangsters and all this sort of thing and we were absolutely horrified.
TJ: I’ll bet.
LR: In fact I say now even the government can’t give us even now but they’ve been forced more or less in to giving us a clasp as recognition for Bomber Command you know the clasp that goes on the medal.
TJ: Yes.
LR: It’s a cheap bit of tin. You know the clasps that they have on medals -
TJ: Yes.
LR: They’re usually nice silver sort of things engraved, all the lot.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: This is a cheap bit of well it just looks like a cheap bit of brass.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: With Bomber Command written on it, stamped on it.
TJ: Why exactly, I don’t know too much about it but why do you think Bomber Command -
LR: Largely because of Dresden.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: You know because of Dresden was bombed after the -
TJ: Yeah.
LR: But then so were a lot of other cities.
TJ: Coventry.
LR: They said Dresden was such a lovely city and all that sort of thing but Dresden, they bombed it because Stalin asked them to because Dresden was the main jumping off point for all the troops from Germany going on to the eastern front.
TJ: Yeah, carry on.
LR: And also there were a couple of munitions factories there. So in actual fact there was a legitimate target but they were saying, what these purists are saying is that there was no need to bomb it to such an extent. After the war, as what we did.
TJ: You were following orders.
LR: Just following orders. I mean.
TJ: Yeah.
LR: Churchill ordered it, he actually ordered the bombing when all’s said and done. When Stalin requested it it still had to go through Churchill hadn’t it?
TJ: Of course.
LR: And he just washed his hands of us altogether.
TJ: Not good. It must have -
LR: But members of Bomber Command feel very bitter about that.
TJ: I’m sure. Well thank you very much for sharing all these memories with me Les.
LR: Quite alright.
TJ: I think I can finish here and say goodbye.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ARutherfordL150605
PRutherfordRL1501
Title
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Interview with Les Rutherford. One
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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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:18:12 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Description
An account of the resource
During this interview Les describes his experience as a despatch rider in France in 1940 before escaping from Dunkirk and returning to the United Kingdom, eventually joining the Royal Air Force. He also describes his training in South Africa and his experience of being shot down, interrogated and imprisoned in Stalag Luft III.
Creator
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Tina James
Date
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2015-06-05
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Poland
South Africa
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Oberursel
Poland--Żagań
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943-12-20
1944
1945
50 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bomb aimer
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Dulag Luft
entertainment
Lancaster
Manchester
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Cosford
RAF Finningley
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Wigsley
Stalag Luft 3
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/325/3484/ASaundersAC170201.2.mp3
1fb4c24cc9bd7c60d04ffe2634fa1ca5
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Saunders, Sandy
Arthur Courtenay Saunders
Arthur C Saunders
Arthur Saunders
A C Saunders
A Saunders
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. The collection consists of a log book, an oral history interview and extensive medical records as well as photographs and a report. Dr Arthur Courtenay "Sandy" Saunders (1922-2017, 295329 Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) received extensive burns after an aircraft crash in September 1945 and underwent experimental maxillo-facial surgery, as a member of the Guinea-pig Club.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Sandy Saunders and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-02-01
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Saunders, AC
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today I’m in Burton Lazars talking with Doctor Arthur Saunders, Sandy Saunders, about his experiences in the Forces and in later life. Sandy, what do you remember in your earliest days?
AS: Not much, er, I was born in Bootle, Liverpool, and the third of four children and I had a quite a contented childhood. I went to a church school in the — in Bootle and, er, that was Christ Church School and then I got a scholarship at eleven to Bootle Secondary School, which was in fact a grammar school. It’s still going strong as Bootle Grammar School and, er, I managed to get a, a scholarship to do a science degree. I, I had had early feelings that I wanted to do, to do medicine but I didn’t get sufficient grades in my scholarship to, to get the five year grant. Anyway I got a sixty pounds a year scholarship and I did a — I started a, a science degree. It was a physics department run by a Professor Rotblat (R O T B L A T) who later became a — he went to Cambridge and was one of the developers of the atom bomb. He was a nuclear, nuclear physicist and, er, in 1941 I heard of a, er, a short service commission in REME for radar, radar officers so I applied for that and I, er, went into the Army and did my usual boots training and I was commissioned as a lieutenant in REME in, in 1940, ’40, ‘43, and I did two years as a radar officer, lieutenant in REME, and, er, it was straightforward work. It was working on various gun sites round the country and, er, calibrating the gun laying radar and — but it was very remote from enemy action and I suppose I was quite excited by the operations that were going on in Europe. 1941 there was the Pegasus Bridge Operation and that seemed really exciting and then there was Arnhem in 1943 and, and, er, I had a yearning to join the Glider Pilot Regiment. I applied for a transfer to the Glider Pilot Regiment in early 1945 and after the various medical checks and interviews and psychological checking and all the, the rest of the palaver I, I went off to, er, the battle course at Fargo camp in Sal— Salisbury and, er, did that and it was quite exciting, this kind of commando course, because of course glider pilots were soldiers and once the landed they were operational fighting troops. And then I went off to Booker Airfield near High Wycombe and did my ETFS, Elementary Flying Training School, and I did about seventy-five hours on flying Tiger Moths and I was — I passed out as a pilot of average ability. I'd done all sorts of exciting things. I did solo night flying and aerobatics, and recovery from stalls and all sorts of things. And it was great and I loved the flying and then I was sent off to a, to a conversion course to gliders, with the intention of becoming a pilot of, of — the war as over by this time by the way and I went off to, um, an airfield in, in Warwickshire and, er, I did some training on the gliders. They were — the gliders they used were, were Hotspurs. It was a smaller version of the, of the, er, troop carrying gliders, towed off by DC3s and, er, as part of the training I had to do I was sent off on a navigation exercise. We had the Link trainer and that gave us our basic navigation skills and, er, I was sent off, on a training triangular flight. I hadn’t flown a Tiger Moth since I was at Booker a month or two before and, er, the — I was instructed to take off on the grass runway. At, at this airfield there was only one runway and that, that was occupied by gliders and tower aircraft so I was asked to take off on the outer wind strip which was ninety degrees out of wind. So I took off with a, a corporal in the front cockpit to do the navigation and, er, there was no problem taking off and I did the triangular flight and it took about probably twenty-five or thirty minutes. I returned to the airfield and, er, I had to land on this grass strip. There were no, no other aircraft in sight and I attempted to land and I had to side slip in because the wind was obviously increased and, er, I had to side slip but coming out it seemed like an angle of about thirty degrees. I thought it was unsafe to put the wheels down and so decided to go round again and I made a circuit, same thing, and I went — I opened the throttle and went round again, did another circuit of the airfield, circuit and bumps they used to say, and on the third attempt, er, I don’t know, probably the lack of experience, I, er, made a late decision to, to go round again and by this time feeling rather fraught. In charge of an aircraft, you’ve got no contact with the control tower and there’s no radio because it’s an open cockpit two-seater plane and, er, I opened the throttle, went to go round again, and found I was going towards some trees and I pulled the stick back to get over the trees and I overcooked it and went into a stall and, of course, then everything goes floppy. You’re, you’re out of control and, er, I — the plane just dropped in a stall, hit the ground rather hard and I was knocked out. I, I presumed that my head had hit the control panel, the instrument panel and, er, by some miracle I, I was wakened by the flames all round. I was obviously on fire and, er, the survival instinct kicked in. Shut my eyes tightly. I think my goggles had been knocked off in the, in the crash and, er, I managed to undo my harness, again instinctive, and climbed out over the starboard side of the aircraft and dropped to the ground and next thing I knew I was in hospital. The, er, the corporal in the front seat must have been killed instantly. I flew in a Tiger Moth last month. The BBC arranged it. They were doing a documentary. I think the film was last Monday, Monday of last week and, er, I was in the front cockpit during that flight and I must say that I had a momentary flash of grief. I get, I get nightmares even now, flashback nightmares, fortunately not so often nowadays but it, it always contained this grief about the navigator in the front seat. What he must have felt when the plane stalled God knows. You’ve only fractions of a second to think about it before you die. So anyway, it’s, er, a rather pathetic story of, of crashing a plane but, you know, there’s no drama to it. I ended, I ended up in the Guinea Pig Club. You know there were thirty-four Spitfire and Hurricane pilots who’d taken part in the Battle of Britain. They, they’d sustained their burns in act—action and, er, I just got mine from a training accident. It’s a — yeah but it was wonderful when I got to East Grinstead eventually. That was in 19— the end of 1946. I was in hospital in Birmingham for, for a year and they did my, my resuscitation and the initial grafting and, er, I had really horrific disfigurement and, anyway, I was under a general surgeon there. He’d done a course in — at East Grinstead and he did my initial facial reconstruction. He gave me four new eye lids and, er, at the end of a year I was back on duty, light duties, non-combatant duties, in REME. I was — they were mainly in central workshops and then I was, I was posted as second in command of a prisoner of war camp in Derbyshire. And it was there that the medical officer checked me over. I, I couldn’t close my eyes properly and I got recurrent infections and, and it was he who suggested that I see the national expert in burns surgery at East Grinstead and, er, I went there in late 1946 and, er, McIndoe looked at me and he offered, he offered further help. He said, ‘You need four new eyelids and reconstruction of your nose and some work around face and,’ he said, ‘Come in tomorrow and check into Ward 3 and I’ll do some work on your eyelids in the morning.’ [slight laugh] And from then on it was just a matter of recurrent operations and recovery time, and I applied to get in to Liverpool Medical School and was successful, and I started at Medical School in, in September 1947. I was still having operations at that time and, er, I did, I did the five years training, qualified in 1952. So that was five years at Medical School which were pretty wonderful. I, I was living at home. My parents, they’d been bombed out twice during the war. Do you know, in 1941 I was at — I’d been evacuated to Southport and I went home for the weekend, May 1941, and that, that weekend Liverpool was heavily bombed, particularly Bootle with its docks and I was a Rover Scout and I’d, I’d been given the privilege of working in a rescue squad and I went out on duty and, er, had — we went over to houses near the, the South Park, digging people out of bombed houses. I went back to the bunker and there was another call out so I was first, first out of the bunker and there was a scream of bombs, you know, the usual [whistle]. I threw myself flat and there was huge explosions and I was picked up between two bomb craters and I had bomb, er, splinter wounds across my buttocks, and my — one in my leg, and one in my foot and I was sent off to Ormskirk Hospital in a pick-up truck. I spent only ten days there for — while the lacerations healed up. But I thought then — I was, I was eighteen and I, er, I was thinking then deep thoughts about mortality. You know, I, I went camping one, one night in a pop tent [background noise], a camouflaged pop tent, in Lancashire. And I remember lying with my head out up through the, through the flaps of the tent, looking up at the Milky Way and thinking about eternity, and I thought, ‘God in — I’m eighteen. In fifty-two years’ time I’ll be sixty.’ Did I get the calculation right? ‘Well, I’ll be sixty and probably dead.’ And [slight laugh] started thinking about philosophical thoughts of mortality. Anyway, it was wonderful to recover and qualify — I think I got the dates wrong about Medical School. 1941 was the bomb— bombings and I was still at school then. It was 1943 I went to, to the, er, science department in Liverpool. Yeah, my parents had a bad time, you know, with moving house and my, my father pulling out what remained of the carpets and then refitting them in, in the next house and he was wonderful. He’d been, he’d been in the Army in the First World War and he was posted to the North West Frontier of India and, er, he became an interpreter. He could speak Hindi and Pashto and Urdu and, er, I suppose that was my, my inspiration towards a, an Army career. Yes, he survived the — his three years in the, in the Army but he was on quinine for three years and that made him profoundly deaf so he had difficulty getting a job. He was — he got a job as a grocer’s assistant but he was a wonderful chap. He, he was very good on DIY, you know, he used to mend our shoes and he made my Christmas presents. He made me a boat and an aeroplane and all sorts of things. Wonderful, wonderful people in the 1940s. It was — talk about resilience. What my mother must have gone through, you know, with the being bombed out and my injuries. And my daughter, my sister, was in the Army. She, she was, er, posted to Italy with the invasion there. And my brother, my younger brother, he was in the merchant navy at sixteen. He was a, he was a wireless operator on a merchant ship. He was at the beaches on D-Day delivering troops. Yeah, very exciting times. Anyway my, my story is really the Guinea Pig Club. It’s a — the Guinea Pig Club was really the making of me because, you know, there were six, six hundred and forty-nine members who’d, who’d been burned, some of them horrendously. Some of them had — I had twenty-eight operations in my — at the two hospitals but some of them had sixty operations or more and they, they were all cheerful, resilient people and, you know, these were the bravest of the brave and, and being a fellow member was really such a privilege and that’s what, that’s probably what drove me, as I was getting on in life, to propose this memorial to the Club. There’s a big memorial to McIndoe at East Grinstead. It’s an eight foot statue with — which, er, the town had erected and — but that was to McIndoe, the medical services, but I wanted one to the Guinea Pig Club, the Club, its six hundred and forty-nine members to — as a memorial to, to what they went through and the stone mason, the stone mason designed a quite a moving tribute. I was going to pay for it myself but my wife, Maggie, started a campaign, a fund raising campaign and, er, she managed to raise enough money to pay for it. But, er, my — I said in my speech to the Duke of Edinburgh that my intention in, in [pause] arranging the memorial was that as a [pause] it was repayment of a debt of honour really for the, er, medical expertise that had brought me back to health and for the enormous psychological support I got from the other members of the Club, who really altered, altered my attitude and personality and, er, really gave me the ambition to get well again. So, er, that’s my story.
CB: Thank you. Did, um, you, as part of the treatment at East Grinstead, did they have psychiatrists there?
AS: No psychiatrists. There, there was no psychological support at all except from the encouragement of McIndoe who said, ‘I can help you to get back to a normal, normal life, physically.’ And — but it was, it was the members of the Club really. Their attitude was so optimistic and there was black humour, you know, but everyone was cheerful and up — uplifting. You know, I, while I was having my eyes, eyelids grafted you had to lie in bed for, for a couple of weeks with your face covered so you couldn’t see. To one side I had Dinty Moore, who was a bomber pilot, and his story was amazing. He, he took off in a, in a new Halifax and — with a full load of fuel and a full load of bombs bound for Germany and he, er, he found after take-off that he was having difficulty climbing and the flaps had, had stayed down and, and, er, the undercarriage wouldn’t wind up and then the right starboard engine, the starboard outer engine, wouldn’t feather and, and he had to cut, cut the engine, so he had managed to get to two thousand feet and then he had that awful decision, what to do next? So he decided to fly on and ditch in the North Sea. He’d taken off from South Yorkshire somewhere [background noise] but I’ve got this story in print and the, er, outer port engine caught fire and he had very great difficulty maintaining height so he decided that he had to do — he had to land, you know, at night over the fields of Norfolk and in the dark. He had a full load of bombs and fuel. Anyway he landed and the right wing hit a farmhouse and the right side of the fuselage was torn out and the plane was on fire but he managed to get out somehow. And he became a Guinea Pig and went back to a normal life. Christ! All the decisions, all the decisions you have to make. What could be more horrifying than that? Did you see the film about the landing on the, on the river in New York? That —
CB: I’m due to see it soon.
AS: I’ve seen it and, you know, the pilot had a fraction of a second to make a decision whether to go back to the airfield or carry on to the river. Christ! It’s such an enormous responsibility. Anyway it was meeting people like that that, er, really gave me my destiny. I’ve had a wonderful life.
CB: So after medical school what did you do?
AS: I went into, into general practice. I was in hospitals in Liverpool for a year or so as house, house, surgeon, house physician and, er, one of the — the chap who was the — he was a physician at Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital in Birmingham who, who befriended me and he telephoned me to say there was a General Practice job going in Nottingham, was I interested? Well I was quite open minded about what career I should take at that stage. And I went to Nottingham and had an interview with the Practice and they took me on as an assistant with a view — and from there I went on to another — I didn’t get that Practice so through the, er, through the Family Practitioner Committee I, I got a chance of another Practice and I was there for forty years. Amazing. But it was a career that I thoroughly enjoyed. Of course, I had to practice for the sense of dedication and, er, it was a great advantage to me because I really enjoyed doing, doing the work. God, it was hard work. It was like “Call the Midwife” stuff, you know. We booked a hundred women a year for home confinement. I did all the work, you know. If a patient needed a blood test you just got out a syringe and did it on the spot. And, er, if they needed any other examinations you felt you had to do it yourself. It was really — I didn’t have any staff. It was me and my fountain pen. It was a partnership of three with an elderly, elderly man at the head and he eventually retired and he offered me the sale of his house and I — then I went through various life crises, you know, the mid-life crisis and the marriage folded up and — but I battled on and [pause] yes, it’s amazing how life experience affects your person— personality and attitudes. And here I am at ninety-four, quite content with life, wonderful wife.
CB: Where did you meet Maggie?
AS: Over a bridge table. My second marriage folded up, er, in 2000. I, I’d been living apart from my wife in the same house but she was playing up with other men and I eventually divorced and, and I settled here, next door actually. I got it, I got it through a house agency in Melton Mowbray. I was living there with my dog for the next ten years and then I used to have a, a bridge group on Wednesday evenings. They were all women and, er, Maggie was one of them. She was married and had children and I’d, I’d already decided never to have anything to do with women again after my second marriage experience. And I was living there quite happily and Maggie’s husband died about nine years ago and I realised that I was living apart, she was living apart and we kind of chummed up and the — it became quite intense and we married seven, seven years ago, and then the lady here died and I bought this house and this, this is the ultimate in down-sizing [slight laugh]. You know, doctors usually have big houses and I had a farm house with my second wife, with big farm house and a few acres, and we ran horses for her children. We were quite happy there until she started playing up and — but I’ve been happy here. It’s a tiny, tiny bungalow but it’s just, just idyllic.
CB: You don’t need a lot of space do you?
AS: Well it’s ideal for elderly people to have very little. You can only sit in one chair at a time and [slight laugh] three meals a day and wonderful entertainment from TV and —
CB: How many children have you got?
AS: I’ve got — I had three. I’ve got two, two now. Angela, my younger daughter, she studied medicine at Southampton and she, she was a GP and she was a medical officer of a hospice in Somerset, Yeovil, and she developed a, a sarcoma in her pelvis and in four weeks, five weeks she was dead.
CB: Was she?
AS: Yeah, and she was nursed in her own hospice. That was a dreadful time to go through.
CB: How old was she?
AS: Fifty-two. Yeah, and I suppose it was her death that, um, prompted Maggie and I to decide on marriage. So, er, we’ve been very very happy. My dog died and — yeah, me and my dog next door, I thought that was wonderful and, you know, when I was eighty I thought, ‘I’m getting on in my life and I’m alone with my dog.’ And [cough] I decided — sailing was my hobby. I had a boat [cough] and I sailed it round from its base at Woolverstone on the River Orwell and I sailed it round to Falmouth and I used to go off cruising, um, with a friend and we sailed down it down to the Marbella [?] and Bay of Biscay and [cough] all over the place and I sailed all the North Sea, you know, Germany and Holland and Belgium and all over the place for years and, er, when I was in my late seventies I decided that my ambition was to do the Atlantic crossing so I got a crew job on a, on a Westerly Ocean, Ocean Wanderer and I got into the North Sea Race in November 2002. Yes, I was eighty. I had my eightieth birthday halfway across. We went across from Gran Canaria over to St Lucia and I flew back and continued my life with my dog. And then, do you know, when I was eighty-four I thought, ‘God I’m really old now. I’d better make arrangement for my funeral.’ So I bought, bought a grave at the — in a churchyard a hundred yards up the hill there and made arrangements and then, er, Maggie came along.
CB: Your salvation.
AS: Yes?
CB: Your salvation.
AS: My salvation. I’ve had an incredible, incredible happy life. It’s been wonderful.
CB: What about your other two children?
AS: My, my son became a doctor. He was a GP but he fell foul of, er, drugs. He went onto opiates while he still a doctor and I think he’d some experience with a dying patient, you know, and I think he had some mental aberration. He went onto morphia himself and eventually ended up in a court case and then after an interval I got him a job in — with one of my ex-trainees in Nottingham. And from drugs he went onto drink and he became a, an alcoholic and he also lost his job and had court cases and driving offences and all sorts and, er, the day before we married I rang him to see if he could get to the funeral. I’d, I’d paid for therapy for him on several occasions but he always relapsed and he — the turning point for him was my daughter’s death. He, er, he came down to — by train to Somerset to the funeral and he was living in a hostel at that time, a hostel where they did a breathalyser test every evening and, er, if you, if you didn’t pass the breathalyser you were chucked out. Anyway he came down and Maggie and I took him to the station in, in Somerset to get him back to Derby and, er, he must, he must have, with his daughter’s, his sister’s death it must have affected him, and so he had a drink and when he got the hostel he was over the limit and they chucked him out. So he was on the streets and eventually he got a flat in Nottingham and was living rock bottom and the day before the funeral I visited him and he was damn near dead, you know. He’d had a couple of bottles of vodka that morning and he was living in dis— disgusting disorder and I got him into the alcoholic unit at Nottingham the next day which was, which was the day of our wedding. And, er, they took him in and he hasn’t had a drink ever since.
CB: That’s good.
AS: That was the turning point. He was rock bottom and he had a few weeks of cold turkey and therapy and, er, he’s been improving ever since. He’s given up smoking and last year we went to his wedding and — he hasn’t worked. He’s a house husband but he’s much, much better.
CB: And, er, number three?
AS: Number three. My, my daughter. My elder, she, she was born in 1952, the year I qualified and, er, she’s been more or less an invalid all her life. She had, she had bilateral CDH and she had some horrendous operations during her childhood and, er, up to the age of twenty-one, when she had a [unclear] osteoplasty and she’s had both hips replaced, replaced in her fifties. She’s OK. She has a degree in art. Never worked. She married and — to a chap who had a teaching diploma but he, he’s never had a settled job and they live in very poor circumstances in Nottingham. They had one boy, who’s my grandson, and I now have two great grandchildren. They came here on Saturday and — because I’m not well and I’m in close contact with them. My son rings me every day or every other day and we’re all attuned. They — I, with my, with my huge divorce settlements I’ve never been able to accumulate enough money but I had enough to buy this place and Maggie’s got her pension and so she’ll be alright.
CB: What did Maggie do when she was working?
AS: She was a head teacher and she was a senior magistrate. She was chairman of the Melton Mowbray and Rutland bench. And she retired at seventy. She’s seventy-five now and so this place is ideal, ideal for her. It’s easily run. It’s got a modest garden and she likes the gardening. She’s been doing the lawn mowing for the last year. I haven’t been able to do much.
CB: You mentioned the extraordinary inspiration, er, from your bedfellow and, er, I just wonder what it is that — we’re talking about Dinty —
AS: Dinty Moore.
CB: Yes. What it is it that gives people the extraordinary positive focus in times of desperate straits?
AS: I don’t know but it does wash over you. You have these extraordinary cheerful men. Some of them were horrendously disfigured. They’d walk about the town with pitiful grafts, you know, between their arm and their, and their face and, and, er, they’d be jokey and upbeat all the time. They, they enjoyed laughing and there was a barrel of beer on the ward encouraged by McIndoe. He said, ‘It’s a very good idea to keep the men hydrated.’ [laugh]
CB: And in most cases in the early days of surgery then the view of the people must have been fairly challenging. What was the reaction of women particularly to men with this disfigurement?
AS: That’s extraordinary. Some of the, um, Guinea Pigs have written books and in, in one the reaction of his wife when, when he came back from East Grinstead was that she couldn’t stand to be touched by him because his hands were knobbly, you know, and — but when I got back to Liverpool I had been engaged to a girl and — but that folded up. Yes and, er, I think reactions were variable and yet many Guinea Pigs married their nurses.
CB: Did they?
AS: And quite recently, as recently as November, December, during the course of this documentary I was doing for the BBC, they took me down to East Grinstead and we met a present-day patient on — an Army, um, plastic surgeon and he was very very badly disfigured. He had very serious burns and he still had a lot of facial scaring and unevenness and he had a wife who’d met him as a patient and, and she’d fallen for him. Isn’t that extraordinary? But on one hand women couldn’t tol— tolerate the disfigurement but this girl had actually been attracted to a man who was disfigured. I think, I think the personality of the injured person comes over somehow and it’s the personality that matters to a sincere woman.
CB: Is there any history of how people progressed after they finished their treatment in terms of settling down with a family? In other words, did they all marry or —
AS: Yes, well I haven’t got the statistics but most, most of the Guinea Pigs became happy married family men.
CB: And from a medical perspective we have these, for some people, horrific views of the immediate aftermath of the initial surgery and then a progression but how does the body assimilate these extraordinary changes with some of the fabric of the skin coming from areas that aren’t normally exposed to the light?
AS: Well my legs were grafted and they — I regained full function really accept that I can’t squat, I can’t bend my knee back fully. I, I think the, er, treatment I got at the first hospital — I had a years’ treatment there — it wasn’t really, er, up to modern standards. The, the tightening of the grafts over these stopped me bending my knees but I had physiotherapy but it was only for a, er, a few weeks I think and I’ve never been able to regain my full, full flection, um, but that’s no handicap and I’ve been able to leap about the deck of a boat and I’ve been able to ski. I was skiing until I was eighty-two and, er, I’ve never been a runner but I’ve been a walker. I used to go trekking in the Himalayas and for years I carried on with a trekking group. I went as trek doctor and, and it was a wonderful time of my life. That was in my seven— sixties and seventies. And I’ve been trekking with Maggie in Italy, er, on the Amalfi coast and that involved quite a lot of energetic walk— hill walking.
CB: So what’s the secret to your long and active life?
AS: The secret? I think its attitude really, um, you get on with things [laugh] doing your best. Do you know, I used to march in the, in the, er, Armistice Day parade? And, er, I once went to the, to the Horse Guards Parade. I was — I’d travelled, travelled down the night before and I got to the parade ground quite early about 9 o’clock and I went to the, um, the van where they had the, the, signs where you’re supposed to stand and I got a — my stick with a label on it and I went over to the parade ground to my spot, in a row of seats, 3 of something, and I was standing there and a few Guinea Pigs joined me, and then two or three and then — oh, there were five of us. I was standing there and a chap with a bowler hat came along and, er, he was obviously ex – RSM and he said, ‘Now Sir, I want you to place your stick on that sycamore leaf and stand there and line up in rows of six.’ So I said, ‘But there’s only five of us.’ He said, ‘Well do you best Sir.’ [laugh] I think that’s, that’s a good maxim to go by, do your best, yeah. Well —
CB: In your perception, your experience and perception, you have a number of people who all have had a disability because of fire, for various reasons, to what extent did they compare notes as to how they got them?
AS: Well we didn’t really talk about it very much. I think we — my conversation with Dinty Moore in the next bed kind of thing. But we, we heard about things and of course all the books written by Guinea Pigs, the — Richard Hillary was the first, wasn’t he? And, er, he described things very well.
CB: Geoffrey Page, various people.
AS: Geoffrey Page. Yes, yes but just knowing these people, sitting in the same room, you know, sitting at the same table at dinner, was wonderful inspiration.
CB: Do you think that somehow this personality and jovial approach was developed by the difficult situation?
AS: I think it was. Yes, making the best of things seemed to be the order of the day. And of course these, these were men of twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two and, you know, they were all full of hormones and, er, they had a drink ethic and very parlast [?]
CB: Supported by attractive nurses were they?
AS: Yes, well McIndoe’s policy was to, to, er, encourage a social intercourse with other people and of course talking to young women was far easier for young men.
CB: You talked about one of your early relationships going wrong. How had you met in the first place there?
AS: Well that probably went wrong because, er, I was at, at Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital in Birmingham and one of the nurses who was looking after me in quite an intimate way, you know, ‘cause I was quite helpless. My hands were in bandages, my legs were in bandages, my head was in bandages so you had to be looked after, for hygiene and all the rest of it, and I suppose I developed a, an emotional connection with my first wife. She became my first wife.
CB: She was a nurse? Right.
AS: She was a nurse and yes —
CB: She knew —
AS: She, er, had a nice family. Her mother and father were teachers in Bourneville and she used to take me there for meals and she used to wheel me, wheel me to the cinema in Selly Oak in a wheel chair and look after me generally so, er, there was an emotional development and —
CB: And was there a second wife?
AS: We eventually married in 1949.
CB: Right.
AS: Yeah.
CB: Was your second wife a nurse?
AS: Oh, my second wife was following several life crises.
CB: In the medical sense you are all, one way or another, severely injured by fire. But you talked about your legs being burnt so you’re affected because your skin was taken from your legs, is it? So that’s why —
AS: I had skin taken from the upper legs and buttocks and, er, my eyelids came from the inner upper arm, yeah, the hairless part, and the nose came from my chest, yeah.
CB: So was the nose completely rebuilt underneath as well, from a bone point of view?
AS: No the cartilages were alright, yes.
CB: OK. So there are certain parts of the anatomy that give up the skin for particular spots more commonly, do they? In other words the upper arm for eyelids.
AS: Yes, that’s right. It’s chosen to be appropriate. I don’t grow a beard which is unconscious really.
CB: So what was the damage initially? You hadn’t got goggles on?
AS: No. They must have been knocked off, yeah.
CB: Did it affect your ears as well?
AS: No, no, I had a helmet. Yes, that saved my scalp and I’ve still got hair.
CB: Yeah. And then —
AS: Some of the Guinea Pigs did lose their ears and scalp.
CB: And arms, hands, were hands. Were they affected?
AS: I was wearing gloves but I had first and second degree burns to my hands and wrists but they were back to normal function within six months. Yes, first and second degree burns survived without grafting. You get blistering and so on but it was —
CB: What was the reaction of people at medical school to your circumstances?
AS: Yes that’s rather curious because it was twenty years after I, after I qualified that we had a reunion and one of the, one of the, er, my ex-student colleagues, a lady, came to me and said, ‘Sandy, I just want to apologise to you because it’s been something that’s been on my mind, ever since doing second MB. We were in the dissection room and Professor Wood had allocated us to do head and neck.’ And, er, I had my lower eyelids, er, grafted about two weeks before and I still looked pretty hideous, you know. Anyway she said, ‘In the dissection room you were, you were lifting the skin from the malar area and I looked at you and looked at the corpse and I had to go out to the ladies and actually physically vomit. I was so, so deeply affected.’ She said, ‘I just want to apologise to you now.’ Isn’t that strange? It’s — I can understand her feelings. I shouldn’t have been there really.
CB: You should have been resting.
AS: Until I was presentable. But reactions in people to disfigurement is quite extraordinary. It’s much better nowadays I think. There’s a lady appears on TV now doing the weather report with, with part of an arm. Quite openly she’s had an amputation and it’s marvellous that people are now — and through, through the armed forces amputations and things they, they’ve become — they have a much better attitude but at one time people were revulsed [emphasis] by physical disfigurement, particularly facial, and I used to try and hide my face in the first year or two.
CB: Did that mean that you didn’t get involved socially very much?
AS: Well, well, um, I was rather defensive about it. I remember when I, when I had my eyelids done I had to travel back to Liverpool from Sussex and I arranged a felt mask [laugh] like the Phantom of the Opera, you know, which I stuck round my glasses to hide the scars. Yeah, the Phantom of the Opera is a comparison.
CB: Yes, well, inspired by these sorts of things.
AS: Yes, well that was written in, in the days before acceptance of disfigurement.
CB: Did you get the feeling that a lot of people stared?
AB: Yes, yes. In fact, East Grinstead, through McIndoe’s influence, became known as the town that didn’t stare.
CB: Because they’d been programmed by the hospital—
AB: Yes, they’d been programmed. McIndoe used to go round the bars and the dance hall and the cinemas and say to people, ‘Please accept these patients as normal. It’s very important to be able to talk to people without feeling embarrassed.’
CB: And in medical school one has a huge curiosity for medicine and everything associated with it so did your experience come up as a student with other students?
AS: I never, never really noticed. I didn’t think about it. I developed a great friendship with Sid Watkins. He was a brilliant student, got a First in everything, and, and he became, um, the Professor of Neurosurgery at the London Hospital and, er, Bernie Ecclestone picked him up and appointed him as the
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ASaundersAC170201
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Interview with Sandy Saunders
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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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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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01:04:03 audio recording
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Pending review
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Chris Brockbank
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2017-02-01
Description
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Sandy Saunders recalls Liverpool being bombed in 1941 and while on a rescue squad he sustained splinter injuries from a blast requiring hospital treatment. After taking a science degree he served in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers as a radar officer, working on gun sights and gun laying radar. He later remustered as a glider pilot. He describes his crash in a Tiger Moth during training. He was burned and consequently became a member of the Guinea Pig Club. He had twenty-eight operations including re-shaping his nose and skin grafts to his eyelids. He became a general practitioner in Nottingham and was in general practice for forty years until retirement.
Coverage
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British Army
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Great Britain
England--Liverpool
England--Sussex
England--Lancashire
Contributor
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Christine Kavanagh
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
aircrew
bombing
C-47
crash
grief
Guinea Pig Club
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
memorial
pilot
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/327/3486/AShuttleworthHJ151021.1.mp3
1e229b0a918cfe3b6d74219097f584c4
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/327/3486/PShuttleworthJ1501.1.jpg
59a7d9a38c1dae94a5276abcaff86f0f
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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Shuttleworth, Joe
Hugh Joseph Shuttleworth
Hugh J Shuttleworth
Hugh Shuttleworth
H J Shuttleworth
H Shuttleworth
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Hugh Joseph "Joe" Shuttleworth.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-21
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Shuttleworth, J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive is with Joe Shuttleworth. A 50 Squadron rear gunner. The interview is taking place in Surrey Hills which is a suburb of Melbourne. It is the 21st of October 2015. My name’s Adam Purcell. So, I think we’ll start, if you don’t mind Joe with can you tell me something of your early life, growing up? What you did before the war.
JS: Well I grew up and born in Brisbane and had a pretty charmed life. Went to a state school. Wasn’t much but was good at ball games and I enjoyed life with my mother and father. Father had a job whereas, you know in the Depression years in the 1930s times were pretty rough really. I remember kids taking food out of rubbish bins at school. That didn’t ever happen to me. My mother and father came from Victoria and they moved up to Queensland at some point about 1920/21. And they came. Big families. And I had the opportunity of being sent down to, to Melbourne when I was ten and again when I was fourteen and caught up with my, my relatives on both my mother’s side and father’s side. And after a long time my mother and father agreed to, that I join the air force. So I went to the air force place and I was accepted to air crew. And that was February 1941. That was before the Japanese war but I wasn’t called in for a uniform until May of 1942. By that time the Japanese were well advanced in the, in Northern Australia. I was at 3 ITS. The Initial Training School that was based at Sandgate and the waterfront was just outside, you know. Do you know? You know Brisbane I suppose?
AP: I don’t. I don’t know it very well but —
JS: Do you know Sandgate then?
AP: No. I don’t actually.
JS: The water was just outside the area there. There I was told I wasn’t accepted to go in aircrew because I had an eye deficiency. I wasn’t smart enough to be accepted as a navigator. They were the boys with all the brains. So I enlisted as a wireless operator/ gunner and went to Maryborough where I was there for about seven months. Whilst there I got the mumps and I was in the, in the hospital at the camp for a few days and then I went down to a convalescent place nearby. Spent a couple of very enjoyable weeks there. Life in Maryborough was, was pretty good and we stayed in huts of about forty blokes in there. Food was pretty good. I palled up with a particular bloke who came from Bundaberg. He had a brother that was killed in the early stages of the war. And we saw a bit of Bundaberg, went down to the various beaches on the back of his motorbike. Then after Maryborough went down to Evans Head to a, to a gunnery school and did a bit of flying there. We had Fairey Battles aircraft pulling a drogue and we’d have a pretty, what do they call it, a go gun to shoot at the drogue. About 5 o’clock everybody was saying to me go down to the, to the beach. Occasionally I went to Lismore for the weekend and I stayed at a hotel there. Was presented with the, with the wings and went back to, to Brisbane. Stayed around on, on leave there for a few weeks. The air force then sent us down to Melbourne. We, I was able to get caught up, caught up with my relatives. Uncles and aunts on both side. Saw my grandmother who died when I was overseas. And then, surprisingly the air force decided to send us back to Brisbane. We sailed from Brisbane in about May of ’42. Went down to the wharf and got on to a ship. A Dutch ship. The [pause] What was its name? Anyways, under, under American command. We had bunks down in the holds of the ship. It was, the air was pretty putrid there. I elected to sleep out most nights on the, on the deck. Sometimes I got a bit wet but just a light shower. Life was pretty good. There was lots of good reading material there. Particularly a publication, a Saturday Morning Post, err Saturday Evening Post. But it ceased publication but I read a lot about American life. We had nineteen days on the, on the Pacific. Didn’t see another ship. Didn’t see any land at all. But it was a very enjoyable nineteen days. The weather was pretty good the last couple of days going into San Francisco. In San Francisco it got a bit rough but not too bad. Went in under the Golden Gate Bridge and the ship docked just in the bayside outside Alcatraz at the, the big prison there. After about a day and a half we went across to, to Oakland. Got on a, sent on a train and we went on the train — spent about four and a half days on the train going across America. Went up through Sacramento and that’s where I saw my first snow. I hadn’t seen snow in my life because my previous trips to Melbourne were in the summertime. It was. There was no, no snow up there [unclear]. And we went to, we sat up during the daylight hours and there’d be an American negro putting down the beds that we could sleep on at night. But it was very interesting going across America, seeing. I recall going across on the boat — we didn’t have any ice cream and I think I had the best ice cream in my life at Salt Lake City early one morning. Bought a, bought a packet. It was great. We continued on the train across the, across the Mississippi which the negro, the negro fellow pointed out to us and went outside to a place called Taunton which was outside Boston and there we had some leave. Got down to New York. Saw The Rockets. They were a dancing team. Also, the Rockefeller Centre which is an ice rink there. Lots of American people skating around on, on ice. Went down to Philadelphia to see a, the father, I previously worked in Brisbane at the SKF Bearing Company and an American GI, I believe went in there to enjoy himself about his father being employed at the SKF Bearing Company in Philadelphia. So, I went down there, introduced myself and they looked after me very well. Went back to Boston. We used to get leave in the, during the day. Went down to, to Rhode Island. And life was, was pretty good really. Then we went down to New York. Got aboard the, the Queen Elizabeth and at that time in the next berth was the Queen Mary and alongside again on an adjoining wharf was the Normandie, the French ship which was sunk there — caught fire and they pumped so much water I think it was always suspected it was a, as a ploy really because the Normandie would have been a great asset to the allies ferrying troops to and from Europe. There was only about two hundred Australians there. We were selected to do anti-craft, anti-aircraft watch on the, on the ship. And that was a bit, a bit of a thrill for a twenty year lad on the QE. Was it just the Queen Elizabeth? The QE1 it was subsequently called. Spent about four and a half days getting across the Atlantic. Went in to Scotland to, to Greenock. Stayed there on the ship for about a day and a half and then got on a train and sent down to Brighton. And one, one evening I was out on the, doing the anti-aircraft watch and a Sunderland circled around and it was pretty atrocious weather and I thought not Coastal Command. It’s not for me. I’ll take my risk on Bomber Command. So, after a few weeks in, in Brighton I was sent to 29 OTU at Bruntingthorpe which is now still an operating airfield. The equivalent of something like Moorabbin. It’s not, not an RAF station. But Bruntingthorpe initially was pretty much lectures and the operation of turrets and I did reasonably well on that. I was selected by a flight lieutenant, a Scotsman from Dunoon in Scotland and he, he thought I had potential evidently. There was another chap, Bill Bottrell. He was an Irishman and he had an Irish wireless operator and they were very keen for me to join their crew but I didn’t do so. But fortunately, or unfortunately they were all subsequently killed. At the OTU we lost two aircraft. One disappeared off the Wales Coast and another coming back from dropping pamphlets over France crashed. There was an Australian air gunner, rear gunner, he died. And the only person who got out of it, a chap named Terry Wilder who I subsequently met and I’ll refer to him later. The flying was at an subsidiary airfield Cresswell. And on OT, on Wellingtons, which were pretty well clapped out, one night we were doing circuits and bumps as I used to call them. Just circling around. Mainly to get the pilot practising in flying the Wellington. Circuits and landings and take offs. But one night when we were just about on air speed of about a hundred, a hundred kilometers an hour got a tyre burst and the aircraft crashed and slewed around. We all walked out of it unscathed but the risk was that sometimes in those circumstances if it caught fire because the Wellington was only fabric covered. Then whilst at Bruntingthorpe the adjoining village was at Lutterworth and there was a bit of a fair there one night and I was walking around and girls, two girls came up and one girl, Joyce Barry asked me did I have any change which I was able to oblige but I palled up with the other girl Freda who I subsequently married. We, we spent a lot of, a bit of time together. I was, after leaving Bruntingthorpe, I went up to Bitteswell and converted there to four-engined aircraft. Particularly the Lancaster. What’s so interesting in my father’s era pretty well they were all smokers but in our crew, there was only two smokers — the wireless operator and the top gunner. And that was pretty representative of the situation, I think, everywhere really. So, it’s the attitude to smoking has changed so much over the years. At, at Bitteswell we could, I was sent up to Skellingthorpe to do fighter affiliation work. We had Australians flying Tomahawks and, you know they were just making a simulated attacks on the aircraft and there would be a camera so that it would record what you did and the circumstances. We also changed the wireless operators at Bitteswell but I was up at Skellingthorpe so I don’t know really what happened. I wasn’t there to. Then we went to Morton Hall. To a commando school really. Jumping over fences and getting through wires etcetera. Unfortunately, I sprained my ankle on the second day so I was, did very little. I often thought subsequently that Morton Hall could have been the Command Centre for 5 Group but I, I don’t know whether that was right or not. Also, when we were at Bruntingthorpe we could hear engines running and just talked about, you know a place down the road running engines. We subsequently found that it was Frank Whittle, subsequently Sir Frank Whittle developing the jet engine. What happened then? I think we went to, posted to Skellingthorpe. Now, one thing about Bitteswell, that was a permanent RAF station and the accommodation was in brick buildings whereas at Skellingthorpe it was a wartime aerodrome. Lived in what we called Nissen huts — accommodation for about ten crew. And there would be a stove in the centre of the hut where we burned coke to keep us warm in the, in the cooler times. Also, before we went to Skellingthorpe went to Syerston. That was another permanent RAF station where the accommodation was in brick buildings. Actually, I saw my first snow drop at Syerston. That was the first I’d seen in England. Life on the, on the squadron, 50 Squadron and the flight insignia on the aircraft was VN and I’ve got a plate inside where that, the N is showing. We tended to go up to the flight office about 9 o’clock in the morning to see whether there was a war on. If there wasn’t we’d go out to the aircraft and have a mess around. Have practice of getting out of an aircraft into a dinghy. The food was pretty, pretty reasonable. It was certainly the best available in England. Sausages were mainly a lot of bread. I often thought I wouldn’t eat baked beans again but I quite like them now and again. But certainly, food at the squadron was the best available in England on the operations. If the war was on we were given an evening meal and briefed as to where the aircraft, where the target would be. The wing commander would say where, where the target was that night. We’d see the target. The flights into Europe, we did a lot of trips to Berlin and they were generally about ten hours. Sometimes you went in, flew over France. Other times it would be over north, over Denmark and into Berlin that way.
Other: Do you want a drink of water, dad?
JS: Pardon?
Other: Would you like a drink of water?
JS: No thanks. No. Yeah, perhaps so.
[pause]
JS: The great losses of aircraft at that time — we would be sending out about seven hundred and fifty aircraft and we’d generally lose about fifty. So, on a tour of thirty, statistically it’s impossible to get through a tour but some, some did.
AP: What time was this?
JS: Pardon?
AP: What time was it? What? Or when was it?
JS: We tended to, to go off just before dark. About an hour, this is English time. I suppose it would be about 8 o’clock really because there was double daylight saving over there then. So it was, you know normally light till about ten and we’d probably take off about eight and get back about ten, ten hours later. That was coming back after a flight. The, all the, the squadron leader and the wing commander and sometimes the air commodore would be there to greet you. Hot, hot chocolate drink to drink. It was a bit hard at times, you know. It would come back to you, you had to go to bed but sometimes representatives of other crews didn’t survive. On one occasion we did three, three flights in and, then in four days we did two daylights. Take off at daylight. Another one we turned, turned up about midnight. Came back in the light and flew over England. And I recall one particular occasion coming back over the south coast of England, seeing the white cliffs of Dover and up through England. I often thought that, you know life was pretty great really. What else? When I was at Skellingthorpe I used to go down and see Freda, my wife and often hitch-hiked back and often stood outside the Trent Bridge Cricket Ground waiting for a lift back to Skellingthorpe which is just outside Lincoln. Eventually, one night coming back there was a flash about 11 o’clock high and I felt immediate pain in this eye. I think one of the crew dragged me out of the turret. We got back to, to England and went to, to hospital at Rauceby which was outside Grantham. And there they gave me the decision that they couldn’t do anything about the eye. It would have to come out because the piece of metal there was, was too big. And then after about, oh about a month in hospital there I went up to Hoylake which is outside Liverpool. The RAF had taken it over as a convalescent. It was a public school and they’d taken it over as a reception recuperation place for aircrew personnel and I had a few months there. Quite, you know, life was good. Used to have various exercises to keep us, keep us young and fit. One particular bloke that I met at Rauceby, an RAAF bloke, an RAAF bloke he came from Barcaldine in Queensland. He’d married one of the, the nurses at the hospital. A bloke named Templeton. I guess he came, eventually came back to Australia. The, after Hoylake I went back to, to Brighton and they asked me did I, they told me I was declared unfit for further flying. They asked me did I want to go up to Kodak House and stay in a clerical position or come back to Australia. And I said, ‘No. I’m going back to Australia,’ but I went up to Kodak House and did clerical duties there for a couple of months. That was, that was alright. Eventually they sent, took me back to Brighton and I waited then a decision on, on going home to Australia. Whilst in London I had the husband of a cousin of mine on my mother’s side who had been in the Royal Navy since about fourteen or fifteen years of age. He was a lieutenant there and I saw quite a bit of Keith. Also, Australia House they had a Boomerang Club where they used to serve luncheons there. It was all done in a voluntary capacity. A lot of Australians would go there and meet fellows that we’d met at various times at our training. Eventually the word came. Get on a train. Went back to Greenock. Back on the Queen Elizabeth. Back to New York. By that time there were very few Australians there. Only, only about a hundred of us and there was no, a few Americans going back after being injured in various parts of the UK. Well, whilst at Hoylake we went down to the luncheon. The BBC news came on and announced D-day. That was a great thrill. It was eventually on. My brother in law, Fred is my sister’s husband, he was in the, in the army and you know he got out at Dunkirk. Went around to North Africa. Involved in the, in to Sicily and in to Italy. Back to England and then went into Europe about two, about two days after D-day. So, they certainly had a tough, tough life. One of the things at the RAF stations we used to have sheets on our beds. That’s something that we didn’t ever have in Australia but we had lovely blankets and the idea was to hang onto your Australian blankets because they were real wool and warm whereas the English blankets tended to be a bit feltish. At [pause] New York we, we had constant leave. Went down to one of the United Services Club and they invited me to go down and meet a couple of girls there, you know. Palled up with one girl. Went out with her and she took me home to a place on Great Neck and introduced me to her sister and her father who was involved in the forestry business and, yes they looked after me very well. Took me to a nightclub. Café society. And I got a signature of Joe, Joe Lewis — the American world champion boxer. Had quite a number of other signatures in that, in that RAAF diary but it’s disappeared like a lot of other things. Back on the train to San Francisco. This time we went on a more southerly route in those rather poorer areas of America. Whereas the country up north around Denver, you know was lovely and prosperous but the southern parts looked, looked pretty tough. Went to a staging camp, Petersburg. Was there for about a fortnight. American people often took us for drives around the country. Eventually we went on to a ship, the Monterey. One of the American liners. Went to, sailed it across. The ship was full of Americans going out to the Pacific war, warfare. Sailed into Finschhafen, saw my first American Duck in the water there. Spent a couple of days there. Then went up to Hollandia, changed ship there on the Swansea and that came down to Oro Bay and Milne Bay and back to Brisbane. That’s about it.
AP: That was pretty well your story. Well, we may as well go, have a look at some of the things in a bit more detail if you don’t mind.
JS: Yeah.
AP: I love it. I ask one question and thirty minutes later we, we’re just about finished. We’re not really. Where were you when you heard that war was declared? And how old were you and what did you think at the time?
JS: I was [pause] When the Japanese invaded or are you talking —
AP: Well, right back at the beginning. 1939.
JS: Oh yes. Yes. I remember. I was working then at the SKF Bearing Company in Brisbane and a couple of months after the war started it was obvious we wouldn’t be able to get ball bearings and roller bearings from Europe where most of it was coming from. Not a lot from Sweden. So, the boss said to me, ‘Well Joe. Sorry.’ But I was a stock clerk there and quite an interesting job. Enjoyed it. So, I was able to get a job at a warehouse in Brisbane — Hoffman’s and Company who sold supplies to, to the small shops in those days. Of course, there was small shops over the Brisbane area and over the Queensland area. And I was there until I was, went into the air force then in, in May of ’42. One thing too that I may, should have mentioned. At Sandgate we were, just before lunch, there was an American Airacobra who flew around the station. But he got too low. Dipped his wing in the water and crashed. And in those days I was pretty, pretty fit so I and a few others swam out but he was dead unfortunately. Whilst I didn’t see it that same afternoon another one crashed out, out into the sea.
AP: You were on the Reserve. The Air Force Reserve for a fair time, I think. You said it was.
JS: Yeah.
AP: It was almost a year.
JS: From February. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. What, did the air force give you anything to do in that time?
JS: Yes.
AP: Or did you just carry on?
JS: We attended educational classes in airmanship and particularly Morse code which I never really ever mastered well. Formed quite a few friendships of fellows there. In Brisbane a number of fellows who, who went to, to England there was a very high casualty list amongst them. Fellows that I went to school with, who knew in various parts, you know, didn’t come back. But I, when I was discharged at the [pause] just after the world war, the Japanese capitulated, I joined Veterans Affairs and worked at Veterans Affairs for a couple off months off forty years. First in their administrative offices in Brisbane. In Perry House. I was there for a few years. Then I went out to the Greenslopes Hospital. Was there until 1959 when they, for the last six months I went to Kenmore which was a TB sanitorium out [pause] out Lone Pine way. Out that direction. And then in 1960 I applied for positions. The blokes ahead of me weren’t going to move from Brisbane. My father had died. My mother was living with us and we were in a, built a home in Corinda in Brisbane and we’d only two bedrooms. My mother was in the lounge and she had relatives in Melbourne of course so I applied for a job in Melbourne. Eventually went to, to Heidelberg and I was there most of the time in Heidelberg. My last job there was director of administration which was an exceedingly interesting job. You know, in charge of the domestic services, food services, ordinary stores and administrative people. And I had a lot of liaising with the, the medical people and specialist departments like occupational therapy, physiotherapy. Yeah.
AP: So that’s the repatriation hospital at Heidelberg.
JS: Heidelberg. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Ok.
JS: Yeah.
AP: Just for context because this is going to the UK.
JS: Yeah.
AP: Why did you pick the air force?
JS: I had a fear of fighting in the trenches of France.
AP: Did you have any —
JS: And I was always interested. We lived in, in Sherwood in Corinda and it wasn’t so many miles across to the Archerfield Aerodrome. And I often used to cycle out or being taken out by somebody to see visiting aircraft. Had a few joy flights out that way. My father, airlines had prospered, it meant that caught an aircraft, a Stinson to Townsville and then changed aircraft. He was going to Cairns and he got into a Dragon Rapide. Only a little two-engined aircraft. And going out the weather closed in. They landed on the beach. Stayed there for a couple of hours. The pilot said, ‘We’ve got to get out the tide’s coming in too quickly.’ So, they went on to Cairns. Now, fancy that happening that way.
AP: Now [laughs] yeah. It’s a bit different. I was going to ask you something about that. Alright. The first time you went in an aeroplane. Apart from those joy flights. When you were in the air force tell me about your first flight if you can remember it.
JS: At Maryborough. That was my first flight.
AP: What, what did you think of it?
JS: They were pretty basic aircraft but they were pretty good in those days.
AP: That was a Battle?
JS: They had wireless sets and you’d practice your Morse code and verbal communication. Yeah.
AP: Very good. You’ve told me how you got to the UK. That’s very good. When, what [pause] that was the first time you went overseas?
JS: Pardon?
AP: That was the first time you went overseas?
JS: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. What did you think of wartime England? First. First thoughts on arrival.
JS: Oh, lovely country. Lots of beautiful girls. Lots of warm beer. It was pretty hard to get cold beer in those days. The countryside was absolutely beautiful.
AP: Alright. That leads on to the next question, I guess. The beer question. What did you do to relax when you weren’t on duty?
JS: Where?
AP: What did you do to relax when you were not on duty?
JS: Where?
AP: Ah, well anywhere. On the squadron. On OTU. That sort of thing. When you were on leave. Or not even on leave.
JS: Very often I was going to and from Lutterworth to see my wife.
AP: And you actually got married in England.
JS: Yes.
AP: Yeah. That’s —
JS: Got married on the 30th of December 1943.
AP: Tell me about a wartime wedding.
JS: It was at Bardon Hill just outside Coalville. We toasted with a bottle of Australian wine. How it happened to be there I’m not quite sure but it was there. I realised, you know, that people in England had it pretty tough in comparison to, to life in the Australian household. You know they didn’t have a bathroom. They’d have a tub which, which you’d have a wash in that. Whereas of course in Australia, you know I grew up in a house, a timber house on stilts. Had a copper down, down under the house where you washed your clothes. But if you wanted a hot bath you had to bucket water up in to the bathroom. I remember a chip heater being installed to heat the water in the bath. That was a great advantage. Subsequently of course before the war it was put in an electrical system [pause] And domestic appliances. In those days there was no dishwashers, vacuum cleaners or anything like that. Cleaning the floors was done by a broom or down with a cloth. Hand and knees. I remember my mother, you know washing the floor and polishing the floor which was in those days was linoleum. Whereas these days we’ve got all these modern cons and every, and of course, you know people get fairly gigantic loans to get into houses but you know they, they want and expect everything at the same time. All of those modern cons. Two cars in the family which is pretty well a necessity these days.
AP: Different, different times I think, Joe. Different times.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Alright. We might, might talk a bit about, well ok the aircraft. The Lancaster. What did you think the first time you saw a Lancaster?
JS: Yeah. Well it was, was built to carry bombs. Pretty light construction really. I saw the one earlier this year. Went up to the War Memorial in Canberra. And whilst we, we thought it was huge back in 1943 you know, they’re pretty tiny now. And one of the, one of the things that the RAF didn’t miss on. You know, you often thought that the aircraft would be attacking you in to the, in to the turret but what was happening would be German aircraft perhaps a thousand feet down below you and what they didn’t know — the Germans had a gun pointing up like that and of course the aircraft was sending out a certain amount of exhaust fumes so we were sitting ducks to the German fighter pilots. And the RAF didn’t ever wake up to the fact that this was what was happening.
AP: Did, did the crews themselves have some sort of an idea of that? Or —
JS: No.
AP: There was just no, no one had, they just disappeared.
JS: It didn’t seem to get through to anybody.
AP: No one worked it out. What’s a turret look like when you’re in it? You’re sitting in your turret. What’s in front of you? What’s beside you?
JS: There was, in a Wellington it was two guns — 303s. And in the Lancasters four. Four guns. The ammunition. Every, about every tenth shell would be a tracer so that you could see it in the sky. I didn’t ever fire a gun at a fighter pilot. A fighter. I didn’t see one. And of course, our gunnery was 303s whereas the English, the German fighter pilots certainly .5 or 20mm.
AP: Yeah. There was a bit of an unfair fight, I think.
JS: Yes. Yeah. The, the Halifax, I didn’t ever have a flight on it. I was very impressed with the turret in the Halifax. A Boulton Paul whereas it was a Fraser Nash in the Lancaster. And I’ve been told that they were easier to get out of if there was an emergency.
AP: I’ve heard of that sort of thing. That kind of declares my next question null and void. But I suppose you did fighter affiliation. What’s, what’s the drill when you, if you were to spot a night fighter somewhere —
JS: Yes.
AP: What happens next? What’s the drill?
JS: You’d do a corkscrew. Down. Down to port or to starboard. So, go down and up, down and up again to get out. That was a case of being attacked from the rear by an aircraft. Now that didn’t ever happen to me and I don’t think it happened to too many.
AP: What was a corkscrew like in a turret?
JS: It was up and down, you know. That wasn’t, that wasn’t too bad you know. In the turret of course, we had heated, heated suits on. One night coming back across Denmark mine petered out and I had a fairly cold trip back. But I survived alright [laughs] the temperature outside me would be down. Down to about fifty degrees centigrade. Centigrade.
AP: What, what was your evacuation drill if you had to leave an aircraft in a hurry? What would you have done as the rear gunner in a Lancaster?
JS: Well, you had to get around, open the doors, grab your parachute. The parachute wasn’t in the turret. It was inside the aircraft. Grab the turret and either get it back and jump out of the, from the turret or get out through the main door. And the idea was to roll over so that you didn’t get hit by the tail fin.
AP: It sounds like it would take a fair bit of time that you probably might not have had.
JS: Yeah. And if you were doing it at say eighteen thousand, you know we would be bombing at about twenty one thousand. You know. You know, coming down all of a sudden. Pretty hard getting out I’d imagine.
AP: How many, how many trips did you actually do?
JS: Twenty five.
AP: Twenty five. And it was the twenty fifth trip which you were injured.
JS: Twenty fifth I met my Waterloo.
AP: Do you know what it actually was that hit you? You said you never saw a fighter.
JS: No. I suspect it was — of course the Germans were sending out anti-aircraft fire from the ground. But I strongly suspect it was one of these, these fighters that were down below, below me and sent up a shell hoping to knock out the aircraft. Perhaps his shot wasn’t all that good and hit the turret.
AP: Was that the only damage to the aircraft that you know of?
JS: Yes.
AP: Yeah. So, and you were the only one injured.
JS: Yeah.
AP: Luck of the draw isn’t it?
JS: Yeah. Luck of the draw.
AP: Yeah. Very much so. Do any of your other operations stand out in your memory at all? Any, any other interesting ones?
JS: There was one particular night there was a bit of a disagreement between the navigator and the pilot as the track which we should go back on and we wandered over, over France and got coned by about a half a dozen searchlights. We thought we were a bit lucky to get out of that and didn’t deserve to get out of it really. Another night, taking off, the aircraft swung across to starboard and pretty much out of the control of the pilot really. Scooped off the runway. Got up alright but was a bit dicey there for a few minutes. You know there was a tremendous amount of people killed over there as a result of sheer accidents really. You know there was six hundred and fifty two thousand killed in Bomber Command and a very high percentage of those were due to accidents and not involving operations.
AP: Yeah. It was a large, it was, was a certainly a large —
JS: Yeah.
AP: Before they even got on to a squadron let alone —
JS: Yeah.
AP: Yeah.
JS: There was about four hundred plus or minus a few Australians killed over in, in Europe.
AP: Yeah. There were quite a few.
JS: Yeah.
AP: Oh, Morton Hall. I was going to ask you about that. My great, this is the personal bit for the tape. My great uncle, so my Bomber Command connection spent some time at Morton Hall as well.
JS: Yes.
AP: It’s written in the back of his logbook. I don’t know what he did there.
JS: No.
AP: So, if you could expand a little bit on that that would be really cool.
JS: Just a commando school to make us physically fit. It was, you know, it was important to be fit for flying. It was also if you happened to parachute down into Europe to try and escape. You know. It was good fun and I enjoyed it very much until the second day I sprained my ankle.
AP: That was the end of that.
JS: Harris, the, in charge of Bomber Command. We didn’t ever see him at the airfields. We used to refer to him as Butcher Harris.
AP: London is, is something that comes up often in these interviews. Aircrew sort of seemed to gravitate to London on leave or as they were passing through on the way to other things. Obviously, you spent a little bit more time there than most at Kodak House.
JS: Yes.
AP: But I’m interested in perhaps in what, what sort of things you did in London. What did you see? What did you do? When you weren’t, when you weren’t necessarily at work.
JS: Well I used to see my cousin a fair amount. We’d often go out for a few drinks. He knew the London area pretty well. He’d been there since well before the war. Knew a place down near Victoria, Victoria Street station where we could get some steak. That was a pretty important factor over there. We weren’t great drinkers. I was never a great drinker, and I wasn’t a smoker.
AP: That’s, yeah that’s it’s something that a lot of people seemed to meet friends in London as well.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: The Boomerang Club for example.
JS: Yeah.
AP: There was a signing in book or something. You’d look through and go, ‘Oh, I know him.’
JS: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Very good. I guess we’re getting pretty close to the end of my list of questions. You said you weren’t a great drinker. Did you spend any time in the local pub near Skellingthorpe? What was it called? And what happened?
JS: No. We spent more, more time in the local pub at Lutterworth drinking some of the warm beer. Looking at the fire. There was always a fireplace so, and there was always somebody who could play a piano, have a sing song and very enjoyable nights.
AP: Excellent. Piano is something you don’t get very often these days either.
JS: Yeah.
AP: Alright. I guess we’ll jump down towards the end now. You’ve told me what you did in civilian life. How is, how do you think Bomber Command is remembered and what sort of legacy do you think?
JS: Well, unfortunately, of course they got a bad name on the, on that last raid to Dresden. A lot of people think that that was unnecessary. I think it was probably at the request, to some degree by the Russians and of course not only did the RAF operate at Dresden the Americans sent daylight aircraft over there. And that seems to be, seemed to be forgotten. You know, Harris after the war he didn’t get any, any knighthood. He went back to South Africa, I think. I’ve got an idea he went to Kenya where he’d come from originally.
AP: So, for, how do you remember your time in Bomber Command. What did you get out of it, I suppose?
JS: A great experience. Great experience. I had a world’s trip.
AP: I guess that’s —
JS: A selfish, selfish attitude but that’s what it was.
AP: That’s —
JS: I, you know, saw places. I’ve never been back to England. I haven’t been outside of Australia at all.
AP: That was, that was your one opportunity and you grabbed it.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Very much so. Well, I guess that’s, that’s really all I’ve got for you.
JS: Yeah.
AP: So, thank you very much Joe.
JS: That’s alright.
AP: It’s been a pleasure.
JS: How much do I owe you?
AP: [laughs] Not at all.
[recording paused]
JS: Control at the aerodromes were girls.
AP: Ah yes.
JS: Talk you in. Sometimes you’d come back after operation — you might be ten or fifteen thousand feet and you’d come down on five hundred feet levels.
AP: Someone would have to control that.
JS: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Do you, do you remember much about the process of arriving back at the base?
JS: Well I was, you know we were treated like heroes when you came back. As I’ve said before the station commander and the wing commander if he, sometimes he’d be on operations but generally he wasn’t. They were there to, to greet you. And sometimes the commodore within 5 Group was 54 base and that covered Skellingthorpe, Bardney, number 9 Squadron. And 463 and 467 at Waddington. It was 54 base and there would be an air commodore in charge of that and sometimes he’d be there to, to greet you.
AP: That’s pretty [pause] yeah. Excellent so , ok why not keep going? When you, when you arrived back you come back to dispersal, the engines shut down. What do you feel? What do you think?
JS: Relief. It was nice to get out. Out of that aircraft. Get some of that flying gear off. You know these Taylor suite. These great huge yellow heated suits. Get that off and out of uniform would have underclothing. Cotton. Warm underclothing. Long strides and singlets. So, you liked to get that out of the aircraft. Outer garment off. It was a relief of that’s another one towards the twenty five, from the thirty. They didn’t, we’d hoped to, our aim was to complete the thirty and then go to Pathfinders. Kind of liked an eagle on my uniform but I didn’t.
AP: Did the rest of your crew go on?
JS: No. No. They were all, all killed.
AP: Oh really?
JS: They went on flying and were killed.
AP: So you, I guess you got away with it didn’t you?
JS: Yes. Yes, I was one of the lucky ones.
AP: Yeah very much so. What was, what actually was the target that night and when, what night was it. Can you remember?
JS: No.
AP: No. Sorry. That you were. That you were — sorry.
JS: Yeah. Well I was in hospital.
AP: Sorry.
JS: Yeah.
AP: The night that you were injured what was that?
JS: Berlin.
AP: Berlin. On which trip? What night? Do you know what the date was?
JS: 25th .
AP: Of?
JS: ’43. No. No ’44. ’44.
AP: ’44. So, March. Was that March?
JS: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Ok.
JS: Yeah.
AP: Ok. My great uncle was on that trip as well.
JS: Yeah. Of course, as you know they had some disastrous trips. Leipzig, they lost seventy nine and about ninety six, ninety seven at Nuremberg.
AP: Yeah. They were all in, in that area.
JS: Yeah.
AP: And there was a Munich trip in there as well.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: And there was a whole bunch. Yeah. That was a particularly bad time to be operating actually.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Wow. That’s, you were very lucky then.
JS: Yeah.
AP: To be taken off ops then.
JS: Of course, the Americans saved us really with their capacity. The manpower and their capacity to build ships and provide aircraft. I don’t think England would have been able to survive without American help. If the Japanese hadn’t have come in I think ultimately Hitler would have been, invaded England.
AP: It could have been a very, very different war.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Yes, that —
JS: You know, the American capacity. I know was probably a stunt but they, they built one of those Liberty ships, about ten thousand tonnes in three and half days. Working twenty four hours, seven days.
AP: Craziness. Shows what wartime economies can, can achieve.
JS: Yeah.
AP: To a certain extent for unlimited. Very good. Ok. Anything else you have to add?
JS: No.
AP: Just before I turn it off again.
JS: No. That’s about it, I think.
AP: That’s about it. That’s, that’s very good actually.
JS: Yeah.
AP: That’s some very good stuff there.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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AShuttleworthHJ151021, PShuttleworthJ1501
Title
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Interview with Joe Shuttleworth
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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:03:05 audio recording
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Adam Purcell
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-21
Description
An account of the resource
Joe Shuttleworth was born and raised in Brisbane but also spent a lot of time with family in the Melbourne area. He volunteered for aircrew and soon began training as a gunner. After initial training he sailed to the United States and on to the UK. While at operational training unit at RAF Bruntingthorpe he went to the local village where a chance encounter led to meeting his future wife who he married in 1943. He was posted to 50 Squadron as an air gunner and was based at RAF Skellingthorpe. On his twenty fifth operation which was to Berlin he experienced a sudden flash and a searing pain. One of the crew managed to pull him out of the turret. He was taken to hospital at RAF Rauceby where he lost his eye. The rest of his crew continued to fly but they were all killed in a later operation. Joe returned to Australia where his wife joined him a year later. He remembers his time with Bomber Command as a wonderful experience which led him to see the world. After the war Joe never left Australia again.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Great Britain
United States
England--Lincolnshire
New York (State)--New York
Queensland--Brisbane
Victoria--Melbourne
Germany
Germany--Heidelberg
Victoria
New York (State)
Queensland
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1943
29 OTU
50 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
crash
Lancaster
love and romance
mess
military living conditions
Nissen hut
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bitteswell
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF hospital Rauceby
RAF Morton Hall
RAF Skellingthorpe
take-off crash
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/331/3491/PSouthwellDE1603.1.jpg
14aae2a01070e096fa9c00a5c57a4ace
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/331/3491/ASouthwellDE160424.2.mp3
bd5f88b470f50c82d0fece440095f478
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
Southwell, Don
Donald Edward Southwell
Donald E Southwell
Donald Southwell
D E Southwell
D Southwell
Description
An account of the resource
10 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Donald Edward "Don" Southwell (b. 1924 - 2019, 423987 Royal Australian Air Force), documents including a navigation chart, and six photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 463 and 467 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Don Southwell and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-24
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
Southwell, DE
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DES: [unclear] have you?
AP: My little question sheet.
DES: Oh, good, [unclear] you should have given it to me before.
AP: No, no, no.
DES: [laughs]
AP: So what I do, uhm, because of this little adapter, if I unplug it, the careful tuned thing dies and it gets embarrassing cause it never works. So, instead I have to plug in earphones, so that I can check cause this is a little splitter. I can plug in earphones so that I can listen to it, because if I just try on the speaker, it goes out the earphones so, anyway. It works now, that’ the most important thing, I’ve had a couple of interviews where I had to use the little microphone built in here cause I never know if this thing’s working. Very very [unclear].
DES: I didn’t know there was a mike in those. See, I use one of those all the time. [unclear]
AP: Well, some of them, some of them do, so there is actually a little camera up here, there is a little microphone there, so it is like for web cam, is not for very good quality and it picks up all the noise that’s around, this seems to be more, uhm, localised to adjust your voice, which [unclear] in the recording. I did one of those with a bloke, uhm, Jack Bell, who, he was shot down in Libya, uhm, he’s 98, he was shot down in Libya in 1942 and spent the rest of the war as prisoner, ’43, very early [unclear].
DES: Ah, prisoner.
AP: 42 [unclear]
DES: In Germany?
AP: Uhm, in Italy and then in Germany.
DES: Ah.
AP: Uhm, and the house next door was actually being demolished at the time we did the interview. In the background you can hear a little bit of it, but not very much. So, for a twenty dollar E-bay special, they are pretty good. Anyway, if you are comfortable and ready to [unclear]
DES: Yeah.
AP: All this is, as you know, IBCC interview, uhm, basically we just have a chat. Uhm, I’ve got a sort of list of questions to get us started, but basically I’ll let you run and we go wherever we go and then we might come back and fill in gaps, all that sort of stuff.
DES: You edit it. Yeah.
AP: Yeah, uhm, we just go until one of us begs for mercy basically. I know what you are like, so it could be for a while [laughs].
DES: No, no, no, it’s not right. No, I, whenever this comes up and I’m in a group, I know the people who’ve got all the interesting stories. I’ve been doing this since Australia all over.
AP: No, I.
DES: Down in, [unclear] I’m gonna write him a letter too, but, uh, Ian McNamara and uh he was, uhm, I was all, I did directing, at, down there, I got the, we got this bloke and got this bloke, got that bloke, got that bloke, he’s gonna get all interesting blokes, you know, I knew [unclear] too long [laughs] and they didn’t want me [laughs] Yeah.
AP: Very good. Anyway, uhm, so, look, the shortest interview I’ve done went from forty five minutes long to three and a half hours or so, you know, whenever we get, we get, it’s quite ok. As I said, there’s a list of questions to sort to start of, so
DES: Forty five minutes, [unclear]
AP: That’s very short one, that was very hard because I had to keep asking questions to. Uhm, my favourite one.
DES: You’d might have to do that.
AP: We’ll see what happens when I ask the first question, that’s always the same question I start with and once the opening response went for about ten words, the longest one has been an hour and fifty before I had to say anything else. Which
DES: [unclear]
AP: It’s astonishing, it’s really really good. Anyway, so, uhm, I start off with a little spiel, so, kick off with that now, just to sort of set the time and the place, uh, so, we are recording and it looks good. So, this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Don Southwell, who was a 463 Squadron navigator at the tail end of World War Two. Interview is taking place at Don’s home in St Ives in Sydney, it’s the 24th of April, I should know that, it’s their [unclear] day, my name is Adam Purcell. Uhm, so, as usual, Don, we will start with the normal question, can you tell me something of your early life, growing up, what you did before the war.
DES: Yes, I can certainly do that. Ehm, I was born in Croydon, in New South Wales, in number 10, Hardidge [?] Street as a matter of fact and I was the third child of my mother Cathy. Ehm, I had my brother Brian, my sister and myself, we were four years between each of us and we lived in Croydon, in Sydney. My father died when I was thirty, when he was thirty five and my mother brought us all up to the [unclear], my, I went to school in [unclear] High school and I had, oh I had a job when I left high school. I was, uhm, my first job was at, uhm, RKO Radio Pictures and I was there for about eighteen months and uhm, my mother thought that this picture business wasn’t the sort of place that [laughs] her son should be spending his career in. So, she started to work on various people and I finished up with a job at the MLC. At the MLC, at this particular stage, they only took you with the leaving certificate. My mum couldn’t afford to keep me on the leaving, so, while my brother and sister went to Fort Street High School and did the leaving, uhm, my mum couldn’t afford it. Anyway, we, I went to RKO Radio Pictures and we, uhm, I lasted there and, uhm, I got the job at the MLC and my sister actually worked and that’s how I probably had a little bit of influence and they didn’t want to appoint me first of all but I reached the stage where there weren’t getting many men in because of the war and the war had started and this was in 1941. And so, uhm, I was very fortunate to get that job because I remind there laws about 90 and that’s not a jag either, this is quite true and I [unclear], I have to write, yeah, uh, I was there for eighteen months and the war came and I’d already enlisted, I’d already joined the air training corps, it was 24 Squadron at Ashfield and under control of squadron leader Whitehurst and he had the grads there and we did all the courses for the air training corps and I was also an ARP warden on my bike and I had an ARP band on my arm, patrolling the streets at night to make sure the people were keeping to the blackout rules. I used to sit in those, sit at the top of the town hall at Ashfield and looking for [laughs] Japanese planes coming over. We didn’t get any Japanese planes but we had to report all things that were going in there and then I got the call up for the army. Because I was eighteen the army called me up and because I was in the air force, I had already been in the air training corps it didn’t make any difference so I went up to the infantry training battalion at Dubbo in central New South Wales and, uhm, I was there for about three weeks, while the rifle regiment came in on a motorbike and looking for [unclear] and took me back to the, you know, the orderly room, I was put on a train to Sydney, I was discharged from the army and sent down to Woolloomooloo. In Woolloomooloo was the air force, uhm, recruiting depot and there we did the medical tests and so forth and I was then posted off and I to number nine Glebe Island [?], which is a wharf in Sydney, I went in as an aircrew, I was called, the air force had so many people for aircrew that they couldn’t cope with them at a particular time and they made us air crew guards and I served for three months in Sydney, there’s an aircrew guard, some of them got posted all the way from New South Wales but I was fortunate enough, I caught number nine Glebe Island, where we guarded little beds, belonged to the air force and so forth and we also did jobs working on the wharves and I was part of the secret war people talk about, that the wharfies continually being out on strike and so forth and they asked the, they sent one of us down to do various jobs on the wharves because later all the supplies were going up to New Guinea, was on a ship called the Marino and it belonged under contract to the air force and now, the wharfies were pilfering stuff from this convoys that were going up to the, the trips up in New Guinea, they were pilfering stuff there and so we had a, we were put, what do you call it? A revolver, a Smith and Wesson revolver around their waists and I did stay for one night, I’d be inside the wharf for one day, inside the wharf in the stores where they had all the stuff there laying. We had a guard on the door, a guard on the, uhm, where the crane came down and picked the, uhm, supplies up, one on top on board the ship and one down in the hold. And we virtually stopped the pilfering in the, but there was a great war against the wharfies in those particular days but a very interesting book has been written about the secret war and it’s not only happened there, but it happened in the army and all around the place. So, that was just a little side set up, while I was waiting to go to aircrew. I was then called up to number 2 ITS in Bradfield Park, to go and do my initial training school and, uhm, so began my career in the air force. Then, do you want me to go further?
AP: Yeah, can you keep going as [unclear].
DES: I’m in the air force then, ok.
AP: Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Absolutely.
DES: We’re in Bradfield Park and Bradfield Park was the centre of two ITS and we did the normal parades on the [unclear] rid marches, uhm, we did cross country runs, we did all sorts of subjects that were pertinent to air crew and so forth, meteorology, all that sort of business and we, uhm, that took us about three weeks to do that and then I was categorised as a pilot. Cause I wanted to be a pilot because my brother was a pilot and so they made me a pilot. They sent me off to number 8, I think it is number 8, EFTS at Narrandera and so began my career, started my career as a pilot. The time limit for getting through, through the school was you had to go solo in twelve hours, now came twelve hours and I hadn’t gone solo and the, uhm, my instructor said; ‘Come on, Don, we gotta get you through this’ and we were operating from a little satellite area, outside of Narrandera, he said you gotta go up and go solo today [laughs]. So, I worked out all what I had to do in the circuit and so forth and I went up on the, took off, made a nice take off but I got the wind changed and then [laughs], I didn’t know the wind had changed and I’m doing the circuit on the basis of when I took off, I did the left-hand circuit and so forth and coming, all of a sudden there is a Tiger Moth coming up beside me, it was my instructor and he was pointing down to the wind sock and I didn’t know what he was talking about, you know, so I didn’t, I just went up and landed, I did a beautiful crosswind landing, it was a good crosswind landing but that’s the last time I, I think I lasted for another half an hour or so flying and then they decided that I, you know, I hadn’t gone in twelve hours, didn’t look like it, so they scrubbed me, I was scrubbed and that was a terrible thing to happen to me, to be scrubbed, I wanted so much to be like my brother who could fly before the war. And, so, uh, I was then, I thought, oh, I’ll have it now the air crew but they transferred me. The boy that got a B in mathematics 1 and mathematics 2, the intermediate, they transferred me to embarkation depot as a navigator and so, but I, and then I stayed at the, I came from Narrandera back to Sydney and I stayed there at the embarkation depot and uhm, just as on the side, we used to, get my [unclear] at Burwood, that was a [unclear] about twenty minute train ride from Chatswood, we used to have a night down, tucked down under the barbed wire, get down a lady game driver, was not a lady game driver this near, walk up to take off, picked to be kept, seen the fiver air crew, when I say we there were a lot of fellows doing this, and we get, I get the train to Han, I spend the night at Ham (or Han), get out of bed at about five o’clock, then come back and up [unclear] at five o’clock ready for parade. And so that, that didn’t go on for long of course, but I did my, that was our waiting game but of course, we were going overseas an therefore we couldn’t leave Australia until we were nineteen, that was a government rule, they just couldn’t, you couldn’t leave, you couldn’t get out, be transferred out of Australia unless you were nineteen. So, I kept going, I was before I turned nineteen, I went to embarkation depot, so I kept [unclear] just about every day reminding them that I was, I’ll be nineteen on the seventeenth of April. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we were bound on a train up to, from Central Railway, we went up to Queensland and transferred to Kalinga and the army came, was a big army came and we slept in tents, oh, by the way, the train trip was terrible, we were in, we had to sit up or some fellows were sitting up, lying down on in the luggage racks upstairs but we had a terrible trip that night, that train, they put us like cattle in there, and so we got up to Brisbane to Kalinga and we had to wait there for our ship and that was somewhere around the first or second of July in 1943, ’43, yeah ’43, and we uhm, one night we had the cars or the truck all arrived and took us down to the boat, was the Noordam, was the United States army transport going back to San Francisco, empty or as empty, except for us air force, because they’ve been bringing all those hundreds of thousands of American troops over to Australia for the Pacific War and uhm, so uhm, we set sail from Brisbane heading or Morton Bay and then shortly about two or three hours out from Brisbane we [unclear] and we wonder what we were doing because of the Japanese submarines and all that sort of thing and it was the, only about three or four days before, or, yeah must have been before, we have to because the Japanese had sunk the hospital ship, the, the, the, the, because they sunk one of their hospital ships and we had two minutes of silence we expected to be torpedoed [unclear] and we headed on our way to, I think it took us about eighteen days to get to San Francisco and never been past Hornsby, past Wollongong, never seen the Blue Mountains, I hadn’t been out to the parks to the, in the [unclear] and to Dubbo in the army and, uhm, here I was, just coming into San Francisco harbour and so I made sure I was at the front of the ship and I never left that ship till about two o’clock in the afternoon, we came by, saw the Golden Gate bridge [unclear] I was nineteen years of age and we heard the, we saw the [unclear] prison and the San Francisco bridge and we landed at Oakland and from there we were put on a train and sent up to, up the uhm, West Coast of America, uh, to Vancouver, where we switched trains for our trip on Canadian national Railways, was a steam, was an old-burner train and we went to, went on our way through the Canadian Rockies to Edmonton and slightly north of Calgary at and the thing that strikes us, was the difference in travelling in Australia in the cattle trucks, where we had, uhm, they weren’t there for our Americans in those days but they were there for Americans were waiting on us, we had sleepers, everything was laid on, the Canadian people, the Canadian government were fantastic, and here we were, we were only leading aircraftsmen, we weren’t even sergeants, and so anyway, we got to Edmonton, I went to the, uhm, manning depot, manning depot and I have a big photo in my home here of the, uhm, on one of our parades, you can pick me out in the [unclear], we had the morning [unclear], you can pick out the Australians because of their blue uniforms, all the rest wore khaki, was in summertime, but anyway, you could pick us out, pick me out with the manning depot and then I was transferred from there, which was just across the road, really, to number 2 AOS Edmonton, that’s where I did my navigation course. My first trip on navigation course was a real, [laugh], was a real did last as far as I was concerned but I’ll tell you about it. We, uhm, I had a, uhm, another navigator, we were flying Avro Ansons and, well, just digress slightly on our Avro Ansons and then poor our navigator had to wind the wheels of the Anson, Avro Anson up, a hundred and forty-nine times to get the wheels up, that was their job for, just straight on take-off. Anyway, we went on from this first navigation trip, I had a second navigator with me, who was supposed to be giving me fixes and that sort of thing and I got lost and so while I was suggesting we do, the pilots by the way were all civilians, they were not in the air force, they were under civilian contract and that was [unclear] Canada and, uhm, Maxi Titlebomb his name was and he suggested we get out and have a look at the railway sign [laughs] so we went down to the railway station and were at a sort of place called Wetaskiwin, not far out of Edmonton, but it was Wetaskiwin so I proceeded to [unclear] I knew where I was, I got me air plucked for Wetaskiwin and went up and we continued on our course, I expected to be scrubbed straight off on that score but I wasn’t, no, they didn’t, was the best thing that ever happened to me because I made a mistake on my first trip, you were never, the navigators rule was never to drop your air plot and I dropped me air plot because if you kept your air plot [unclear] end your life to get a position, make some sort of, where you think it was but you, you’d always got the opportunity to do that and, so a navigator never had to, should never drop his air plot. But anyway I finished up, was about six months course, was about six months and we, incidentally we had to, people talk about the weather these days, it was forty degrees, one night it was forty degrees below zero, now was in Fahrenheit was thirty-two degrees and so was seventy-two degrees of frost. We had to warm the aircraft up in the hangers before we went out and we had winds, sometimes we had headwinds where we were going backwards up in the north part of Canada [laughs], you know, very, very frightening for a nineteen year old [laughs] that didn’t know a lot about navigation, but we got through all of it and we, I finished up with a reasonable max coming out of my course, I was always better at the air plot than I was, I always had trouble with my theory things, wasn’t very good on the theory but I was, even if I say so I was reasonable as a navigator. And so we got our wings there and was around December 1943 and I haven’t been out to find many [unclear] since I came across my fellows book called Navigator Brothers the other day and I wrote to the author, because in there was a photo of one of the group that was having their passing air parade, cause a big deal the passing air parade, the Canadians really put on all their pomp and ceremony for their passing air parade. The, uhm, uh, yes, we got our wings and we proceeded then to go to, uhm, to uhm, we’d being posted to Montreal [unclear] I just had a thought, we went to Montreal and we had to wait a bit to go over to England and, you know, during my stay in Montreal, we stayed at a place called the Sheen, we were sent off for six weeks up to a ski lodge, so they didn’t have a boat to take us over to England so they sent us, was about thirty of us, we were all sent up to a ski lodge, luxurious place for, you know, a couple of weeks, two or three weeks, we learned to ski, we learned to use the tennis rackets on the feet to walk in the snow, we learned to ice skate, to do all sorts of things, it was wonderful. Anyway, we got back from, we went back to the Sheen and I found out that my brother, was, uhm, who was a pilot in the Middle East and an instructor at Lichfield, which would probably entirely they said to be Bomber Command.
AP: Absolutely.
DES: But he, uh, I found out he was coming over on his way home to Australia having completed his tour, he was transferred back to Australia but on his way he had to go, he was [unclear] to fly back with a brand new Liberator and Bryan was in New York with his crew, but they’d been flying Liberators although a lot of these fellows who did this were Lancaster pilots, cause there’s two hundred of them eventually, and then Bryan and I we shared a room in Belmont Plaza Hotel in New York for a couple of days. Then he went on his way home or to California, I should say, where he did three months before he flew off back to Australia, If you like I might talk about that later on. But, then I went back to Montreal and we then got advised that a ship was waiting for us in Halifax, so we did a night trip to Halifax from Montreal and we joined the maiden [?] vessel called, the maiden [?] vessel called the Andes, was a flat bottom boat, a, yeah, a 20000-tonner I suppose, but it was very fast and on that boat we had a complete Canadian armoured division, were ten thousand fellows with their tanks and about a hundred aircrew, [unclear] pilots joining there, there were navigators, there were wireless operators, there was bomb aimers, all been trained in Canada and sending us all over and so we went over there on our own, we didn’t go in a convoy, we went on our own, took us about seven days, we went up towards the North Pole and [unclear] in Liverpool but we didn’t have any, uhm, we didn’t have any [unclear] things happening to us except that we, was a [unclear] taking more than seven days but it was a fast trip was what we did and we weren’t allowed about decks at night time, so, at night time you couldn’t go up on deck no matter what it was because people had a habit of lighting cigarettes and submarines could catch you but some of these, the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary, they were too fast for the submarines so they, we zig-zagged all the way across and we arrived in Liverpool and uhm, we uhm, got, we arrived nearly as the morning met by the salvation army, they gave us food and so forth, we went in the big tunnel out of Liverpool and came down to, went down to Brighton PDRC and that’s where I started my first, uhm, flying, my first events in England.
AP: What did you?
DES: Now.
AP: What did you think of wartime England when you first got there?
DES: When?
AP: As a nineteen year old Australian, you are now in wartime England. What?
DES: What I thought of it? Well, uhm, when I first got there I, we went by train down to, we skirted to London, we went to, Brighton was a lovely place but, we were, there was the IFF that had taken over the uhm, the uhm, the Metropole and the, the Metropole and the, the two big hotels, I have just forgotten their names but it was where Margaret Thatcher was blown up later on, she escaped the bombing near in Brighton some years later but we went straight down so, we didn’t see much of the, uhm, the countryside. We were billeted out from the hotels, the [unclear] were billeted out in homes quite near the hotel but we didn’t see any great, you know, people had their coupons, that sort of thing and I saw a lot of it after on my first leave to London, then was when I, you know, realised how terrible things were but there in Brighton, where we were, all the beaches were, they’re all pebble stones not sand all the beaches were mined so you couldn’t go there. If anybody knows Brighton as the Brighton pier, and then it had been chopped in half purposely and the bottom half was used by the air force to, but we used to go and gonna get paid there, we used to go and collect the money on a Thursday or whatever it was, and so uhm, we didn’t see, uhm, in all fairness, you know, I didn’t see, you know, it was, I wouldn’t say, you know, nasty looking, you know, there wasn’t, there was no visible damage that I saw down in Brighton but, my mother and father both came out from England in 1912 so I had relations to go to in England and so I was, uhm, my first leave I had when I went to, I went to a place called Maidstone where my mother was born and uhm, I went to see uncle Ted and auntie Gladys who became [unclear] mother while I was there and I stayed with them and they had a big two story home. He was the general manager of Fremlin’s Brewery, which was a big brewery [laughs] in London and Maidstone, and was a white, the emblem was a white elephant on all the London busses and he was the general manager of this [unclear] and so naturally I was well looked after. If they wanted some meat, if they wanted a steak or some, which was very rare, she takes it, make sure you keep the uniform on and we’ll go down to the butchers today and she, he’s my cousin from Australia you know and they’d toss out some special food for us. But uhm, they seemed to live pretty well you know I think they were, you had to be careful with petrol rationing and that sort of thing but in the group that I sort of as, you know, these people were part of, put in mind, you know, reasonably well off as people and, but she was a real mother to me, she used to take me round on, I always used to go there on leave but she used to take me round and onto, show me the Rochester cathedral or Ramsgate, where my mother used to go and swim as she was a kid and so forth, you know, and I’ve met all my relations but I, I don’t have any, it’s only when later on I went down when I was in the middle of the buzz bombs and the V2 rockets that I realised, you know, how terrible that, uh, what the Germans had done to our people here in London and, you know, when you see streets that are just completely, [unclear] smashed, it was quite something but generally speaking I can’t say that I, you know, I go shopping in London and I, one of the girls there I used to take out, Elisabeth Fulligan, she was a solicitors clerk in London and I used to see her every now and then when I was on leave but I generally speaking, you know, the, I go into a restaurant but we might have a bit difficulty in getting decent sort of stuff but, you know, I can always get eggs and bacon or some I think we had horse meat at some places in London but I didn’t know we were eating horse meat until somebody told us but. Uh, all I can say is about, the people there were marvellous [unclear] and if I can just get back, the people in Canada I missed them, I spent a lot of time when I was in Canada doing my course, one of the fellows on my course was Harry Thompson and he was a Canadian, he lived in 1065 107 Street and we used to go to weekends there and you know, they couldn’t do, his parents and their friends had us all out to their places and we go, they take us to their places and, you know, you can never pay for them, they , it was fantastic in what they did for us and I had, as I say, I had relations in England and they are all the same and I, I think that I was fortunate in that I had relations to go and stay with, all our on the other side of that I missed seeing a lot of England, I used to go down on leave to Wesperdale [?] , good to be when I was there, I was enjoying myself immensely you know, I didn’t drink beer, I drank cider and that was worse. I can always remember going to a Rotary club meeting in Maidstone and they introduced me to a sergeants household and I had to get up and say who I was and I didn’t drink beer and I thought I’d have some cider and I think I was silly as anything because I didn’t realise cider was, I any, I didn’t know much about the air force and before we finished I’d like to speak about to something about the air force that I would like to say but I answered that question there and that’s about the best I can do about the people and the conditions and that sort of thing.
AP: So.
DES: Except that I had a good time.
AP: Well, that’s the important thing.
DES: When I was on leave that was, all my leave [unclear], that’s when you notice these things.
AP: So, from Brighton, where did you go next?
DES: Oh, ok, from Brighton my first port of call was, I think it was 29 OTU, operational training unit at Bruntingthorpe, which was near Leicester and that’s, no, I’m sorry, that’s not where I went, I went to the advanced flying unit in Freugh in Scotland. There’s a good story about Freugh and that’s where we did our first lot of real navigation. We did all trips, day trips out to the Mull of Kintyre, we’re up right in the north of Scotland, no the north, but half way of Scotland, and we were doing all these trips. You went over pretty close to Ireland, we’re doing all these marvellous trips, you know, that’s where we really learned to be navigators, really into, we got our wings in Canada, but this where we really did the real thing and there we spent, West Freugh is near Stranraer and Stranraer was the main port of call when you go over to Northern Ireland and now we are on the maps, normal maps, you can find them on google now but on the normal maps you buy, you will never see West Freugh, I’ve asked many a Scottish bloke about West Freugh but they can never find West Freugh, they can only assume it was probably a farm of some sort but they had especially for that, they made it [unclear] because it was flying, we’re on Avro Ansons again, we were flying Avro Ansons there at West Freugh, they’re a two-engine aircraft, and they had two navigators on board and then we, uhm, so, I think from a point of view of a AF advanced flying unit, by the way, it was number 4 [unclear] which is [unclear], we stayed there about, uhm, oh, we didn’t stay there long, we stayed there from July ’44 to the end of July, early July, 5th of July to the 21st of July and that’s where we did our AFU advanced flying unit . Now, from there, we graduated from there and we were only doing cross country trips and that sort of thing from there. From there we went to 29 OTU at Bruntingthorpe and that’s where what we called crewed up and that’s where we, uhm, we’re all pilots, navigators, wireless operators, correct me if I’m wrong, there was, we didn’t have any engineers cause we didn’t have engineers at that stage we had two air gunners, not certain about if we had all, and the wireless operator and so we all, where we were, we were put in a big room and we were told to find yourself a pilot, navigators find yourself a pilot sort of, so, all was a real PR job, you know, we’d all yeah and there might have been a few drinks [unclear] around too as I say but they all, we were all supposed to be friendly and you wanted to find out if you, you wanted to find you’ll gonna have a team that you could work together with and I, I don’t know how I picked my pilot but I [unclear] [unclear] from [unclear] and was slightly older than me, he’s a big man and he had the biggest hands I’ve ever seen, he was a, he had a grape, not a vineyard, well it was a vineyard but he had dried fruits in [unclear] and now was to sitting behind a big bomber and we had to carry a full bomb load and with his hands gave him a great confidence. But I’ll get back to the Bruntingthorpe now, but we, we got together and we finished up with whatever we had to do and we all then did various cross country fighter affiliation where they send up and you get up in the air find another fighter plane to come and meet you and then attack you and all that sort of thing and all various subjects pertaining to air, Gee, H2S, all that sort of thing and we we’ve been introduced to, that was our navigational aids, air positioning indication, that was another thing we learned all about but that was, an hour on Wellingtons, Wellington bomber, well, they were bombers in the early stage, they were being used for training at this stage now and uhm, the uhm, and so we, when they thought the pilot was satisfactory, off we went then to, let me see, we went to, from to HCU which was the heavy conversion unit and that was our introduction to four-engine aircraft and we caught the Sterling, now said and the, uhm, we were there for a short time, that was just, this was mainly the, the pilot getting used to and the navigator, we were doing more, more uhm, things that we had done before, you know, were dropping bombs and packed us bombs and we were doing long, uhm, long cross countries, uhm, you know, five hours, two hours, that sort of thing and uhm, we, uhm, we’d be when the pilot was satisfactory trained, we were showed off to what we called the Lank finishing skill, it was the Lancaster finishing skill and we were introduced to Lancasters and the, from and that was once again, we all did our own thing with the pilot and he just had to become a professional on that particular type of aircraft and from there we were sent to the squadron. Which was Waddington, which was just a few miles away and, and that was when we started our operational flying.
AP: So, what was your first thought of the Lancaster when you first [unclear]?
DES: Oh, after being on the Sterling [laugh], after being on the Sterling it was marvellous, uhm, yeah, with, uh, yeah because [unclear], the carry under the Lancaster, you know, this was probably the best aircraft that had ever been produced at that time for the duration of the war uh, but everything was, when you are a new pilot on the squadron, you usually get the [unclear] aircraft, but some of them, some of had been there for a while had their own aircraft made sure that they kept their own aircraft, we were not allowed to do this, I was on my first start, we were on one particular type of Lancaster and but everything was so modern and up-to-date, you know for us the Gee was, the navigational instruments were all spot on, you know, we never, I don’t know who did the, to this day I don’t know who did all the mechanics and the [unclear], our aircraft was already, it was one of the ground crew base but, you never saw them at work, at least I never saw them at work, unless something really went wrong but yeah, the gap at the back steps of the Lancaster and to walk along the, yeah, it’s try I suppose when I first went up there, you wonder, Gee, where am I going, you had to walk over a big spare but then again I had my own room, well, area, it was just a small area with a black curtain around it but I had a nice desk, had the astro[unclear] up on top which would flashed the various maps down on the and the stars onto the table, everything was spot on and you know, we came to expect, we’re on a Lancaster, we’re on the best we had and that was the feeling that I had, that I was very, very fortunate, you know, some people like the Halifax , you know, but, you know, they say, I love the Halifax and so forth but we just happened to, uh, it had such a good reputation and such a wonderful aircraft and could carry so many more bombs than anyone else. Uh, you know, I think that, uhm, that was my feeling about my first, but I was amazed, really. I was in awe. Yeah.
AP: So, you then go to Waddington from, what’s it, I think, I saw Skellingthorpe in [unclear]?
DES: Yes, I did, I went to Skellingthorpe I thought that was after. I went to Waddington [unclear].
AP: [laughs]
DES: No we didn’t get to Skellingthorpe.
AP: You didn’t get to Skellingthorpe? [unclear] after.
DES: No, we went to Skellingthorpe after the war finished. We went to Skellingthorpe and we were all transferred to Skellingthorpe and we were, uhm, we had our final passing air parade in August, August 1945. We had our passing air parade.
AP: So, alright, we will get back to Waddington then.
DES: Yeah, get back to Waddington.
AP: Yeah [laughs]. Uhm, where and how did you live on the Squadron at Waddington?
DES: Oh, well now, Waddington was a permanent station in England, a permanent RAF station. It was, it had been there for many years and it consisted of what you would call apartment-type of accommodation, it was brick, big brick flats and in that we’d all, the officers, my pilot now was a flight sergeant right through but as soon as he went to the Squadron, he got his commission and that was the rule then he got his commission. And so he went to the officer’s mess and they had their own specific area and we had our own, we were in dormitories and, uhm, I had, I sort of, well, I was a flight sergeant a lot of that time but I was regarded as a bit senior, not senior but, I seemed to be the one that organises for when and what we are doing outside out of the, you know, for our recreation cause my pilot didn’t smoke or drink and that is marvellous, [unclear] didn’t smoke or drink, he was young too but, but he was a great one for, uhm. He was really wrapped in aircraft, which he should be I know, no, but he gathered at the end of the runway if we weren’t flying a particular day on the squadron he’d go off at the end of the runway and watch them all take off and that sort of thing, he was, he was a wonderful bloke and then he took a great interest in everything, but he. My brother was the same, he would do all that sort of thing, you know, they’re really wrapped but others might be doing something else, but, we used to, well, there were various things we could do, I used to take them down to the, we used to go down to The Horse and Jockey, which is still there, the hotel, but it was a hotel in the , you know, we could go and have something to eat down there, or we’d have a few [unclear], play darts, [unclear] balls and that sort of thing and there a lot of our lot, we had pushbikes and we could pushbike down to the Horse & Jockey and that was in the little town of Waddington, was only a little place and uhm, uh, a lot of our time was spent going around and then we’d have, every six weeks we’d have leave. But, sticking to Waddington, uhm, you know, we had a lot to do, we had dances, the west [unclear] we would have dances all night, yeah, we’re all, uh, I reckon that we were all well looked after and they really were, I’ve recently been back to the Horse & Jockey, and, you know, they are so pleased to see you and they were like that in England. Most, I think of most of them were, I’m not being a snob but I think most of them were pretty good party fellows, there were not a lot of drunks, gave me a favorite to drinks, we had a, we had right a bite back and a [unclear] who used to stop us every now and then and say: ‘Aye, aye, aye!’ but they wouldn’t do anything to us. They were quite, uhm, quite pleasant. But I’ve really found that the people there, I didn’t get involved in anything much outside [unclear] leave I had relations to go to [unclear] wonderful, cause I had my mother’s side and my father’s side so I had relations of both so [unclear] he was from, my father was from Maryport in Cumberland, right up in the north and I have been there a few times since. I met my grandfather that I had never seen and a bit quite of the other relations but the grandfather was the closest, he was a tenner and there was gaslight, there was no electricity, was gaslight, and he, I had to sleep with him, he had no other accommodation there was I think he had a family gone but there wasn’t a very big place and I had forgotten he had, I was [unclear] he was one of six brothers, my father was one of six brothers but later on I found out that my grandmother had fourteen kids so that meant we, in the last few years I’ve been chasing up all these people we’ve met, since I didn’t know we had but sticking to the, uhm, on the Squadron, yeah, we, uhm, I don’t think I had much more [unclear] than I, I had just a normal [unclear], I used to go to church at the Lincoln Cathedral every now and then, I used to go to Southwell. In case you don’t know that Southwell was six miles south out of Newark in Robin Hood territory and it’s a cathedral, it’s got a cathedral so it’s a city, it’s only a small place but it’s a city of Southwell, although they call it Southwell, and so I went there a few times, I was made very welcome and incidentally the Southwells in Australia is one of the biggest families in Australia but, and I am connected with them but they’re in Canberra and they, their offshoots are all, uhm, there is an enormous lot of them, probably the biggest family in Australia, the Southwells. You might, [unclear], but the government gave them a grant in the bicentenary they have their big reunion in Canberra, so there must be some truth in there.
AP: So, you mentioned The Horse & Jockey earlier. Uhm, if you walk into the Horse & Jockey, in wartime, what’s there, what does it look like and what’s going on?
DES: Looks like an old English pub.
AP: Yeah? Funny that.
DES: Yeah, a bit out [unclear] cause I went back a few months again and I hardly knew the place, it had been changed around, they moved a lot of the chimneys out, but I can’t remember getting to a reunion in 1995 at the Horse & Jockey and they had an upstairs everybody could go and we had a great get together that day which was been back on Channel 9 and I was lady in the singing of all the wartime songs in Waddington but it was a real meeting place down, there was another pub we tried [unclear] plus I didn’t drink much but I went to that, oh, I was drinking as at that stage I hadn’t started to drink but that’s another story. My brother, I didn’t mind, now I never drink in our family and my brother on his way back he came up to see me in Montreal at one stage and he said: ‘Would you like a beer?’ And I said: ‘Oh no, I will have a lemonade’. And he said: ‘I will have a beer’. I said, oh, so I didn’t say anything to him. And when since I got back to Montreal, I’ve had a beer and I’ve been drinking beer ever since [laughs]. But, you know, Canada was a funny place for beer because it’s a, they don’t sell beer in a, in those days they didn’t sell beer in a hotel, you had to go into a place that was especially designed and sit down and have a beer but you put salt into the beer to get the gas out of, it was so gassy, that’s another story. But, the Horse & Jockey now, I gonna say now because honestly I’ve forgotten what it was there like but now they have a lot of dart boards around, we played darts and we played balls outside, it was fun, uhm, but it was just, you know, there were members of the public, you know, the people that were working there, we would fraternise with them, they were all friendly with, so, it was generally, it was nice, actually it wasn’t a bad place to go and have a [unclear] and a [unclear]. No, I wouldn’t say that, [unclear] we were [unclear] but more recollections of the Horse & Jockey that was, I said, the crew kept together, I kept the crew together, we were all there together, it was the whole other six of us, there as, that didn’t mean, there was no worry about that but I would like to add that I had [unclear] to my place in about 1950 or 60 and he [unclear] smoked. So, [laughs], [unclear] it’s been a change, he remained a bachelor all his life. But he was wonderful fellow and he was another one, as I say he was very, very keen on, what he did, he took on the training course after the war in [unclear] and he was, he got a medal for that, an RFD or doing something like that, royal returned forces, no, not returned, what’s it, returned something forces decoration? Not returned forces. Anyway, as an RFD, as a, there’s a post normal or medal, but he, he got one of those. But he was a great fellow and he brought us home safely.
AP: [unclear] Alright.
DES: But I had a lot of confidence in him, as I was saying, earlier on, [unclear] blessed hands, they were bigger than mine, I got the tiniest hands you’ve ever seen, mine, my wife’s gloves won’t fit me, you know, they’re my hands, my hands are so tiny, but, yeah, he was, yeah, that’s about it, [unclear].
AP: Yeah, we’re going alright still. So, a little bit more about this daily life in Waddington. The Sergeants Mess, what was that like, what sort of things happened there?
DES: Oh yeah, the Sergeants Mess. Yeah, well, we spend a bit of time there, no, after a trip we do was going to the mess and there’s a lot of, a lot of untoward things went on in the Sergeants Mess and some of the other persons over there, a bit longer than I was, tell some wonderful stories about bringing a donkey into the mess and there’s the Officers Mess and all sort of that. But, we, uhm, I can’t recall, my memory is not that good for the Sergeants Mess. I can, I know what it was like but it was not a place that, you know, we all met there at various stages and had our lunch there and our dinner there and all that sort of thing but, uhm, this never stayed in my mind as being rather relevant to me, I don’t know why but I know we ate there and had our meals there and you know the ordering officer would come round and say: ‘Any complaints?’ [Laughs] Every day in the evening we had our meal there, the ordering officer would come round and say, quite often it was one of the, one of your pilots that, [laughs] you know, was his turn to come over from the officers mess and say: ‘Any complaints?’ What’s the officer, orderly officer, any complaints, I don’t know, that I had many complaints, no, I can’t help, I can’t recall a lot about the Sergeants Mess.
AP: Did 463 and 467 Squadron eat in, did they have their own officer’s mess [unclear]?
DES: No, we were all together, they had their own, the two were there together.
AP: So it was more [unclear] Waddington.
DES: yeah, yeah, yeah. Was Waddington, yeah. Yeah, when we went back to Waddington in, when we went to the Officers Mess there was just one place, yeah, there was only one place, there was 463 and 467, yeah, we got to know each other 463 and 467, as you know 467 was the first Australian Squadron, first Squadron on, uhm ,first was their own Squadron, they were formed in about 1941, something like that and then after they got a big bigger, we wanted to have another Squadron, so 463 grew out of [unclear]? Yeah, [unclear], grew out of [unclear], is it about November or December? ‘43, would that be right? 47 might have been ’42, I think it was ’43.
AP: Yeah, ’43.
DES: Yeah, it was ’43, I think. And so that’s how 463 was. Uhm, and that was under Wing Commander Rollo Kingswood-Smith, who send me off the parade ground for not having a shave. And I was only a young bloke who only shaved about four days a week and I was on, and they sent me off the parade ground for not having a shave. And then later on of course, I’m going ahead of fifty years I became the secretary of 463 Squadron, Rollo was, he is the patron at present, no, he is the patron, I think but he was and he came up to me, oh, I did know him a bit afterwards so. He came up to me and looked at me and said: ‘Oh, Don, you’ve done your shave today’. And days before he died, he said to me: ‘Don, you had your shave today’ and I reminded him when I came back from England but I became quite a good friend of Rollo, when I finished, cause he is really very, very good, he always [unclear], you know, he was a flight commander, no he was a CO, or was a flight commander, whatever he was, he wasn’t a station commander, because that was different from, but he was, he was a 463 commanding officer but he did his trips at the time, he never, he always did his trips, so, he could have quite easily have said, No, I’m going tonight or something like that, but Rollo would always do his trips and never fail. And he was always very good with his, I know, with his writing to people for, you know, lost their and lost their sons and but I believe he was a very strict, he was a very, very strict man, as I say, he was quite different in late years, well, he was, you knew where you stood with him but, and I think he had to be to be the commanding officer at that particular, and we had all walks of life in our, uh, in the air force.
AP: Did 463 Squadron have any superstitions or hoodoos or anything that you are aware of of [unclear]?
DES: Not that I am aware of, I always used to carry my RAF, I had no RAF scarf, always carry my RAF scarf, had to go back one night to get it, but, which I had forgotten, I had to get back but that was only a personal deal I don’t think I was really superstitious about I had to carry my RAF scarf, it was a scarf, it wasn’t a tie, it was a scarf, I didn’t see many of them, I still got mine on my top drawer beside my bed I’ve got my Royal Air Force scarf. I also had my Royal Air Force [unclear] [laughs].
AP: [laughs]
DES: Some [unclear].
AP: We were talking about off tape before we started. Very good. So, you flew nine operations [unclear].
DES: I did nine operations, yep.
AP: Do any of them particularly stand out?
DES: Yeah, was a couple I can have. The trip, uhm, I did to Pilsen. We took off, was a long trip, Pilsen was in Czechoslovakia and it was a long trip and not, we had a couple of hours and now one of our engines went and the skipper said to me: ‘Do you think we can make it?, and I said: ‘Yes, I think so. I think we can take a few short cuts [unclear] we might be able to make it, we don’t tell anybody whatever’. And he said, [skimming through pages of a book], yeah, the uhm, I said: ‘I think I could make it’ and I did a few calculations and even though I say [unclear] I reckon I did a pretty well navigation so I think that was that day because you know you had to be careful if you gonna take any short cuts it couldn’t stand out we were on a track that you were given and as long as you stayed four miles or five miles out of the side of the track you are fairly safe because that’s where all the other aircraft were going, and we were tossing out the silver paper, the Window, that made look as if there are more aircraft out and that sort of thing. But we had to be careful if we went out of it, you could be picked off by the German radar, so you had to be a little bit careful. So, anyway, we got there on time, uhm, we uhm, and uhm, so that was a long trip that I got a bit of praise for by my skipper in the briefing that we went back to and that was about uhm, eight hours and we bombed on three engines. We were diverted when we got back cause we didn’t have much fuel left, uhm, we landed at Boscombe Down that particular night and, uhm, then the next day went back to, uhm, to, uhm, Waddington but uhm, yeah, it was that. And one other night we went to [unclear]. I was in a couple of thousand bomber raids, daylight, we were over Essen and Dortmund and I, we bombed through a cloud there and this was, you realised we were getting towards the end of the war and the master bomber was down below the clouds and he’d come up the cloud, drop the target indicators and go back down again and see how they went and he turned on the RT, the radio telephone and he turned into [unclear] TI by ten seconds or something like that, you know, and he’d be conducting the whole operation from down below. And, so we were just, we just dropped bombs, we didn’t see where they go, we just dropped them on top of the cloud, and that was on the Krupp works at Essen and Dortmund and. But there was another one I was going to mention and we went to [unclear], and uhm, which is just south of Hamburg and the wind changed that particular night and the whole force was all over north-western Europe, we got a little blown away but well, I got a little bit off course, I got to say this, I got a bit off course and we were chased by the German jetfighters, the 263 I think it is? The 263, something like that, the 263? But, we went into a cork, we did have, we were well-trained, went straight away and went into the corkscrew and we did all that, and, cause they can only stay up for about ten minutes and so they, you know, you, if you did your corkscrew properly, probably you were safe so we got out of that but that was, we were picked off there because I got a bit off course. And then I went to uhm, smaller refineries, Bohlen, I went to Bohlen, that was out near Leipzig, for people that might know where Leipzig is, a lot of these synthetic oil refineries were in Eastern Germany and, uhm, we’re at the crossing of the Rhine when the British army were, uhm, crossing the Rhine, uh, we were given the job of bombing Wesel, we were given the job of bombing Wesel and, uhm, which we did and I think it was only, it was only our, you know, our group went that particular night but the British army were on one side of the river and the German side, the Germans were on the other side, and we bombed the other side but we were given a certain time because the British were going into the water at a certain time to go over and I took it with the loss of one life, I think it was in, General Montgomery, Field Marshall Montgomery, he, send the message back to, they brought it over to the loudspeakers the next day on parade, do you want something to eat?
AP: No, thank you.
DES: It was on parade and we were on parade and they read out a message from Montgomery to say how wonderful it was and we did a wonderful job bla, bla, bla, yeah, and uh, yeah that was interesting because you can, if you go to Wesel afterwards it’s quite, you know, I’ve seen some photos of it lately and I think they have rebuilt most of, most of the place. And lastly we did the last operation of the war which was on Tonsberg, which was in the southern part of Norway and we approached it from the North, so it was a long crossing over the North Sea, this was the last operation of the war, on Anzac Day, and with the, we came down the coast, I was coming down from Norway, with Sweden on the left hand side and Sweden was all beautifully lit up, all lit up and the other side was all black, blacked up there was the, Norway which was under the control of the Germans, anyway, we, uhm, that was the last operation of the war and we, uhm, that was bombed successfully but on, if I check forward about fifty years, I was at a funeral and, uhm, of a lady who was of Norwegian birth and the ex-consul of Norway was there and I went and spoke to him and I said: ‘I’ve never been to Norway except on the air’. And he said: ’When were you there?’ I said: ‘Oh, I was there on the 25th of April 1945’ and he said: ‘Well, your aim was pretty good that night’. [laughs] Not at all, so I thought we did pretty well. He said yes. He said, but some of your bombers did bomb the shipyards, some of them went astray and they bombed some of the civilians and he said that all the people of Norway, the war was coming to an end, the 8th of May was the end of the war, the war was coming to an end, they are all thrilled, all happy because everybody knew the armistice was coming on that particular day and he said, now, all the people in the rest of Norway, he said, we were burying our dead and he was very nice about the whole thing and, you know, he is, I got him down as a likely speaker for whoever wants someone to speak about it but, they were very understanding and. So I must really go to France these days, you know, the people in France they were terribly bombed, you know, was, they are thanking you and thanking you and we did an enormous lot of damage but they realised that we had to, that we had to do that for, uhm, sake of winning the war.
AP: So, you mentioned that Messerschmitt, or the jetfighter.
DES: Jetfighter, yeah.
AP: And the corkscrew. So, you are the navigator. You hear corkscrew port go. What happens next?
DES: I have been difficult. Well, we gotta a set of pattern what you got to do the, if the plane’s coming in from the port, you corkscrew port go the rear gunner or whatever the hillside part will do his corkscrew and he’d go down fifteen hundred and he’d turn and he’d go up fifteen hundred feet and it’s quite a ring morale to do but you fly, if you do it properly you fly, you know, a certain course even [unclear] and so, you know, it didn’t do much damage to our [unclear] we didn’t have to make much allowance for an hour in our navigation, if you had to corkscrew port, you, you could just sort of forget about it and just there’s, as long as you weren’t [unclear] too long but generally speaking you flew a net course for this business, all designed to and it was very successful the corkscrew but I, I think we did this about three times I suppose.
AP: What does it feel like?
DES: Oh, I don’t mind, don’t forget we are nineteen years of age there, this was just, this was just wonderful, trusting the aircraft. Oh, of course you were worried a bit about where you were being shot down that goes into it, but generally speaking the corkscrew never, we thought if we did the corkscrew port we would be safe. You’ve got that feeling in your mind that you’d do that, I always remember Redge Boys [?] he was our hero, he was [unclear], he was our navigation leader at Waddington and Redge he did two tours and he said he never believed himself that he’d ever be shot down and he tried to, he despite the fact that the pilot was the chief, he always made sure the crew were all, you know, positive about what we were doing, they were all, they were always convinced that they were gonna get through this. They had this positive attitude that they, you know, and I think it helped, while you’re up there, [unclear], I tried to adopt that attitude that, you know, we all wanted to get home and see the people and I want to get home but, I must admit that, when we were on a bombing run, I used to see, a navigator didn’t have his parachute on, he, you couldn’t work on a desk when, cause we had a chest parachute that fitted on a harness on your chest and you had it sitting beside you. Now, uh, if I was to leave there at my desk, I’d always put my parachute on and I would go, if we were on a bombing run, I would remember the course you got to steer after we dropped our bombs and I’d turn the light out and I’d go up and stand behind the pilot, and watch all the, what was going on and I could then pop down to the rear gunner, near the rear gunner and say, could I have a look at the pilot [laughs] and you’d see the fires and all that sort of thing in the background. But, you know, I felt as if I wanted to be part of the thing so I wanted to see what was going on. Cause everyone else could see what was going on except the wireless operator and what’s the name because we were sitting [unclear] bomb’s gone, you’d have to wait a while, while the photo was taken, away was given course 270 and off we go. And, yeah.
AP: Yes, that’s unusual, most, uhm, most navigators I have spoken to would, you know come up and have a look [unclear] take the head and go, no, don’t ask me to do that [unclear].
DES: Oh, now, that’s, that’s another story. Well, that is. After, a lot of people don’t know about this. But after the war we disarmed, the war had finished and we were disarming with all our, [unclear] disarmed and we had to get rid of all the bombs on the station. So, what they did was we’d [unclear] might have been a couple of weeks, I could look that up but that’s been a couple of weeks, we flew out of Waddington with four bomb loads, headed to the North Sea, about two and a half hours and straight course out, dropped our bombs, they were dropped safe, they weren’ dropped armed but they were dropped safe, and there, I know what the Greenies [?] had signed out because they knew all these thousands of bombs now there was really thousands of us, there was not only our Squadron but every other Squadron was doing this. We go out there and then we come back and if you were above the cloud, we used to have a lot of fun with the pilot with going over the cloud, as if you were low flying. We had some lovely time so, but what I’m coming to is I thought this particular dive [?] was navigation record, no had Gee operator, [unclear], I didn’t done any, I didn’t have to do any strict navigation set up, I, cause I had near position indicators which told me, anyway, we, I thought I’d like to get into the rear turret and I saw [unclear] was the rear gunner and he could come up and sit in the navigation seat and I’d coming in here for a couple of hours, you know. So I trotted off down to the and the [unclear] showed me what to do and [unclear] I couldn’t have gone out of there, couldn’t have gotten there faster, was scared stiff, you know I’d never been because you’re away from the tires of the aircraft, when you are sitting back behind you, so, you are sitting out in the open. You know, you’re away from the aircraft so you feel like it and I think [unclear] having to sit [unclear] on our trip to sit in this thing, you know, you’d be, mind you, these, while our air gunners had had the experience of flying they knew what they’d, you know, they’d got used to it I suppose but me as a person I was scared stiff, I was more scared stiff getting into, getting out of that turret than I was, say, sitting out there in the navigation and bombs, looking down and looking at bombs going off and [unclear] I was scared stiff on that trip. And I had the greatest of admiration for our rear gunner out there, how they could [unclear], and [unclear] you know, I’m not necessarily claustrophobic but I thought oh, Jeez, I couldn’t do this. And I realised how well off I was, because the navigator was lucky I reckon because, as I say, on a ten hour trip you’d have, you had to get a fix every ten minutes or so and, you know, you no sooner that you’d got your fix, you’d plotted it, as you got your fix, you plotted it, you’d make the necessary course, the course change and so forth so If you had to make any change and it took time and the time went quickly this was what the beauty was the pilot was the same, he may be sitting around looking, you know, sitting out on the front [unclear] putting on a [unclear] every now and then, yeah, most of the time but he, and but the navigator had to do and the wireless op was something similar to, he had a lot of work to do, he had to keep the schedules and report back and we had our jobs and our logs don’t forget, as soon as we got back, were handed in to the navigation leader and you were marked as if you were at school and you get 60 percent, or 50 percent or 75. And uhm, you know but this is why we had, oh I must say this as a navigator, that we had marvellous navigator, the navigators were, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force, they were wonderfully trained, they, don’t forget, they took as about eighteen months to get into operations, the Americans, I understand can get in as navigating, get in about six weeks training, you know, and that’s not exaggerating, I believe as I say, because some of the B-24s out of Darwin carried, the Americans carried Australian navigators if you look up your history, which is not widely spoken about, but we were well trained and, as I say, we strictly [unclear], we knew our work was big marked anyhow so you had to be, you really gave you a greater incentive to be [unclear] but above all, you know, a ten hour trip might have seemed by far, you know, then, yeah.
AP: VE-day.
DES: Ah, VE-Day. This is all vivid with me, I had wonderful times on VE-day but VE-Day I did three trips to France bringing home, I think it was on VE-Day, yeah, it was on VE-Day, I don’t know if it was three or two we didn’t the next day, you know I did three trips of bringing home prisoners of war, we’d go over in Juvincourt in France and load up twenty five, it was called Operation Exodus and we were out, we load up to twenty five British war, British prisoners of war, they’d been, some of them had been there since Dunkirk in 1940 and the first load we carried, oh, they sit, the twenty five of them sat in the fuselage of the Lancaster on cushions, not seatbelts, uhm, they just had to hang on and [laughs] they just had to sit there and there were thousands of them, we brought out prisoners of war with this Operation exodus by the way, but they were, uhm, It was a wonderful experience, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life, you flew these guys out, they’d been prisoners of war all these years and they, uhm, the first load I carried they were all Sikhs, they were Indians the first lot we carried out. The next load we carried were all obviously from England and it seemed to be most obvious, I made sure that I went down and I got them to come up gradually when the white cliffs of Dover came, got them, and we ferried them up but it was nice and orderly and hear the tears was rolling down their cheeks, you know, was absolutely wonderful to see the, uhm, and they all shook hands when we, uhm, they all shook hands when they got off the aircraft and that was what I did on VE-Day. Now, shortly after VE-Day we had a lot of celebrations and I, you know, I can always remember smoking a cigar, having a few beers, I was Mister Churchill at one stage, you know, was a lot of hilarity and joyness and it was a wonderful feeling, they, you know, all the station was all together and we were all having, officers, ordinary, you know, the airmen, we were all together having a and they’d put on some wonderful [unclear] there and at that particular time and that’s my, I worked on the VE-Day there and we were so glad we were doing, and the guy that wrote our 463-467 book, Nobby Blundell he was a, uhm, he was a fitter, he was a fitter, uhm, an engineer and on a ground staff and he wrote our books incidentally, all the books on 464-647 fisher [?] books were all written by Nobby did a magnificent job but the uhm, was great the, uhm, he managed to, you know, get, gives us all the particulars that we wanted to know, I don’t know, and he was all of our flying set up, all of the, he’d used the, [unclear], is that called, the evidence of our doing your trip, he used to get all these information from the [unclear], he spend years on doing this and so we were forever grateful and he did this but, uhm, getting back to VE-Day, I was more than, more than pleased with what was happening and then of course we had to start thinking about what was gonna happen as it was after VE-Day.
AP: Uhm, how did you get back to Australia?
DES: Ah, that’s a good [unclear], you’ve got some good questions. They are very good, you know, [unclear], we uhm, the uhm, oh I made two efforts to get away. We were disbanded by the way, we were disbanded in August at, uhm, Skellingthorpe, I think it was Skellingthorpe, we’d moved to Skellingthorpe from the Squadron and they formed a Tiger Force for people that were gonna go out to fight the Japanese and uhm, we uhm, managed to particular Tiger Force the uhm, [unclear] you know just asking [unclear].
AP: How did you go home?
DES: How did you go home, yeah. Lost my train of thought. At my age you can.
AP: That’s one. That’s the first one in [unclear]
DES: No, I forget.
AP: Off you go.
DES: Oh, good. [laughs] I know you can scrub that out, yeah, but getting home. Yeah, but I wanted to mention about, we disbanded and then we were transferred to Brighton to wait for a boat and the [unclear] came along. Now, a lot of people in the Air Force know what happened there, there was virtually no, [unclear] but the conditions on the [unclear] which is the [unclear] boat, there was no P&O those days, [unclear] made all the newspapers that a lot of the trips walked off the ship at Southampton because of the conditions, I didn’t want to go twenty five days or so we gotta go and we went back through the canal and [unclear], well we didn’t stop, well we stopped in a few places, the uhm, it was, the, in Brighton we went from, we’d gone onto the ship on the [unclear], we’d got onto the ship and we sailed eventually, we sailed to half of it and wouldn’t you believe we broke down in the Bay of Biscay and the war was over, there was no submarines or so, the war had finished at this time, this was in August or September 1945 [unclear] and we, in between time we had been flying, we’d been doing, taking stuff out to drop the bombs and we’d been doing fighter affiliation and all, we then found work for us to do. Anyway, we set sail out of Southampton and we broke down, and we were flying the black flag, anyone knows it’s out of control and so we eventually we got, we slipped back to Southampton, the first time I have ever been sick was on that bay because we just it [unclear] and happened [unclear] it was about 20000 tons and was their luxury ship when the [unclear] luxury could have been made into a troop ship and we went back to Southampton we were sent then up to Millham. Now Millham is right up near West Freugh, up near Stranraer, right up on the North-West of England and [unclear] us all up to, it was the middle of winter. And we were in Nissen huts and we had to try and keep warm and they had to heat us there but ran out of coal, they couldn’t get, we were rationed the coal, so we smarty Australians [unclear], there was the coal, we got into the coal, [unclear] and pinched the coal, I caught a couple of sometime [unclear] about but we had to go and pinch coal to keep warm. And uhm, we eventually went from there, we were there about a week I suppose and then they found another boat for us which was the Durban Castle, it was a [unclear] ship which went from London, used to go from London to Cape Town and that was a nice ship was made up of air, the complement of going home was a lot of air force people, we had New Zealanders coming home uhm, was quite an interesting lot of people that were on board but we were in [unclear], I was a warrant officer then I’d got up to warrant officer and there under the normal chain, six months of flight sergeant, twelve months of, uh, sorry, six months of sergeant, four months of flight sergeant, then you’re put and made a warrant officer, that was the RAAF and so we’d became warrant officers and then was commission if you got a commission. And the uhm, we uhm, [pauses] [unclear] yeah, yeah, we’re back, we’re off from and, yeah, we were now on the Durban Castle, we’re on the, I forgot, the Durban Castle and the Durban Castle and we had a lot of, we pulled into Gibraltar, can remember Gibraltar, the conditions on the boat were good, the food was good, I put on a stain on the way back because, you know, we put a lot of potatoes, they had a lot of stuff [unclear] but they fed us well, it was a full ship really, but we picked up people on the way, we went to Gibraltar but that was to drop off somebody who was sick so we didn’t pull in, it was just off Gibraltar and we could see the place and if anybody is interested they oughta go to Gibraltar, it is one of the most interesting places to go there. Uh, you don’t expect to see what you see, so we, Gibraltar just a night, we dropped these people off and then we went to Taranto in Italy, in the heel of Italy and there we picked up the New Zealand war brides, that had married a lot of the New Zealanders, who were fighting in Italy, they’d either gone home or [unclear], but the war brides were on their own and so we picked up the war brides and that filled the boat a bit more and then we went from Italy to the Canal, went through the canal, and they wouldn’t let us off the boat in the canal and, you know, none of us would have been through the Suez Canal and so, that was working of course and so was [unclear] to Port Tewfik, Tewfik? No, Port Said, we went to Port Said and they, one of the guys in that was with me at the time, was called [unclear] and he had a DCM, Distinguished Conduct Medal which he had earned in the Middle East but he was in the Air Force, he was, he was a gunner in the Air Force but and he’d been to Port Said, you know, he knew all about this place and we had to get to Port, [mimics the gunners voice] so there was a ladder down at the back of the ship and so a few of us got out of the bumboats as they called them [unclear] and we went ashore, we went ashore, we didn’t take any notice of them people [unclear] we, most of the people were doing this but they were not supposed to. And so we were wondering around the town and the Arabs tried to come and sell us something, dirty postcards on sale [laughs], you know, and we were looking, [unclear] got out, went off and he hit one of these blokes, he hit one of these blokes, you know, because he was trying to do something wrong or I don’t know what it was but he knew what he can get away with, he slapped him on the face [unclear] we gonna get caught [unclear] being in a riot, anyway we got back to our ship alright and went up the gangway this time, no one said anything so. We went through the canal which was a great experience to go through and see how that operates, I’ve never been through the Panama but a lot of our fellows went through the Panama, which I would have liked to have done, uhm, then we went into Aden, and then we, that was near Yemen, and that was in Yemen where you nearly got a lot of troubles and then we went to, uhm, Perth, we went straight across the Indian Ocean to Perth and that’s where we dropped of the Perth blacks [?] and I remember carrying, not carrying but helping a bloke who’d had too much to drink in Kings Park and we were gonna miss the boat, cause you had to be up to Perth and the boat was at Freemantle, we had to get back by train and we had to get him back so [unclear] helped him back but he was not used to Australian beer cause the British beer was pretty, uh, pretty weak and this Australian beer was pretty, you know, pretty [unclear] anyway we got back, we came around the [unclear] to Melbourne, and was Melbourne we got off the boat and went to, uhm, went on the train, went on the train to Sydney, I don’t recall, must have been the train of the time, we sat up but we didn’t have sleepers, and no, we went up to Sydney and the Vietnam blokes all complain that they didn’t get a welcome home. Well, none of us got a welcome home but we were quite happy, cause we arrived at Central Station on platform number one, my mother and sister were there to meet me, they took me home and then a week later I was to report at Bradfield Park, I went to Bradfield Park, they gave me a dischargement home and I went back to work.
AP: That was it.
DES: That was it.
AP: Did you have any issues settling down again? [unclear]?
DES: No, no, no, I had no issues. The only thing is for a while so I went straight back to my job that I left at the MLC and I had been there eighteen months, for eighteen months so I didn’t know much about the business and so I got into, when I went to, I applied when I went back, this is in early 1946 I uhm went back to the MLC and they put me on, they had to put me on that was the law, they had to put you back on staff and they sent me to a department where I was the only fellow with a hundred and forty girls. I’d been in the Air Force all this time with fellows, we had the well WAAF around but generally speaking you weren’t used to mixing around with women, you know, and they put me there for, they put me there for a purpose, of course, and they put next to me the girl that spoke the most [laughs] she was a real gossip, she spoke the most, Shirley Reed, and Shirley, and I, the first two weeks I didn’t hardly, apart from doing my work I didn’t say anything but not because I didn’t [unclear], I was just out, I don’t know what to do, you know, I was just doing my work but I thought, and I wasn’t that good at conversation at that particular time [unclear] we had lunch at our desk in those days, we bought some sandwiches and had lunch at our desks, she kicked the chair from underneath me, I was leaning back and she kicked the chair it was dangerous, she kicked the chair, I went down under the [unclear], well, everybody laughed and I laughed and from that time on I was married [?] [laughs]. I was in that department for about two years and I was still the only fellow. And I have great memories of that, of that two years because I was single, I went to so many birthday parties and twenty-first birthday parties, to weddings, I talked to get a few other girls, my wife was one of them and well, became one of them and I went to work for her in the department and I made [unclear] she came to England for four years and then came back and I married her then but I don’t, was I was then move to, I went again they sent me to Tasmania to open up the office in Tasmania in Launceston and then I was there for two years and then I, they did that in those days, don’t do it nowadays, then I was sent to, I was in Sydney for a while and then I was posted to Adelaide in 1960 and I, I was in charge of the collector branch there in Adelaide and we had two children there, Dave and Jane and that was another wonderful experience and then. I’ve got to say something about the air force, don’t let me forget.
AP: [unclear] of course.
DES: But, we had, Adelaide was a wonderful place to bring children up, I became a fan of the, I was a rugby person, rugby union, I became a fan of Australian rules when I first went to Adelaide I was, uhm, every Monday we had lunch with a group in the industry, in the life insurance industry and I didn’t have much to, I didn’t have much to talk about because I didn’t know anything about the Australian rules, for all they talked about were the teams that played at the weekend so I thought, oh, the best thing for me to do was to join those, if we were gonna have, [unclear], I’d better join them, better go out with them, so, they were members, a few of them were members of the Stirling football club, Aussie [?] rules club, and, no, The Double Blues, I can sing you the song if you want me to sing it, but they are The Double Blues and I became quite a rugby, an Australian rules fan, I’m not forgetting me rugby cause I’m a rugby person still but the, I used to, family, it was a family setup, we’d go out on a Saturday and we’d go, we’d have the radio would be on at the eleven o’clock match and then we’d go on, we’d have lunch or something then we’d go up to see the afternoon, the main game in the afternoon and then we’d finish there we’d go and buy some beer and some food and we'd watch the replay of that game and then we’d watch the replay of the main game in Melbourne, that was our Saturday but all the kids were all around at home that particular day and they’d come to the game in Adelaide, then they got so much free bottle they could pick up and the kids used to go and pick it up and make a lot of money on a Saturday [laughs] and but I became quite a fan of that we won the premiership four weeks running and that was my introduction to Australian rules, what a wonderful thing to be, but it’s a wonderful game and I love Australian rules and I do follow the Swans, uhm, but I don’t go out and see nowadays, I don’t go and see the rugby except on [unclear] occasions again I go and watch the rugby but. And in Tasmania I played rugby union and my [unclear] was the president of the North Tasmanian rugby union, we had three teams and I played in one of the teams and, uhm, that was in Launceston and, oh I forgot, New Zealand. I was in, I was two and a half years in New Zealand and I was there for the Springbok Tour in 1956 and I saw quite a bit of the football there, I used to go to the football in those days but New Zealand was another great place to be I was married there but I came back to Sydney, married Dorothy and then came back to New Zealand when she came back, she came back to work at the MLC for twelve months and, uh, and then we came back to, and I had a wonderful time because I have got relations there In New Zealand, so, I had places I had to go, so, I’ve seen every city in New Zealand except Gisborne and I don’t know why I’m saying that but, uhm, it was a wonderful place for me and it was a good place to, uhm, yeah it was a good, I was the, I joined the Kendala Lawn Tennis Club and I played tennis and I became the treasurer of the Kendala Lawn Tennis Club and so I fitted into the New Zealand mob, cause New Zealanders by and large as a group don’t like Australians, you know, but they do like, when they meet individually we’re all great, you know, we might talk about the Anzac business but they have really odd, that’s only my observation of course, they don’t’ really and I’m a, I regularly go to funerals in New Zealand at the moment but you know I’m a great fan of New Zealand and they as a group, they are jealous of Australians, I think, cause we’re so big.
AP: Ok, could be something.
DES: Yeah.
AP: Yeah, worked with a few kiwis, anyway. Uhm, yeah, you were gonna say something [unclear].
DES: I was gonna say, I do a lot of this, you know, I’m gonna plug in for the Bomber Command Commemorative Day and I’ve been involved with 463-467 Squadron Association, I’ve been involved with, uh, the Bomber Command Commemorative Day Foundation but that’s just a little aside. Uh, I’m doing this really because [clears throat] I owe the Air Force something. [sighs] When my, when memoires bring us [unclear] when I went away on the Air Force, I didn’t know anything, I was a real greenhorn, I was a green eighteen, didn’t know anything cause mum, you know, we were never allowed to play cards on a Sunday as I’d never, we never had cards in the house, mum didn’t, mum was a bit, she was an Anglican and uh, but she wasn’t, she wasn’t an [unclear] or anything either but a [unclear] drink she might have been, we never had but grog in the place, I tried to have [unclear] sherry sometimes [laughs] she went [mimics and astonished expression] when she heard, she was a great mother by, a great mother by the way but our mum, I’m trying to get the message over that I didn’t know a lot about the world until I went to the Air Force and the Air Force made me and I feel I gotta make some contribution to the Air Force and the same thing applies to the office MLC, that they to me were absolutely marvellous and I only retired from there about two years ago when I, I retired in ‘84, I went back to do a job for three months, to set up the database, helped set up the database in the MLC and now twenty five years later I’m still there with two, with another guy, it was five of us who stayed on for a while, but then, three had died and two of us are still left. But the MLC were, they, you know, I was on a, I tell you I was on a two and half percent mortgage for a time at the MLC, and they didn’t pay as much as probably some of the other companies but you know, I never, you felt you had a real, uhm, you know, they never sacked anybody except if you pinched money [laughs] and that, it remarks the office that didn’t happen but the MLC were wonderful to me, the Air Force and the MLC were wonderful to me and a lot of my friends are not jealous of me but they would have loved to have had a job like I’ve got, working with the MLC until I was just on ninety and, uhm, and I was doing every bit as good a job as I was as the people beside me that I was working, I was doing all computer work and this sort of thing. Oh, when I say computer work, it wasn’t on a main frame but it was, was all the stuff was all set up for us to do but I did some work on the telephones and that sort of thing but there was a lot of sixty plus, sixty five plus fellows that could, they some of the companies could, instead of putting them off, give them extra time, you know, keep them employed on a, say, five days, four days, three days, because, you know, I was bored stiff for a while when I first retired and when I got this [unclear], I was a bit two-minded about going back and doing this and that was one of the best decisions I have ever made and so there for that, this is not wartime setup but the MLC they could have paid when I was in the Air Force but I was getting more money in the Air Force than I was in the MLC [laughs] so I didn’t much from it but. Had I not been in the aircrew I would have probably cause we were paid extra in the aircrew, not a lot but we were paid extra. And, yeah, so that was, I have a lot to thank the Air Force for and that’s why I’m doing, I do this work now with volunteering with doing various things on Bomber Command Association and the 463 business, anything to do with the Air Force I like doing, you know, and I meet a lot of nice people.
AP: Good. Final question. Uhm, what do you think the legacy of Bomber Command is and how you want to see it remembered?
DES: Uh, well, I don’t think we will ever see another Bomber Command, in these days we will never see another Bomber Command because the days of the, uhm, what do we call them? The, you know, the things that fly on their own? You’ll never see another Lancaster bomber bombing places, you will see atom bombs or, not atom bombs, but these other sort of, what do you call the little?
AP: Drones. Yeah.
Des: The drones, you see, just here in one of our Squadrons here now, the 462 Squadron in Adelaide, they are mixed up in drones, you see, and so, you know, I’m very proud of, uhm, joining and taking part in Bomber Command. I think they did a magnificent job; they’d had a rough trot until 1942, when they weren’t hitting their targets, [unclear] as things got better, they did the, I’m fully happy with all what the Bomber Command did. I think the world of Air Marshal Harris and I get, I get annoyed sometimes when people who want to criticize him. You know, every year I get a message from Melbourne about Dresden [laughs], which, you know, which annoys me, more than anything else, because Dresden deserved what they got, you know, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, London, Liverpool, Coventry, they all got a similar treatment and I don’t think, you know, there was a lot about Dresden that, and I’m sorry I brought that up but we know that there were a lot of people operating in Dresden which were military, they were hidden, slightly like the people today are putting, uh, children and some of these in where real targets are and there were definitely a lot of things in Dresden that deserved to be bombed and, you know, we’re at war, we had to do our best to do that but I’m quite proud of what we did in Bomber Command and I’m very, I think I finished my speech at the reflections at the Bomber Command thing in Canberra a few years ago and I was very proud and fine with Bomber Command and but I don’t think we will see another Bomber Command type of people, there will never be a group like us ever again, so I don’t’ think there is any future, but it will be done by the drones, what it’s gotta be done I think will be done by the drones and then that creates a bit of loss of life to civilians but I’m afraid when you are fighting a war it’s just, you know, it’s just the way it goes. Uhm, I don’t know, of [unclear].
AP: How do you want to see it remembered?
DES: How will I remember it?
AP: Yeah, how do you want to see it remembered, how do you want Bomber Command to be remembered.
DES: Oh, [unclear], oh, I just like the people here today to and that’s what we’re in the business with the Bomber Command Commemoration Day Foundation, we want the children of our people to carry on and thank the people of, like the 5000 who died, not us particularly but, ah yeah, the 5000 Australian airmen we hope you’ll remember them, you might forget them, as I hope you won’t forget the Vietnam people and the people who went to Korea and the people who went to [unclear]. We do remember them and I pray that they remember them on Anzac Day, uhm, but I think that, uhm, I would like to and I am amazed at, uh, the young people today that we have come into their [unclear] up to about four or five years ago and never heard of some of the things of their fathers and grandfathers had done. And I’m amazed by the number of people who came out of the woodwork to find out more about now and it’s up to us now, cause we are talking here now, it’s up to us to make sure that we get the message out to the younger people that their living today because of the sacrifice that the people made, that died over in the Bomber Command raids and that sort of thing, that they would be, uhm, might be leading a different sort of life, that they, uh, if it hadn’t been for the actions and the deeds of those who fought in Bomber Command. But I’d like them to think nicely of us and I think most of them do. I get, not amazed, but I’m really interested and pray that today for instance I’ve been talking to people that were involved and had involvements, you know, a lot of them didn’t know to a certain extent what things we’d done and how we’d helped shorten the war and that sort of thing, cause we did really and I suppose dropping the atom bomb bought us to and I’ve got no objections to the atom bomb being dropped either, it probably saved a lot of lives too. It’s a terrible thing but once, if I can say again, I’m amazed at the young people that are so interested and yet there are some families that they are not interested at all, not interested at all and parts of families, including my own, now, some of mine are not that interested, my son is and but, and I think [unclear] but one of my grandchildren is very interested. It’s on the other side but that’s their decision, we probably haven’t got the message over to them which is [unclear] and I am disappointed when I speak to some of my friends who don’t want to talk about it, it’s not boasting about these [unclear], people should know that these sort of things went on, that these, because of their actions, they’ve had fifty, sixty, seventy years of freedom here, even in Australia which might never have happened if those people hadn’t made the sacrifices that they did and volunteered and don’t forget, all the aircrew in Australia were volunteers, there was no, no one was conscripted, they were all volunteers. Yeah.
AP: Oh well, that’s the end of my questions. So.
DES: Well, that’s good. Yeah.
AP: You’ve done very well.
DES: [unclear] How long was that?
AP: That was one hour forty two.
DES: That was alright, well, that was [unclear]
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ASouthwellDE160424
Title
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Interview with Don Southwell
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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:42:57 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2016-04-24
Description
An account of the resource
Don Southwell grew up in Australia and worked for RKO Radio Pictures and as an Air Raid Precautions Warden before volunteering for the Royal Air Force. After training in Australia and Canada, he flew nine operations as a navigator with 463 Squadron from RAF Waddington. He describes crewing up and everyday military life at the station, and gives accounts of his operations and being chased by Me 262s over Hamburg. He remembers ferrying liberated prisoners of war as part of Operation Exodus.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Canada
Czech Republic
Germany
Great Britain
New South Wales
Alberta--Edmonton
Czech Republic--Plzeň
England--Brighton
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Essen
Germany--Leipzig
New South Wales--Sydney
California--San Francisco
United States
California
Alberta
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Sussex
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
29 OTU
463 Squadron
467 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
crewing up
fear
Lancaster
Me 262
memorial
mess
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Waddington
RAF West Freugh
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/332/3492/PSpenceMA1502.2.jpg
5a6657b4575a6396f0860cd494be921e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/332/3492/ASpenceMA151005.1.mp3
98a0fa42e0ca70873f8ca52ae247e6df
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
Spence, Max
Maxwell Alexander Spence
Maxwell A Spence
Maxwell Spence
M A Spence
M Spence
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Maxwell Alexander "Max" Spence (437564 Royal Australian Air Force), his log book and a photograph. He flew operations as a navigator with 460 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Max Spence and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-05
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Spence, MA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Digital, International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive, is with Max Spence, who is a 460 Squadron navigator. My name is Adam Purcell, we are at Max home in Montmorency in Melbourne, it’s the 5th of October 2015. So Max, we’ll start with an easy one. Uhm, can you tell me something of your early life, growing up, uhm, your family and what you did before the war?
MS: Well, uhm, we here, [pauses] uhm, I grew up in Briar Hill, which is quite close to Montmorency. I’m an only child, I went to, I was an original pupil of the Briar Hill primary school and then I went to Elton High, eh, secondary royal Elton higher elementary and then I went to Melbourne High and I finished at year eleven, which was pretty, eh, substantial in those days, that was in 19, uh, 30, or 34 or 5, I think. And then I went to work at Briscoes Limited, which was a wholesale hardware firm, and there were two office boys, I was the outside boy, and the other was the inside boy and we knew in 1938 that there was a war going to start soon, so, we both opted, we were going to join the Victorian Scottish Regiment. But when we found that the uniform was gonna cost us twelve pound, or twenty-four dollars which is about a three months, uh, wages that went out the door, so [laughs]. So, as I said, my dad, being a Gallipoli veteran, and he was an only son with eight sisters, and I’m an only child and no way was he gonna let me go, so, uh. Then, suddenly in May 1940, he changed his mind and said the Air Force would be alright and I applied for ground staff and the recruiting sergeant said: ‘You could apply for air crew’, so, which I did and got up to the selection board and one said: ‘You’re left-handed’, I said: ‘Yes’. He said: ‘You’re no good to us’, I said: ‘Ah, why?’. I was only just eighteen, so, and he said: ‘You couldn’t handle a Morse key’, uh, so I said, ‘but we will send you Morse lessons’, which they didn’t. So, I lost interest in the war altogether like they [unclear] run it without me and but in 1941 I was called up and I went to, it was I believe a signal, uh, the signals organisation, that took [unclear] , well it was a signal operation and then, uhm, [unclear] was separated and joined the 19th Machine Gun Regiment as a [unclear] and we went off to Darwin and were there at pretty close proximity to a lot of the raids there, which was a bit, you know, ordinary, uhm. And about October it settled off and the RAF came recruiting again and I applied, and they accepted me, they didn’t have any of this nonsense about left-handedness. And there was fifty-four of us I think, and only eighteen passed and they were mainly, uhm, excluded because of the colour blind test which was not the red, yellow and blue thing but it was a complicated business where you looked into this pattern and if you’re colour blind you just saw a colour and if you weren’t, you didn’t see it, and vice versa and funnily enough it was developed by the Japs. So, we came down in February and to Corfield [?]and eventually started ITS, the initial training stream, uh, which was a three months thing, and, uh, I think it finished around about May 1941 and I was lucky enough to get what I wanted, a navigators course, and I went to Edmonton in Canada and that was a five months course, so I spent eight months in Canada. And then I, following that, went through and eventually came to England, where I went to a British (or badge) flying unit which was navigation in a [unclear] Ansett, uhm, was largely visual and uh, where you took a visual line of sight and guessed what the distance was. Well, having finished that I went to operational training unit, uh, where you formed crews and very scientifically there’d be one hundred and fifty blokes in a room and they just said, sort yourselves out, so, I got, I saw this big black [unclear], I said: ‘Do you look like you could handle a big plane, could I be a navigator?’. So, we did operational training unit at Syreford, that’s in Midland England and then we went to conversion unit, we’re on Wellingtons at the operational training unit and then we went to the Lancasters at the conversion unit and then we finally joined the 460 Squadron in about, I think, early February, forget what the date was now. Uhm, and I flew eighteen operations in pretty quick succession, including the Dresden raid which has brought so much, misinformation [unclear]. We were then posted to Pathfinders, the war ended and the squadron, we all set off to another squadron that was, uhm, breaking up and then I went down to Brighton, which was the forwarding station, up to Liverpool we got the Andes, this ship I got on, I had been on this before and was the same ship I came from Canada to Britain on. And then I came home, and the war ended in Japan, I was discharged and I went back to work. That was about it.
AP: I only had to ask one question there and we just [unclear] covered the lot. Uhm, anyway, we will go back in a little bit more detail, if you don’t mind. Uhm, what, you said, you went back to work, what were you doing, as work, before you enlisted?
MS: What? What?
AP: What were you doing as work before you enlisted?
MS: I was, uhm, a clerk at, in a wholesale hardware, Briscoes, which is a very old, uh, is still operating in New Zealand but it followed up [unclear] about 1970. I was warehouse manager then.
AP: Before or between, between enlisting, as in between the air force coming to Darwin and then you signing the paper, and you started the ITS, uhm, can you remember roughly how long there was between the two and what did you do in the middle there?
MS: Ah, well, the recruiting mob came up about October in 1942 and but we didn’t leave Darwin until February 1943 and then we spend a few weeks down Laverton and then I suppose it will be, around about April 1942, 1943 that I had gone to, uhm, initial training school Summers [?] and that was a three-months course. There was no flying in that one there. It was just, uh, a number of subjects that, uh, which were, [unclear], was quite a lot of subjects, I recall meteorology, navigation, signals, I forget the other ones, been quite a number of. And then we got our postings and I was posted to Edmonton in Canada and so to do that we went up to Bradfield Park in Sidney, were there for about a fortnight and this big ship arrived and next thing we were on our way, uhm, to San Francisco actually. Uhm, it was the Mount Washington, Mount Vernon, they called it, uh, it was a big ship, 35000 tons I think and it went on a sound, so. And then we travelled up to, uh, Edmonton, we were stayed in the manning [unclear] for about a fortnight and then we started there a five months course, which was pretty intensive. Uhm, and then I was onto Britain on the same ship as I came home on, and as I said we were in Brighton at manning [unclear] and then we went up to a place called West Freugh in Scotland which was just near Stranraer and that’s where we did our advanced flying unit, which was pretty much the same as what we did at Edmonton. And then I was down to Syreford, there was a place called [coughs] I forget now but Syreford was where we did our operational training as a crew. Seven, it was six of them to stay on a Wellington [coughs] and then we transferred to Lancasters at the conversion unit and then onto 460 Squadron, uhm, I think it was just before New Year’s Eve in 1944 and we did one, I think a couple of, trains country [coughs] or cross countries [coughs] and, may I get a glass of water? And we started there operations and as I say, after the 18th we were posted to Pathfinders, but we never flew there. So, that was it and I came home [coughs].
AP: Can you tell me a bit about the first time you ever went in an airplane? Was that in Edmonton?
MS: Ever went in a?
AP: In airplane. The first time you went flying.
MS: Ah, yes.
AP: What memories, if any, do you have of that flight?
MS: What?
AP: What memories, if any, do you have of that flight?
MS: [coughs] Nothing but enjoyment. Edmonton was [coughs], I put in me memoires, [coughs] leaving Edmonton was like leaving home, I just accepted it as so. Well, we spent time in their homes and. But as I say, it was largely visual navigation we didn’t have much in a way, we had things to look at the stars with, [unclear]?
AP: Sexton.
MS: Sexton, but our aviation sexton was different from the normal and we used to take star shots and [coughs] that was about on Polaris, which was the north star. We saw the constellations align and everything. [coughs] And that was, as I say, was a five months course. So we left there in February ’44, uh, I travelled across Canada, my mate and I went, we had eleven days leave actually and we went to Chicago and then there to Halifax and boarded [coughs] the Andes [coughs] to Britain and then on up to say, advanced flying unit which was [coughs], [unclear], pretty much the same as Canada and that was only [coughs], uhm, when we got to Syreford that we got into the more sophisticated, uhm, navigation, machines [coughs].
AP: You’re alright?
MS: Yes.
AP: Yeah, ok. Uhm, what were your first impressions of wartime Europe, of wartime Britain, was there any, anything at all?
MS: Funnily enough was that the women smoked, although I never smoked. And, uh, I had an aunt in Scotland, so I used to go up there a lot, uh, but that was pretty frugal, we were alright on the stations we got fed well [unclear] [phone rings] excuse me. Yeah, go on.
AP: [unclear] England you were talking about. The women smoked?
MS: Yeah [coughs].
AP: And something about you were treated pretty well on the squadron, you got plenty of food on the squadron.
MS: What?
AP: You were saying you got plenty of food on the squadron. Where else [unclear]?
MS: Yeah, well. Was pretty ordinary food [coughs] but was food [coughs] a lot more of it than the general public got.
AP: What, uhm, so, we will go back or forward a bit now to OTU. You’ve picked your crew, you’ve crewed up?
MS: Well, we were picked out by ourselves.
AP: Yeah, so you now have the six people before you get your flight engineer.
MS: Yeah.
AP: With which you get to fly with. What did you do at operational training unit? What sort of exercises did you do? What sort of [unclear] did you do?
MS: Cross country, uhm, mostly in Britain but we did go to the coast of Holland once, uhm, which was a pretty long trip [coughs]. Uhm, yeah, was mostly cross country using the Gee which is, [coughs] was the, you can find it on the internet, was the, they used to send their signals and you saw the cross reference and that’s where you were and then hopefully.
AP: Hopefully you got it right. Where, uhm, where on the airplane was the Gee set?
MS: Uh well, it was beside the navigator’s table.
AP: The navigator’s table.
MS: On the Wellingtons sort of facing forward, behind the pilot from memory but on the Lancaster was the, there was the, uhm, bomb aimer used to take his place as front gunner, then the bomb, operating [unclear], and the flight engineer, he sat beside the pilot, then there was the pilot and then there was me and then the wireless operator and then we had the mid-upper gunner and the, uh, rear gunner.
AP: That was in the Wellington?
MS: There was seven.
AP: Oh, seven. So, we are in the Lancaster at this point?
MS: Ay?
AP: That’s a Lancaster you are talking?
MS: Yes, yes.
AP: Ok, that’s the other crew then. Uhm, I guess, what, when you’re in England, obviously you would have got periods of leave in between your, well, while your training [unclear].
MS: [unclear]
AP: You would have had periods of leave while you were training?
MS: Ah, yeah, we had six days every six weeks.
AP: Oh, this is when you were on operations.
MS: Yeah, yeah.
AP: What did you do?
MS: Well, they had a couple of schemes. There was the lady Rider[?] scheme, which, uhm, you could book a place and go to the land of the state or, I went to with a friend to a retired army major and his wife up in the, uhm, up sort of north of, east of England, that was, when you got there, that was the first sort of scheme. And then they had the Lord Nuffield, Nuffield was the, the Morris, he owned Morris cars and he used to [coughs], uhm [unclear] of various places [coughs] and if, and if you eventually met up with someone who got married, he would pay for the wedding and the, uhm, sort of honeymoon, he was very good [coughs].
AP: That’s what you did on leave. Uhm, what about the pubs?
MS: Eh? The what?
AP: The pubs in England and
MS: Yeah, well, they were a bit of a, the first time I went to Tommy Farr’s bar, he was the [coughs] British empire heavyweight champion. Now I ordered a beer, that tasted like tar and water, it was mild beer and so I [coughs] talked to a couple of other blokes who’d been here for a while, they said, oh no, start off on bottled beer and then gradually, uhm, move over to bitter, which we did, yeah.
AP: Next one. We’ll jump onto the, your operational aircraft. The first time you saw a Lancaster, what did you think?
MS: Was another aircraft, didn’t really have any thoughts about it. It was a lumbersome, or cumbersome aircraft [coughs] and that was a difficult one to get into, you had to climb up eight steps with all your gear, all your navigation gear and parachute and what. [coughs] Ah, bloody cough, and I don’t know whether is any [unclear], I don’t there are, couldn’t find any, uhm, and then you, fairly narrow near the, walk right up to the front and had a huge spar across the, that held the airframe together and you had to climb over that and then I had a little office, uh, and then I had to pull the cloth around me, cause we weren’t allowed to show any light.
AP: Can you describe that office? What was it like?
MS: Well, [laughs] it was only just, a curtain drawn around, just had a table and had the Gee-set and the Y set there and, uhm, I had the various instruments up to, you know, [unclear] the dividers and all those sorts of things but they weren’t very big, [unclear] wouldn’t have been any bigger than that, yeah.
AP: You said then the Y set? What’s the Y set?
MS: Well, that was a primitive Radar set, uh, which when it was put on, it picked up the outlines of towns by the people, intelligence people know that sort of, they gave a chart with the major towns as you were passing, [coughs] outlined and this picked that up and then you could give a bearing and a distance by the [coughs], by machine and you just plotted the thing.
AP: Navigation? Alright. Uhm, might as well go onto the squadron. Where and how did you live at Binbrook?
MS: Well, this is another thing. For an organisation [coughs] fighting for democracy, the services weren’t very democratic. When we got to the squadron, our pilot got a commission immediately and he went off to the officer’s mess and we actually had [coughs] pretty comfortable, uhm, we lived in a house actually, all in a unit, uh, but we were all together in one big room, we had comfortable, uhm, we had comfortable beds and then we used to go to the Sergeants’ Mess for meals. And then incidentally on the, uhm, conversion unit they were real snotty people, they. The permanent staff here had their own mess, uh, we weren’t allowed to go there, we had to go to our mess, they regarded us as second-class amateurs. But, yeah, the conditions were quite comfortable.
AP: What, uhm, what sort of things happened in the mess, in the sergeant’s mess in Binbrook?
MS: singing and drinking, and the [unclear]
AP: [unclear] [laughs]
MS: Writing letters and that sort of thing.
AP: Flying for Bomber Command would have been fairly stressful, I imagine.
MS: I can’t hear you.
AP: Sorry, flying for Bomber Command would have been fairly stressful, I imagine. How did you cope with it?
MS: Well, they keep, all the documentaries they do sort of emphasise the drama but largely it was just hard work. Cause I had to fix my position every six minutes and then dead reckon ahead another six minutes so, I was like an one-armed paper hanger actually, I was. So, the navigators probably had the best job, cause they were working, the rest were largely in a watching role all the time. And that’s another thing you said, they used to offer Benzedrine tablets, uhm, ‘wakey-wakey tablets’, we, I never took them, I had no problems staying awake. But sometimes a bloke would take them and then they’d call the op off, and of course we couldn’t sleep all night. And, yeah, it was, mostly hard work, I didn’t really, some of me mates did but I really didn’t feel any stress much.
AP: You say: ‘Every six minutes you are getting a fix and did reckoning again’. What can you remember much of the actual process, the actual method that you were doing?
MS: Well, it was, if we used the Gee machine as [unclear] sort of, uhm, things that flicked along and you got them together and you sort of isolate and that gave you where you were and with the, uh, Y, the radar which we were only allowed to use for a minute because the, uhm, enemy fighters could home in on us, uhm, we just operated it and got a bearing and a distance from where we [unclear] onto.
AP: There is something from that, uhm. Ok, so, you had eighteen trips.
MS: Yeah.
AP: Uhm, we will get to Dresden in a minute. Uhm, do any of those trips stand out particularly in [unclear]?
MS: Well, two of them do. We did Nuremberg, where we lost, I think, uh, nearly eight percent of the force. And a place called Pforzheim, which didn’t have any particular merit but they put it off twice and when they put them off, they always used to have to change the route [unclear] but they didn’t and the Germans had just reduced their jet fighter Me 262 and they got into a [unclear] on the way in, so obviously they’d been informed of where we were going and the route.
AP: When you said they got into [unclear] was that your crew in particular or [unclear] general?
MS: No, no, no, just general, we were pretty fortunate, I don’t remember, we only had one episode with a fighter and that’s right up near the back and we got hit by flak once but that was pretty much all of it.
AP: So, fairly, fairly uneventful tour.
MS: Yeah.
AP: Ok, so, the inevitable question comes up then, of Dresden. Uhm, what was your personal experience on the Dresden trip?
MS: Well, it was the longest trip we did, was nine and three-quarter hours in the air. I believe I didn’t have any particular, uh, memories of it, uh, as it was just another flight but funny, after the war we didn’t go home, we had a lecture from one of the education groups and he was talking about the phoney aspects of war and one of them was that the British shareholders in the Krupp ironworks at Essen were saving dividends up till the end of 1942. And then he got onto Dresden, now the major reason was given for Dresden that was to help the Russians, you know, but he actually [unclear] was to hinder the Russians, because they were getting into Berlin before the Americans and in fact we went to Dresden once, the Yanks went there six times. Twice before us and four times after us. The last one was about, was only three weeks before the end of the war so, there could be some truth in the hinder thing, because you know, they had to get to Berlin and cut it up, so, we’ll never know.
AP: You mentioned earlier about misinformation about Dresden. What [unclear]?
MS: Well, they were, they kept saying, well one [unclear] that the press council didn’t win, he said it was a war crime, you know, and because it was the biggest loss of life I think in any other raids were about 35000, it varies, 35000 seems to be the [unclear] death rate. It was just another raid to us but they kept hammer every year, [unclear] on February the 13th they were hammering this Dresden raid so [unclear]. So, I actually got a couple interviews, I think, in the [unclear], not sure which paper it was, about it, you know because it was all lies, [unclear] the historians giving the wrong story. There was the, a major historian in the Australian war memorial. Uhm, he wrote a book, he wrote a [unclear] book, Australia at war, was about Bomber Command. Well, his first mistake when he had a diagram or a sort of illustration, he had the navigator and the wireless operator in the wrong place and [coughs] he also had said that Dresden had not been bombed before. So, I wrote to him and pointed out his error in the book and I said that the Americans had actually bombed Dresden before we did and he wrote back and admitted his error in the illustration but he said that it was only a small bombing, but it was still a bombing you know, [coughs] and they were all, when I really got into it, they actually bombed a lot more, or dropped a lot more bombs than we did on Dresden but, cause Dresden had been virtually destroyed anyhow but they kept on doing it. Yeah.
AP: Why do you think that misinformation is out there, why [unclear]?
MS: Well, it happened with Darwin, they said that the Japs were never going to invade, the same bloke actually, and we, well, we will never know but I tell you what, we were pretty sure they were when we were there and they kept hammering this one raid all the time, as I say, they gave the Americans no press coverage at all. And yet, they actually did more to Dresden we did. It was just another, I mean, probably weren’t, were doing what they were just done, Harris didn’t want to go to Dresden but they overruled him. It was some sort of between Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin, I think, in ’44, late ’44, they had a conference.
AP: So, uhm, we’ll step back to a more general question. Your sitting there doing your every six-minute thing at your navigation table, and you hear over the interview, over the intercom, uhm, I got one of your gunners saying, fighter corkscrew port go. What happens next?
MS: Uh, what, say it again.
AP: You’re sitting at your table doing your navigation stuff and over your intercom you hear one of your gunners saying, corkscrew port go.
MS: Ah, yes, well that was, uhm, they had an evading process called corkscrewing, where the gunner who picked up the, uhm, alleged fighter would say that the pilot, uhm, enemy fighter, well he did this time, enemy fighter skip, skip, he was a bit, he said, prepare to corkscrew left, na na na, prepare to corkscrew right, na na na, he said, doesn’t matter, he’s gone past [laughs]. Well, that was one and I had another one where I was, oh, I think I had done five trips or something and one of me mates came to the squadron, he was on his first trip and he was coughing and splattering, I said: ‘That’s a bad cough you got there Butch’, he said: ‘As long as I still got it in the morning I’ll be happy’. [laughs] Ah, that was two sort of, [coughs] lighter moment.
AP: Excellent. Uhm, so, your tour ended, well your tour as such as it was, and eighteen trips it ended with the end of the war? Is that correct or is that before?
MS: [unclear]
AP: When you got to eighteen trips, you stopped?
MS: Yes, we went to the Pathfinder.
AP: So, you were posted to the Pathfinders, the, uhm.
MS: But we never flew there because the war ended.
AP: You said something in one of your emails to me about a disagreement about navigation methods. Can you expand on that?
MS: Don’t know whether, I, I’ve been operating quite happily on my own, the eighteenth trip, when we got there they set the bomb aimer behind me and he was having very little experience of the Gee and the Y. He was taking the information and passing it on to me which, I thought, lends itself for error for a start [clears throat] and took him away from his proper role of watching, you know, being the front [unclear] gunner and I, all I said, I am not too happy about it. Next thing they pulled me and the bomb aimer out of the crew and they sent us off on a forty-eight, two days leave or as we thought. When we came back, we were called up, or I was, called up before the stuffy pompous CO who wanted nothing but to stand to our attention and he said you’d be an AWL, I said no sir. Anyhow he obviously wasn’t sure, he checked us. If you’re charged with being AWL, it’s either a confined to barracks or it can a mandatory penalty. And if it was to mandatory penalty, you’re gonna ask for court martial, which is all, uh, bells and whistles and you get a defending lawyer and all that stuff. And he obviously wasn’t sure of his ground, so he sent us to a shorter tour of Sheffield that was and it’s, it was called an Aircrew Retraining Centre, there was lads, they were slobs of a military type, you know, probably never been out [unclear] a drill, but it was, so was quite interesting, it was. I did air force law and one bloke [unclear], I’ve seen it anyway together, this bloke was gonna go back and he put his CO [unclear] when he went back because of the information he got from the military law. But that was a three week course and actually the war ended while we were there and as I say, we were then posted to a squadron that was breaking up and I went to Brighton and, uhm, I was home in, uhm, August, just before the Pacific war finished, I was out on September the 2nd or 3rd or something I forget and I was back at work at 20th of September ’45, most of them didn’t get back till 1946. So that all worked out well.
AP: How did you find the readjustment to civilian life?
MS: Couldn’t cause me any problems.
AP: Just got straight back in, straight back where you left off.
MS: Yes, more or less, yeah. No, I got a, I was given a hired job, so. [coughs] But, now I, a lot of my mates had a break down and a few of them have suffered a post-traumatic stress as they call [unclear] they got [unclear] I used to drink too much, that was the main problem.
AP: Ok, uhm, this is usually my last question. How is Bomber Command remembered and what legacy do you think it left?
MS: Uhm, without a say, it was just a job and we had a job to do, we did it to the best of our ability, it was. There weren’t any special sort of. I get annoyed at the documentaries cause they emphasise the dramatic side all the time, you know, [unclear]. When we flew we flew long, this the other thing, people refer to what we did as missions and missions were what the Yanks flew. We flew operations, so, it’s only mine I think, but I get annoyed about that at. I lost the train of thought, [pauses]. As I say, these air flights were long but basically the last raid was the same because we were sending more planes at night and a lot of them banging into one another rather than and then the issue of the Me 262. They reckoned that if the war got another three months Germany would have had aerial supremacy but they didn’t have any fuel of course and but they certainly [phone rings] excuse me. Ok.
AP: So, how, yeah, how is Bomber Command remembered for you personally, I suppose and in the wider part?
MS: I don’t think about it [unclear] at all really, no. It’s, it just little, sort of personal episodes. As I said, it was just a job and I did it as best I could. Don’t have any special place in my memories.
AP: Did you ever fly again, apart from just getting on a passenger plane and going somewhere?
MS: No, no.
AP: No, that was it. Did the air force [unclear]?
MS: I got a , well, even then, now, when [laughs], when we were being discharged, uhm, they’d take your shirt in and they give another one and I noticed all these blokes going around the back picking up all our shirts, I got four shirts out of that lot and they, uhm, you know, bureaucracy is never far behind. I, uhm, first thing that happened was, uh, the WO there wanted to put us on guard at the Melbourne [unclear] guard so we didn’t turn up and he got us out on Monday, he said, if you’re not out [unclear] in half an hour I’ll put you on the charge so, but we managed that alright, that was our final episode there. And I went up, my cousin was royal [unclear] in the army and he said to me, I met him in town and he said, oh, he said to me, we got a good mess come up and you know we will have lunch together. So, I walked through the guard there and the next thing this WO came out and he said: ‘Where are you going, staff, I was a flight sergeant then, I said I’m going up to meet me with my cousin up at the mess, he said: ‘You are not allowed in there’, he said, I said: ‘I thought we were on the same side, you know.’ And then he started blustering, carry on and this Lieutenant came down, he said: ‘What’s the trouble, [unclear] he’s so bloody stupid, he said, carry on staff. You know, that was [unclear], you gotta try the other side of bureaucracy, anyhow.
AP: You said WO there?
MS: Yeah, warrant officer.
AP: Warrant officer, yeah, just for the tape. I’ll write that down. Uhm, what can I say, I guess just the one question that I skipped over earlier, when you heard, you said, I think you said that by about 1938 you sort of had the feeling [unclear] that war was coming.
MS: Yeah, you know, Hitler was flexing his muscles and we’d had Chamberlain saying no war in the near time and that sort of thing. I was just [unclear] and we could see it coming and we decided we’d be part of it but when it was gonna cost us 12 pound we decided we won’t [unclear].
AP: Can you remember when you heard that war had actually been declared and what were your thoughts?
MS: No, not particularly.
AP: Not particularly. Uhm, what else do I have here. I think, ok, the final question, is there anything else that you would like to ad, any other stories that [unclear]?
MS: I think I covered it pretty well.
AP: Covered it pretty well. [laughs] Covered it pretty well with one question. You’re off for ten minutes and that was the end. Alright, we might end the interview there, thank you very much.
MS: Ok, good thank you. [file missing] We got a special medal and they actually had one [unclear] guide but I never, my issues were the clasp in a little, piddly little thing [unclear] read the views of some of the British airmen on that, a sort of a second prize, you know. [file missing]
MS: [file missing] And yet, the aircrew Europe star were given to, uh, people who finished their operations in seventy or eighty hours, they did a tour of thirty. We had done eighteen, we [unclear] about one hundred and forty hours, so, well, I think that was unfair [unclear].
AP: Good.
MS: And that’s it.
AP. That’s it. Can I turn it off now? [laughs]
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Interview with Max Spence
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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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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:47:51 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2015-10-05
Description
An account of the resource
Max Spence grew up in Australia and worked in a hardware store before he volunteered for the Air Force. He recounts his training in Canada and in England and life on an operational station. He flew 18 operations as a navigator with 460 Squadron.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Canada
Great Britain
Germany
Alberta--Edmonton
Germany--Dresden
Northern Territory--Darwin
United States
Northern Territory
Alberta
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
460 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
Gee
Lancaster
mess
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
perception of bombing war
RAF Binbrook
RAF Syerston
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/337/3501/PTaylorEC1701.1.jpg
acbcb633c679d09f01c94a0f7e54d530
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/337/3501/ATaylorEC170928.2.mp3
9a15f4d3f4e54369b0747cf28be0b8eb
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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Taylor, Eric
Eric Charles Taylor
Eric C Taylor
E C Taylor
E Taylor
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Squadron Leader Eric Charles Taylor.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Taylor, EC
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: So this is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre, interviewing Squadron Leader Eric Taylor at his home on the –
BT: Where are we?
DK: 28th of September 2017. So if I just put that there, put that that there –
ET: Yeah.
DK: Put that there. I’ll keep looking down, I’m just making sure that it’s working.
ET: Yes.
DK: That looks okay. So if we leave that, yeah that looks okay. Well, what I wanted to ask you first was what, what were you doing immediately before the war?
ET: School.
DK: Right, so you went straight from school to –
ET: I left school in the June forty-three –
DK: Mhm.
ET: Sorry, [pause] –
DK: It would be 1943 wouldn’t it?
ET: Yeah it is forty-three.
DK: Yeah, yeah. So you went straight from school, straight from school to the RAF?
ET: Yes.
DK: So what made you want to join the RAF then?
ET: Because I, I joined the, the LDV I think they called it –
DK: The Home Guard.
ET: The Local Defence Force.
DK: Mhm [BT laughs].
ET: And they put me through hours of drill [laughs], and I didn’t like that very much. I thought I’ll probably better join the Air Force, and you used to get all these magazines of course, you know, with all the things about the –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Battle of Britain and that type of thing. That’s what encouraged me to, to join. I went to Edinburgh for a testation [?] which was delayed for six months, so I actually went in, in the February –
DK: Is that on? Yeah, okay.
ET: Forty-three.
DK: Right. So –
ET: That was wrong, I told you –
DK: You’re right, it says forty-two in here.
ET: Must have been forty-two [emphasis].
DK: Right.
ET: Twenty, 1923 and something.
DK: That’s 1940 isn’t it? Okay, don’t worry, don’t worry.
ET: 1940.
DK: Yeah.
BT: 1940, you’d be seventeen.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Must have been forty-one then.
BT: Forty-one was it, okay.
ET: Left school.
BT: Yeah.
DK: So forty-one.
ET: Yeah, because it was forty-two –
DK: That you joined the Air Force.
ET: That I joined the Air Force.
DK: Yeah, yeah, okay.
ET: That’s right.
DK: You left school in 1941 and then joined the Air Force –
ET: Yeah.
DK: In 1942. So what, what was your first posting in the Air Force then? Where, where, can you remember where you went to?
ET: Well the first , well I went to London, and the – ooh we attended several lectures, you know, mainly about venereal disease [all laugh] and all the rest of the things.
DK: Yeah.
ET: And the, from then on I went up to, I trained at Staverton, Gloucestershire, Number Six AUS [?].
DK: Right.
ET: And that took about a year.
DK: So at this point you were already training as a navigator?
ET: Yeah, oh initially I did a small six hours course. I went in as a PNB.
DK: Right.
ET: Pilot, navigator or –
DK: Bomber aimer.
ET: Bomber aimer. Didn’t quite make the pilot stakes [?] so I became a navigator.
DK: Right.
ET: And then I went to the CUS [?]. That was the first straight navigator course, because before that they had the air observers, they called them.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Yeah, so we didn’t do any bombing aiming at that time. Course I went through them very quickly [emphasis], it only took about a year.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Then from there I went to Stratford-on-Avon to the OTU.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Operational training unit.
DK: Yeah. Just going, winding back a bit. What, what was the training as a, as a navigator? Were you actually flying [emphasis] at the time then?
ET: Yes, yes.
DK: So what sort of aircraft were you –
ET: Anson
DK: Ansons, right.
ET: Anson mainly. And then we came onto the Wellington when we came onto the OTU.
DK: The operational training unit.
ET: Yeah.
DK: Yeah, so that was Number 16 Operational Training Unit?
ET: That’s right.
DK: Yeah, and that was at RAF Upper Heyford?
ET: No.
DK: Oop, sorry.
ET: It’s at, it was at, it, just past Stratford-on-Avon.
DK: Stratford-on-Avon, right, okay.
ET: Yeah.
DK: So that’s 16 OTU at Stratford-on-Avon. And, and what aircraft were you training on there?
ET: Wellingtons.
DK: And is that where you met your, your crew then?
ET: Yeah. Well we all met [emphasis] –
DK: Mm.
ET: And just somebody would say, ‘would you like to fly with me?’ It was very, it wasn’t a rigid [?] thing at all, you know.
DK: No. So how did that work then? Were you all pushed into a hangar and you all had to work –
ET: Well we’re in a big hall, yeah, and the pilots were there and [laughs] –
DK: Right. How did you think that worked, ‘cause it’s quite unusual for the military. Normally you’re ordered to go somewhere.
ET: Well that’s right.
DK: This was quite an unusual way of where you –
ET: Yes.
DK: Picked your crew.
ET: Anyway, that’s how they did it and it seemed to work out there pretty well.
DK: And you found your, your pilot there then did you?
ET: Yes.
DK: And can you remember your pilot’s name?
ET: Yes, Cyril Pearce.
DK: Right.
ET: I think he’s no longer with us –
DK: Yeah.
ET: I don’t think any of the crew are with us now, you know.
DK: So you would have met your pilot?
ET: Yes.
DK: And –
ET: I met them all, the bomb aimer –
DK: Bomb aimer.
ET: And the wireless operator.
DK: Yeah.
ET: And the gunner.
DK: Mhm. And, and did you all get on well together when you –
ET: Yes, we seemed to, yeah.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Yeah. And I – the navigator didn’t do a lot of the pilot training on the aircraft, you know, the local flying circuits and mops and that.
DK: Yeah.
ET: But on the cross countries of course, we, we all went on those.
DK: Mm.
ET: Some had a dual instructor and others smaller [?].
DK: Yeah. What did you think of the Wellington as an aircraft?
ET: Actually quite good after the [laughs] – it was a bit bigger. The big thing I remember is – I think the model’s a 1-C that we trained on.
DK: Right.
ET: At the OTU, but then we got a mark three I think. ‘Cause we took an aeroplane out with us when we went to Tunisia.
DK: Right.
ET: And that was a long flight.
DK: Mm.
ET: We had to go miles out to sea to avoid the Bay of Biscay, you know, ‘cause all the Germans –
DK: Yeah, yeah.
ET: Were there, and we flew from Portreath to a place called Ras el Ma –
DK: Right.
ET: On the west coast of Africa. The big thing I remember there was there was always an enormous amount of flies [DK and ET laugh]. You had a plate of soup, had a quick swipe [DK laughs], put your spoon in quickly [laughs]. And from there we just, we went on through Blida and then ended up at the Kairouan.
DK: Right.
ET: With aircraft – 142 Squadron and 150 had both just gone there. There was nothing, there were no facilities at all. There wasn’t even a latrine initially [laughs].
DK: So, so out your training then, you’ve done the operational training unit and really cross country flights around England.
ET: That’s it.
DK: And then your posted to your squadron and you’re posted out to Africa.
ET: Yes [emphasis].
DK: Oh right.
ET: Actually we just cleared [?] Africa, North Africa. Well we arrived there –
DK: Right.
ET: And when I was, we were there, we had the invasion of Sicily of course.
DK: Mm.
ET: And Italy. And most of our bombing were, they were to, you know, targets in Sicily.
DK: Right.
ET: And several, going up the coast to Italy.
DK: Right, and this was with 142 Squadron?
ET: 142 Squadron.
DK: Yeah. So can you remember how many operations you did in the Middle East and Italy?
ET: Yes I, thirty.
DK: Thirty [emphasis]? Oh right.
ET: That was a tour then.
DK: Yeah.
ET: And I came back to UK. Oh I went with a journey from Tunis to Algiers –
DK: Mm.
ET: By train, and on the carriage I’ll always remember it said, ‘forty orm [?] or five [laughs], what were they, sivar [?] horses’ [ET and DK laugh]. Took five days, the journey, and then you got on a boat, came back to Liverpool.
DK: Right.
ET: This was at the end of forty-three –
DK: Uh-huh.
ET: And the – I thought I’d move to Scotland so I went all the way up to a place called Edsoff [?] where I used to live and the last bit I had to do by bus, you know, train then bus.
DK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ET: Then I met this girl on the bus and she said, ‘what are you doing?’ And I said, I said ‘I’m going home [emphasis], what did you think?’ She says ‘I think they’ve moved’ [laughs]. Ah, I had then to go and search where they’d gone to.
DK: And this was your family?
ET: That’s my family –
DK: They’d moved while you were away [laughs].
ET: My parents – well I didn’t get the letter of course to say they were moving.
DK: Oh of course.
ET: And they’d moved to Woodhall Spa would you believe.
DK: Oh right.
ET: In Lincolnshire.
DK: Yeah, yeah, know it well [DK and ET laugh]. So when you were in Africa then, your parents moved from Scotland –
ET: Yes.
DK: To Woodhall Spa.
ET: Yeah.
DK: And you didn’t, you didn’t know [laughs].
ET: Didn’t know.
DK: No. If I could just go back a bit, your operations in the Middle East. Did you find navigating something that came to you easily or –
ET: Quite difficult.
DK: Difficult? Right, because –
ET: Actually, we did have one, one navigation error which a very lucky to get away with it in many respects because coming back from Italy, we hit this land [emphasis] and I thought it was the north coast of Africa –
DK: Right.
ET: It turned out to be the north coast of Sicily [emphasis], going along.
DK: Yeah.
ET: And, course there’s some very high mountains there. Our signaller, our wireless operator finally got a , what we’d call a QDM –
DK: Mm.
ET: You know, a course to steer.
DK: Yeah.
ET: So we turned on that. Of course we’re getting short of fuel and all sorts of things, and we threw out the guns onto the turret to make the aircraft lighter, and coasted at quite a low altitude –
DK: Mm.
ET: Thinking of the mountains there –
DK: Yeah.
ET: And landed , there was an emergency airfield right on the tip of, which we landed at.
DK: On Sicily?
ET: No, no, in North Africa.
DK: Oh North Africa was it, right.
ET: Right at the top there.
DK: Right, oh right.
ET: So that was a real bit of luck there.
DK: Did you, did you get into any trouble for navigating?
ET: Not really.
DK: No, good [DK and ET laugh].
ET: What I remember is my pilot got in trouble because there was a taxi accident.
DK: Right.
ET: That’s the worst thing that can be done, you know. I think the wing hit it [unclear] on one and knocked [?] it up and twice, and I remember the station [?] commander at briefing for an operational trip. He’d see [?] pilots in front of him and say, ‘look at these men, traitors to the cause.’ I always remember that.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Terrible thing to say really.
DK: Bit harsh isn’t it?
ET: They felt bad enough as it is.
DK: Yeah. And one of those, one of those was your pilot was it?
ET: Yes [emphasis].
DK: Stood up – so he had to stand in front of everybody and get told off?
ET: Well there was three of them.
DK: Three of them, right.
ET: Yes, two’s [?] being blamed for the trip, you know –
DK: Yeah.
ET: That night. And this came out.
DK: Oh dear. It’s not very good is it? [Laughs].
ET: Very unsympathetic.
DK: No. Were commanding officers like that then? Were they a bit tough?
ET: This is a copy, what’s it? [Papers shuffle]. Is there something in there called “Blida’s Bombers?” A book. Oh yeah, it’s about him.
DK: Oh right.
ET: There’s something in [papers shuffle, pause]. All this mail, that’s Kairouan [laughs].
DK: Right. Just for the recording, it’s a magazine or a pamphlet called “Blida’s Bombers.” B-L-I-D-A, Blida. That’s, that’s in Algiers isn’t it?
ET: That’s right.
DK: [Unclear].
ET: That was a big base, as the Army. We started going in with the first army –
DK: Right.
ET: [Unclear].
DK: I actually went there many years ago, to Blida in Algiers. And just for the recording, this is “Blida’s Bombers” by Eric M. Summers. Did you know Eric M. Summers?
ET: No.
DK: No, no.
ET: But there was a Group Captain Powel, his photograph was in there which I was trying to, to find.
DK: Right.
ET: He was a man that –
DK: Oh, Group Captain Powel –
ET: Yeah.
DK: Here he is.
ET: Yeah, but there’s a picture of him with his –
DK: That’s in there.
ET: Fly [?]. He always used to fly [laughs].
DK: So he was your commanding officer was he?
ET: He was the station commander actually –
DK: Station commander, right.
ET: Group captain, yeah.
DK: And was it him who told your –
ET: Yes.
DK: The three pilot off?
ET: Yeah.
DK: Well that’s for the recording then, Group Captain Powell [laughs]. Ah there he is, there is he is.
ET: That’s him.
DK: Yeah.
ET: That’s exactly with his – yeah.
DK: Oh, so just for the recording here. It’s Group Captain Powell, briefing for Radan Recina [?]. And it looks like he’s got a fly swat there.
ET: That’s right. He always used that as a pointer [DK and ET laugh].
DK: He looks like he must have been a bit of a character. Oh wow.
ET: Quite a forceful –
DK: Forceful, I can imagine [?].
ET: Yeah.
DK: So there’s the Wellingtons –
ET: Probably [unclear], that’s him, yeah.
DK: You were flying.
ET: Yes, yeah.
DK: So this is all – the book itself is about the Tunis campaign then?
ET: What I can remember is when we got later [?], the power, the whole, the whole instruments used to shake and [laughs].
DK: [Unclear] my phone’s on. Sorry about that. So you got Noel Coward’s poem [?] there, ‘lie in the dark and listen.’
ET: Yes.
DK: Yeah, ah. So while you were in North Africa then and you’re bombing targets in Italy, were you, was your aircraft ever hit at all or, can you recall?
ET: Er, not really. Should they call it sometimes [?], few peppered.
DK: Right.
ET: But nothing direct.
DK: Nothing serious.
ET: Direct hit.
DK: So you never got attacked by German aircraft –
ET: No.
DK: At all?
ET: No.
DK: Right. So what did you, what sort of targets were you hitting there in –
ET: Mostly airfields.
DK: Mostly airfields.
ET: There, [papers shuffle] here you are –
DK: Right.
ET: I don’t have the – oh [unclear]. That’s how we got there.
DK: Right okay, so that’s, for the recording here, that’s your logbook.
ET: That’s my logbook, yeah.
DK: So –
ET: Number one.
DK: Your pilot then is Pearce.
ET: Yes.
DK: Sergeant Pearce, and you’re the navigator down on here.
ET: We’re all sergeants –
DK: You’re all sergeants, right.
ET: At the time. There was very few, very few commissioned there on the squadron.
DK: Right, so the whole crew was sergeants then?
ET: Yeah.
DK: Yeah, so from the logbook then, so you’ve gone from Portreath to Ra –
ET: Ras el Ma.
DK: El Ma. Ras el Ma to Blida.
ET: That’s right.
DK: Then Blida to Kairouan.
ET: Kairouan.
DK: And I’ll spell that for the recording. It’s K-A-I-R-O-U-A-N. And so your base was Maison Blanche?
ET: No the base was Kairouan.
DK: Kairouan was it?
ET: Yeah.
DK: Right okay.
ET: It looks as though someone must have taken an aeroplane or something up there.
DK: Oh right [something pings in background].
ET: And I don’t know how we came back but it –
DK: Right. So you’ve done operations then to Nissena [?] –
ET: Yeah.
DK: And that’s in a Wellington, 19th of June 1943. So Nissena [?] seems to be a regular target, hmm. So Nissena [?], Italian airfield, Syracuse.
ET: Syracuse, yeah.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Masala [?].
DK: So quite a number of – so you said you did thirty operations there in North Africa?
ET: Yeah.
DK: Hmm, the Nissena beaches I noticed [page turns]. So what were the, what were the briefings like in North Africa? Were you sort of in a tent and – what were the facilities like?
ET: Yes, was all under canvas, the whole thing. The food was corned beef –
DK: Yeah.
ET: For everything. In fact, I got an attack of jaundice –
DK: Oh right.
ET: Through that. I went into hospital and they gave me tinned fruit –
DK: Rivht.
ET: And I thought this was a most wonderful thing to, to get. In fact, there was a big American camp near us and they – we used to trade whiskey [DK laughs] for tinned fruit –
DK: Yeah, yeah.
ET: You know, that they had.
DK: [Tape moved] I’m not sure that that’s such a good spot now [laughs].
BT: No.
ET: Not now [laughs].
DK: Not now, no. Oh right.
ET: I suppose thank goodness for corned beef otherwise the [laughs] –
DK: So at, at the briefings then, presumably you’re sort of sat down and told what the target – were you told what the targets were?
ET: Told what the target is, yes.
DK: Right. So in North Africa, were they mostly military targets, airfields and –
ET: Yes.
DK: I noticed here you’ve got here [reading from logbook]: ‘30th of September 1943, ops. Port engine caught fire on takeoff [emphasis].’ Do you remember that?
ET: Not really [both laugh].
DK: Well it says you landed okay after twenty-five minutes.
ET: Yeah we always – obviously we’d have just gone –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Round and there –
DK: And landed again.
ET: And landed again.
DK: So then you’ve had, got several places in Italy then. I noticed you’ve got Pisa is one, ops to Pisa.
ET: Yes.
DK: Yeah [paper turns].
ET: I remember the vehicles [?], I remember we were on that night, bobbing and the beaches, you know, before the army got in.
DK: So that’s 142 Squadron then, and you’ve done two hundred and forty-two hours, fifteen minutes operations then.
ET: Is that the end?
DK: Yeah that’s the end there, yeah.
ET: Yeah [page turns].
DK: So you’ve, you’ve come back to the UK then, you’ve come back to England. What, where –
ET: I was an instructor then.
DK: Right [laughs].
ET: Or so – we didn’t have half the instrumentation that the UK aircraft had.
DK: Right.
ET: So it was like an idiot teaching an idiot really [laughing], until we got used to –
DK: Right. So you, you went onto training then did you? You were –
ET: Yes.
DK: Right.
ET: It, I did a year –
DK: Right.
ET: Mainly at a place called Barford St. John –
DK: Right.
ET: Which is not far from Oxfordshire. Oh it’s about three miles away from, what’s the name of the town [pause], starts with a B I think.
DK: Bedford?
BT: Bicester?
DK: Bicester?
BT: Bicester, yeah?
ET: B – well down that way, yeah.
DK: Right. And that was in Oxfordshire was it?
ET: Yeah.
DK: Right.
ET: And then the –
DK: So what, what aircraft were you flying doing the training there?
ET: Wellingtons.
DK: Wellingtons again, and that, you said they were better equipped than the ones you were flying in the Middle East?
ET: Yes [DK laughs]. There’s a thing in navigation called G [emphasis] –
DK: Yes.
ET: Which we didn’t have out there, you know. It was a wonderful aid, very accurate –
DK: Mm.
ET: But I had to learn [laughs], I had to learn that, you see, when I came back .
DK: So although you were training people, you yourself didn’t know –
ET: Well [laughs].
DK: Oh right.
ET: You know radio, you know, out there, about thirty-five miles was the range of our radio. You know –
DK: Mm.
ET: If you did want to call our base [laughs] –
DK: Yeah.
ET: You had to be within thirty-five miles of it.
DK: So not very far then?
ET: Not very far at all, no.
BT: Banbury, it was.
DK: Banbury.
ET: Banbury [emphasis] was the place –
BT: I just looked it up.
ET: Yeah sorry, Banbury, Banbury’s where – it was just outside Banbury. And anyway, at the end of the year they changed from Wellingtons to Mosquitos.
DK: Right, okay.
ET: So I just stayed there and did the course, met the pilot. He was a very good pilot. He, when he finished training in Canada they kept him on as an instructor.
DK: Right. So you’ve come – I slightly misread this earlier and I want – for the benefit of the tape, your initial training was at Number Six Air Observation School at Staverton.
ET: That’s right.
DK: And then you went to 21 OTU, Morteon-in-the-Marsh.
ET: That’s correct.
DK: Then [emphasis] to North Africa.
ET: For operational training –
DK: Then to North Africa –
ET: North Africa.
DK: Sorry I misread this, with 142 Squadron.
ET: Yes.
DK: Which we’ve just covered.
ET: That’s correct.
DK: So you’ve come back then and you did a year’s training –
ET: Yes.
DK: Instructing, and that was at 16 OTU, Upper Heyford [?].
ET: Yes, that was the main base –
DK: Main base.
ET: But as I say, I spent it all at Barford –
DK: Right okay.
ET: St. John.
DK: Right. So then in early 1945 then, you’re now converted onto the Mosquito?
ET: That’s right.
DK: Can you remember your pilot’s name on the Mosquito?
ET: Yeah, Green, Dave Green.
DK: Dave Green.
ET: We didn’t have a – he was married, the chap in the, well obviously [unclear] he met a girl out there and married her, and so we didn’t spend a lot of social time together at all.
DK: Right.
ET: He didn’t drink at al so l [laughs].
DK: Was that quite unusual in the Air Force then? [Laughs].
ET: Well a bit. But yeah he was a good chap.
DK: Right. And would he have been a pilot officer or –
ET: He was a flight lieutenant.
DK: Flight lieutenant, right. So that’s Flight Lieutenant –
ET: I expect –
DK: Dave Green
ET: If you, if you finished top of your course –
DK: Yeah.
ET: You were normally commissioned, the top. So as he did well, kept him on as an instructor, I suspect he was –
DK: And you say he was an Australian?
ET: No, no, he was English.
DK: English, right okay. So, and you’re in the Mosquitos then. What did you think of the Mosquito as a aircraft?
ET: Oh it was great [laughs], with so much speed.
DK: Mm.
ET: Amazing aircraft because to carry that load, to carry one four thousand pound bomb, was like a big oil tank, you know.
DK: Mm, yeah.
ET: Oil drum, for the business. And course we’d overload tanks on the wings as well, so she was pretty heavy.
DK: Yeah.
ET: But it was wonderful. We used to bomb at twenty-five thousand feet.
DK: Right.
ET: And when the bomb went of course you shot up about three [DK and ET laugh], three hundred feet.
DK: And this was at 571 Squadron?
ET: 571, yeah.
DK: And –
ET: It was very short lived – each squadron, they were created [emphasis], you know, and of course the war, the war finished –
DK: Right.
ET: And they disappeared again.
DK: Can you remember, can you remember where you were based with 571?
ET: Yes, Oakington.
DK: Oakington, right okay.
ET: Which is a big –
DK: Housing estate now [BT laughs].
ET: Oh is it?
DK: Yeah, afraid so. It’s all been knocked down.
ET: But did it, did have all these refugee, I don’t know what they were, refugee centres?
DK: It was for while, yes.
ET: Yeah.
DK: It was a refugee centre –
ET: Yeah.
DK: After the war.
ET: Oh but, but I haven’t mentioned that I – when the war finished, they asked for volunteers to ferry the aircraft back from Canada.
DK: Oh right.
ET: SO I volunteered for that. I got out to Canada, went out by boat, and they said ‘oh you’re not wireless trained’ [laughs].
DK: Mm.
ET: ‘So you can’t do that.’ So I ended up doing about thirty hours in Dakotas.
DK: Oh right [DK and ET laugh].
ET: And I was there for about three months, and came back in a BUAC [?] Liberator.
DK: Right.
ET: [Laughs] to Prestwick, I remember that.
DK: Just, just going back a little bit to your time in the Mosquitos.
ET: Yes.
DK: Can you remember how many operations you did on Mosquitos?
ET: Yes, I did twenty.
DK: Right, so that was thirty operations, Wellingtons in North Africa –
ET: Yes.
DK: And another twenty –
ET: When we were operating on the Mosquito, we had sort of two nights on and one night off.
DK: So what was your role with the Mosquito, because you weren’t really flying with the main Bomber force were you? Were you separate to them?
ET: Well, it was diversionary [emphasis] normally. We went to targets to make them think that the –
DK: Right.
ET: Main force was going there. You had your sneaky little – I went to Berlin thirteen times [laughs].
DK: Right. What was it like flying over Berlin?
ET: Well it’s quite, quite intense. The flak was, you know, they had these predictions, the marshal [?] –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Predicting –
DK: Predicting flak –
ET: You’re very happy if you saw it bursting a bit beneath you, you know, thinking ‘oh they haven’t got it right.’
DK: Mm.
ET: And they had these incredible searchlights, and a marshal would come on you, and then all the sleeves [?] [unclear]. It’s a really lovely feeling [laughs] being all lit up at night.
DK: So when that happened, what did your pilot do? Did he –
ET: He couldn’t do much at all really –
DK: Right.
ET: For that. Because with that height, you know, it would take a long way to –
DK: To get out the searchlight. So you’re, you’re being fired on all the time while you’re in the searchlights?
ET: Well, you might be or you might not, you know. It didn’t – we had a little indicator on the aircraft, a light it was, which was supposed to switch on if you were being attacked.
DK: Yeah. So you, did you fly out with a number of other Mosquitos?
ET: Yes.
DK: And could you see them at night, or –
ET: Well that’s the amazing thing is, there’s all these aircraft together –
DK: Yeah.
ET: You suddenly see, if another one gets lit up by the searchlights you think, ‘I didn’t realise he was there,’ you know.
DK: Mm.
ET: You were like a loose formation I think, you weren’t in flying formation.
DK: Right, so you never saw other aircraft then?
ET: Not very often.
DK: So your role was then, the main force would go off to one target and you’d attack somewhere else to, to draw –
ET: Yes.
DK: Their defences there –
ET: Yes.
DK: Presumably.
ET: Of course, we had the Pathfinders.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Who would – now this, well a secret as it was at the time, called Oboe.
DK: Mhm.
ET: And they used to drop on that, and this thing was amazing. Two different aircraft flares go down, you go down one on top of the other. You’d think it was out of one aircraft, you know.
DK: Right.
ET: This was getting towards the end and –
DK: So when you saw these two flares go down, what was your, what did you have to do then?
ET: Well, I’d, it would tell you, or, if it was some apart [?] it would tell you which one to go for. Well, I had to get down into the bomb bay, and, well about ten, you had a ten minute run in when you had to stay rock steady, you know, and I had to get down into the front and set up the bomb, bomb site.
DK: Right.
ET: ‘Cause one night, an incident was that I got down there and I wasn’t making sense about it to my pilot, and he was very quick at knocking my oxygen off [laughs].
DK: Oh.
ET: And he quickly catched on what was wrong and put the switch –
DK: Right.
ET: Back on.
DK: So he switched the oxygen off then, right.
ET: Yeah just getting, getting down into the – I had a harness [?] on, you know –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Just to –
DK: So, so although you were navigating then, on the Mosquitos you actually acted as a bomb aimer as well then did you?
ET: Yes, I did both jobs.
DK: Right.
ET: Yes, I did a small bombing course with a Mosquito conversion. We did a course on –
DK: Right.
ET: With Oxfords [emphasis] it was this time, which was a training aircraft.
DK: Mm.
ET: Used to bomb in the Wash.
DK: Mm.
ET: You know, the target.
DK: Yeah.
ET: The Wash.
DK: Yeah, so, so you said you went to Berlin thirteen –
ET: I think it was about thirteen –
DK: Thirteen times.
ET: Times if you –
DK: So for the recording, I’m looking at the logbook again so, so 1st of March 1945, Mosquito. You’ve gone from ops to Erfurt, E-R-F-U-R-T.
ET: Erfurt, yeah.
DK: So you’ve got one four thousand pound bomb.
ET: That’s a bomb we carried, just one.
DK: And then 3rd of March forty-five, Wurzburg, one four thousand pound bomb again.
ET: Yeah.
DK: And then it says here Berlin on the 5th of March, the 7th of March, 9th of March, 11th of March, 13th of March. So every other day there for about a week, you were going to Berlin.
ET: Yeah.
DK: So each time it’s one four thousand pound bomb. So those trips to Berlin, can you recall, were those diversional then, or part of a, a main attack on Berlin?
ET: I, I don’t think it was a main attack because we didn’t see other aeroplanes there really.
DK: Right, so the main force has gone off somewhere else?
ET: It’s more a nuisance, you know, morale type thing I think –
DK: Right.
ET: On that.
DK: So you’re also going out there then to, not as diversions as such but to just keep the defences alert?
ET: Keep it going, yeah.
DK: So then 15th of March, Erfurt again [page turns]. [Laughs], and then here 21st of March, Berlin, 23rd of March, Berlin and the 24th of March, Berlin [page turns]. Think the people in Berlin must have got a bit fed up of you turning up [all laugh]. So your, and it says here, so the same pilot, Flight Lieutenant –
ET: Yes.
DK: Is it, was it Dave Green? Dave, Dave Green, was it? Green?
ET: Dave Green, yeah.
DK: Dave Green. And just reading for the recording here –
ET: Yes.
DK: So 4th of April, Magdeburg, and then 8th of April, Berlin, 10th of April, Berlin, 12th of April, Berlin [BT laughs], 13th of April, I’ll spell this out for the recording. It’s S-T-R-A-L-S-U-N-I, or S-U-N-D, Stralsund I think it is. 17th of April, Berlin, 20th of April, Berlin again, 23rd of April, Flensburg [page turns]. So the end must be coming to an end here then. And finally, 25th of April, a power station at Munich.
ET: That’s right, that was the last one.
DK: Mm.
ET: It, I had a son out there [laughs].
DK: Right.
ET: He worked with the, what’s it called, you know, the –
BT: Eurofighter.
ET: Eurofighter.
DK: Oh right, oh okay.
BT: After the war you want to add [DK and BT laugh].
ET: After the war, oh yes.
DK: Yes.
ET: But I said, ‘I probably passed this part,’ I said, ‘I probably bombed [emphasis] that part’ [all laugh].
BT: Yeah.
DK: So years later, your son was working on the Eurofighter in Europe?
ET: He was in the Eurofighter, yeah.
DK: So can I, if I just add those up [page turns]. Where are we, that’s Berlin. One, two, three, four, five [page turns], six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. Yes as you say, thirteen.
ET: That was –
DK: So out of those twenty operations in Mosquitos, thirteen of them were to Berlin.
ET: Yeah.
DK: And your trips to Berlin, it’s obviously quite a long way. I mean, are you fired on all the way or is it mostly quite dark and quiet?
ET: Bits and pieces.
DK: Mm.
ET: Sometimes flak would come up, you know, you could see it at – you just hoped they hadn’t predicted you, your height.
DK: Hmm. But in a Mosquito you’re a lot higher than another aircraft.
ET: Twenty-five.
DK: Mm, twenty-five thousand feet.
ET: We were, and sometimes we used to get to thirty coming back, you know.
DK: And can you recall, were you ever attacked by German aircraft at all?
ET: Not that I know of.
DK: No.
ET: No.
DK: So as you’re, as you’re approaching the target then, you’ve got down into the –
ET: I get down into the, the bomb bay –
DK: So –
ET: And set up the wind and that –
DK: Yeah.
ET: On the – in fact, so that we could keep together more of the navigation, you’re trying to navigation –
DK: Yeah, yeah.
ET: The leading aircraft might pass back the wind, so as we’re all using the same wind to, to part [?] with our drift and that –
DK: Right.
ET: So as we’d keep –
DK: ‘Cause presumably wind change can really affect your navigation?
ET: Oh yeah, well effects your drift and everything you see, so if you get different winds you could be offsetting differently.
DK: Right, what was it like, if I can ask – you’d obviously have a briefing beforehand –
ET: Yes.
DK: And, and this is in the building at Oakham. What were your feelings like when you saw what your target was going to be?
ET: Well you think –
DK: Presumably they have curtains and they put it back and –
ET: Well they tell you where it is. Oh, the routine was, you take the aircraft up for an air test –
DK: Right.
ET: Up there about fifteen minutes, see it’s alright in the morning, and then, this being the morning, then the afternoon you would go to briefing. Told you where it was, you had to make charts up, you know –
DK: What was your thoughts when you saw Berlin again? Were you –
ET: [Laughs] yeah, ‘can’t you find somewhere else to’ –
DK: So you now know the target, so you’re now doing your charts presumably as the navigator?
ET: Yeah.
DK: So you’re, you’re told the winds and –
ET: Got to put a tracking of where we’re going and that, all these sort of things. Oh yeah, you get briefed by the MET officer of the winds and the weather.
DK: Mhm.
ET: And after that, you had a meal, and then you went back. The worst thing I found was you went back to your billet and then you’d devour [?] away these hours –
DK: Right.
ET: Until, ‘cause it’s always at night of course, you know, until you’re ready for takeoff.
DK: So it came as a bit of a relief then, when you got to the aircraft to takeoff?
ET: Oh yeah, once you get going, you’re too busy really to think about anything else, provided you didn’t swing. It was quite a nasty aircraft to swing in on takeoff –
DK: Mm.
ET: Mosquito, you know, the propellers going the same direction –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Until they got the tail up for a bit of –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Control.
DK: And your pilot then, Dave Green, was he a good pilot?
ET: Yes [emphasis]. But just as I say, he was a quiet chap so I didn’t really see much of him –
DK: Right.
ET: Apart from work which, which was fine [laughs].
DK: But did you – I’m presuming you’d have to work well [emphasis] together then.
ET: Oh yes.
DK: So you worked well together?
ET: Yeah.
DK: We’ve covered what you did over the targets, so you’ve come back after the operation and your landing. How did you feel then as you got back?
ET: Relieved once you got down but of course you’re coming back, you’re all coming back together aren’t you? In these airfield, the seconds [?] they overlapped.
DK: Yeah.
ET: So it was a bit dodgy at times. We landed once at the wrong airport [laughs].
DK: Really?
ET: You know, the wrong way, direction was the same.
DK: Yeah.
ET: We ended up at Wyton [laughs].
DK: Right.
ET: Anyway, they just briefed us and, and that was it. I think we took off in the morning to get back to base [DK and ET laugh].
DK: So you, once you’ve landed then, what’s the procedures then?
ET: Oh you go for a briefing.
DK: Right, a debriefing [emphasis].
ET: De –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Debriefing.
DK: And, and who would take that?
ET: Intelligence.
DK: Mm.
ET: Officers.
DK: Mm, and what sort of questions did they ask?
ET: Did you hit the target, did you think you hit the target?
DK: Right.
ET: We used to take a, a film [emphasis]. Some were better than others, you know –
DK: Mm.
ET: Of the target area and when it happened.
DK: So a photo would be taken when you –
ET: A photo when you pressed the plunger for, to release the bomb a photograph would be taken –
DK: Oh right.
ET: A little later.
DK: Right. So you’ve got back then and you’ve got feelings of relief. What happened then, you just went to bed?
ET: No.
DK: Ah.
ET: Went for a meal.
DK: Right, okay [DK and ET laugh].
ET: And a beer.
DK: Mm.
ET: And a few beers [DK laughs], otherwise I never slept really, you know.
DK: Right.
ET: It’s all night [?], but oh, it was a relief [emphasis] –
DK: Mm.
ET: Really. I mean we were very lucky in the Mosquito, we didn’t have near the number of losses –
DK: Mm.
ET: That the – the loss that I saw, well, the loss that I saw was at – one aircraft completed [?], he was up on his air test and of course he came and tried to beat up the, what we called the flight hock [?] [emphasis], you know, where our ground crew were.
DK: Yep.
ET: And these, these overload tanks in the wing. He hit a tree and knocked one tank off, and the aircraft just [unclear].
DK: Cartwheeled.
ET: I watched this –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Just rolling [emphasis].
DK: Yeah.
ET: And it went straight in the front of the, the sick quarters.
DK: Mm.
ET: That was a complete waste of lives. Another accident we had was at the – one chap lost an engine and he came roaring in far too fast. Oh no sorry, he spun [emphasis] in and of course, they were killed. It happened a second time to another person, and he thought ‘I’m not going to stall’ [laughs], so he came rolling in too fast and [taps four times] wasn’t able to stop at the far end. And then the disciplinary thing at Sheffield, so they sent them to Sheffield. [Unclear] fly –
DK: Right.
ET: But just for discipline [laughs].
DK: But at least he survived that one.
ET: He survived that one, yeah.
DK: But got into trouble for it, yeah. Okay that’s, that’s great. Just ask you, after all these years how do you look back at your time in, in Bomber Command? How do you look back on that?
ET: I don’t really look back on it all that much nowadays.
DK: Mm.
ET: I think – well I was occupied, of course seeing an Air Force and getting in transport we had the Berlin Airlift –
DK: Right.
ET: For a year.
DK: So you got involved with the Berlin Airlift then did you?
ET: Yeah.
DK: Yeah, so –
ET: I did three hundred lifts on that.
DK: Oh right. So you’ve, let, you’ve – so just reading here, that’s three hundred and two lifts –
ET: Yeah.
DK: To Berlin.
ET: That took a year.
DK: And, and what aircraft were you flying?
ET: York.
DK: Right, the Avro York. So what, what was Berlin like when you, you went there after the war?
ET: Oh they were very, very grateful that we’re keeping away from the Russians I think was a big thing, you know, there.
DK: Mm. ‘Cause it’s, it’s kind of strange ‘cause one moment you’re dropping bombs [BT laughs] and then the next –
ET: Three years later, yeah.
DK: You’re giving them food.
ET: That’s right. It’s amazing when people have nothing, you know. If anybody had a bar of soap or something like that –
DK: Mm.
ET: It was like a gold [emphasis] to them, you know.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Things like that.
DK: So what kind of stuff were you carrying in the Avro Yorks then?
ET: Oh you name it, everything.
DK: Food and –
ET: There was coal.
DK: Right.
ET: Actually the aircraft – I forget they were a lot heavier when they finished, it was all this coal dust.
DK: Mm.
ET: They erm, hay for horses, all the natural stuff that people eat.
DK: Right.
ET: Anything like that.
DK: So flying into Berlin then, did you have to stick to certain routes or –
ET: Yes –
DK: ‘Cause you’re flying over –
ET: The Northern – we used to go up north and then go down from a northern corridor, and come back at a centre corridor.
DK: Right.
ET: ‘Cause basically, Onsturfrun [?]
DK: So you went to Onsturfrun Gateaux [?].
ET: Onsturfrun [?] to Gateaux [?] yeah, yeah that’s right.
DK: Right.
ET: And –
DK: So they’re just continuous flights then, going –
ET: Yeah.
DK: In the northern route and coming out the southern route.
ET: Oh it was a shambles in this case. We had lots of different speed aircraft, you know. There was, there was Yorks, there was the Dakotas –
DK: Mm.
ET: Valettas, and what was happening, supposed to go off on waves but one wave was [laughs] overtaking the other wave, you know –
DK: Right.
ET: And things like that. It’s amazing there weren’t more accidents than there were, but after they got it settled it worked very well. You just went along, you got in. If you missed, if you couldn’t get in you came straight back, you didn’t, you couldn’t go round again, you know –
DK: Right.
ET: To Gateaux [?]I mean.
DK: So you, you had to land first time?
ET: You had to land, that’s right.
DK: Yeah.
ET: But it worked very well. And we went down to two lifts. Initially we had to do three lifts. It was a tremendously long day ‘cause you had to wait for the aircraft to get ready and complete your three lifts.
DK: Mm.
ET: That was it, but they put it down to two [emphasis] so we did a night shift or a day –
DK: Yeah.
ET: Day shift. It was well organised towards the end.
DK: Was it easier for you as a navigator, doing that then, because they –
ET: Oh I didn’t do very – there wasn’t very much navigation at all.
DK: Right.
ET: For – you just, it was a corridor, you know –
DK: Right.
ET: And took me an hour coming back ‘cause you flew over quite a bit of Russian territory coming in.
DK: Mm.
ET: The only, the odd fighter used to come and have a look at you [laughs]. Think ‘I hope you go away again,’ you know.
DK: Oh right [ET laughs]. So after that then, you’ve remained with transport and –
ET: Yes.
DK: Yeah. Just looking, so you were in Valettas, Varsitys, the Beverlys?
ET: Yes.
DK: So that was, you went out to Aden then, and –
ET: Yes.
DK: And Iran? Yes.
ET: Yeah, did two years in Aden.
DK: Was that during the conflict out there or –
ET: There, there was a bit of conflict –
DK: Yeah.
ET: But [coughs] there was a lot of trouble in – what do you call that country?
DK: Yemen?
ET: Yemen.
DK: Yemen, yeah and Aden, Aden is Yemen I think, isn’t it? Oman?
ET: There’s another one I think, further east.
DK: Right. So, so what were you doing there? Was it supplying –
ET: Oh just loads of [?] – it was wonderful, a place called Macierz [?] –
DK: Mm.
ET: Which was about eight thousand feet high, and from Aden was very steamy, you know [laughs], and you get up there, your stockings fall down because it’s so dry up there.
DK: Yeah.
ET: Byt they’ve got stuff in there you didn’t know if you could get before, you know.
DK: No.
ET: Like quite big trucks and that type of thing.
DK: So what was, what was the Beverley [emphasis] like as an aircraft then? They’re quite big, quite bulky things aren’t they?
ET: Oh dear [DK laughs]. It was slow [emphasis], it was noisy [emphasis]. In fact the navigator’s table used to be on an angle, you had to, you had to [tapping] flatten it and you had to [tapping], they tried to [?] bounce on it, you know [DK laughs]. And that had a fixed undercarriage, and if you got into icy conditions, these legs used to ice up which meant you even go slower [emphasis] than [DK and ET laugh]. But it had this great capability of short landing in –
DK: Yeah.
ET: In getting into these airfields, you know.
DK: So then you’ve gone onto the Britannia.
ET: That’s right.
DK: So what, what was the Britannia like?
ET: Oh it was lovely.
DK: Yeah
ET: Yeah, I did five years on.
DK: And what was that, mostly trooping flights was it? So whereabouts did you use to go to?
ET: All over the place [coughs]. Did a lot to Norway because the commander was a not [?] – always went there from January to March –
DK: Mm.
ET: They go for their winter training –
DK: Right.
ET: So we’d lots of flights there and back. That was an adventure [?]. We had a lot of flights out to Woomera –
DK: Right.
ET: You know, the atomic –
DK: Oh right, the atomic bomb tests.
ET: It was a little box.
DK: Oh.
ET: Didn’t know what it was [DK and ET laugh]. But we used to go down to Adelaide.
DK: Probably best not to ask [all laugh].
ET: Well, quite a lot.
DK: Yeah.
ET: When all these tests were going on.
DK: Yeah.
ET: And just [coughs] –
DK: You, you didn’t witness any of the tests then did you?
ET: Oh no.
DK: No, no.
ET: We used to use an Edinburgh field recorder, it was a RAAF base. That went on quite a lot. We did trips to Singapore and back –
DK: Mhm.
ET: But when it first started, you know, there was no slipping [emphasis] crews –
DK: Yeah.
ET: You just had a – everyday it took five [emphasis] days to get to Singapore, you had two days off there and five days to come back. And I think what a waste of aircraft it was really [DK laughs]. I suppose we had so many we didn’t bother. That was on the Yorks [emphasis] then.
DK: Yeah [ET laughs]. So finally you’ve become ATS navigator instructor.
ET: That was on Belfasts.
DK: So you’re, you’ve – and then 53 Squadron on the Belfasts?
ET: That’s right.
DK: So, so what was the Belfast like as an aircraft?
ET: Oh it was nice, nice. Well lovely, very palatial for the crew.
DK: Mm.
ET: Just the pilots could get in from the outside of the aircraft into the seat, you know, being a big aircraft –
DK: Right.
ET: It was very palatial for the crew.
DK: So what sort of loads would you have on the Belfasts?
ET: All sorts, helicopters.
DK: Yeah?
ET: Tanks, just stuff like that.
BT: You took the Concord engines didn’t you as well? Concord engines.
ET: Oh I had a big, yeah. Oh my big flight was I went – we carried an engine for Concord once. It went on a world tour.
DK: Oh right.
ET: Well, went to Far East sales pitch. It never needed the engine [laughs].
DK: Right, so it was just a spare –
ET: But it was a few pictures somewhere of that. Is it in there [shuffling].
BT: Yeah that’s the one, that’s the Concord.
DK: Ah.
ET: There’s one with the tours [?] on.
BT: I’ll have a look [ET laughs].
DK: That’s the original prototype isn’t it?
ET: Yeah.
DK: DBSST.
ET: That’s right.
BT: Oh wow.
DK: Okay, so I’ll just finish this off. So you retired in 1978 as a squadron leader.
ET: That’s right.
DK: Ah.
ET: They eventually decided to promote me after [laughs] –
DK: So they promoted you just before you retired?
ET: Yes.
DK: Ah [laughs]. Okay, well I’ll stop that there because I’m conscious of you talking for a whole hour there, but thanks very much for that. I’ll switch that off now.
ET: Well –
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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ATaylorEC170928
PTaylorEC1701
Title
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Interview with Eric Taylor
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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:54:10 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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David Kavanagh
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-28
Description
An account of the resource
Squadron Leader Eric Taylor joined the Royal Air Force in 1942 and served as a navigator. He served in North Africa and completed a tour of operations against targets in Italy before becoming an instructor in England. He describes the differences in instrumentation between the North African and English aircraft, such as the Gee navigational aid. He flew nuisance and diversion operations in Mosquitos over places such as Wurzburg, Erfurt and Berlin thirteen times. He was involved in the Berlin Airlift and then spent a couple of years serving in Aden and the Middle East, and remained in the Air Force until 1978 when he retired as a squadron leader.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Algeria
Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Tunisia
England--Cambridgeshire
Algeria--Blida
Algeria--Râs el Ma
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Erfurt
Germany--Würzburg
Tunisia--Qayrawān
North Africa
Contributor
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Katie Gilbert
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
1945
142 Squadron
16 OTU
571 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
civil defence
crewing up
Gee
Home Guard
Mosquito
navigator
Operational Training Unit
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Oakington
RAF Upper Heyford
training
Wellington
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/339/3504/ATaylorJ150916.2.mp3
f76e00dfb7d0f9819f6a843d7b85b955
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
Taylor, John
J Taylor
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant John Taylor DFC (1923 -2021). He flew operations as a navigator with 50 Squadron.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2015-09-16
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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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Taylor, J
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MY: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Malcolm Young and the interviewee is John Taylor. The interview is taking place at Mr Taylor’s house in Sale in Cheshire and the date is the 16th of September 2015. John, if we could start. How did you come to join the Royal Air Force?
JT: Well, at the, when I was young I’d got two sisters closest to me. I was the eldest of seven. And I’d got a, I had a scholarship to the Grammar School and reached the fifth year in 1939 and so I was about to go into the sixth form when the school was evacuated into Lincolnshire. No. Gainsborough. North Nottinghamshire. I didn’t want to go. They were doing half time, you in somebody else’s house. So, I left and went to work.
MY: Yes.
JT: And I went to work as an assistant analytical chemist at Boot’s factory on Island Street in Nottingham. And I was sixteen at the time. I joined the air raid, ARP — the Air Raid Precaution people as a first aid party. I had training and days when we — mock incidents and things. Every time the sirens went I had to put my overall on, put my tin hat on and cycle to the warden’s post. And, and I got sick of this. But I found out that working as an analytical chemist — it was a reserved occupation and one day, cycling home I saw a poster “Reserved men. You can volunteer for flying duties with the RAF.” So, I thought, that’s for me. I was seventeen then and I went around to the recruiting office and they seemed delighted to see me [laughs] and signed up. And then I went home and told my parents who were not overly pleased. Proud perhaps. But not overly pleased. Then of course, I had to go through all the medicals and especially the eyesight things. It was rather funny when it came to the eyesight thing because you know, they closed one eye and you had to read the letters. And when I’d finished the examiner said, ‘Now let’s see what a mess you make of your other eye.’ The other eye 6/6. Perfect. So, right, both eyes 6/6 [laughs] Obviously, they wanted people. And then of course I was sent home to wait. And it was, nineteen four — all this happened in 1941. And in 1942 just six days, three days after my nineteenth birthday I was called up. They’d sent me a list. Razor, shaving brush. I’d never shaved at that time because I was very fair and smooth. And all the rest of the clobber. And I got it all together in the suitcase and off I went to report to St John’s, London. No. Lord’s Cricket Ground. Cricket ground. And on the train down there was a chappie sitting opposite me. Dark, a rather big nose, suitcase and he said, ‘Are you going to Lord’s Cricket Ground?’ ‘Yes.’ And so, I met Vic Page who became quite a friend. So, it wasn’t too bad. The two of us together. We got to Lord’s Cricket Ground. They formed us into uneven lines and then, to my horror told us to strip naked. We were under the stands. Where the stands go up there’s a space underneath. Of course I was brought up with two sisters and so, a virgin of course, anyway.
[that’s my son in law to collect the — ]
[pause]
JT: That was my first FFI.
MY: Yes.
JT: Free from infection. After that we shambled around somewhere else. They were decking out uniforms. And then we went to a block of flats in St Johns Wood. They were very posh apartments but of course, everything had been stripped out. But we were in a, a room for three. And although we got the iron beds and the biscuits — those were square [pause] I don’t know what they were filled with. Horsehair or something. And, to my surprise — sheets. I didn’t expect to have sheets with I joined the forces. And we also had our own ensuite. But we were told by the corporal that we’d got to keep that clean and we weren’t given any cleaning materials. It was up to us to keep the bath and basin and everything clean. And we spent three weeks there at the Initial Receiving Centre or whatever they called it. My first time in London but it wasn’t Vic’s first time.
Other: Sorry to just interrupt. I can’t see —
[recording paused]
JT: Yes. In London. We were allowed, after the first week when we’d had drill every morning and been shouted at more than I’d ever been shouted at in my life. And the corporal in charge of our flight of thirty of us and it was the, I think they must have all been taught from the same script, ‘If you play ball with me, I’ll play ball with you.’ But they weren’t bad. They weren’t bad. And everywhere in London they marched us around and we saw other flights being marched around. All to the different places. And every morning stopped for break at some sort of café and we could get a scone with butter and a cup of tea for about a penny ha’penny. And you could see the corporal sitting at a table at the side. They got theirs free I think [laughs] for the perks of taking us to this café. And [pause] but quite early in the afternoon we were let off, especially in the evenings and weekends and so we went to the Opera House. And they’d taken all the seats out and boarded over at a level with the boxes that went around. Covent Garden Opera House. And there were dances.
MY: Oh.
JT: So, we went to dances there. And another time we went to travel by tube because it was convenient and cheap. Went to Max Miller to see Max Miller perform. And I thought it isn’t all bad being [laughs] in the forces. Because you feel, you know you’ve got such anticipation. Another time they took us to the Rudolph Steiner Hall by coach and showed us some training films. Horrendous things that can happen to you if you don’t take protection [laughs] when you have sex. I’d never had sex anyway. And then [pause] that must be a difference from today’s nineteen year olds. And then they put on a lot of little filler films. So, I was sitting in the warmth of the cinema, in the upper circle there and I think there were orchestral rites, “The Rustle of Spring.” And I thought [laughs] I didn’t think being in the air force was like this. But of course, the other side of it was parade every morning. Inspection. And the sergeant would come down and the old script, as I say, I think they were all taught, ‘Am I standing on your hair?’ ‘Am I,’ no, ‘Am I hurting you?’ ‘No sir.’ ‘I should be. I’m standing on your hair. Get it cut.’ You had to go off to the station barber, pay sixpence and they took nothing more than an inch. No hair on your head more than an inch. Two days later, on parade again, ‘Haircut.’ ‘But sergeant I had it cut.’ ‘Never mind. Get your hair cut.’ You’re really being taught that you don’t question orders. You just do what you’re told without thinking. Totally opposite from Bomber Command. But we went through this initial training but at the same time we had classes on Morse. We had to reach twelve words a minute in Morse which I found fairly easy because you got the rhythms of it. As long as you didn’t concentrate and just let it flow you could, because it was all blocks of letters or numbers. And they taught the Aldis lamp. Now, that was difficult. When we saw that light flashing from the Aldis lamp I found it very hard to distinguish between the long and the short flashes. But I struggled and reached the five words a minute which was the minimum to pass. And then having had three weeks of being knocked into shape and beginning to look like airmen although we were AC2s [laughs] and we were allowed a weeks’ leave. Made a big fuss of at home. And then we were posted down to Torquay for the Initial Training Wing. I think it was Number 1 Initial Training Wing, Torquay. And there again we were in a hotel. The Hotel Regina which overlooked the inner harbour at Torquay. Very nice big room, stripped bare. With just four beds in it, I think. Or five. And a very nice crowd. Very nice crowd. And you know, talk about the rude and licentious soldiering. We got an Irish guy there from Southern Ireland. Got a beautiful lilting voice and he could sing. And we used to ask him to sing for us and he’d sing all these Irish songs like “Mother Machree” and all. And again, not what you’d, not how you see soldiers or — [pause] Our regime there was to run in PE kit up to the top of Rockend which is at one end of Tor Bay. Do an hour’s PE, run down again and then do an hours drill. Change and do an hours drill and then go to lessons. And at the end of that time I was as fit as I’ve ever been before or since because I wasn’t a games player at school. I lived, you know, over a furniture shop. My father was a furniture dealer. With sisters. So, games were not my forte. But that was probably why I wasn’t commissioned until much later. Because I didn’t fit their idea of an officer. Any rate, we quite enjoyed, I quite enjoyed it but I mean one weekend we invited my sister and her friend down. I was very popular then with the boys wanting, and they stayed in a boarding house near and so that was rather nice. I had a girlfriend I later married. Much later. Now, at the end of ITW we had a riotous party at a hotel where I was drunk for the first time in my life and felt awful the next day because I’d only just started drinking beer. The next stage was then off to [pause] Eastbourne. The Grand Hotel. And there we were again in a room with a ensuite but the usual beds and you had to put the sheets, the blankets just exactly three inches and then the sheets exactly one inch and then — so you’d got a sandwich of blanket, sheet, blanket, sheet, blanket. And the corporals would come around and look at them. Throw them all on the floor and say, ‘Do it again,’ if they weren’t exactly right. And you’re, we all had gas capes. The only time we ever used them was when they were testing us by going into a gas filled room. But you had to hang them up exactly where the seams were flat and the bit where your back went you had to pull it out so it was standing out straight. All that sort of thing. Looking back, I realise the whole idea is to take away your civilian identity and make you service. But of course, among the lectures not only did we get lectures on navigation but lectures on the history of the Royal Air Force. And we went on route marches. The discipline at Eastbourne was not as harsh as before because our sergeant was a ex-flyer, an air gunner who’d done his tour of ops so, we were a bit in awe of him and he was very easy going. We’d march out of camp and a bit down the road he’d say, ‘All right. Fall out for a smoke.’ Which I didn’t. I didn’t smoke. But we’d rest and then he’d say, ‘Alright, we’re marching back. Bags of swank as you go in,’ [laughs] We’ll do our route tomorrow. Although as route marches sometimes they got quite, quite pleasant. The rhythm of swinging along and somebody would start singing and then others would pick it up and they were the most raucous and rude songs I’d ever heard. But we were all singing with gusto when we were out of sight of the camp. So, I think they [pause] after we went overseas. That’s right. Because they’d started the Empire Air Training where they were training aircrew in Canada, South Africa and America. Although at that time in America they just wore grey suits. Everybody knew who they were of course. They were all in grey. Identical grey suits. Because America wasn’t in the war at that time. And I was posted to New Zealand err to South Africa. Yes. I was just looking to see where it started.
[pause]
JT: Looking in my logbook at the moment.
[pause]
JT: About November 1942. 41 Air School, South Africa. But before that, of course we’d been, had a horrendous sea journey from Liverpool on a converted cargo ship where they’d put extra decks in and three thousand troops on the ship. And it was a big convoy with an aircraft carrier and two cruisers and about four destroyers and there were several troop ships like ours. Some of them were going to Singapore. You know, we were going to South Africa. And you were sleeping — some slept under the tables, the mess tables. Some slept on the mess tables. And some slept in hammocks above the mess tables. They were advantages and disadvantages in all because if you slept on, in the hammock you would either have cockroaches falling on your face if it’s something over the ceiling and you had to stow it up ship shape every morning. And of course, if you slept on the bottom tiers you were liable to have people being sick on you because of all the seasickness. Terrible. But after the first three days I felt ok. I got my sea legs and, but the ship was crowded. You were allowed one pint of beer a day and you had to queue right around the ship deck to get it and it was warm. And you had to sit with your back against the, I don’t know what you call it, some rails at the side of the ship, to drink it. They asked for volunteers to serve in the sergeant’s mess. Now, I know they tell you never volunteer for anything but I thought this might be alright. So, my pal and I, we volunteered and enjoyed it very much. Our job was to collect the food from the galley, carry it. Two plates on each arm to the sergeant’s mess and then we’d wait on the sergeants if there was anything else they wanted and everything. And then when they went back to duty, we produced the food. The food we kept to one side.
[recording paused. Phone ringing]
JT: Aircrew people.
MY: Oh.
JT: He calls himself Ivor the Engine and he does all the research and I put it in the air newsletter I produce every month that goes — send these out to all the people who are in the Aircrew Association but can’t get to meetings.
MY: Yes.
JT: So that keeps them in touch. So, oh have we started again?
MY: Yes.
JT: Oh, I didn’t realise [laughs] I was saying about after the sergeant’s had gone to duties I and my friend, we produced the food we’d put on one side. Which was the food for the sergeants. Much better quality than what we were getting in our mess and we sat down in the sergeant’s mess and had it. And then we were free until lunchtime and of course we’d missed all the drills and parades that they had so, we thought it was a good number. And this went on for two weeks. Perhaps three weeks. And suddenly we were called before the colonel in charge who said, ‘I’m afraid you can’t do this.’ ‘Why sir? Why sir?’ ‘It’s because you’re potential officers and you can’t wait on the NCOs.’ And so that skive finished and they got squaddies from the army to do the job we’d been doing. I was sorry about that because the trip took twelve weeks because we had to go right down into the South Atlantic to be out of the reach of the U-boats. Almost to the coast of Brazil before we swung around, came down below Cape Good Hope. Landed at Durban. And on the way, I think, I don’t know whether we’d got dysentery on board and we were queuing up for the toilets and they’d got no doors on. Just cubicles. And as the ship rolled all the water on the floor rolled towards us and we lifted our feet up as it rolled back. Oh dear. Oh dear.
[telephone ringing recording paused]
JT: I’ll talk about, we’d got this dysentery and so you queued because you knew that you had to go to the back of the queue because by the time you got to the front you’d need to go again. But we survived all that and landed in Durban and it was paradise. Lights were on. No blackout. You could go into the Red Shield Club or the NAAFI but the Red Shield Club was very good. The Salvation Army ran it and you could get egg and chips and things like that and plenty of it. And the attitude towards us was very good from the English that lived in Durban. Cars would pull up with a couple of girls in the back and the father in the front. He’d say, ‘Boys. Are you going anywhere? Would you like to come for lunch?’ And we’d hop in and go for lunch. We were entertained. And then after an initial time in Durban where we were in tents for the first time in my life we moved to [pause] I’m lost for words sometimes. East London. We were stationed at East London which was the, oh like I said that was 41 Air School. From there we did dead reckoning theory, dead reckoning plotting, compasses, meteorology, maps and charts, instruments, reconnaissance photography, ship recognition, aircraft recognition, signals, astro navigation and it was interesting. I was very interested. We were flown. It was the first time we’d flown because this was the first time we’d actually come in contact with an aeroplane. And they were the Avro Anson. They called them, “The flying classroom.” And three navigators came up with a South African pilot. We had the first navigator who actually did the navigating. The second one, I forget quite what he did. And the third one, there was no seat for him so he sat on the parachutes at the back and it was his job to wind the undercarriage down. It was quite an arduous task. And then we rotated. And I quite enjoyed that. I remember we did a square search. And that’s where you, if you’re searching for something. Let’s say a ship that’s been reported in distress. So that you don’t go over the same ground twice or miss it there’s a pattern of going out there and then turning at certain ways and making squares. Ever increasing. So, you covered the whole thing. And then at the end of that time and you were over the sea with nothing in sight you have to plot a course back to base. And so, it was all dead reckoning. But you, you could look at the waves and turn an instrument around until it was aligned with the wave caps and then you got the wind which was at right angles. And of course, it was important to find the correct wind because otherwise your calculations didn’t amount to much. At any rate, as we set off for base we passed right over the town and the South African pilot said, ‘Well done. You’re spot on.’ And I felt very chuffed about that. And East London was equally fascinating. It got dark at 8 o’clock but that didn’t matter because it was warm. Although we wore khaki during the day, we wore our blues in the evening. And quite early on somebody had come to the camp and offered to put us up — two servicemen for the weekend. So, I volunteered for this. And it was Mrs Butler. Her husband had a farm at a little village called Berlin [laughs] About twenty miles from East London. And she’d got three daughters and a son and I was quite fascinated. And in fact, I was so fascinated I went back every weekend. Caught the train from there and became one of the family as it were. And she was like a mother to me. And then in the evening we’d sit on the stoop, as they called the veranda. Drank pink gin. And sometimes they’d have, the native workers on the farm would have a bonfire, sit round drinking kaffir beer and we would join in and sit around on the outside drinking pink gins and it was very enjoyable. But one weekend we got a shock because they said we were going to have a church parade. Of course, that would kibosh your chances of going to Berlin for the weekend. So, Jimmy Elliot and I who were pals, both trainee navigators, we set off for a walk after lunch on the Saturday and after a little while we had a terrific thunderstorm. The rain poured down and we thumbed a lift from a passing lorry. The only lorry we’d seen in ages. And he gave us a lift and we travelled through the rain until it stopped and we said we’ll have to get off there because we’d got to get back. So, we got off and he left us. We said, well we seem to have come around in a semi-circle in a way. There was a bend. If we cut across it would be the shortest distance back to camp. So, we set off marching across the veld. Quite an experience because the grasses were above our heads almost and you got queer insect noises buzzing at you and a bit of trepidation there. And it was getting dark and we came to a river. And we thought well what do we do now? Do we go all the way back to the road? It’s taken us all this time. Or do we try and get across it? We decided to try and cross it. So, shoes and socks off, tied around our necks. Shorts pulled up as high as they could go and we started off wading across this river. The river came up to our thighs but luckily no further. And we managed to get to the other side of the river but we were confronted with a quora. A village of beehive huts and the women sitting outside pounding maze and things. And there were natives standing there on one leg, the other leg against it. Holding spears. What do we do? Well, we’ve got no choice. Just go straight ahead up that track and don’t look at them. So, we set off up this track. The women picked up their babies and hurried inside the huts. And then another black girl came down the track, a blanket wrapped around her. ‘Oh, master John.’ ‘Oh,; I said, [unclear] Missy farm?’ I didn’t know what to say. And Missy Butler, ah. And she pointed back up the track. It was the house girl at, who had looked after us while we were — so we went up there, and of course Mrs Butler was very pleased and surprised to see us because we’d said we couldn’t go. But we were made very welcome. And of course, Jimmy Elliot, he’d never been in so we introduced him to the Butler household. And nobody to this day ever believes it wasn’t deliberate. And yet it was pure coincidence. Pure accident. Some of the things I remember about going to Berlin is that you could go down into the village, which was about two miles away and you could buy sherry. And the best sherry cost a half a crown a bottle. So, we could make a contribution to the parties. Mrs Butler used to play the piano. Used to roll the carpet up, invite neighbours in and they’d have parties and dance and sing. I learned the Afrikaans songs of course. The family next door, well when I say next door, next farm, were Afrikaans and so and they were living amicably together. And then they used to have auctions for — to raise money for warships and warplanes and the boys up north. Fighting in North Africa. And it was a Dutch auction they used to have where they started high and came down until somebody bid. And they asked me to be the auctioneer. Mrs Butler said afterwards that when I left they still asked where the little auctioneer had got to. When we left, when we finished our course, done all our flying and had the exams we were posted to Cape Town. Ready to go home. We went by train and we were very touched because Mrs Butler and the two, two of the three girls walked the two miles down and stood at the railway track. As we passed the farm — waving like made to us. Further on there were black girls that waved like mad too. Pulled their jackets up to show their breasts which met with whoops from the troops. Now, Cape Town of course we were just waiting. And on the way out on the boat I told you the sergeants had their own mess and the officers had the upper deck to themselves and the nurses. And so we saw how the other half lived. Every gangway was out of bounds to other ranks. So, we thought well we’re sergeants now. We’ve had a passing out parade. We’ll go home in style. Not a bit of it. We went home on an American ship where they didn’t recognise ranks as such. You ate at long tables and they gave you tin, metal plates with indentations for the bacon and the eggs and porridge. All slopped in. And you ate it standing up at these tables. They were standing up height. The Americans mixed everything up and then took a fork and they did a rotary movement with the fork to shoot the food in to their mouths. And the whole meal was over in five minutes, and we were given guard duties. We were given to guard the Poles who were also on this ship. And we had to stand guard to stop them going. Leaving their quarters. Never knew why because they were supposed to be on our side. And so, we came back to England.
[pause]
JT: What’s the time? Crikey. You’ve got me talking.
MY: If you move forward to when you were being streamed into Bomber Command. How did, what, how did that selection process work?
JT: Well, we went through OTU, which was. I can’t think of what it stands for now.
MY: Operational Training Unit.
JT: Operational Training Unit. Yes. And the first thing they did was to put us all in a big hangar and say, ‘Find yourself a crew.’ Pilot, navigator, wireless operator, engineer. We didn’t know anything about any of the others. It was pure luck. But a little Australian air gunner came up to me with a New Zealand pilot officer in tow and said, ‘This is Jack. Would you like to be our navigator?’ And I thought Jack looks a pretty dependable guy so I said yes. So, he said, ‘This is John but John said to me, ‘Well we can’t have two Johns in the crew. You’d better call me Jack.’ I thought that was very magnanimous of him [laughs] because he’s the skipper. And then Butch had made friends with an Irish wireless operator. And so we assembled the crew like that. And it was amazing how well we got on with each other. And of course, the [pause] I was driving a car by that time because in 1942 we’d had a mid-upper gunner who’d been a car, used car dealer and the pilot didn’t like him and got rid of him. But before that happened, he’d sold me a car. A 1938 Hillman Minx. Black with red seats. And so, I was very popular because I could take people into town and that sort of thing. I remember when I, I lived in Nottingham. I was born and bred in Nottingham. When I went to record everything and do my insurance and I said I only want fire and theft, ‘What happens if it catches fire next week? What do I get?’ And they said, ‘About two years in jail,’ [laughs] But the beauty of these airfields in Lincolnshire was that they were all within about forty miles of Nottingham where I lived and where my girlfriend lived. And so, every chance I got I went down the Fosseway to Nottingham. And of course, they got used to seeing me. But then I took members of the crew with me because coming from New Zealand and Canada and Ireland they couldn’t get home.
MY: No.
JT: So, they came home with me. Mother put mattresses on the floor. And I don’t know how she made the rations stretch. We helped because Butch and Paddy always made friends with the ugliest girl in the cookhouse and flattered her and everything. And they’d go around to the back door and get extra supplies of butter and stuff, bacon which we’d take with us to help my mother feed the crew. And we all went down to the local where my father used to, where my father and mother used to go. So, we became their crew.
MY: Which OTU were you at?
JT: I’ll tell you in a minute.
[pause]
JT: You forget the numbers and things.
[pause]
JT: That’s AFU. AFU came after OTU didn’t it? Because that’s Advanced Flying Unit.
[pause]
JT: And then EFTS — Elementary Flying Training School.
[pause]
JT: Well, do you know, I can’t remember.
MY: Which airfield was it on?
[pause]
JT: Names escape me. Names escape me.
MY: Well it’s not that important. We can look at that later. How long was it before you actually got on your first squadron?
JT: Do you know, nearly two years. Two years of training.
MY: Right.
JT: Because after we came back from South Africa we were posted to Harrogate. And they didn’t know what to do with us, you know. Whatever. Just holding while another course moved out. Put us on flying Tiger Moths around the Lake District which was very good. Anyway, get back to ops. We, you finish, we went on to Stirlings. We went on to Stirlings for the final stage of our training. Four-engined. We did Wellingtons at OTU and they were very comfortable. Very good aircraft, the Wellingtons. And then the pilot of course wanted to go on to, had to go on to four engines so we went on Stirlings which were the height of luxury with all the controls, beautifully coloured enamels, everything. But they couldn’t get above twelve thousand feet which was their downfall. And then we finished up at Advanced Flying Unit at Syerston which is near Nottingham and that was where you were introduced to the Lancaster. We lost a Lancaster there on training because he flew into a cumulonimbus cloud. You got whirled right up and broke to pieces which gave us a very stern lesson on not to fly into cumulonimbus clouds. And then because at the end of my training some people were selected to be commissioned. I wasn’t, although I was a good navigator because my background didn’t fit. Son of a furniture dealer. Went to Grammar School. Didn’t play games. Not officer type at all. So, we were posted to Skellingthorpe which is two miles from Lincoln. Waddington, I think was the base station. We were satellite. Although at one time in our training we had been to Scampton for a few weeks. I remember that because we missed the last bus one night and had to walk all the way back from Lincoln to Scampton. Now, Skellingthorpe. We shared an airfield with 61 Squadron. We were one side. They were the other. We had the record of dropping the most bombs and they had the record for flying the most sorties. It was sort of friendly rivalry across the airfield. Now, one or two things. The first trip we went on was to a target right in the south of France and we had to fly right down through the coast. Avoid, and then fly inland and find, find the target. And our bombs hung up. We had to return and we’d already fused the J type canisters. Do you know about those there?
MY: Yeah.
JT: Incendiaries set to go off at a thousand feet. So, our dilemma was if we landed, tried to land, with these on they’d go off when we got down to a thousand feet. So, we tried every manoeuvre. The wireless op and the mid-upper gunner had come down and were trying to open the floor and get at the bombs and dislodge them. And then the pilot was doing a lot of jinking about. Anyway, we managed to drop them in the sea and we saw this big flame as they went down and think thank goodness. But as it happened that operation was a failure anyway because what they thought was a German troop camp was a refugee camp which they’d bombed by mistake. So, we all had to go back the next night. This time we got, they weren’t expecting us I think the second night. So, we were [pause] I can’t go through all the ops and things but one or two stand out. First of all, there’s the people say, ‘Were you frightened?’ I say, I don’t think so. You grew with this knowledge that you might be living on borrowed time so you made the most of every moment. The girls and the beer and everything. And me being an imaginative type, as I walked across the fields in the June evening every blade of grass, every leaf on the tree seemed bright and vivid.
MY: Yes.
JT: Because it might be the last time you saw it. But you didn’t show any fear even if you felt it because you’d be letting down the other members of the crew. And you were worried about what they might think. They were the ones. Your crew were like your family and we worked very well together and played very well together. About the fourth trip we went to, I think it was that one, we went to Mailly-le-Camp where they’d German troops or something. And something went wrong with the communication between the master bomber and us. So, the first wave that went in bombed successfully. Came home. But we were in the second wave and we couldn’t hear any instructions from the master bomber. So, we had to circle and as we circled it gave time for the fighters from the Ruhr to arrive. Oh, and a massacre. You could see Lancaster, fighter, Lancaster, fighter, Lancaster, fighter. And we lost forty three aircraft and seven people in each aircraft. And the rear gunner Butch who’d been a plantation manager in New Guinea, he was yelling and yelling because he’d got a grandstand seat. I wasn’t so bad because I was in a cabin with a curtain I could draw. I could see out by standing up and putting my head in to the astrodome.
MY: Yes.
JT: And you could see from there. What I saw I didn’t like so I went back in again. Now, Butch didn’t fly with us on the next trip because of the experience he’d had. But the next trip was to Brest where the battleship in the harbour or something and we were coned over the target. Now, that means that the master searchlight has caught you and then all the other searchlights that are automatically linked to it all latch on to you at once. Can you imagine what it’s like to have seven or eight searchlights all focused on you? It was brighter than daylight inside the cabin. In fact, it was so bright you could hardly think. And you knew that the next thing to happen were the guns that were automatically aligned to these searchlights.
MY: Yes.
JT: Would open up. Sitting target. So, Jack just dived. Pushed everything forward. Dived almost vertically. Screaming down. I sat in my cabin watching the altimeter go around and around, down and down. Then I saw we’d dodged the searchlights and then the pilot and the engineer who sat next to him they were pulling back on the stick for all their worth. And we thought this is it. And we levelled out at two hundred feet and came back at two hundred feet over the Channel. And Butch never flew again. He [pause] was determined. He had a mental breakdown. If he’d been in the RAF they’d have said lack of moral fibre and they would have stripped him of his stripes, put him down to AC2 and put him to clean the latrines. Because he was in the Australian Air Force he was invalided home. He was sick, you know. Which is, you know, a much kinder way of dealing with this. On the other hand, I can see the reasoning behind the RAF because if people had been able to say I don’t like this after they’d done twelve ops they wouldn’t have an air force.
MY: No.
JT: So, they had to have something very worse than this to make you keep flying. I was thinking we went on, D-day was the next, next thing. We didn’t know it was D-day because — we went to briefing. They hadn’t said this is the invasion but they said you must keep from that part of the Channel because there are American warships and they will shoot at anything. We knew that from experience. Now, keep away from this area because there’ll be gliders being towed. And after he’d gone through all this list of dos and don’ts we realised that it was something big. And our job was to fly at dawn and bomb the naval guns at Cherbourg on the Cherbourg peninsula. And they’d given us a cine camera as well. But we flew and there wasn’t all that much flak although there was a lot of things going on all around us. So, it was a fairly easy trip until we got there and of course the coastal guns and everything go up at you. But we bombed. We couldn’t take a picture because it wasn’t light enough. You took your usual picture with your own flash. But as we turned around dawn had broken, the sky was getting lighter and there was scattered cloud and I looked down onto the sea and I saw all these little boats. All coming up to the beach. And that’s when I realised there was an invasion going on. We got home. Because we’d been flying two nights consecutively, we were given the night off and went to Nottingham. In the pub, in the pub they got the radio, ‘Tonight our troops landed in Normandy.’ And they said, ‘What about you lot?’ ‘We were there this morning,’ [laughs] Which got us a lot of beer.
MY: I bet.
JT: Now, after, after we’d finished our ops which were more or less the same. Those were some of the highlights. None of us got scratched. Although our most exciting trip perhaps was, we were going to the, is it the Saint Cyr Military Academy near Paris? Where they’d got troops, German troops being trained there. Officers. And we were going on daylight because it was so near to Paris. We were not used to going daylight. And so, as we set off some fighters, German fighters got among the stream and you saw them breaking, sliding all over the place. Dodging. They should have kept a light on the gunners. And I saw one aircraft, one Lancaster just slide down, slantingly and take the tail off another one. Which was quite awful to see. We passed the zone like that. I was navigating and trying to keep midway between the two zones that told us where the ack-ack was worst. And the fighters went away of course. You know, they only had about a twelve minutes and had to go back to refuel. Beautiful June evening. The sun was out still and all of a sudden I stood up in the astrodome to have a look. A stream of white smoke coming out of the starboard outer engine. And as I looked suddenly that smoke turned to flame and the whole engine went up in flames because we had been hit several times by flak on the way in.
MY: Yes.
JT: And of course, the engineer and pilot pushed the fire extinguisher button and the fire went out. But it meant we were only on three engines. The port inner engine, the engineer reported was running rough so we were losing power. Anyway, we went on and bombed. All, as I say on the run into the bombing run as we were swinging around I saw the Eiffel tower and realised that was Paris under there. I’d never been but there it was. And [pause] am I taking too long?
MY: No. I’m at your service, sir.
JT: So, we’ve got to [pause] yes when we’d finished our ops. Now, I’d been called up to the group captain at Waddington some weeks before for —recommended for a commission.
MY: Yes.
JT: And asked a few question. He said, ‘Well, these people say quite nice things about you. Who am I to disagree,’ [laughs] Right? And that was it? But it didn’t come through until the actual end of the tour, it coincided. I’d already gone to the training as a lecturer when it came through. It would have been nicer if it had come through while I was still back at the squadron. 50 Squadron. And of course, nobody really knew me there. They just took it for granted. But of course, I was moved because they move you straightaway.
MY: Yeah.
JT: So, I was moved to Chipping Warden as a course shepherd. That’s where they put you in charge of a course and men to make sure of their welfare and everything. No training. No training at all for an officer. No teaching how to use your knife and fork or anything like that. But they must have thought I was [pause] and, and then to my surprise they announced that I’d been awarded the DFC.
MY: Oh no.
JT: And that came as a great surprise to me. And so had my pilot and the bomb aimer. In those days you only had the one ribbon. So they made a great fuss of me at home and in the local newspaper. But then I went home [pause] but after a while of course you were between tours. Just because you’d done the tour of ops doesn’t mean that’s it. So, they posted me to Transport Command for my second tour. We were on Dakotas and we were going to bomb the Burma Railway in Burma. Not to bomb them. To push out supplies. So, I was posted to Baroda in India and that again was a culture shock. But looking back, to think that a nineteen, twenty year old bloke had all these experiences. We’d, the Maharajah of Baroda. They’d taken over, or he’d given us his cricket ground and so we were stationed — myself, my pilot and the other crews in what were the dressing rooms. All around veranda in front and then the open space of the cricket ground. And we didn’t have Indian food. We had a caterer and we had an officer’s mess and we could have anything as long as it was eggs. You could have scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, eggs on toast. Then some funny vegetables. And there was no drink. It was a dry state. The high point of my time really was when we were picked to go to Lahore to collect beer. Supplies of beer for the mess because you could drink it in the mess if you could get it. So it was put down as a training flight. And that was about the only time I’d really been treated as a proper officer. Because we flew to Lahore. Put up at the Faletti’s Hotel in Lahore and my pilot and I were waited on by six waiters with big turbans and cummerbunds. White everything. Before you could think of anything, they’d thought of it for you. We had a meal there and the next morning while we were waiting for news that our plane had been loaded up, sitting on the terrace and there were a lot of civilian ladies and gentlemen all doing the Times of India crossword puzzle – ‘What did you get for number eighty across?’ ‘Number eight across?’ ‘Oh, good show.’ I thought this is the life. We could stay here [laughs] We could stay here. But unfortunately, we couldn’t. And you know we went back to the mess. Took it back. And it was all gone in two days. But in Baroda we did flying from the Maharajah’s own airfield. We did trips around. My pilot, who was a Scotsman from Kirkaldy, he’d been a slaughterman in a slaughterhouse. He had been an officer before but he’d flown under a bridge and been broken down to PE. Corporal PE. And then he’d come back when the shortage of pilots — come back and worked his way up to flying officer again. And he’d got the DFC. Which is probably why he picked me when we were crewing. He was a mad so and so. You know, if he saw somebody with a flock of cows below, he’d swoop down and then laughed like mad when they all scattered. I thought, I’m going on ops with him. Heaven help me. But we never got to that stage because the Japanese war finished.
MY: Right. What to ask?
JT: Yes. You know [pause] we were getting to the stage where they were demobbing.
MY: Yes.
JT: Because VE day had passed so we weren’t fighting the Germans anymore. And my pilot’s demob number came up because he’d been in before me and so they brought the whole crew, a crew of three on a Dakota, back to England. And I’d still got six months to go before my number came up.
MY: Right.
JT: So, they sent me to Wheaton Aston. In Shropshire as well isn’t it?
MY: Yes.
JT: And I know it’s near Stoke [pause] as a flying control officer. Now, a flying control officer needs six month training course which seems a pretty waste to me if you are going to leave in six months’ time. So, I used to say to the flying control office, ‘You don’t need me, do you?’ ‘No.’ ‘Ok.’ Hitchhiked to Nottingham. And when it came to be demobbed you had to last of all go to the CO to get him to sign after you’d been to all the departments. He didn’t even know me and I’d been on his station six months. Oh dear. You couldn’t get away with it now. Or perhaps you could. Perhaps you could. But then of course I got demobbed and I got married in 1945 at the end of my tour of ops. So, I was married all the time I’d been in India.
MY: Yes.
JT: And then I got home and we started the house. At my mother in law’s I had a room at my mother in law’s house. And Boots had promised me the job back so, I went back to Boots. Yes, they gave me my job back — at the same rate of pay I’d left it at. Four pound fifteen a week. I’d been spending six pound a week in the mess alone on drinks and stuff. So, I thought this is not going to be right for me. And people I’d trained to use the instruments in the lab were now seniors and I’d still gone back as an assistant analytical chemist. So again, I saw an advert for teacher training. Emergency teacher training. And I thought that’s for me. So, I applied. Went to a centre and given maths tests. Wrote an essay. And was accepted for training at Danesthorp College, Ranskill. Near Ranskill and it was like being back in the service. All these people were ex-service. They still talked about their [unclear] and things and the cutlery. And the teachers were very good I thought. And we did a whole course sandwiched into thirteen months. Of course, you didn’t have the long holidays.
MY: No.
JT: In thirteen months, three teaching practices and they let us loose. And my, my job, I applied to Nottingham and to Nottingham County because they were separate. Nottingham City offered me a job. And their practice was to have a pool of teachers and then they sent them to the appropriate schools.
MY: Yes.
JT: So, I didn’t know what school I was going to until I was told to report to this Secondary School. The name’s gone for a moment. Now, in my education I’d done all the sciences as separate subjects so I’d done biology, physics, chemistry. I’d been interested in science. I’d done navigation which is a lot to do with science. Theory of triangles and things. So, I thought I’d be a science teacher but no. Headmaster said, ‘We’ve got a science teacher. I’d like you to take over the history.’ I dropped history at third year. At any rate I said I was always one for thinking things from first principles. And I think I must have done quite well because [pause] searching for the name of the school it was originally built as a primary school. At a time when everything was [affluent?] and the classrooms were built in a semi-circle with the windows that went right back to expose it to the open air, facing south and a terrace outside. And then there was a woodwork room and a music room. There was no staff room so the staff used to meet in what was a storeroom that they’d emptied and put a table and chairs in for the staff. I don’t know what the designers were thinking of but it was very nice. I got interested in theatre and especially marionettes. I’d made marionettes at college and we’d gone around giving marionette shows. So, I started a marionette club. And the very sympathetic woodwork master made us a beautiful stage with a bar that about four children could lean on and we’d put shows on. I wrote the script and then got the teachers to read the parts. Had great fun reading different parts and then the children manipulated the marionettes and of course they recognised the teacher’s voices in these marionette characters and it was quite a hoot. I enjoyed that. And from that I was given Head of English post. And I had been up for Deputy Head at another school but when the Headmaster wanted me in, I’d had a good recommendation he discussed all he wanted to do but the Director of Education said, ‘Mr Taylor can’t be appointed as Deputy Head. He has no degree.’ So, I settled for Head of English at another school. A bit resentful. And I found it also involved being head of the library. In charge of the library and in charge of drama.
MY: Yeah.
JT: And expected to put on a production every year. I borrowed costumes from the playhouse theatre that had just opened in Nottingham. They were for the two little cats that were the centre piece of this play, “The Magic Tinder Box.” And we put that on for three nights and that was a great success. And all the time of course I was applying for Deputy Headships at this time. Time I moved on. And I applied to Cheshire. There was a job came up. And so I drove up there. No. I went on the train, that’s right. And walked. I was interviewed and apparently the post had been earmarked by the Head for his Head of English department so it had been careful. It had been written for him. English. They wanted English. They wanted knowledge of using recorders. Tape recorders. Because he had a tape recorder. School hadn’t got one but he had. And after the interviews apparently, I found this afterwards, they were tied. So, it was a dead heat and it was left to the casting vote of the chairman. Now, the chairman had taken a dislike to the Head because he was, old man Cunliffe was a true blue Tory. And the head had stood as a Liberal candidate in the autumn. And so, when it came to the casting vote, I got it. I was called back in. And the chairman said, ‘And by the way Mr Taylor, congratulations on your DFC.’ I thought perhaps that might have been a little bit of a weight.
MY: Possibly.
JT: So, I came up here in 1964 and was the Deputy at the school down the road which was Sale Moors Secondary Modern. The head was a very dynamic bloke, John Hartley. And he said, ‘John,’ he said, ‘Usually I keep my people several years before I give them promotion but in your case, you know, you’re a bit older. I’ll have to do it more quickly.’ At any rate I was rung up one weekend to say Mr Hartley had died. This was within a year of joining. He’d had a stroke in his car over the weekend. I went to see his widow and she asked me to arrange the funeral and everything. And I did this, went to school the next morning, called a staff meeting. Told them. We made arrangements for certain sections of the pupils to attend. And order of service and everything. And then I found myself sitting in front of this big polished desk and the feeling that struck you [laughs] I’m in charge. There’s nobody to tell me what to do. I’ve got to tell them. And I wasn’t altogether pleased with the way things were arranged because there were, at that time it was six form entry. Sixth forms came in every year and they tried to bluff by calling them A upper, A lower, B upper, B lower, C upper, C lower. Everybody knew that C lowers were really ABCDEF.
MY: Yes.
JT: It didn’t fool anybody. And I was given four C lower as a penalty. Probably by that Head for because he wanted [delete] to be head. Although [delete] was a very nice man and we got on well. And I made some changes. I divided the school into two halves so there were only three tiers in each half. A bit of timetabling of course you could put one half against another. But the staff accepted this. And then I decided that the important maths and English — you might be good at maths and poor at English. Or vice versa. So, let’s have them set so you could be in a top set for maths and a bottom set for English.
MY: Yes.
JT: Or vice versa. So, I introduced that. And we had a governors meeting three times a year at the end of every term. And they still hadn’t advertised the job. And so, I got to know the governors very well. When they arrived for governors meetings I offered them sherry all around. My secretary was very good and made them feel very much at home. And my wife was very good at supporting me and getting to know the governors and telling me, ask him about — he keeps rabbits. He’s very interested, ‘Oh hello [delete] I hear you’re interested in rabbits.’ Anyway, it was two years before, before they advertised the job and they’d got six candidates. Three were existing heads. And three were deputies like myself. And the existing heads of smaller schools because of course this was a big school with sixth form entry. And at the end of the interview, now let’s, I’ve gone back a bit. At the same day as my interview I’d got an interview as Head of Sale West which was a new school recently opened. But it was group six. This was a group 8. And it was in the morning. So had the interviews, it went very well but they appointed somebody else. I drove home for lunch and said to my wife it’s no good if I can’t get a group C school, no hope of getting group A. In the afternoon they had interviews again. Same governors. Same people. And I got the job. And the chairman of governors said to me afterwards, ‘We wanted you to be head,’ because they’d known me for two years.
MY: Yeah.
JT: But we were a bit worried in the morning about giving you the headship of Sale West because somebody might have come along in the afternoon so blinded us with science. We had to take the risk of not appointing you to Sale West. And that’s how I got the job as Head of the school I’d been deputy at. In fact, it was a school I stayed at as Head because it grew under me. It grew to eight form entry and had new buildings. A very good drama studio. Good music studio. I was very happy there and I’d got a very happy staff. And we had parties after school in the evening. And the cook was very co-operative. Chintz tablecloths on the tables in the hall that we sat around. Brought our own drinks. I always said staff that drinks together stays together. You know they’re not allowed to have drink in school now.
MY: No.
JT: Not allowed.
MY: No.
JT: Lots of things are not allowed. So, I was at that school for about twenty three years because there was no point in applying anywhere else because a Group 8, six, twelve hundred pupils was in the top five percent of headships. And so short of going to Eton College or somewhere I couldn’t see, but it must have got a good reputation.
MY: Yeah.
JT: Because when the High Master of Manchester Grammar — he was made a governor of a Secondary Modern school and he asked the Director of Education, he said, ‘I know nothing about Secondary Moderns. What shall I do?’ And the Director of Education said, ‘Go to John Taylor’s and have a look at his school.’ So, he spent the day with me and no doubt learned something about running a school. Anyways, I’ve talked long enough haven’t I?
MY: Well we’ve actually managed to —
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ATaylorJ150916
Title
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Interview with John Taylor
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
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:52:13 audio recording
Creator
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Malcom Young
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-16
Description
An account of the resource
John Taylor grew up in Nottingham and was evacuated before he went into sixth form. He left school and started working as an analytical chemist at Boots and although this was a reserved occupation he volunteered for aircrew. After his initial training he went to South Africa to complete his training as a navigator. On his returned to the UK he flew operations as a navigator with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe. On one operation the incendiaries had not dropped and they feared carrying them back to base but it took several attempts before they dislodge them before finally succeeding. On an operation to Mailly-le-Camp the rear gunner was devastated at the losses he was seeing around him and it was his last operation. He suffered a breakdown and was invalided home to Australia. On another operation the aircraft was coned and in order to escape the pilot went into a steep dive. The pilot and engineer fought to bring the aircraft back under control a matter of a hundred feet from the ground. After the war he became a teacher.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
France--Mailly-le-Camp
France
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1941
1942
1945
50 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
C-47
crewing up
demobilisation
entertainment
incendiary device
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
physical training
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Syerston
RAF Torquay
recruitment
rivalry
searchlight
Stirling
training
Wellington