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Title
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Barron, Andrew
Andrew James Kelton Barron
A J K Barron
Description
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Three oral history interviews with Flight Lieutenant Andrew Barron (1923 - 2021, 163695 Royal Air Force) He flew 38 operations as a navigator in 223 Squadron at RAF Oulton flying B-24s.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-05-10
2018-04-19
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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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Barron, AJK
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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NM: Okay, so this is Nigel Moore, I’m with Andrew Barron and we’re going to catch up from where we started last time. So Andrew, can you tell me a bit about life on the squadron when you were off duty, when you weren’t on ops, what were you, how did you socialise, what did you do?
AB: I’m sorry, what was it you wanted?
NM: When you weren’t on operations, tell me about the squadron life, what did you do for recreation and down time?
AB: Drank too much and sang silly songs! Really, wasted my time I think would be the, the most succinct explanation. I had no social life really, on the squadron, as I’ve already explained. I was pitchforked into this half qualified crew in the Bahamas and I had really no sort of social contact with them. The captain had flown, as far as I know, half a tour in Coastal Command, so had the navigator and so had the, the chief wireless operator. The rest of us were all sprogs who were drafted in to the crew to make it up and we had no particular social contact. I don’t know what their, what they did. I don’t think Scotty Steele, the skipper, was very happy. He’d, his experience had all been Coastal Command long range patrols, flying at about a thousand feet, two thousand feet perhaps, over the oceans for twelve or thirteen hours, and he had no, he had, I don’t think he had any chums in the squadron either, they were all stranger to him and I don’t think he took to night flying in the, at high altitude in the Liberator, and in fact I think he had one or two rather dodgy landings and I believe [emphasis] he sort of disappeared from the squadron after a few weeks. The, I was pitchforked into this Canadian crew, and as I’ve explained, the skipper, his father had been in the British Army in the First World War in Mesopotamia, funnily enough the same as my father, and I think Tony used to go off searching up his English relatives up in the north of England. The co-pilot, Mervyn Eustace, his brother had just completed a tour in 4 Group, I think it was 4 Group, which was the, either 4 Group or 6 Group which was the Canadian bomber group and Mervyn used to go off to seek out his brother who was, um – god, what are they called - he was at Shawbury acting as an instructor to new crews coming over so that disposed of them and I just used to go home and as far as, when I was on leave, and as far as the rest of the time was concerned, I think we worked a rather more intensive pace in 100 Group than the average main force group. If you look in Middlemiss’s tome The Bomber Command Diaries you’ll find that, you know, a different, groups weren’t turned out, they didn’t operate at every night that Bomber Command was operating: 100 Group did. 100 Group went out with everybody. Either we went with the main force to jam the radars in the target area or else we were sent out with, as a diversionary force or if main force wasn’t operating we were sent out to stir up the Germans anyway. So you look at my log book and there’d be, perhaps, in a week we’d fly four sorties, maybe, five sorties; Bomber Command didn’t operate at that pace. So we didn’t have all that much of a social life in the mess anyway and some of us were bookish, and Ron Johnson, who was one of the squadron navigators, he studied music I think in his spare time in the mess. I just used to go in there and drink and when I’d had enough, or probably too much, I’d stagger off to bed and sleep it off until the next day. And we used to sing silly songs, you know, good night ladies and of course the WAAF officers never did go off to bed, they used to stay and listen to us. They were all schoolboy songs, just snippets of which I remember [chuckle] and that was it. I know, oh dear, think er, I’ve forgotten the chap’s name, but the fellow who more or less runs things in the little village of Oulton le Street organises the teas for all us chaps when we come up for our memorial celebration in a week’s time and he’s asked me sort of what were my impressions. I didn’t have any impressions of Oulton, you know, they were just houses there and we drove past the houses as we went to our various offices, the, there was an intelligence room which had digests of the previous night’s operations and you know, you could leaf through those and I remember my sort of impression of them was that if the losses had risen to two figures, you know, we hadn’t done a very good job, you know, we ought to have done better than that and it had various publications of, you know, trying to instil a better spirit in us I suppose, but I don’t think, well, as I say I [emphasis] don’t think, I don’t think, I’ve no idea what other people thought because we never discussed the previous night’s operations, we never discussed what we were doing. The jamming was highly secret and it was more than your life was worth to try to chat up anybody about what all these weird instruments were that were in the back of the aeroplane, you know, they’re not your business laddie, but would you like to have a spell in Sheffield in the RAF’s penitentiary for asking too many questions, so you didn’t ask any questions and we just wiled the, they er, wiled the, our life away if you know. One day some of us went up to town and bought ourselves revolvers and small arms of that kind and I know I got a Webley which had a 22 sort of insert in it and we used to go down and shoot at the trees on the Blickling Estate. It just really, wasted my time.
NM: Going back to operations, when you wrote to me, an email you described -
AB: Pardon?
NM: When you wrote to me an email recently you described how you were, on approach back to Oulton, you were overtaken by a German fighter aircraft on its way to shoot down a B17 ahead of you. Tell me about that.
AB: Oh yes, that was Unternehmen Giselle, trust the Germans to make Giselle into an unfortunate name like Giselle. Anyway, the Germans in, I think it was, it’ll be in my log book, but early March ‘45 they sent in I think about two hundred night fighters with the, they infiltrated the main force on its way back home and they kept schtum until they were over the UK and the planes were circling their bases coming in to land and they intercepted a B17 which was, of 214 Squadron, which was coming in to land and shot it down, literally, just about as it touched down and they were all killed, all the crew were all killed. And according to Mervyn Eustace the plane had actually flown past us as we were orbiting overhead, you know, waiting our turn to land, and of course as soon as the balloon went up we got the order to disperse and the, Tony said: ‘course for Brawdy navigator.’ Brawdy being somewhere down in south west Wales, so I gave him 270 as being the nearest westerly heading that came into my head and off we went. All the lights out, all the gunners at their positions and everything on an active basis and we stooged off into the darkness of the Midlands and after about twenty minutes I got a fix, you know, a Gee fix, not a, that kind of fix, and found a wind from that and did the job properly you know, and laid off a course for this place Brawdy and we got there about, oh I don’t know, about an hour later, something like that and kipped down for the night, flew back the next day.
[Other]: I’m really sorry to interrupt. Daddy, do you know what mummy’s pass code is for her?
NM: So you took part in the last operation of the war, tell me about that.
AB: Yes, we, it was um, a feint to Schleswig. It was when they thought that the Germans were going to mount an attack from the forces that they’d got in Norway. There were two things, there were, one was that they were going to launch an attack from Norway and the other one was that they were going to launch their forces from down in the Alps, I think, using Bertchesgarten as the operational headquarters but both failed of course and the Germans surrendered.
NM: So how many of your operations were in daylight and how many were at night time?
AB: Sorry?
NM: How many of your operations were in daylight and how many were at night?
AB: Oh, I only did four daylight, those were the Big Bens right at the very beginning, you know, when they thought that the V2s were radio controlled, but they discovered that they weren’t so that was finished. They realised that there was no protection against the V2s, no warning, nothing, they just came out of the blue, and er, ooh, and blew a, excuse me, I’ve got a bit uncomfortable there-
NM: Are you all right? Do you want to move?
AB: So, as I say, the Big Bens were closed down and we were put on to the, the ordinary Window diversionary sorties, well the, the three operations. One was the escorting of the main force, jamming whatever the special operators could pick up as we flew along with [emphasis] the main force and when we got to the targets, orbiting it for, oh probably eight or ten minutes, something like that and jamming anything that they could hear, they could pick up. That was the one operation then the second one was the Window spoof forces, where a couple of dozen or so mixed force of Liberators, Fortresses and Halifaxes went out from the Heavy Squadrons in 100 Group and they mounted a, a spoof; they would break away from the main force and pretend to be an attacking force on another target. I used to think at the time that it was all a big guessing game but in fact it was very carefully thought out and timed to convince the Germans that it was a genuine attacking force, it wasn’t just a, a spoof. And then if Bomber Command was stood down for the night, usually because of the weather, 100 Group would be sent out, a couple of dozen planes would go out, everything else, a Mandrel screen would go up to, to screen the approaching forces from the, from Britain and that was carefully timed and little gaps would be opened in it to allow the Germans to get a glimpse of the opposing forces coming behind the screen and we would be sent out to threaten some town or city. It was helped by the fact that one of the other squadrons, I forget what its number was, but it was an Australian squadron, they always carried a few bombs and markers cause as they said, [Australian accent] they weren’t gonna come half way round the world just to drop bits of paper over Germany! So they carried bombs but we never did. The Fortresses and the Liberators were both completely, all their bombing equipment had been all stripped out and so that was left to the Halifaxes and that was it and then on May 2nd it all finished.
NM: So when it all finished, what was it like on the squadron?
AB: I don’t really remember. I think everybody was sort of, you know, quite happy, have another drink. We were allowed to go on Cooks’ tours round the Ruhr, you know, to see what sort of damage had been done by Bomber Command and crews were left to pick their own routes. And I did a couple, I did one with Tony in a Liberator, they’re in here somewhere. [Noises of opening box, looking through papers] You see here’s November, November the 4th, the 15th, the 25th and then the 25th, 26th, 29th, 30th – well main force didn’t operate at that sort of strength. See the 25th of November was a Window, we had to climb to twenty four thousand feet. That was another of the advantages of the, the Fortress and the Liberator, they had a higher ceiling than the Lancaster. Then the next night it was a Window, again, and then three nights later another Window, and the next night another Window: busy, busy. And one or two other months were a bit like that. February: 20th, 22nd, 24th, 28th as I say you compare, and March 7th, 20th, 22nd, 23rd, if you compare that with the Bomber Command Diaries it would have been different groups would have been out and not all the squadrons in all the Groups would have been turned out, so that over a fairly [emphasis] short period I flew thirty eight sorties. Even April, 2nd, 7th , 10th. The 2nd was a Window, the 7th was a target, Malbis, which is an, sort of a outskirt of Leipzig, and the 10th again was a Window all way to Dessau to Leipzig. The Russians are coming – show ’em what the RAF can do. Well, there was an element of that. And that was, as I say the Meritorious Service and Good Airmanship in that a full operational tour. I was only once uncertain of my position and that was I think on the 1st of January 1945 when I’d been very late to bed the night before, celebrating the New Year, and found myself on the ops list on the 1st of January, rather hung over, and I made some gross navigational error, I don’t know what it was, I’ve not been able to discover what it was, but anyway it, we ran out of Window. We ran out of engines actually, we ended up on two and a half engines for a start, and then we ran out of Window and so Tony decided to cut it short and go home but we didn’t get penalised for it which was what counted.
NM: You made it back home on two and a half engines did you?
AB: Yes, yes.
NM: Running low on fuel.
AB: Yes, but then you say, at the, I never did get on to the Cooks Tours; here we come. May the 2nd, that was the last operational sortie; that was the Window to Schleswig aerodrome: uneventful, thirty two, and then on the 5th of May we did an air test and on the 7th of May with Tony, we did a cross country: we went to Gravesend, Dungeness, Cap Griz-Nez, Ypres, Brussels, Aachen, Koblenz, Cologne, Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, Krefeld, oh and so on and back home and that was the one I remember. It was a nice clear day, sun shining and we flew all over the Ruhr and the whole thing was glistening with the broken glass and in the whole length and breadth of the Ruhr there was only one railway train to be seen operating, so you know, it was, it was flattened. Mind you it was a bit deceptive because of course what the bombs did, they blew out the windows, they blew off the roofs, but they didn’t in many cases, they didn’t destroy the heavy machinery so that a lot of production carried on. That was on the 7th and then on the 26th I was called in to, I was at RAF Swannington at that time – I’ll tell you about that in a few minutes - on the 26th of May I did a trip in a Fortress of 223 Squadron and that was a rather limited one. We did Cap Gris-Nez, Antwerp, the Ruhr, the Mohne Dam, Vimy Ridge and back to Oulton. I was rather keen on Vimy Ridge because when I was a boy, one of my father's friends in Wolverhampton was actually a Canadian who’d come over with the Canadian forces and had decided to stay in England after the First World War, and of course Vimy Ridge was a Canadian operation, they organised the whole thing themselves and it was a majority of Canadian forces who took part in it and they captured the Ridge and it put Canada on the map. After that Canada got its independence.
NM: When you flew over the Ruhr and places like the Mohne Dam what did, can you remember what you thought at the time looking down at all the damage?
AB: Pardon?
NM: Can you remember what your thoughts were when you flew over the Ruhr valley and saw the damaged cities?
AB: Not really. No, I, you know, I didn’t feel vengeful, or sort of there you are you bastards, you got what you asked for.
NM: Was it just professional detachment?
AB: I just noted the fact that the place was just a carpet of broken glass glistening in the sunshine. I don’t think, I mean, again, I can only speak for myself, I can’t speak for others cause I never asked them anything, but I don’t think, I don’t think many fellows had a vengeful feeling, you know, we got in to the war and we won it and that was it. You know, I don’t know if fellers whose fathers had been in the trenches in the First World War used to talk about it with their fathers or if they did, what they had to say about it. No idea, it was, you were just there and you did it.
NM: Tell me about your RAF -
AB: Pardon?
NM: Tell me about your RAF service after the war.
AB: Er, yes, well of course, I remember vaguely being posted up to Yorkshire, to, and according to my log book where you can record your units at which served as observer, 223 Squadron 7th of May ‘45 and then the 10th of May, 77 Squadron, Full Sutton, Yorkshire for a day: got 10th of May to 11th of the May and then the 11th of the May, of May I was posted to 102 Squadron at Pocklington until the 15th and I do have some record of that. RAF, 102 Squadron, 1st of June: local flying: circuits and bumps. And 7th of June: more circuits and bumps. And this went on until the 9th of June, was a busy day, flew four sorties, to, we flew to Snaith where we picked up a load of bombs, thirteen by eight by thirty pounds and we flew out to sea somewhere and dropped them in the sea, I ask you. We did three of those.
NM: That was in Halfaxes.
AB: And that was with, yes, in the Halifax, that was with Flying Officer Briscoe as the captain. Well Flying Officer Briscoe had been a pre war University Air Squadron pilot and had learned to fly, he’d actually got his wings as a cadet in the University Air Squadron and he was an ex, he worked in the Air Ministry as a Civil Aviation, came under the aegis of the Air Ministry pre war, and John Briscoe was a member of that organisation so the instruction came round that we were destined to be Tiger Force to go out to the Far East and teach the Japanese what was which, but obviously some time in June the decision was made that you had to be a volunteer to go out to the Far East and John Briscoe had decided he didn’t want to volunteer, so that was that. He disappeared. And then mixed up in the middle of that you see it says here, 102 Squadron: 11th of May to 15th of May, June disappears and then I was, on the 15th of May to the end of May I was sent down to RAF Swannington which was one of the 100 Group night fighter bases and was the home of 85 Squadron and 157 Squadron and I was sent down there to learn these Mosquito navigators how to do the job properly. I felt a right bloody lemon cause there was me, you know, nothing on my chest but a few hairs and half these blokes had got DFCs and DFMs, and DSOs and you name it and so as I say I felt a bit of a lemon and then I was, that was cancelled and I was sent back to, I suppose I was sent back to 102 Squadron. I remember one of the Mosquito fellers flew me up to Pocklington to rejoin 102 Squadron or whatever it was. And then Japan collapsed and I wanted to, I decided that I didn’t want to go back to college, that I’d stay in aviation, there was a future in aviation and I’d stay in aviation and become [cough] a civil navigator, little knowing of course at the time that the pilots were busy manoeuvring all the other crew members out of their seats; the pilots were going to take over the navigation, I don’t know what was going to happen to wireless operators, I think they were just going to disappear because it was all going to be voice transmission over the oceans and everywhere but anyway I decided that I’d stay in civil aviation and [cough] what I needed was experience of long distance flying, you know, to present to some prospective employer that I was the right sort of material that they wanted. So I tried to, [cough] I tried to get in to one of the squadrons that was doing these long range passenger work, I think I mentioned that the Lancasters and Halifaxes were re-employed to fly out to the Far East and come back with, you know, fifteen or couple of dozen squaddies who were due to be demobbed because the airmen and soldiers in India and the Far East were getting very restive because they knew that men were being demobbed in Europe and they weren’t and they didn’t like that and there were some near mutinies. But so anyway, I left Pocklington, presumably I left Pocklington, according to my log book it said 102 Squadron and actually the next entry, 102 Squadron, oh that’s right, Pocklington, 31st of May to the 11th June ‘45 and then I entered into an interesting period, during which I was crewed up with a, I forget what his name was, Purvis I think, who’d been, a man who had been flying Halifaxes and we were posted to Mashing, we were posted to Great Dunmow, Earls Colne, about a half a dozen aerodromes in 38 Group in Essex. We were posted to them and we’d get to them and they’d say: oh no you, you’re Halifax trained, we’re flying Stirlings in this squadron so, you know, go away on leave and so I stayed on leave until [laugh] until the 13th of November 1945 when we arrived at Shepherd’s Grove which is just east of Bury St Edmunds, 196 Squadron and it was flying Stirlings in 38 Group and they said, oh yes, you know, no problem old boy, you know, we’ll convert you on the squadron and this is in fact what they did because I stayed with them until March of 1946. And in March 1946 I was posted to the Empire Air Navigation School at Shawbury to become a specialist navigator which would hopefully improve my possibility of gaining a permanent commission in the air force. Well in fact, I didn’t get, I was turned down, I don’t know why. In those days you weren’t told if there was something unsatisfactory in your RAF career. There is now apparently, they have to tell you and you have the right to, I forget what the wording is, anyway, you can complain against the fact that you were turned down for a permanent commission or whatever but in those days you weren’t so I ended up at Shawbury and I spent probably two months at Shawbury, learning to be an advanced navigator, which in fact was a load of old rubbish because you know, we thought it was a laugh a minute you know, the RAF had got its fingers on all sorts of German navigation equipment and they thought it was a bit of a laugh but in fact of course, it wasn’t; the Germans, certainly in 1940 were well advanced on the RAF. The RAF’s pre war navigation was, well it wasn’t a joke, it was very much less [emphasis] than a joke, the RAF hadn’t got any idea how to bloody well navigate at night or at long distance and they would land near a railway station and ask them where they were all that sort of stuff. The Germans had this nichbein, bent knee, I think that’s what it meant, they had this nichbein equipment which enabled them to bomb Coventry with considerable accuracy in 1940. [pause] It erm, and they had various other bits of equipment; they had a thing called the kirskopler which was really just a method of following a defined track, what the RAF, when we were training in Canada, was look down on on its nose, called track crawling, where you, you followed the track that you’d been given to fly and when you’d found you were off track, you made a correction of course to get back on track, which I used to do, much to the disgust of our Navigation Leader of course, who used to call it guestimation. But we thought we were going to be the bees knees, but in fact of course I mean even at that time the airlines were busy phasing out the navigators, as I said, they were training pilots to be navigators and there were two or three rather advanced BOAC pilots who, who had cottoned on to this jet-stream business, you know, they had been transatlantic pilots and they had noticed that you got these very strong winds and they happened under certain meteorological conditions and I mean you know, proper navigation, it took off after that, but I didn’t know of course all that, it was happening. So I quite happily went to Shawbury and did the short N navigation course which didn’t get me a permanent commission or anything like that. So I left Shawbury and was posted to Tarrant Rushton down in Dorset which was within weeks of closing and I was posted in as deputy Station Navigation Officer, a high faluting title. My boss was V. J. Wright I think, who’d been a bank manager in Great Dunmow and he was the Station Navigation Officer and it was interesting, they’d taken part in Arnhem. Incidentally I forgot to mention that at 196 Squadron where we finished our tour round East Anglia and were given a home, every man on the squadron had been shot down over Arnhem, it was that bad, and one of them had got the MC and they reckoned he would have had the VC if he hadn’t shot his mouth off quite so much about his exploits once he’d been shot down; I forget what his name was. Anyway, and then when Tarrant Rushton closed down and I left there with a truck full of surplus instruments of various kinds: I had three or four sextants and that, because the worst thing you could do in the air force was to end up with a surplus on your inventory. When you came to close down an inventory you couldn’t show any surplus equipment because, well, where did it become surplus from? And then of course there was a long and tedious investigation as to why [emphasis] this particular piece of equipment was surplus to requirement? So in the, anyway, from there I was posted to Netheravon which was one of the first World War One RAF aerodromes and in the foyer of the officers mess they had a, oh I don’t know, one of these pre First World War rotary engines on a stand and the story was that when they were doing some [cough] excavating there they’d dug this engine up [laugh] and it was on display. The, the Chief Technical Officer, he was a bit more down to earth, he said, oh he said, you know what happened there, they found it was surplus to somebody's inventory and they buried the bloody thing. Well they might have done, but anyway, they had this thing on display there. It was an interesting unit. It was the Heavy Glider Servicing Unit of 38 Group and they had the Horsa gliders which was the, no, the, yes it was the Horsa glider, which was the man carrying glider in use in the British forces. They used to carry about, I think it carried about a couple of dozen soldiers, you know, volunteers, you, you and you, you – you’re all volunteers. They landed hours before D-Day on the west, on the eastern side of the British Sector and their job was to capture the bridge over the river Orne which bordered the western edge of the, of the zone, the landing zone, and they did this and it was abs, we, it’s worth a visit if you get the chance. These gliders, they landed these bloody gliders within feet, [emphasis] I mean feet [emphasis] of the targets that they were supposed to land the things on. Mind you, the chop rate was pretty terrible. I think about half the glider pilots were killed of course because they, it had made these heavy landings in the darkness and very often they came to rest on these steel girders which the Germans had buried in the ground as a deterrent to that sort of thing. But it was an incredible job, they, they, this glider force, who were, I think they were the Ox and Bucks Light Infantry, you know, they were just volunteered for the job and they did a, anyway they had these Horsa gliders at Netheravon and they used to do all sorts of experimental things, like snatching them. You know, you’d sit in the glider and the tow rope would be taken out in the front and a big loop put up on a pole and a Dakota would come roaring over the top trailing a hook and this hook would engage in this loop and literally pull the glider off the ground; it was quite exciting. I mean you, I did it both sitting in the glider and sitting in the Dakota and the glider took off with a bloody great jerk and the Dakota came sailing over and the airspeed indicator read something like about a hundred and, I don’t know, a hundred and thirty, a hundred and fifty knots and the hook would take and this bloody great drum in the, in the Dakota would start spinning round and the airspeed would go “eurgh” and fall down to about eighty knots, very exciting. But, er, I spent some months doing that and then where was I, at H, yeah, the Heavy Glider Servicing Unit, oh that’s right and then I was in June ‘47 I was posted to TICU, Transport Initial Conversion Unit at Bertram Newton which was very nice because that was a pre war station as well. I mean Netheravon was very nice cause it was pre First World War station and it was, that was very pleasant. I used to have a running battle with the adjutant there, Ross Beldin, because I used to go off every weekend, used to go back home every weekend and I was busy courting then and on Monday mornings I’d catch the local train cause Dorothea lived in the next town up towards London, so I’d catch this train and meet up with her at Hampton station and when we got to London I’d walk her across to her office in the city and say goodbye to her and then I’d get off to Waterloo station and catch the nine something to Salisbury, where I’d get out. I’d had breakfast on the nine o’clock train, very civilised, and I’d get off at Salisbury and the glider pilots, there were always a load of glider pilots on the train and they’d always got transport, you know, they’d got their own jeeps and that, so I’d get a lift up to Netheravon and I’d sneak in to Netheravon just about round lunchtime and the Adjutant, the Station Adjutant, Flight Lieutenant Beldin, he knew I was up to something, he knew I was absent on Monday mornings but he never managed to catch me and, until one day he saw me after lunch I think, and he ‘oh!’ he said, ‘the CO wants to know where you were this morning.’ So I gave him some cock and bull story, ‘oh well,’ he said, ‘he wants a report about it,’ he said, ‘so let me have it this afternoon.’ So I thought you sneaky bastard, he doesn’t know I’m missing in the mornings, so anyway I went back to my room and wrote this report and took it up and there was nobody in the adjutant ‘s office so I thought ha, I’ve got you you bastard, so I knocked on the CO’s door to give him this report and the bloody adjutant was in with the CO, he said: ‘oh yes,’ he said, ‘I’ll give it to the old man, thank you very much.’ And that was the last I ever heard of it, but he, later on, he got dismissed from the service for having hanky panky with a WAAF when, the days when it wasn’t allowed to do that sort of thing I think. It’s a bit, they’re a bit more open these days, but not in those days they weren’t. So anyway, I went up to TICU and that was quite pleasant, but it was just classroom work and I wasn’t getting any flying, and I thought well sod this so I deferred my leaving the air force by about two years I think, but I realised I was wasting my time, the air force wasn’t going to give me what I wanted so I packed that in and after about, I don’t know how many months at TICU, oh, about six months, 23rd of June to the 2nd of December 1947 I came out and I went to ooh, something aviation training limited and got myself a civil licence which again was full of esoteric rubbish, you know: how to construct a chart and all sorts of things that you, you never saw in a year’s, so anyway I got my licence. There weren’t any jobs going and I was very lucky, I got engaged and I got a job, I think it was advertised in the Telegraph or something like that, as a navigation instructor at one of the RAF’s Reserve Flying Schools. They’d reconstituted the Volunteer Reserve after the war and I got a job at Castle Brom with number, forget which number it was, it was either 5 or 18, 5, 5 RFS at Castle Bromwich, which is all blocks of flats now, and that was quite interesting, I learnt a lot there. I learned not to shoot lines, because I discovered that I was talking with, many of my reservists had forgotten far more about operational flying than I knew. One chap had been flying Vickers Wellingtons, which was a single engined RAF long range bomber pre war [laugh] an antiquated machine and he was flying with a squadron of them from, I think from Khartoum actually, and when Italy entered the war on Germany’s side, he said they had to go and bomb Eritrea and Italian East Africa and he said they used to get the wogs, they used to get the natives to light a bonfire at a deter, at a designated position sort of way out in the desert a hundred, hundred and fifty miles away from Khartoum and they’d fly to that and find a wind from it and then they’d use that to navigate round Italian East Africa. [Laugh] Very crude navigation, but that was the standard of RAF navigation, you know, I mean the first sorties that the RAF flew over Germany in 1939, 1940 were ridiculous. I mean the Germans were in fact well ahead of us. Well that’s it then.
NM: So, Castle Bromwich, what happened after Castle Bromwich?
AB: Pardon?
NM: You were at Castle Bromwich?
AB: Oh yes! I spent about eighteen months, two years at Castle Brom and the Chief Flying Instructor left and went down to Fairoaks, which is near near Woking, and he contacted me and he said he had a vacancy for a Chief Ground Instructor would you like to come down and have it? It was another, I don’t know fifty, hundred pounds a year pay better of, which mattered in those days. I mean you know, when I started my pay was about four hundred or four fifty a year and we lived quite happily on that too. So anyway, I accepted his offer and we bought a caravan and lived in that. Somebody towed it down to Fairoaks for us and we lived quite happily in that and I spent about another three and a half four years doing that, until - I’ll give you the date - until 19th of June ‘53, 19th of June ‘53 when the government of the day decided that the next war was going to be a push button war and there wouldn’t be time to call up Reservists let alone retrain them, so the Volunteer Reserve was shut down and we all had to look for other jobs and the best offer I got was as a flight navigator with Scottish Aviation flying Yorks all over the world and I did that for five years until they decided that they weren’t going to do that sort of flying any more, but I enjoyed it. Whether it trained me for married life I don’t know, probably not.
NM: So after Scottish Aviation?
AB: But er, pardon?
NM: After Scottish Aviation?
AB: Yes, I was flying Yorks. The York was the transport plane developed from the Lancaster in the, in the 1940s and of course it was basically the RAF’s only heavy transport aeroplane. Churchill used one for flying around about all over the world and it was extensively used. Wasn’t a bad plane. Climbed like a lead balloon, terrible rate of climb, you know, about five hundred feet a minute or something. So it took me a long, long time to get used to the modern aeroplanes’ rate of climb. You know, you get in the thing, you sit on the runway and the pilot calls out rotate and the next thing you’re about three thousand feet up in the air!
NM: So what did you do after Scottish Aviation?
AB: Pardon?
NM: What did you do after Scottish Aviation?
AB: I became an air traffic controller, which um -
NM: Where was that?
AB: Well actually I was flying from Stansted with Scottish and I became an air traffic controller and at that time one of the training stations was Stansted so fairly naturally they posted me to Stansted to do my initial training and from there I went to Gatwick. I didn’t get on very well with the Civil Aviation Authority. At the time it was, hmm, it was a government department then still, and I forget which government, I think, which department it was in then. Anyway, I did me training at Stansted and then I was posted down to Gatwick and did further training and you had to validate at the end of your second training station’s time and you passed the eagle eye of the deputy chief, act, in the, no I forget what, we went through department after we started out as the Ministry of Civil Aviation, then it became the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation, then it became the Ministry of Transport and so it went on as governments changed they changed the nomenclature of the thing, anyway I didn’t get on very well and I was very nearly thrown out, but given another lease of life and sent to Blackbushe, which was, which is west London, sent to Blackbushe to have another go and I did that and that actually passed out from there and then I was posted back to Stansted but -
NM: You stayed at Stansted for the rest of your career?
AB: Pardon?
AB: Did you stay at Stansted for the rest of your career?
AB: Well, no, I didn’t actually, I was posted back, I went to Blackbushe and then from Blackbushe I was sent back to Stansted and I qualified at Stansted and I stayed there and then they brought in the requirement that you had to qualify on radar before they would grant you permanent status and so I was sent to London to qualify on the radar at, not actually at the airport itself, but at the Area Control Centre. Civil Aviation was becoming more and more organised. When I first joined it was very much do it yourself, where do you want to go to old boy, oh so and so and so and so, well put the ruler on the map, draw a line on it then go, but then the system of airways percolated over from the States and controlled airspace, where you couldn’t fly, or you could only fly, in certain areas, you know, by obeying strict control rules. Well anyway the first such centre in, was established in the UK in London and I was sent there to train up on the radar and oh, it was interesting and it became a matter of domesticity. I used to spend my afternoons off driving round the countryside looking at houses which were as far the other side of Heathrow as I was living at the time, so ,I one day somebody said, ‘oh,’ he said, ‘would you like to go back to Stansted?’ I said yes please. Somebody who’d been posted away from Stansted needed replacing so back I went to Stansted and I got the radar ticket at Heathrow and Stansted had everything except [emphasis] radar, they didn’t have any radar! But that didn’t matter, I’d got the rating so I didn’t have to worry about. I stayed at the Heath, at Stansted all the rest of my time and I enjoyed it. It, for a junior controller it was a rather satisfying job, you had the responsibility. I mean at somewhere like Gatwick or Heathrow, if an aeroplane came in and called up some kind of emergency you had to call the watch supervisor and if it was a bad enough emergency you had to call the, the Chief Air Traffic Controller of the whole kaboodle, but if it happened at Stansted - [pause]
NM: So if it happened at Stansted you -
AB: Pardon?
NM: If it happened at Stansted, an emergency, you had to take responsibility yourself did you?
AB: Oh yes, you were quite a junior, I remember we had, we were still a civil, a civil service department and the boss man was the Commandant and he used to go home at five o’clock and he didn’t want to know about the place, he expected the duty controller to look after things when they were gone. We had a KLM aeroplane come in to refuel on its way to New York and they poured the petrol in and it started leaking out and so it ended up that they had to defuel it to the point where it didn’t leak any more and then fly it off to Amsterdam where they could either change it for a serviceable aeroplane or fix the leak and so normally Stansted closed at eleven o’clock at night but the duty controller had the authority to extend the hours for three hours, you know, under various circumstances, so I extended this and it got to three hours and this crisis had developed and as I said to the point where they could defuel the plane and then fly it off to Amsterdam, so I said well, you’d better do that and it ended up that I shut the airfield and I was passing, as I was driving home, I was passing the fellows who were coming in to open up for the morning and the next day when I was on duty the commandant rang up, and he said, well he said, who authorised [cough] all this and I said well I did, and I explained the circumstances and that was it, you know. Nobody else was involved. So, and you know those sort of things happened, you know, you weren’t expected to call in higher authority, you were [emphasis] the higher authority on duty and you were expected to get on with it, make your decisions and justify it, but the blokes at Heathrow used to think we were a load of drongoes, you know. Well Heathrow, of course, like all these big airports, it’s an entirely different thing: it’s time is what matters at Heathrow and New York and all these other places, you know, you’ve got to, everything’s got to go on time, you’ve got to, you can’t afford to have fifteen seconds’ time wasted between aeroplanes, I mean that’s how you don’t get the movement rate. I mean Heathrow gets its movement rate by the fact that the planes are coming in like that, and they’re fifteen seconds apart and that’s it. It’s got to be fifteen seconds, not fourteen, not thirteen, fifteen and if you don’t make that they don’t want you.
NM: Andrew can I take you back to something you told me last time we met. You mentioned a man called George Sidebottom. Was he in Bomber Command?
AB: Oh yes, George. I was at school in Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton Grammar School, George and I were in the same class in Wolverhampton Grammar School.
NM: And did you say he ended up in Bomber Command?
AB: That’s right, yes, a few years later. He ended up as my, brother in law’s skipper in Bomber Command and he was in, I think 100 Squadron in Grimsby, I’m not quite sure which group that was in, whether that was in 3 Group I think, but I’m not sure, Grimsby. And my brother in law was his flight engineer and they’d had to abort two operations due to mechanical trouble but the CO wasn’t very receptive to that and told George in no uncertain terms that if he did it again he might very well find himself down the mines, so they were pressing along, they’d got some mechanical trouble, I don’t know what it was, I’ve forgotten, and anyway they were on their way to Leipzig and I think about the about the 13th of February 1944, something like that, be in the book and well it’ll be in, I’ve forgotten, the chap who has the record of all the Bomber Command casualties. Anyway they were chugging along and they were attacked and they were shot up and they were badly enough shot up that George said look chaps, he said, you know, we’re not going to make Leipzig, let alone get back to base, so he said I give you the option of baling out now, so they all decided to bale out and they all got away with it and apparently when the news got back to Grimsby that they’d all baled out there was a bit of a oh yes, hmmm, you know, hmmm, he’s done it twice, got away with it the third time, but my sister in law told me that, or told us, that she was reading some book and it was a reminiscences of a German night fighter pilot and he quoted this, he quoted this plane, this sortie you know, serial number, everything and you know, it was proof that -
[Other]: Are you taking a plate and a fork please?
AB: Oh thank you my darling.
NM: Lovely. Thank you very much.
AB: And it was proof that George hadn’t just done a “come on chaps let’s finish the war”.
[Other] [Unclear] on the table darling.
NM: I’ll just grab that if I may, thank you very much, lovely, thank you.
[Other]: What’s wrong, take another piece.
AB: And it got back to the squadron that – thank you darling - that it was a genuine one that they’d all baled out and Vic and, Vic and one of the other crews, they were picked up about two days later, but two of the crew got all the way to the, I mean they baled out near, oh, well near Potsdam, quite close to Berlin, but two of the crew got as far as the Dutch frontier and they pinched a couple of bicycles and they’d cycled across this bridge into Holland and for some reason or other they were sort of unsure, they were uncertain of where they were or something and they turned round and went back and they were challenged and apprehended by one of the German Volksturm, one of the German Home Guard [laugh] and Vic ended up in Heidekrug which was as far north west as you could get in Germany, it was right up in the tip top tip of east Germany and of course when the Germans, or rather when the Russians started advancing seriously across Poland and then into East Russia, the, East Germany, the Germans evacuated and Vic ended up on the Long March. That was rugged. Couldn’t look a turnip in the face after that.
NM: But he survived and was repatriated, yes?
AB: Mmm?
NM: He survived and was repatriated?
AB: Hmm.
NM: So he was a prisoner of war until the end of the war.
AB: Yes, eventually, the, [eating] they ended up in central Germany somewhere, I don’t know where.
NM: So his name was Vic, and what was his surname?
AB: Mendelski, Victor Mendelski, I think it was 100 Squadron and it was about, round about, round about February 13th I think, something like that. And as I say, it’ll be in Bill Chorley’s books. You’ve got those have you?
NM: We’ve got access to them.
AB: You’ll find it in there, something through that.
NM: Okay, just to finish with then, you’ve been going to the 100 Group reunions for a few years now.
AB: As I said, when Scottish packed up we all had to find other jobs and a number of them got jobs with the Civil Aviation Flying Unit which was based at Stansted and which was responsible for, it was responsible for the flight checking of all the radio aids, the navigation beacons, all the instrument landing systems and so on throughout the country and some of them abroad and they also did the flight checking of applicants for pilots’ licences and then for instrument ratings because one of the things that devolved from the airways system and all the control zone system that I mentioned earlier on, was that pilots had to be able to fly on instruments, had to have an instrument rating, and Stansted did all the examining for that. Well I got to know a few of them who’d been at Reserve Flying Schools and after I retired these chaps said, oh he said why don’t you join the Aircrew Association, which was an association which was open to [cough] all aircrew, everybody, cooks, stewards, the lot of them if they’d been flying, one of the chaps his wife had been an air steward in the RAF, she was a member, anyway, but I did join but I didn’t take to it, it was a, perhaps I shouldn’t say this but it was full of air gunners for one thing! And they used to meet at a pub in Saffron Walden which was not really convenient for me and perhaps I’m not the club-able type, a great cry of I’ll say rises to that, but so I dropped out, but during my membership I saw a notice in their magazine of a memorial stone being dedicated at Oulton, you know where I’d flown from, so I thought oh well I’ll go and go up to that so I went up to Aylesham and stayed in a B & B there and I happened to meet a fellow Squadron Leader, Richard Forder, a retired engineer who was researching the fate of one of the three Liberators that was lost from 223 Squadron, it was, oh I forget, it was captained by, he was either Flying Officer or Flying, or Flight Lieutenant Ayres, nicknamed Lou Ayres naturally, who, one of whose gunners Richard Forder had met when he was a small boy, I forget where he was, he was somewhere in the West Country, Shropshire, somewhere like that, and he’d met this chap, this RAF sergeant who’d given him some toy trains as a souvenir and this chap had been one of the casualties of this, [cough] of this flight and Richard was researching it and I’d been on the same detail. We’d done a spoof, a Window feint to Cassel. We’d come out from, we’d split off from the main force which had gone on to somewhere in the east, Leipzig or somewhere like that and we’d formed a force which flew on up to Cassel which some of the Halifaxes had bombed and we turned back from Cassel and gone home and on the way back from Cassel, Lou Ayres was shot down and we passed over his, over the wreckage of his flight and I was able to provide Richard with all sorts of information, you know, flight times and all the rest of it and proved the accuracy of my navigation, [laugh] reasonably. So that’s how I got involved with the 100 Group Association, kept it up ever since.
NM: You’ve got the next one next week I gather.
AB: We’re meeting the next, what’s the date today?
NM: 10th. May the 10th.
AB: Next weekend. Come along some time.
NM: Really looking forward to it.
AB: We congregate at the memorial stone which is on the eastern end of the old Oulton airfield. It’s about half past three, four o’clock, four o’clock something like that and say a few words, and I usually get asked to, well there’s two things, there’s the one: When you go home tell them of us and say for our todays, we gave, for your tomorrows we gave our todays. I can relate to that. And the other one is, the better known one, is the, what is it, it’s the, oh I’ve forgotten, it’s the [pause] no I’ve forgotten. But I, to which I can’t relate because it’s the one that says about the fellows, for their tomorrows we gave our todays or something like that and I’m thinking I bet they bloody well wish they’d still got their tomorrows.
NM: I think that’s a very good point on which to finish. So thank you very much for your time Andrew. Shall we finish the interview there?
AB: It’s [crockery noise].
NM: Shall we finish it there?
AB: I think so yes.
NM: I think that’s a good place.
AB: Yes. I never, you know it was, I stayed in aviation, as I say, I met all sorts of chaps when I was in the Reserve and I learnt not to shoot a line and then after the Reserve I went flying with Scottish and there were a few occasions where I was rather more frightened than I had been at any other time in my aviation career and because I was a married man by then, I’d got responsibilities and I was rather more aware of the fallibility of aeroplanes and of course, in something like the York, you used to have to fly through it not over it and the prospect of having to fly through the Monsoon was not something which you exactly looked forward to, I mean the rain was so heavy that you could barely, oh haven’t got my civil log book with me, you could barely see the inboard engines, let alone the outboard engines, but I mean it was real flying and you had to do it yourself.
NM: Very good.
AB: Mind you, there’s still real flying going on as that Russian aeroplane the other day. Not very funny.
NM: No indeed.
AB: Has there been anything more in the press about it?
NM: I haven’t seen anything since the accident itself, sorry. Andrew, can I just finish by saying thank you on behalf of the IBCC for giving us your story. Much appreciated. You’ve given us a lot of time.
AB: What’s the next step now? You get it -
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Andrew Barron. Three
Creator
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Nigel Moore
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-05-10
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABarronAJK190510, PBarronAJK1901
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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01:56:35 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Andrew said that during leisure time the crew drank, sang silly songs but didn’t really socialise much. He recalled an occasion when the Germans sent in about 200 night fighters infiltrating the main force on its ways home. They shot down a B-17 as it came into land and all crew were killed. The German aircraft had passed Andrew’s one as it was waiting to land. He mentions four daylight operations: over a fairly short period the squadron did 38 operations. Andrew remembered on 1 January 1945 he was on operations and made some gross navigational error – he had been up late on New Years’ Eve and had drunk quite a bit. May 1945 ended operational flights: on the 26th Andrew did a trip with 223 Squadron from RAF Swannington, in a B-17. When the war ended, they were allowed to go on one of the Cooks tours around the Ruhr to see what damage had been done. Andrew was then posted to 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington doing local flying with circuits and bumps. They did three flights in a Halifax disposing bombs into the sea. Following various postings, he was demobbed and trained for a civil license.
Contributor
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Sue Smith
Anne-Marie Watson
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Norfolk
England--Yorkshire
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1945-01-01
1945-05
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
100 Group
102 Squadron
157 Squadron
196 Squadron
223 Squadron
85 Squadron
B-17
B-24
bombing
C-47
Cook’s tour
demobilisation
Halifax
military living conditions
RAF Pocklington
RAF Swannington
shot down
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1114/11604/PSayFD1705.2.jpg
52b843c39d0ced7b2eb03c0b13e49139
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1114/11604/ASayFD170712.1.mp3
c9d5fe21ca19ee77e4c519dc4a350b90
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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Say, Frederick Donovan
F D Say
Description
An account of the resource
17 items. An oral history interview with Frederick Say DFC (1921 -2017, 752638 Royal Air Force), photographs, charts and documents. He flew operations with 466, 196 and 514 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Frederick Say 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
2017-07-12
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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Say, FD
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 12th of July 2017 and I’m with Don Say in Highnam in Gloucestershire to talk about his life and times. So, Don what are your earliest recollections of life?
FDS: Being bathed in the tin bath by a lady with a red rubber, I think it was a rubber, I don’t know, red apron in front of the fire. Not [laughs] not too close obviously. And that was not my mother actually. My mother had died from what’s the official name of it? Hypocalcaemia. Not familiar with it? Milk fever. It’s an imbalance and in the days when it wasn’t unknown, it was known, cows get it. And when they get it its caller staggers and they stagger. And that’s the symptom for adults. I didn’t know my mother in other words. I have letters you know. A letter to my father. But she would be about twenty two. He would be about twenty one or twenty two. He had been in the Army. His picture’s somewhere over there on that table. You can see it facing you. Facing you.
CB: Right.
FDS: He was in the Machine Gun Corps. Underage so his mother got him, pulled him out and the army pulled him back in again, and he still stayed in the Machine Gun Corps. He finished up managing flour mills, flour and feed mills in Newcastle upon Tyne. But he’d be about twenty one or twenty two then. So I was then in the care for a few months I think with two old ladies who’d been in service who were some sort of relative, although I didn’t know them. And then my mother’s cousin and her husband started to look after me very well until I was, I don’t know, somewhere between five or six years old I think, she died. And eight years later my guardian as he became married again to a lady who said, ‘I’ve been a wicked woman.’ I said, ‘Yeah. I’ll drink to that.’ That was at her bedside visiting. I would have done too. Very unpleasant. There was much, much more cruelty by the tongue than by the lash. Can be anyway. It’s very difficult. It accounts for my aggression. Aggressive attitude to life [laughs] it may do. I don’t know. Blame somebody anyway. The current habit as well. So where have we got to now?
CB: So we’ve got to —
FDS: School.
CB: Yes.
FDS: Well, I passed, passed the various exams and left what was called then Tottenham County Grammar School err County High School. There were three schools. Boys Grammar, Girls High School and the whatever the next. That was called the County School. It was brand new with virtually an entire graduate staff. And quite a privileged education, finest court and the rest of it. And playing field. I was not a boarder and at no point did I feel any great loyalty towards it. Nor have I since. But I did pass school cert. Whatever it was called. Matric or something. And I also took, I was taken by my guardian to what we would we call him now? Careers advisor I suppose. And he said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I know what I don’t want to do. I don’t want to be told what I’m going to be doing all the time.’ So I said, ‘Agriculture sounds like a good bet.’ And I then took an exam and went to the what was then the Herts Institute of Agriculture, but now College of Agriculture, which was financially each year of half roughly horticultural training, half agriculture. And the [pause] they were a good staff. I didn’t work very hard there. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Fell in love with my first girlfriend. Needn’t, needn’t put that down. Long since dead. It was near St Albans. About two or three miles. On the edge of the airfield. I’m trying to think of the name of it.
CB: Radlett.
FDS: Hmmn?
CB: At Radlett was it?
FDS: No. No. It was their private, err, manufacturers of aircraft.
CB: At Hatfield.
FDS: Pardon?
CB: Handley Page at Hatfield.
FDS: No.
CB: Well —
FDS: We’ll get through.
CB: De Havilland at Hatfield and Hand —
FDS: It was quite an important flight path.
CB: Handley Page
FDS: It’s over the College of Agriculture.
CB: Right.
FDS: Or it was.
CB: Right.
FDS: I’m trying to think what.
CB: Well, de Havilland at Hatfield and Handley Page at Radlett. Anyway, we’ll come back to that.
FDS: It’ll come back to me suddenly.
CB: Ok.
FDS: In the middle of the night. I’ll give you a call [laughs]
CB: Yeah, do that, yeah [laughs]
FDS: Tomorrow morning [laughs] But it’s relevant because I went there as a student and many years later I applied and was interviewed for the job of principal and then I discovered that the flight path. The first one was right on the flight path of the thing so I turned it down.
CB: Right. Ok.
FDS: Great fun.
CB: So you were at the college for how long?
FDS: A year.
CB: And then what?
FDS: I went, this is a bit I [pause] I went to, I worked for a local farm. When I say local, in Hertfordshire. I don’t remember it particularly. And eventually the principal went for a change of job and he said, ‘Well, I don’t know if you’ll like it but it’s a job of hedging for a man called Patterson,’ at [pause] near Salisbury somewhere he thought. It wasn’t. That was the one at Petersfield, in fact and the name of the chap was Rex Munro Patterson, and he was the nephew of Lady Alliot Verdon Roe who was the wife of Sir Alliot Verdon Roe, and I went there to go hedging and he interviewed me and he said, ‘You’re not doing hedging. You’re going to tidy up the farms that I’m renting.’ He, don’t write this bit, his aunt had lent him a thousand I think to start with. He’d been to Canada, brought back the idea of the buck rake which she gave to Harry Ferguson and he worked in tandem and he had about twelve farms over Hampshire and Sussex. Is that a coincidence?
CB: Extraordinary.
FDS: Sir Avro.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: And his son used to drive the lorries to go and collect heffers from Liverpool and bring them down to Hampshire. I used to go. Go with him. He would drive. He was about a couple of years older than me.
CB: That was a long journey.
FDS: Good fun. Heffers had never seen people before very much and they showed it. But he, Patterson was novel in the sense that he introduced the buck rake. But he also, he didn’t introduce he shared the introduction of [pause] what do you call them? I can’t think of the name of the damned things now, towing cow, cow units. Mobile units.
Other: Milking units.
FDS: Yeah. Across the Downs trying to —
CB: Mobile milking parlours, were they?
FDS: Milking. Yeah. They were on wheels. We used to, one man and a boy or a young man and a young, two young men rather, and I worked for that because I got fed up with the office and I was working outside. They were short on cattle and we had about sixty or seventy per two men which was quite remarkable then in those days. The land, a lot of the land he rented at about five bob an acre from Sir Phillip Ricketts. Ricketts Blue? So he had large lumps of Hampshire and Sussex and my life seems a circuit around that doesn’t it? That’s how I came to get to Portsmouth and join the RAF VR.
CB: So, we’re talking about now 1938 going into ’39.
FDS: I’m, I’m dodgy on the dates.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: Dates and months. About that time.
CB: And you were eighteen in 1938.
FDS: I had to be eighteen to join.
CB: So, how did you go about joining the Forces? So, how did you go about joining the Forces?
FDS: I joined.
CB: Yes, but how did you do it?
FDS: Well, I, first of all I went to the Recruiting Centres, and I went to the Army first. They gave me a tongue lashing and turned me down.
CB: This was in Portsmouth was it?
FDS: Yes. Then I went to the Navy. All on the same Saturday [laughs] and then I went to the Royal Air Force who said, ‘Yes, thank you. Do you want to fly?’ And I said, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ I said, ‘All I want to do is to have something that’s a bit more lethal than a pair of boots for the invasion,’ which was supposed to happen at any minute. But I couldn’t take it seriously. I never did really. I changed my job, you see. I can’t remember quite why, but I went to Essex. Wickford In Essex, and I worked on a farm there for [pause] it must have been the three months before I was called up, because I was feeding the pigs and my friend who was staying with the people we were staying with at that time came round on his bike and said, ‘There’s a telegram. It looks important.’ And I looked at it and I said, ‘It’s vitally important. I’m needed to save the country three days ago.’ “You will report to Southampton,” three days before I received it. So I got on a train. You know, you do as you’re told. I went to the farm and I said to the farmer, ‘You can come back.’ I said, ‘I don’t think it’s very likely. I don’t think it’s very likely because, I think I might join the Air Force. I don’t know.’ Anyway, I went down and reported to Glen Eyre Road, Southampton [pause] and the chap there said, I said, ‘Where am I supposed to go to now? You’ve recorded that I’m here.’ ‘Go over there with that lot. You two come with me.’ And we two of us followed him out to a vehicle, and he drove us around various, a house, ‘How many bedrooms have you, madam?’ I think the poor woman said, ‘Two or three,’ or something. ‘Right.’ They’re not awful?’ No. ‘Well, these two are staying here overnight. Not, will you? You board them overnight. They’ll be picked up in the morning I can promise you.’ So we were there over night at Glen Eyre Road. That’s it. No. That was the Centre. We were despatched from there to this house. Picked up by lorry and it gets ludicrous. It gets ludicrous. In the morning we got in to a lorry, the back of a standard RAF lorry and we drove to Tangmere. I didn’t know it was Tangmere. We drove through the guardroom and straight through. And there would be, there were fifty four of us. I think that’s right. Work it out yourself because the sergeant who used to be on the door of the local cinema had been recalled and he came up and said, ‘You lot,’ we were fifty four. ‘Three lots of eighteen,’ So there’s three lots. Then he had a piece of chalk. They could afford chalk. He carefully drew rectangles around each eighteen and I was in the first group. ‘You’re A-Watch, You’re B-Watch and you’re C Watch.’ And we said, ‘What precisely are we watching?’ ‘You’ll find out.’ [laughs] We were then marched off to a hangar and given bed boards and a pallias. You never had a pallias.
CB: No.
FDS: And straw. Put the clean straw in the pallias and what the hell do we do with this? Shaped vaguely like a musical instrument. A big one. You put these, anyway we kept there the other end of the hangar suddenly blokes came in in what appeared to be riding britches. Classy reservists. Six foot five airmen doing the same thing but the other end. And this corporal that was running this, this corporal or sergeant came around again. I said, ‘What are we supposed to be watching?’ He said, ‘You’ll find out.’ Marched off along a pathway and down a slope into a room. Guess what? Operations room. We were operations room clerks and three weeks to three months later I moved from AC2 ignorant general duties to leading aircraftsman SD, special duties. ‘Now, whatever you’re told in here and whatever you see in here you’re not to communicate with anybody in the fear of death.’ We did, oh eight or twelve stretches and they found out rapidly that very, all that was happening the convoys were going up and down to the Channel and 605 City of Birmingham Auxiliary, 43 Squadron which I think at that time there I think they were the Gladiators because Number 1 were the Hurricanes. Number 1 Squadron. Halahan was the boss. They were pushed off fairly rapidly to France. To a base there and did a lot of jobs when we ran away from [laughs] when we ran away from the Germans at Dunkirk. That was a lot later. But that was quite interesting to me. Lloyd. A chap called Lloyd from Lloyds Steel Pipes. Flight Lieutenant Lloyd. It was a millionaire’s squadron and didn’t they flaunt it? You know. Silk flying jackets and riding britches. Totally amateur. And relatively few other ranks. There were these fifty four of us divided into eighteens and then about eight were sent off to the wireless centre and what was there? We were shoving counters. Shoving counters around and putting things up for, instead it became enemy blocks of a hundred or two hundred aircraft but originally it was boats. Ships. And these were the convoys and the aircraft and they were sort of went out and did their patrols. And that was very exciting. We sat there, nothing happened. The Observer Corps were at the other end of the lines. They came in to us and you know that you’ve seen all the, have you? You’re familiar with the ops room set up.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
FDS: The map.
CB: Yes.
FDS: Well, there’s a sector map and the platform behind us. I don’t think there was any rank there normally under the rank of about flight lieutenant or squadron leader. And because we were near London we had visitors. Churchill. Churchill didn’t spur me on but I heard that he’d come down and been in the ops room and said that he thought it should be largely peopled by women and oddly enough I agreed with him. And they came in then. WAAFs came through. All frightfully, frightfully nice girls. I wrote a poem to one. Shall I tell you it?
CB: Do.
FDS: Her father appears in “Who’s Who.” I’m afraid I can’t introduce you. For an addition you need a commission. Three rings with the minimum two. She might take a cocktail with me, or come out to afternoon tea, but remember that you are a mere AC2. It makes all the difference you see [laughs] on an AC’s pay. Oh dear. I had nothing better to do than write silly rhymes. That was true, the girl.
CB: Excellent.
FDS: But they were awfully decent and one of them was called Bolton. Mary Bolton. Now, that’s relevant because guess what? She became the mother of Dyson.
CB: Oh.
FDS: I knew Dyson when he was that high and I was, I knew her sister was in the nursing order. I did a eulogy for her about a couple of years ago. Sheer coincidences. At that time we didn’t know it was a coincidence obviously. It was renowned for the excellent entertainment we got because we got all the shows from London and stars and anybody that thought they were anybody with power came to see us if they were allowed in. All shhh. Very secret. Well, the Germans knew. They knew where the, what do you call it? Radar units were because they came over and thoroughly bombed them after I left. Up to that point I was still getting it. I was then posted from there. I said, ‘I want to be out of here although it’s very interesting and very active with convoys and the like.’ I left and went to 10 Group and they promptly bombed Tangmere, did the Germans. Smashed it up and they had to relocate the ops room. I, by now at 10 Group, I didn’t know it was 10 Group. I was in a tent. We were in tented accommodation and some bloke came around. I don’t know. A flight sergeant. It didn’t mean anything to us. We don’t do any station duties. We were special duties. Shush. [laughs] So, I shared a tent for a few months. That ultimately became, it’s now the, what is it? I don’t know the stratospheric centre for, you know battle. It’s deep underground. There was masses of caves. I take it you know that. That county is riddled with caverns and one of them was 10 Group. And the chap who used to fly opposite, was it Hullavington on the opposite side? There was an airfield on the opposite [pause] 10 Group was on a hill. Not on a unit. And the air base was on the other side and the [pause] Park. Park who was on Fighter Command at one point used to fly in in his own little Hurricane. All white. White overalls and shouting and pulling, pulling rank. Stayed about two days and went again. And that was quite interesting for a while but I got bored with that and I was doing night duty and the chap [pause] who was commanding then? Baines. Wing Commander Baines. You had a wing commander who was ostensibly in charge of the ops room, and then the other, there was the Army, Navy and so on and you see them. And I was one of the little erks running about in between, and Baines was on duty that night. He said, ‘I’m bored.’ I said, ‘Well, join the club.’ No sirs or anything when we were off duty. We were on duty but relaxed and I said, ‘I’m bored stiff with this job actually.’ ‘What would you prefer to do?’ I said, ‘Well, I see these blokes walking out from aircraft and they don’t like any brighter than me. So, I’ll be aircrew of some sort.’ ‘I’ll recommend you.’ Which he did. And I went to, at that time I think it was a bit of an unusual entrance. I went to, what was the Air Force base? What is still the Air Force base? Headquarters.
CB: What? Bentley Priory?
FDS: Hmmn?
CB: For fighters?
FDS: London. No. The London office.
CB: Ad Astral House.
FDS: Hmmn?
CB: Ad Astral House.
FDS: I don’t think it was called that then. Anyway, I was sent there for an interview. To be interviewed for aircrew and I was waiting outside in the passage way and a chap passed me full of rings up his arm and I didn’t know how he got, a large ring and lots of small ones. ‘What are you doing there my boy?’ And I said, ‘I’m waiting to be interviewed, sir.’ ‘Are you nervous?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ So he said, ‘Well, don’t be, he said. ‘They’re no brighter than you. Thirteen times thirteen.’ I said, ‘A hundred and sixty nine.’ He said, ‘If you know that [laughs] wonderful. Air Commodore JB Cole-Hamilton. Yeah. Nice chap. Pleasant. He said, ‘Go ahead. You can pass that.’ There was no such thing as [pause] they had centres didn’t they in London and elsewhere for direct entry? And I was being slotted in with direct entry and you could pick me out, because all the others had new uniforms. I had a green great coat. It had gone green when I was in the tent. Sort of gone blue green [laughs] and I was posted. Posted from there. I’m trying to think of the next stage.
CB: Where was the selection centre?
[pause]
CB: Where was the selection centre?
FDS: It must have been. I went to Babbacombe. That was new. They had just taken over the hotels.
CB: Right.
FDS: And I was based in a hotel at Babbacombe with several other blokes. I was UT aircrew. UT pilot. They got fed up with that later on. They couldn’t get any aircrew. Everybody was going in to be a pilot. So they took, took a chopper. I think I wasn’t any good as a pilot. I wouldn’t have made a good pilot. And I came to the same conclusion that they came to. So I went to Torquay and did initial training, ITW, that would be wouldn’t it? Based in a hotel there. And then from there we were, we sat, when we were shipped up to Scotland. I think I went up to Scotland then. I’m not sure at that point. I went to Scotland. It’s come up at a different points. Is this making sense?
CB: That’s fine. Yes.
FDS: I think its fine thus far.
CB: Ok.
FDS: Where am I now?
CB: So, you’ve gone to Scotland.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: That’s to get on a boat is it?
FDS: Hmmn?
CB: That was to get on a boat.
FDS: Yeah. Yeah. And I went to the orderly room which the others sprogs didn’t know much about and said, ‘Say, where am I? Am I posted?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. I said, ‘Where am I posted to?’ And he said, ‘South Africa.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to go to South Africa. Where else is there?’ ‘There’s Canada.’ I said, ‘I’d like to go to Canada.’ He said, ‘I’ll swap you over.’ [laughs] Absolutely. That’s it really. So we were all lined up. The people going on the boat. I think they were about five hundred in the end and we were all lined up on parade, me in my green great coat. The Duke of Gloucester whose time [laughs] I met him much later on life, but he was around stinking of beer. He came round and was due to inspect us. And the chap in charge, whatever he was, of the parade walking down looking at all the airmen all standing to attention and he got to me [laughs] green coat. ‘What do you think you’re dressed in?’ ‘I beg your pardon? This is my issue.’ ‘Well, where have you been?’ I said, ‘Where I’m sent. To a tent at one point. That’s where it went greenish.’ ‘Go over to the stores now and get a new coat.’ And I was sent to get a new coat. It was incredible. I went over on the [pause] doesn’t really matter. It was a liner anyway. A cabin. And I had my first large bar of chocolate for a long time I remember. I remember two merchant seamen who were crew I think were going out to be crew to come back having a fight outside [laughs] in the whatever it’s called. Passageway. Incredible. And we came in to, came in to Canada. Which port? It was while it was still in those days it was still non-alcoholic. What did they call it?
CB: Prohibition.
FDS: The state that we landed on was a non-alcoholic state. So the first two civilians I saw were three staggering drunks [laughs]. Lots and lots of whatever it’s called. I can’t remember now. Illegal booze anyway.
Other: In the US.
FDS: Hmmn?
Other: In the United States.
FDS: Canada.
Other: Oh, in Canada.
FDS: In Canada at that point. In that State. I’m trying to remember the name of the state. It starts with an M. Manitoba? No. That’s west. East. Eastern Canada. Where you land. Or you did land anyway.
CB: Well, a lot of people went to Newfoundland, didn’t they?
FDS: Yeah. We, my lot didn’t because we went to the other bit.
CB: Ok.
FDS: I’m trying to think what it was. I think it was M [pause] When I came back it was still alcohol free. Whatever the word is.
CB: Was it?
FDS: I came back through the, by now it was a big unit. When I went out it was just a base. Nothing was there. We were put on trains. A three day train journey. Very exciting. Old trains you know. You could climb right up the ladders and black gentlemen seeing you on and off them. And three days we were on the train. We got marched off every three hours to make sure we didn’t get too constipated. And we were there two or three hours I think. Stopped. Marched around a bit. Lounged about a bit. You needn’t write it down but I was invited when I went back. Not to me personally. There were three births as a result of those stops. I went back again more than a year later. This was what I was told believe it if you will. I could believe it. We were all white flashed people. The story went around that the people with white flashes in their hat that had unmentionable diseases. That was the story they floated. The other, the non-white flashed people. Quite amazing. Yeah.
CB: So you got on the train three days.
FDS: On and off it for three days.
CB: And where did you end up?
FDS: Very well fed. Calgary. Calgary Airport [pause] which had part of it as an EFTS, and I did a hell of a lot of EFTS and I did a, I got as far as the, I did as far enough to get as far as what’s his name? CFI. And he downed me. Well, he downed me officially. I was told this is only in the last six months. I wasn’t relating this, I heard it related that they had so many pilot applicants ‘38 ’39 they couldn’t cope and they were overdone and they couldn’t get any aircrew so they just chopped off a convenient lot. Which they had to do. So whether I was part of the excess or not I don’t know. Anyway, I went there and I enjoyed that. We used to fly up to the Rockies at the weekend. It was very good.
CB: So you saw the chief flying instructor and what did he do?
FDS: Failed me.
CB: And?
FDS: I was disgruntled. I was disgruntled. It was all very civil. I was called and said, ‘You’re being released.’ That’s all. ‘You’re going to the navigation school.’ I said, ‘Please sir I don’t wish to go to a navigation school. I’d like to go back home now. So, if I can’t do this I will go as an air gunner.’ ‘You won’t. You will do as you’re told.’ Oh. So I was very bad tempered. I went off to the railway station with full kit. Kit bag. All sorts. I’m not sure I didn’t have a gun. Didn’t have any ammunition that’s for sure. I had a gun. I think. Anyway, I climbed on to this train, threw my kit in the corner and found I was accompanied by a beautiful red headed girl about my own age. And we were together for three days because she went off, she was going on one stop further than me. I got invited for the weekend, which was rather nice. So, at weekends of the war the war stopped for us in Canada. Stopped at weekends. It was rather nice. They’d come and get in the car.
CB: Where was this nav school?
FDS: Hamilton, Ontario which you know. I failed my first exam there. Don’t write that down. I failed it quite deliberately. I was sent for an interview. ‘Your little game is to fail and be sent back. It won’t work. You will be here if necessary until you’ve got a beard down to your knees.’ [laughs] I know that, I know you can pass the exam. You know you can pass the exam. Go and pass the bloody thing.’ [laughs] So back I went, but I was back a course all the time as a result of that. So, where are we now?
CB: So there we are in nav school. So what —
FDS: Still at Hamilton.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: Anything interesting happen? I flew round. We flew all over the place. Up to Muskoka looking for a chap who got lost off a formation with Harvards. He got lost in the snow and if you get up to Muskoka and up in that direction it’s about a thousand lakes. We didn’t find him. Whether he was found eventually I don’t know. But he, how he got lost off a formation. That’s what they told us.
CB: So when you were at nav school?
FDS: Interesting.
CB: What was the course content?
FDS: DR nav. Well, we’d already done DR nav anyway so we did DR nav. Lots of cross country. Well, it seemed lots of cross country. They’re logged in here and there. I can’t remember how long it was. They were just about coming up to the point where the Royal Air Force had a fit of the tremors and invented Nav Bs. So navigators who didn’t do bomb aiming and bomb aimers who didn’t do navigation, which was pretty damned stupid but if you were lucky like me [laughs] pilot, a third, a third of the pilot’s course, about all, all of the nav course. The whole. I went to bombing and gunnery at Picton. Picton. Where was Picton? Is it in the back of the book I wonder?
CB: We’ll, we’ll stop in just a mo if we may, but what were you flying when you were getting your navigation practice?
FDS: Anson. I flew with a chap called Warrant Officer Orville and he said, ‘We’re running out of fuel and I don’t know if we can get back very easily. We’ll have to land.’ We landed on what is now the main highway. The trans-Canada highway. Goes up north. We landed on it [laughs] Cars and things came to us and brought petrol [laughs]
Other: Orville.
FDS: As I recall he had a big moustache. I was sat behind him. I had to feed him chewing gum to watch his moustache going up and down.
CB: He was a Canadian, was he?
FDS: I don’t know.
CB: Oh.
FDS: I think he, I think he was English.
CB: Ok.
FDS: He seemed fairly English. But you used to go, you could orbit Hamilton and you could see the, what was the American town down the bottom of the lake? You could see the lights on there very clearly. In no circumstances would you go over to the, to Niagara. So, I’ve got a picture of Niagara Falls taken when we weren’t supposed to go there. We all went there obviously but they weren’t in at that point. They came in in that December I think it was, was it?
CB: So we’re in, that was ’41. So, what time are we in now? We’re in 1941.
FDS: I’m in —
CB: 7th of December ‘41 the Americans joined.
FDS: I’m not [pause] if I have a look at that.
CB: We’ll just stop for a mo and have a look.
FDS: I might have a look because people flying the drogue.
CB: People flying the —
FDS: The drogue.
CB: Yeah. The tug. Yes.
FDS: For gunnery.
CB: Yes.
FDS: Were people who’d been on the pilot’s course with me.
CB: Oh, were they?
FDS: Several people. ‘What score would you like to get?’ Well, of course you can’t get a hundred percent if you were gunning. In gunnery not likely you would get much more than five. I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to get close enough to see the scissors on it but I’d like to get a few shots at it.’ An impossible score. I had to go up and do it again. He got a rocket for being so close.
CB: Oh right, yeah.
FDS: All very decent fun really.
CB: In your gunnery training what did they do to begin with to train you?
FDS: I don’t remember it very much.
CB: Were you using on the ground shot guns or what did you do?
FDS: Oh yes. Yes, we used those. A chap called Henty who’d shot at where ever the famous rifle shooting is.
CB: At Bisley.
FDS: Yeah. He’d been a Bisley shot. Henty. Yeah, we did rifles. I can remember using a revolver because we [laughs] when we shouldn’t do we went in a Nissen hut and we had a lot of marmalade tins and put them on a fence and you could use what was that little, don’t put that down for goodness sake. You could use sten ammunition.
CB: Oh, sten guns right.
FDS: But that ammunition would fit the revolver.
CB: The 9 millimetre. Yeah.
FDS: Yeah. Incredible. Naughty boys. We had a smoking chimney [laughs]
CB: Not 45s.
FDS: Shot the, shot a revolver up the chimney. Flames and smoke coming out the chimney. They could see it, of course. Dear oh dear.
CB: So, they let you get away with some of these things.
FDS: Oh yes. The Royal Air Force for me was fun from the minute I started the ops room with the latter part of the ops room was. The first bit was interesting but not much fun. I didn’t think anyway. I mean moving counters a bit. Knowing where a ship was and an aircraft it could absorb you for the first day or even a week, but it’s not, and mainly men at that point on the other end of the phone lines, Observer Corps.
CB: Right.
FDS: Yes. It was Group Headquarters I was moved to. I don’t know why. But —
CB: 10 Group. Yes.
FDS: 10 Group. I don’t know why. I don’t even know if I’ve not entered. I didn’t enter any of that did I?
CB: No. Let’s go back to Picton, Ontario.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: And your bombing and shooting.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: Gunnery were at the same place.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: So we talked about the gunnery. What, what were you flying in when you were doing the airborne gunnery?
FDS: I can’t think. Oh, we had a VGO. Vickers gas operated isn’t it? So it was a cockpit, open cockpit at the front or back?
CB: Was it?
FDS: I can’t remember. Instructor would be generally at the back of a two seater thing so presumably I’m right aren’t I? VGO. It stays in the mind. Vickers gas operated machine gun.
CB: Yes.
FDS: Used to get stoppages. Well famed for the number of stoppages.
CB: It didn’t like the draught.
FDS: I wonder what it was. Oh I know. The thing. They shot a load of them down at the beginning of the war.
CB: Oh, they were —
FDS: Battle.
CB: Fairey. No. No.
FDS: The Battle would it be. Would it be the Battle?
CB: They could have been Fairey Battles.
FDS: I think it probably —
CB: Because they lost so many to begin with.
FDS: They shot a hell of a lot of them down. Yeah.
CB: The light bomber. Yeah. The Fairey Battles they put to Canada.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: Vickers gas operated machine gun.
CB: Right. And then bombing.
FDS: You could almost count them coming out.
CB: And bombing. Yes. Bombing. How did they teach you bombing?
FDS: How? Well, they had a good, they’d got a damned good simulator. You did hours on a simulator similar to, not identical with pilots but similar, and you bombed that and you also [pause] That would be it, yeah.
CB: Did you not get any live bombing with the Battle? With the Fairey Battles.
FDS: I don’t think so. No. I think that would be, they had six practice bombs. Whatever different. I have that. I don’t know if I would enter that. Would I enter it?
CB: We’re just pausing for a mo.
[recording paused]
FDS: Chris, well, this is what made my voice go high is pollen. I’m trying to [pause] Watson, Watson, Watson. Oh dear, eight bombs. Wellington. That’s, no that’s an OTU. 20 OTU, Elgin.
CB: Yeah. That’s a bit. We’ll come to that in a minute.
FDS: Picton, Picton, Anson, here we are. There you are.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: Results of the gunnery course. Results of the bombing course.
CB: Right. Ok. That’s good. Thank you. Yeah.
FDS: It’s taking a long time isn’t it?
CB: So, you finished the course on bombing. You qualified on your navigation.
FDS: Yeah. It says so there.
CB: Does it?
FDS: Oh, very much so.
CB: So, because you were doing navigation, bombing and gunnery.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: You were the traditional observer.
FDS: Absolutely.
CB: So how did your graduation occur?
FDS: It didn’t.
CB: So —
FDS: You mean when did I get my wings?
CB: Yes.
FDS: I think they were sent to me. I’ve never had a —
CB: So, you came to the end of the course is what I’m getting at.
FDS: Yeah. My award was different.
CB: Was there a parade?
FDS: Not for me.
CB: And everybody went.
FDS: I nearly always had something like scarlet fever, or a change a course or something. Something. I never finished with the people I was with.
CB: Oh right. So at that end of this.
FDS: I don’t remember doing so, anyway.
CB: At the end of the observer course how, what happened next?
FDS: Well, I think there was a parade and gave them my wings and then I did the Picton one. Much the same thing happened.
CB: So you got your —
FDS: You had a parade. No they had a reward.
CB: They did.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: Why weren’t you on the final parade?
FDS: Oh God. I honestly can’t remember.
CB: Ok.
FDS: Nothing disgraceful.
CB: No. So, at the end of the training in Canada then what happened?
FDS: The end of the training in Canada. I’m trying to think where I came back from [pause] I had a great welcoming sign in this particular camp and it said, “The following premises are out of bounds for all ranks because of the [unclear] that had gone on. Well, they were made their own gin from wood alcohol which will make you blind, and some people were damaged by it obviously. So all ranks were forbidden. So, you probably ignored that. No means of implementing that anyway. And they weren’t all thieves and robbers fortunately. I have never ever been on a Wings Parade. That’s an achievement. You just brought it to my mind. What a shame. Not really. Something always intervened.
CB: But you didn’t get any illness in Canada did you?
FDS: Yeah.
CB: Oh, you did. What did you get?
FDS: Scarlet fever.
CB: Right. Was that at the end of the course or when?
FDS: I was at Trenton at the time. No. I was sent to Trenton which was a hell of a big base. When was I sent to Trenton? I think this was how I came to miss wings or something. I had this, I was having an examination of some sort that was important and I sent my apologies and said, ‘I have an infection.’ It was a ring around the wrist. I thought it was. I didn’t think it was an infection. I said, ‘It’s just a sore ring but I’ve overslept but I’ll come and do it because I can pass.’ ‘You won’t.’ Looked at it. You’ve got scarlet fever. Oh right. You’ve got to go through —' they drove me off in a large posh vehicle to a civilian hospital. Put me on the ground floor. Put me in one of those silly operation gown things that buttoned at the back that wouldn’t do up and I had a room on my own. I said, ‘What’s going to happen now?’ They said, ‘Well, you’re going to be isolated for four weeks or six weeks’. I said, ‘Well, that’ll be nice won’t it?’ Anyway, they brought me no food so I rang my bell they came and they said, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘I’m out through that window if I don’t get some food. I’ve had no food since breakfast.’ ‘Oh. You’ll get some.’ So they brought some. It was terrible. I was supposed to be on a starvation diet. I don’t know. I was there about six weeks. That’s how I got an intervening bit missing things. They came and brought an me ice cream. The people who walked past the window. ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘I’m an Englishman imprisoned here.’ And they had a poor little kid in a room as it were over there. He was dying from [pause] what was it called, the horse [unclear] bug?
Other: Tetanus.
FDS: Tetanus. Yeah.
CB: Tetanus. Right.
Other: Lockjaw.
FDS: Because the chap who had to keep an eye on me was also keeping an eye on him and doing other jobs. He said, ‘I’ll leave this door open. You can see him. If he has any great problem or distress he’ll wave at you. That wasn’t very pleasant but there you are. They were all very kind. I got back and sent to Hamilton and of course everybody had gone. That’s how I came to miss. Right. I wasn’t deprived of wings. They could have kept me there for the next quarter though but I’d finished. There we are. That was Hamilton.
CB: So you travelled from Hamilton, Ontario back. How did you go?
FDS: From Picton?
CB: From Picton. And where did you go?
FDS: This you’ll find difficult to believe. I went to the holding unit. Whatever it was called. I don’t know what that was called. It was holding unit for entering and exiting Canada. It was huge by the time I left after a couple of years. But I went round from there to New York. New York, guess what I came back on. The Queen Mary. I get bounced about don’t I? I was the only observer of the four hundred and ninety nine pilots and me. And five hundred American nurses, and about five thousand Americans. And they put a guy, put a bloke with a gun on the door for these [unclear] I said to one of them, I asked the Yank, ‘What’s this bloke armed for?’ I said, ‘I’m going to be armed if they’re going to walk around armed.’ He said, ‘I don’t know really.’ I said, ‘Nothing, there’s nothing there would tempt any of us [unclear] if he’s unarmed. [laughs] They said, ‘You will get one meal a day once we leave harbour.’ And once we left harbour they were all being seasick. You could get food any time you liked. And the Queen Mary came in to Scotland and I came down from Scotland to Bournemouth. Stayed at Bournemouth for six weeks or so waiting to be posted and it was a Canadian unit, it’s a Canadian run, very nice. Good summer. I went down to the local pub there and there was a Wren there and I thought I know her. And I said to her, there was nobody else about, so I said, ‘Don’t get frightened.’ Nobody else there. I started off with a very unusual line, ‘I know you.’ And she said, ‘Yes. I know. I know you from when I was down at Tangmere.’ Tangmere, near the coast. We used to go to the coast and she was one of the girls I met with because most of the entry were local blokes. My, my other seventeen companions were nearly all local. And that’s how, you know they introduced you to the local girls and boys you know. Quite interesting. Jean Marsh that was. So I had her companionship for a short while and guess what? Where I went next? I’m damned sure it’s next, Scotland isn’t it?
CB: For the OTU.
FDS: OTU.
CB: Ok. So, where was that?
FDS: I’ve got the unit in mind.
CB: Elgin was it?
FDS: Pardon?
CB: Was it at Elgin?
FDS: Yeah. No, Lossie.
CB: Lossiemouth, Ok.
FDS: I met a CO of Lossie about couple of meetings [unclear] ago. I’m right aren’t it?
CB: Yeah. Lossiemouth first.
FDS: Which one was it? 12?
CB: Well, you —
FDS: Was that 12th ?
CB: That was 20.
FDS: Well, it was 12 that I went as a staff member later on. We haven’t got very far have we?
CB: We’re doing alright. So you had two OTUs. You had —
FDS: No. I went to the other OTU as an instructor.
CB: Oh right.
FDS: Between tours.
CB: Ok, yeah.
FDS: Which was the normal.
CB: Yes.
FDS: But I got off it in five months because I posted, I posted myself as you will see. I applied for a posting and I’ve got a letter there if you can read it and it says I’m applying for instruction in new instruments and it says, “No permission. No.’ Exclamation mark. ‘This man has been only been off five months and cannot be spared.’ He actually put on it. [unclear] He went off on leave that week and I went to the orderly room and I said, ‘Is there [laughs] is there a spare posting?’ They said, you know, posted. They said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘I’m off.’
CB: So where did you go next?
FDS: Where am I now?
CB: So you’re at the OTU. What did you do at the OTU? You had to crew up first.
FDS: Oh yeah. That was when one of the Royals flew into the hill and got killed didn’t he? They were, what they were doing they were using —
CB: The Duke of Kent.
FDS: Wellingtons until they were knackered and then they put them on to OTU where they were even more knackered and that’s what happened. He was on training I think, very sad.
CB: The Duke of Kent. Yeah.
FDS: It was. Yeah.
CB: So, you got to Lossiemouth. What? How did you crew up?
FDS: Just stood around in a heap as usual. They were crewing up and I crewed up with Alec Watson. I must be, I want you to be very, very careful and scrupulous. I’m sure you will be here. If I say he, he became a bit diffident in sight of a target. He finished. He was all right. He didn’t go off LMF but they would have posted him off LMF if somebody had witnessed it I’m sure. He never [pause] he hesitated. But I should have thought that fifty percent of them hesitated.
CB: Are we talking about at the OTU?
FDS: Hmm?
CB: Are we talking about at the OTU.
FDS: Not at the OTU. At that point. No.
CB: Right.
FDS: Later on when I was training, when I was instructing at OTU he did bullseyes. What was a bullseye then?
CB: They were practice raids weren’t they?
FDS: Yeah, they were going out, tipping the, actually when 617 did their job I think somebody said no other aircraft? What a load of rubbish. I’ve got one veg which is down as a no sortie by some bloke. Six and a half hours. No sortie. I could have kicked him in the crutch. He obviously was not an operator. He just signed it, you know and said oh [pause]. Naughty that. Worst things that was done. But I crewed up there with Watson. The rear gunner of that crew was killed later. I could have found out how but I didn’t see anymore. I thought, well that’s being a bit morbid. The others survived their, that one tour so —
CB: So you became a crew at the OTU.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: Was the, were you did the whole crew then go on to the squadron?
FDS: Yeah.
CB: So which —
FDS: I think. Can I — [pause]
CB: We’ll stop again.
[recording paused]
CB: So from the OTU you were posted to a squadron. What was that and what were they flying?
FDS: 196 Wellingtons. I’d better have that back again now.
CB: Where were they?
FDS: I remember. Hmm?
CB: Where were they flying from?
FDS: Just north of York.
CB: Linton on Ouse, was it?
FDS: No.
[pause]
FDS: Just as well it’s been dealt with as an archive, isn’t it? 196 May, Picton, ah [pause] December ’42.
[pause]
[recording paused]
CB: April ’43. Right. So, 196 was April ’43.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: Right.
FDS: It says here.
CB: That was the full crew.
FDS: Ops Duisburg. Yeah.
CB: From the OTU.
FDS: Well, a full crew of five isn’t it? Ops to Duisburg. Oh, and gardening. Gardening looked like a soft option. It wasn’t. I can remember we went there. Six aircraft went gardening with a couple of mines and only us came back. And there’s six hours and five minutes. That’s not [pause] that’s rather a long time in enemy territory. There we are, and ’43, 196, May. Do we want any of those?
CB: Well, just to know what did you do in. What sort of raids were you doing in your Wellington with 196?
FDS: Killing people with —
CB: But where?
FDS: Mixed bomb loads.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: Not very big bomb loads really in retrospect.
CB: But where were the targets?
FDS: Well, Germany. At that time, anyway. I don’t think they did anything. I’m trying to think of any others. I don’t think so. Dortmund. Oh, Dortmund. DNCO. Not Carried Out. Two hours fifty. Doesn’t say why, but it does say an air test. We did another one gardening. You see why I was allowed to go off on my own I think. There’s another one.? No you wouldn’t know the sortie. Six hours five minutes. Return from St Eval.
CB: Because gardening is mine laying.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: And what height would you fly when you were dropping mines?
FDS: Well, above nought feet but not much above fifteen hundred. If you did it, if you did it very much lower they’d go off and if you did it much higher they’d go off. So they were always, we had a Naval chap come round and explained the fusing, very carefully. The [pause] we, we had bombs and things. You had two, two little cavities. One cavity had liquid in it and the other didn’t. Well, the one that didn’t was sent out and of course they’d drill and say, ‘Ah a one cavity bomb,’ and then they’d drill them again and bang it would go off. They altered them all the time. A fuse [unclear] Some of them, some of them pretty obviously were more or less instant which is difficult.
CB: You’re talking about the bomb disposal people dealing with the bombs when they were found.
FDS: Made it very difficult.
CB: Ok.
FDS: Return from St Eval [pages turning] 196, June, gardening Lorient, DCO. Return from East Moor, engine spare. Air to air bombing practice, air test, air firing. Here we are. 21st Krefeld. Two five hundred, seven small bomb containers, DCO. The 22nd ops Mülheim. Two five hundreds, seven small bomb containers.
CB: What governed the choice of bombs then? The combinations.
FDS: The CO. Well, the command group.
CB: But it was to do with the target was it?
FDS: Group would decide.
CB: Yes.
FDS: Well, if it would burn well they’d have more incendiaries.
CB: Right.
FDS: If it’s, I, I get the impression that if accuracy was the first call you’d have your armour piercing. So, at low level you’d have, well I’d hope they were long [laughs] long on weight, you know. Low level you didn’t do small bomb containers. Where are we now? Mülheim, Elberfeld, Gelsenkirchen. Five and a half hours. Five fifteen. Six ten. A long time isn’t it over enemy territory? June — ops Cologne. Four five hundreds. They did aim at legitimate targets, you know. The actual bomb. I don’t know if you’ve seen the bomb maps. Have you seen the actual, the night maps?
CB: Where the bombs are dropped.
FDS: Where the black, yeah.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: Where there were, I’ve got some but I’m not sure where they are if you want. Oh. A Monica test. Yeah.
CB: So just describe Monica would you?
FDS: Oh, I can’t.
CB: So, that’s your tail warning radar.
FDS: They could pick us up very well.
CB: For night fighters.
FDS: They could pick us up very well. July — St Nazaire. Return from Chivenor. That was six hours forty minutes. Ops Cologne five hours. Advanced base Harwell. Gardening Lorient, six hours ten minutes. That was on the 5th. Gardening Lorient again.
CB: So you did quite a bit of mine laying.
FDS: Yeah. Did a —
CB: And how did you feel about that?
FDS: That was about the time, was that about the time they were trying to run the battleships, the German battleships —
CB: Yes.
FDS: Were trying to run up the coast.
CB: The Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau.
FDS: And we were trying to drop mines.
CB: In the way.
FDS: [unclear] relatively harmless bullets I suppose.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: Because they all went off at different [unclear]. Watson, gardening again Lorient. Gardening Dutch coast.
Other: On a run was it, were you occupied all the time or were you —
FDS: Oh, yes. You were frightened from when you took off. Nervous shall we say. Yeah. Nervous before take-off because you could land at the end of the runway with a full bomb load which was not very comfortable. It happened the odd time. Then you were going around and around missing each other in the clouds if you were lucky and then you went at what? At ten thousand feet. You could be shot down over your own airfield. Some were.
Other: By whom?
FDS: Germans.
Other: Right.
FDS: They were only twenty minutes flight from Britain remember. They could get over here very quickly.
CB: I’m just going to stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
FDS: Well, you were always busy because you were navigating your entry. Two navigators in effect. They and what you could call broadly a DR navigator and the IT.
CB: So the dead reckoning navigator —
FDS: Yeah.
CB: Is the DR. And the IT is the one using the electronics.
FDS: That’s right.
CB: Ok. So we’ll come to those in a moment.
FDS: We swapped them around a bit.
CB: Right. And on, so on your tour with 196, did you do the full tour or did you then go and do something else?
FDS: No. 196 after about twenty operations 196 for some reason was, well a good reason converted to Halifaxes. Some of it was diverted to Halifaxes. I think Watson with the remainder of that crew, I think they went on to Halifaxes to finish that tour and I flew spare. I flew spare. All sorts of odds and sods. Flight Commander Edmondson was one but as Squadron leader.
CB: But still in, still in Wellingtons you were flying spare.
FDS: I think this was Stirlings.
CB: You —
FDS: That was it. I’m sorry. I’m confusing myself here.
CB: Right. So, just to step back a bit 196 you did twenty ops.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: And at the end of your twenty ops what did you switch to?
FDS: Well, I think I was Stirlings.
CB: You did.
FDS: I know I was on —
CB: Never on a Halifax.
FDS: No Halifax.
CB: No. Right.
FDS: The Stirling was a hell of a rotten aircraft, I think.
CB: What was, what was the point of the Stirling?
FDS: It didn’t climb very well. It was electrical more or less throughout so that you could select undercarriage up, and then select undercarriage down and one wheel would come down. So you’d say to the trainee crew, ‘You can find, finds yourself a handle and you can turn that two hundred times, and that will lower the wheel, and if you’re lucky it will lock and show, and do you do that?’ And we said, ‘No, we don’t do that.’ ‘What do you do?’ ‘Well, we select down, one wheel comes down, we select it back up again and then we hit the [laughs] hit the plug hard with the nearest blunt instrument and it comes down.’ They were very heavy too. They couldn’t climb. We took, in the early days did a climbing test around Wales. Not very good. And I went with a squadron leader, I think. Modane Tunnel. We had to go round the taller mountains to get down to the Modane Tunnel.
CB: I’m just going to stop a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: In, in flying with 196 it says that you got to the end of the tour.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: Having done twenty nine and a half. What was the half?
FDS: Some idiot’s impression. That is you know —
CB: It was an operation that wasn’t more than a certain number of hours was it?
FDS: I don’t know what the [pause] I never queried.
CB: Right.
FDS: I never queried anything like that.
CB: So, you got to the end of the tour. What happened next?
FDS: Trainee. I was training.
CB: Yes. So you, you were posted to an OTU.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: That was at Chipping Warden.
FDS: There was two instructors per course. You know, ex-ops. And what they were doing we had correctly, we did the rule book instructions, and then what was more useful to them was telling them the contemporary position which was more useful really. So that we, you know you don’t know what to expect if you were fresh off a training course. And the first time I went up I was seeing flashes. I said, ‘What are the flashes?’ You know. Little things like that [laughs] ‘People firing at us,’ they said. I said, ‘Are they near?’ ‘If you’re near you’ll hear it. And if they’re very near you’ll smell it.’ Dead right, yeah. You’re as naïve as that. It’s a great shame. A lot of bumping going on. Of course you suddenly realised there a, later on with Lancasters of course four hundred all going, all briefed for the same trip. So if they followed it literally they were flying up each other’s jacksy nearly I would think.
CB: So at the end of your tour with 196 you went to number 12 OTU at Chipping Warden.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: So, there were two. A specialist for each. There were two navigators there doing the instruction. You were one of them. How often did you fly?
FDS: I’m just wondering if the other one was, yes, he must have been. How often? Well, I don’t know. It says it down there.
CB: But I mean in practical terms how often did the —
FDS: Didn’t seem.
CB: Trainee crew have a navigator with them?
FDS: Ah, I see. Well, there was a requisite amount and I can’t remember what it was, it would. Does twenty hours sound sensible?
CB: Was it? Right. Might have been. Yeah.
FDS: It’s —
CB: But, but most of the training you did was on the ground was it of the trainee aircrew at the Operational Training Unit?
FDS: I would think, yes. Yeah.
CB: And if you went on a trip with them you’d be standing next to them.
FDS: Oh yeah. Yeah. Be with them. Yeah.
CB: So, what were your impressions of being an instructor?
FDS: Well, you recognised the essentials of it. And because Command, whoever it is can never be as updated as the people that come off ops. And the advances in tactics and technology of both parties was extreme by about that time. From there on all sorts of technology had been flourished. And Germans showed great courage I thought. And tenacity. I met one or two since, you know. Post war. Very interesting. One chap had over sixty Lancasters to his credit. Six or eight in a night.
CB: Amazing isn’t it?
FDS: Yeah. They were good at it.
CB: So, how, how does the time, how did it at the OTU how long did you stay there normally? Did you know how long you were going to be there?
FDS: You were supposed to be, as it says in the, my CO’s note. You were supposed to be off six months minimum.
CB: Right.
FDS: Generally about a year. Six months to a year.
CB: Right. So, in May ’44 you finished at 12 OTU, and you went to a Heavy Conversion Unit.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: And that was 1678.
FDS: That’s at Waterbeach that.
CB: Right.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: And what were you flying there?
FDS: Lancasters. Don’t ask me which mark. They played about with Marks 1, 2, and 3 and I never knew which we were on.
CB: Right.
FDS: They were, they were very similar. Very similar.
CB: And because you’d been an OTU then you weren’t coming through as an instructor. You weren’t coming through to the HCU as a student. You were a qualified person so how did you crew up in the HCU?
FDS: I went as an odd man.
CB: All the time or just temporarily?
FDS: As soon as I got there. I wanted to get back on a squadron and have a bit of freedom.
CB: Sure.
FDS: Complete freedom.
CB: So, how long were you, but when you, as an odd man but didn’t you crew up with anybody there?
FDS: I think it may say it. That’s my escape picture, isn’t it?
CB: Yeah. Your escape picture in here.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: So at the, what my question is at the HCU. The HCU was the point from which people joined a squadron.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: So normally it was a complete crew that would transfer from the HCU —
FDS: Yeah.
CB: To the squadron. So, how did you fit into that?
FDS: They needed a bomb aimer.
CB: Yeah. You were put —
FDS: Bomb aiming.
CB: You did bomb aiming did you?
FDS: I think they wanted a bomb aimer.
CB: Right.
FDS: Because I kept putting down bomb aimer forever more. Yeah.
CB: So, at the HCU you were bomb aiming.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: Ok. And what was the aircraft?
FDS: I think by this —
CB: So that was the Lancaster.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: And then you went to a squadron.
FDS: That’s right.
CB: And that was 514.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: Ok. So what was the crew like there? Your pilot was Warrant Officer Beaton.
FDS: Yeah, inexperienced but good. He died as Flying Officer Beaton DSO and he thoroughly earned it both times. But he, he and his crew, I’d left, I always leave just before they have an accident. I left and they, I left at the time I’d finished a tour and he went over the day after the war ended to bring back prisoners of war and crashed. Killed the lot. So —
CB: Operation Exodus.
FDS: Hmmn?
CB: Operation Exodus, yes.
FDS: Yeah. Or something like that. So, I was very careful how I trod because I wrote to the, the Air Force itself and said, “What’s the account of this?” They couldn’t account for it. I thought they might say pilot error. They didn’t. And they were quite right. The bodies were all in the back of the aircraft and in practice what should have happened whoever was being loadmaster as they now call the bomb aimer presumably say, ‘You sit there and don’t move a bloody muscle. It doesn’t matter what reason.’ Because you know the inside of a Lanc and if you grab on any bit of it you’re impeding and the, what do you call it when you push forward? When you put the nose down.
CB: When you put the control column down. Yeah.
FDS: What’s the —
CB: So, the elevators. Yeah.
FDS: No. No. No. The trim.
CB: Oh, the trimmer, the trimmer, yeah.
FDS: The trim was full forward.
CB: Oh, was it?
FDS: He was complaining that he’d got some sort of aircraft fault. He was going to make some sort of emergency landing and of course he did that with them all scuttling in a panic. I mean I was sorry for them. They’d been in prison for three or four years or more and they’d perhaps had never flown before. So the right thing to do is to say, ‘You’ve never flown before but this lot have and they’ve done it safely and there’s no enemy fire. Sit where you are and don’t — ’ You would be very conscious of the centre of gravity, and if one went to the rear and the others tried to rescue him.
CB: Do you know where the plane crashed?
FDS: Forward trim.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: And it was forward trimmed. Did a flat spin within about twenty minutes of the take off.
CB: Oh, did it? From Belgium.
FDS: France.
CB: Oh France, was it?
FDS: Just on the edge. They are all buried just out, on the edge of the district where all the riots were happening. The French suburbs. I can’t think of the name of it.
CB: Right.
FDS: It’ll come. But the whole lot, great shame. Captains to privates and an Americans who’d thumbed a lift illegally. Well, improperly rather.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: Not illegally.
CB: So, it might have been overloaded anyway.
FDS: Only one.
CB: So, when you were —
FDS: Twenty three.
CB: Pardon?
FDS: Twenty three of them.
CB: In the aircraft. With 514 what are your recollections of flying with that Lancaster squadron?
FDS: I thoroughly enjoyed it. I liked the daylights. Some people didn’t. They preferred the nights. But I preferred the daylights. You could see where you were and what you were doing precisely. Real precision stuff, you know. And they were good.
CB: How accurately did you think you could bomb?
FDS: Well, I’m not bragging. A hundred percent. I could do it. But only because of the kit I had I hasten to add. The kit we had at the end was brilliant, but if you asked me how it worked [laughs] it was modern IT before they’d even dreamed of it I think. The Mark 14 was quite a good sight.
CB: Bombsight. Yes.
FDS: Quite a good bomb sight. You could bomb reasonably accurately with that. There was not an excuse normally for being over about what fifty yards with that I would think. But with the latest stuff you could be spot on. That’s why I’m sure you are. I read these people saying they should be more careful in their bombing, and I think just get up there and give yourself precisely thirty seconds to make a decision because that’s what you’d got. And now we had longer to make a decision. A bit longer, anyway. Yeah.
CB: So, when you were lying down in the front operating the bombsight what’s going through your mind looking down at the flak coming up at you?
FDS: Oh, very little. I didn’t [laughs] I have a convenient mind. I shut off. So it gets familiar. The minute I’m free of direct responsibility but —
CB: But actually you’ve got your eye on the target haven’t you? So —
FDS: Absolutely.
CB: So, you’re not —
FDS: Full marks for that. Absolute concentration. Regardless of anything else. But once it’s done it’s done, that’s it.
CB: And after the bombs have gone then you have to wait for the camera to work.
FDS: Yeah, for flash work. The flash had a nasty habit of exploding once every so often.
CB: In the aeroplane.
FDS: It’s like a bomb going off. A bloody great hole.
CB: Did it happen on your plane?
FDS: Not with the Lanc.
CB: So, you joined 514 in June, just at D-Day.
FDS: When?
CB: You joined 514 Squadron —
FDS: Yeah.
CB: In June 1944.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: So D-Day time.
FDS: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So that’s why you had a lot of daylight bombing wasn’t it?
FDS: Before, during and after. Yeah.
CB: Yes.
FDS: Got a nice letter from the French. With the [pause] that nice little brigadier general to give the award.
CB: Your Legion of Honour.
FDS: Pardon?
CB: They gave you the Legion of Honour.
FDS: Yeah. They gave it to six Typhoon pilots and me.
CB: Did they?
FDS: Wrote a kind letter. A very nice letter as well from the [pause] whoever was the deputy to the man who was boss then.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: It was a very good letter as we. One of the more thoughtful letters I’ve ever received officially. Very good. I’ve got it somewhere.
Other: They singled you out as —
FDS: Couldn’t single out seven thousand.
Other: No. So it was — yeah.
FDS: They single you out in the sense that they give you a decent personal reply and a decent personal awarding.
CB: On three of your trips with 514 you flew as a gunner, a rear as the rear gunner, two of them.
FDS: Hmmn?
CB: You flew as a rear gunner.
FDS: That may well be.
CB: On a couple of occasions.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: Well, I did all the courses.
CB: Yeah, ok. So when you came to the end of that tour of 514 what happened next?
FDS: Well, I saw my CO because I was going to be posted and I said, ‘I gather I’m being posted. I’d like to, you know, I’d like to go back to my reserved job now if I’m not going to, can I fly anymore?’ And he said, ‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so.’ So I said, ‘Well, you’re the boss.’ ‘What are you going to do then?’ I said, ‘I’d like to go back to [unclear] I’m going back to agriculture.’ Which I did.
CB: So, how did it work? You had the conversation with him but how did the mechanism work?
FDS: Ah. Walking along [pause] somebody, who was it? We passed the, what do they call them these days? I don’t know. Further education training officer on the squadron.
CB: Right.
FDS: F&ET I think it was called and they could make recommendations I gather. And he said, ‘What are you doing as you’re moving off?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know really. If I could move off I’d go — ’ I said, ‘I’m going back to agriculture anyway.’ He said, ‘What were you doing before?’ I said, ‘Well, I’d been at agricultural college. I’d hope to do a diploma and be decently qualified. It’s no good saying I can do a bit of farming. You can prove that by showing it but to know it you’ve got to do it and I’m out of touch.’ So, he said, ‘What about, what about a graduation? What do — ? ’ I said, ‘First of all I don’t think I could do it, and secondly I don’t know that it would be necessarily a great advantage to be a graduate in it.’ So, I rang up my friend who had been put in other words, he was reserve through health. He was genuine enough. He had graduated through London University, I think. I rang him up. I remember the call very well and I said, ‘The Royal Air Force through the offices of the squadron have decided that I could have a degree course. What do you think?’ He said, ‘What do you think?’ I said , ‘Well, I’d do it if I think it would be of any value, but I can’t see how it would be of direct value to me and it would be three more years.’ I said, ‘I’m already six years behind everybody else. I said, ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I’m six and a half years ruddy years.’ [laughs] He said, ‘You’ll walk it.’ I said, ‘What makes you say that and he said we’ve kept your brain alive during the war and it hasn’t gone to sleep in the last forty eight. He said , ‘I’d go.’ So that was it. I went to see the F&E. He arranged an interview in London. Oh, they got in touch with the principal of the college I’d been at. Had I any reference? So, I said no, so they referred to the old chap who very gladly backed me up which I thought was very kind. And who else signed it? Anyway, I got a couple of references and I was accepted on the next course where there was the opportunity.
CB: Where was this?
FDS: Durham. I applied for Cambridge actually, taking it that it was near Waterbeach and I knew the area fairly well and guess what? They were full. They were full. Almost as soon as I applied they were full anyway. They were about eighty ninety percent ex-service being fair to the universities and they were very good.
CB: So when was this?
FDS: I got married. All these things happened at once. I left the Air Force. I left the Air Force in ‘45 did I? Or ’46. I got married. I was married when I was still in the Air Force. We were. And I was in charge of MT for a few months. Well, nominally in charge. A flight sergeant found himself suddenly [unclear] [laughs] I said, ‘Who runs this unit? I do so far as you’ll continue. When I leave you can inherit it if you like.’ [laughs] So he ran it. He was very good.
CB: What rank were you at this, at this stage?
FDS: Warrant officer.
CB: Right. So just take —
FDS: Yes. On my first unit, the 196 said you can go, you can go on for commissioning. I said, ‘No. I don’t want to be a tiny fish in a tiny pool.’ And it didn’t seem very, I said, ‘It’s not my career. It’s not my choice.’ When I said I didn’t particularly want to fly, true.
CB: Let’s take a step back.
FDS: Just kill people.
CB: You finished in 514.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: Where did you get posted or did you remain with the transport at Waterbeach?
[pause]
FDS: I wasn’t at, I wasn’t at Waterbeach for transport.
CB: Oh, right. So where, where did you get posted to?
FDS: That unit was Hucknall.
CB: Right.
FDS: Watnall. Watnall. RAF Watnall, W A T N A L L. It was also a Rolls Royce area. Watnall, Hucknall. I was so damned busy leaving the Air Force and getting married and thinking about what I was going to do to earn a living and [laughs] I went out and had a drink one night and there was some youngish blokes I thought at the bar the other end and nobody else. ‘Would you like to have a drink with us?’ So, I said, ‘Yeah. Fine.’ They said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘I’m leaving as soon as I can.’ ‘What are you going to do?’ ‘I said, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ They said, ‘Why don’t you come over for casting. We’re open casting.’ And they were open cast coal mining. He said, ‘There’s a lot of money in it.’ I said, ‘I’d be destroying the countryside.’ ‘No, you wouldn’t. We’ll put it back when we’ve finished.’ I ought to have don’t it really. I’d have had three years of extra income because I had a grant but it wasn’t as you can imagine it wasn’t overly generous.
CB: Where did you meet your wife?
FDS: This must be exceedingly tedious for you.
Other: No. No. It’s very, very interesting.
CB: Where did you meet your wife? She was a WAAF was she?
FDS: As I was driving a lorry across from, at Watnall, it wasn’t Watnall. it was Hucknall was the name of the —
CB: Right.
FDS: Hucknall. The airfield was one side and the sort of flying bit was, the flying bit was one side and the admin the other and I was going from the admin side to the flying side with a lorry. Just for the fun of the thing I think. And going down as I got to the gate guess what? There was a lady coming in on her own, and that was my wife. I saw her and I said, ‘My word, she’s new to the place.’ I knew that because it was a Polish unit.
CB: Oh.
FDS: So, I went to the orderly room and a chap called [unclear] Brown was in charge there and I said, ‘[unclear] you know everything. Who’s the lady who’s just reported in? What section?’ ‘She’s on MT.’ I said, ‘Well, well, well [laughs] We’ll put her on duty the first night she’s there. Make her [unclear] her duties are and I’ll meet her there.’ So, she said —
CB: Never looked back did you?
FDS: Hmmn?
CB: Never looked back.
FDS: I didn’t. She did [laughs] she said, she said, ‘I walked in. There was this flight sergeant who took the details because he was doing the admin. I was sitting there,’ she said, ‘This air crew bloke was sitting there with his feet on the table himself.’ I said. ‘Until you came along who else was there to please, I ask you?’
Other: Charmer.
FDS: There she is. Up there on the brown.
Other: Yeah.
FDS: Framed one.
CB: Lovely.
FDS: When I had some hair.
CB: How long did you have to wait to get out of the RAF after that?
FDS: I don’t know. It didn’t seem awfully long. A few weeks. They did, they did their best for me. I’ll tell you what I was very annoyed about. I did an MT course where I was going to supposedly to pass the time. ‘What would you like to do?’ I said, ‘Well, the flight sergeant is going to run it and I’ll do it nominally and I’m going to learn how to do it. So they posted me up to Blackpool I think it was. Blackpool, Weeton, Weeton. Does that sound right?
Other: Yeah.
FDS: Weeton.
Other: Weedon.
FDS: Hmmn?
Other: Weedon. No. Not Weedon.
FDS: Your question was again, sorry?
CB: Yes. When did you leave?
FDS: When did I leave? I’m thinking of when I left. I’m trying to relate it to courses for the time but I didn’t do the actual course. I did two weeks of the course only. That’ll be recorded. I’d been driving for years on farms. With, you know pushing hay suites and stuff.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: So I could drive and [pause] yeah.
CB: And the course was running the MT section, wasn’t it?
FDS: I did, yeah. I did about two weeks there, and the, whoever was dealing with the admin said, ‘There are four Crossley lorries to go down with four thousand pound bombs on, down to Newmarket and it will just take up the timing, you won’t have the tedium of doing the course.’ I said, ‘Well, thank you very much.’ ‘And you are in charge of it.’ And I said, ‘What bombs are they?’ ‘Four thousand pounders, but they’re empty. They’re taking them down to get them filled.’ But we had outriders with red flags and these old, you know Crossley lorries with —
Other: Yeah.
CB: Canvas roof.
FDS: Left hand drive. So, I drove my Crossley lorry. The roads cleared. The Americans would get out our way. Saw the red flags. These lorries. Took us two days to get down from Blackpool to Newmarket where I left. I don’t know what happened to the lorries. I’d done my job. Over to you. That was the last I saw of active service. I left.. Oh, I can’t remember when I left. January. Must have been January. We were married in January, weren’t we? No. We were married. Still in the Air Force. Yeah. I was still in the Air Force then.
CB: You said you were married in 1945.
FDS: Yeah. I thought. Yeah.
CB: It was fairly quick.
FDS: Oh, November to, it was from I do remember that it was from November to January. Yeah.
CB: So then you did your agricultural college at Durham. What did you do after that?
FDS: University of Durham.
CB: Durham University.
FDS: They haven’t got a farm there. They did useful stuff from my point of view. Because I was familiar with the kit then and it changed. In the same way that the Air Force changed its technology so did agriculture.
CB: How long was the agricultural course at Durham University?
FDS: Three years. And if you did an honours degree it was four.
CB: Right.
FDS: So I went to see the boss and said, ‘What do I do now? I’m seeking advice.’ He said, ‘Well, you’ve a choice. You can do an honours degree but agricultural colleges are being offered to counties and they haven’t got them established so you could get in on the ground floor if you wish. ‘But,’ he said, you know, ‘I’d back you for either.’ So I backed for three jobs. The agricultural Co-op in London, and Hartbury had just, Jack Griffiths had just bought Hartbury on behalf of the Authority. So I was one of the first as lecturer agriculture. Then became vice principal there for about thirteen years. And then I did vice principal up in Staffordshire, Penkridge.
CB: And you retired from there, did you?
FDS: I retired from there. Oh, and then [laughs] I was invited to sit on the panel for whatever it was called when they allowed farmers so much milk, you know. Milk quota. The Milk Quota Panel. Would I sit on the Milk Quota Panel for Gloucestershire? I said, ‘No. I’ll do it for any other county if you wish but not Gloucester. I’m not going to quota people I know.’ So I was quoting, quoting still people I knew in Wiltshire. Just funny really. Strange.
CB: So what brought you to Gloucester?
FDS: Hmm?
CB: What brought you here to Gloucester?
FDS: The job. The fact that I knew it. I didn’t know Gloucester. I knew of Gloucester, and I knew of Gloucestershire but I didn’t know it at all really.
CB: And at what age did you retire?
FDS: Whisper it quietly, sixty two. I was going to retire at sixty. You could retire at sixty and I had enough bottling about one way or another. I didn’t take, I didn’t think I could subject my wife to dotting about. You can see from that I was dotting about, you know.
CB: Yes. Yeah.
FDS: All the time.
CB: Yeah. How many children have you got?
FDS: There was three jobs so I went for this one and got it. It had accommodation. A clapped out cottage on the side of the main road where you turned left to go in to Hartbury. So they said just wanted to let you know. So they then put me in the corner house of the college and a very busy old lady, the butler’s wife came across. She said, ‘Captain Canning, and Captain Ramsey were there.’ I said, ‘I know but it’s been disinfected since they were there.’ They were there on, you know during the war.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: He was still there post war.
CB: Was he?
FDS: A pathetic old man. And he got married to quite a nice lady and they said she’s having a baby. I said, ‘Good. Well done.’ And it was a girl. So that was the end of George Canning, Prime Minister and foreign minister and aspiring gauleiter of the south west. He would have been.
Other: Did he go to Australia?
FDS: No.
Other: No.
FDS: Why did I say Australia?
Other: No. I was asking that.
FDS: I was in Australia.
Other: No. No. Canning.
FDS: Oh, that Canning.
Other: Yeah.
FDS: Canning was in charge of [pause] he was in charge was he? George Canning was foreign minister.
Other: Right.
FDS: Way back.
CB: How many children did you have?
FDS: Two. I’ve four grandchildren and six great grandchildren. Only one grand-daughter. Don’t put down regrettably because the others might read that [laughs]
CB: Right.
FDS: You never know anyway.
CB: Finally, what would you say was the most memorable point of the war for you?
FDS: Meeting my wife. It was.
CB: What was the —
FDS: Memorable of the actual war [pause] I think the second tour. And I would say particularly in daylight. I don’t know if she, I don’t think it should be recorded because I, I had an understanding with my superiors of 514 that we could please ourselves, Weeton and I, within reason. So that if for some reason you didn’t have a primary.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: You could go and do a secondary.
CB: Sure.
FDS: And it was about the time that Montgomery would ring up and say, ‘I can’t move out of — ’ it wasn’t Le Havre. It was —
Other: Caen. Caen.
FDS: Caen. ‘Can you make it that it possible for me to go?’ He told Harris. Harris was fresh from area bombing so Harris raced three hundred Lancs down to a town the size Newham, and it was a pile of rubble. He came with his tanks through it. They couldn’t put anything through it for about a week.
CB: Right.
FDS: Yeah. Oh, great fun. And Villers-Bocage was another place I knew. They got stopped there and the Germans ill advisedly, well advisedly actually had a practice Panzer group and they were practicing, and they were practicing right near our troops conveniently for them and they were about to set off the following day we were told. And they were in a wood outside. Villers-Bocage is a nice little village now but there was a great big hole there after we went there. Three hundred Lancs. They all bombed. The dust came up to ten thousand feet.
CB: Did it really?
FDS: Unbelievable.
CB: Wiped them out.
FDS: People banged into each other which that was a loss. Easy to do if you’re fairly close.
CB: And so the —
FDS: But that was a good job. I thought it was a good job anyway. I was sorry for the people underneath.
CB: Wiped out the whole thing, yeah.
FDS: What?
CB: Wiped out the whole thing.
FDS: Oh, not very nice for them at all.
CB: No. When there, when there were air to air collisions, what normally happened then?
FDS: Well, at least one is lost normally. I don’t know why that is really. What happens. Nothing really can happen but I see discipline. If you’re told to fly in a loose gaggle who can blame you? What about when you drop your bombs through somebody underneath you? That happened as well.
CB: Did you see that happen?
FDS: No. I saw where it had happened. You know, a Lanc with the front of it off. They stopped short at the sort of windscreen virtually. Bought it. Nasty.
CB: You alluded a bit earlier to a situation that has the heading LMF.
FDS: Hmmn?
CB: So, what do you recall about lacking moral fibre in terms of —
FDS: I think the words lack of moral fibre is a disgrace to the Service. An easier way could have been chosen. They paid us the compliment of imagining that we’d all run away, I think and they thought we’d be frightened of that. That wouldn’t frighten me in to running away from it. Fear would do it. I had to go on bombing and experience fear for the only time in my life. I had not been frightened before. You don’t go through life frightened if you’re fortunate do you?
CB: No.
FDS: But I did then. I was frightened out of my guts, dear me. Mentally praying to everything in sight and not in sight.
CB: Are you talking about as a navigator or as a bomb aimer?
FDS: Either. Either in terms of fear. You’ve got to suppress it. I don’t meant that. It sounds terribly brave. If you are of a certain temperament that is what you are I think. And if your temperament is average which I’m a great mind you have your fears and you overcome them, don’t you? Really. It sounds terribly brave. If you survived that is.
CB: Sure.
FDS: Sounds good but everybody has the, I mean people say now, people, youngsters couldn’t do it. I disagree entirely. That abuses the unknown doesn’t it? I’ve got, obviously got lads there. They could do it, and if necessary they would do it. I think they’d [pause] I don’t know if they found it unnecessary, I would now. I don’t, it’s not a solution to anything. I don’t know what you do instead of bombing in Syria. I’m not that clever.
CB: You talked about one of the, your early captains having some difficulty.
FDS: I think he had a difficulty, and I think he overcame it within his limits to overcome it. But if you’re not, it sounds horrible, if you’re not prepared to press on really thoroughly you shouldn’t really be there. It’s doubtful whether it’s the right place for you.
CB: So, in circumstances where people felt they couldn’t continue what happened?
FDS: You never knew really. I heard rumours. People said they, I think it depended where, where you happened to be. I heard various stories about people being paraded and stripped of the badges, rank. What the hell difference would it make if you finished anyway? So, they’d take the stripes off or crowns or whatever. I don’t know. And they put them into [pause] I think that was a damned cheek. Put them into a labouring units, you know.
CB: Hard labour.
FDS: Hmmn?
CB: Hard labour.
FDS: Probably.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: I don’t know. It’s not a thing I can ever remember people discussing. We didn’t discuss our fears. I wouldn’t have been as candid with my own crew members as I am with you. No chance.
CB: And with the crew —
FDS: You’d admit fright, yes.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: Every, you can say especially anybody that says they weren’t frightened weren’t [laughs] they just weren’t there. At some point.
CB: Did it vary do you think according to the position in the aircraft? The role.
FDS: I think the gun, gunnery must have felt frightened because they were in isolation. But I couldn’t see the logic of people that talk about them but not the gunners themselves. Very dangerous position. Now, if you were a German pilot for the latter part of the active war when most of the killing of everything was done they divided, they tumbled the corkscrew very quickly. We knew they would. But some people didn’t and they corkscrewed so the German comes back, flies straight through the bottom part of the corkscrew underneath the aircraft, guns made and manufactured to fire upwards. Comes under the bomb bay, bump. Dissolved. There’s one flash and the lot’s gone. Now, I can understand how these people could shoot down forty to sixty easily. The dangerous bit was going in to the stream of four or five hundred aircraft who didn’t know what they were doing.
CB: In the dark.
FDS: Much more dangerous. And all of them carrying about two thousand gallons of fuel, a couple of thousand gallons of explosive of one sort or another. And fabric. Bloody cold at minus thirty with no heating [laughs] Ah but you had this woolly jacket. Didn’t you just.
CB: Did you prefer being in the Lancaster or in the Wellington?
FDS: Oh yeah. The Wellington was a wonderful aircraft of its day. It would equal the Lancaster in its virtues I think. In, in it’s possible virtues. You can climb on one engine with a four thousand pounder. The wings flap normally. That much is as you are aware and in four thousand pounder on a 1C of a Mark 10 held its [laughs] I surrender. Keeping it straight it’s not flapping at all. No. It’s, I think you admire an aircraft design that can carry eight twelve thousand pounds in one bomb. I could admire the man who can design that, and designed the Lanc. Chadwick was the Lanc and my other man whose name I’ve conveniently forgotten [pause] damn it. Bouncing bomb.
CB: Yeah. Barnes Wallis.
FDS: Barnes Wallis.
CB: Barnes Wallis. Yeah.
FDS: He designed the Wellington.
CB: The Wellington. Yeah.
FDS: Brilliant design. Every design he had is brilliant, and I believed the film that I’ve seen once or twice a very modest man. Very modest.
CB: You had two different crews on operations. How—
FDS: More than —
CB: How did they compare?
FDS: More than two different crews.
CB: Oh, did you? Right. So, how did the crews gel?
FDS: I think very well. Not just to say it. I haven’t thought of it so that’s why, why I’m quite sure. I wouldn’t hesitate to go on ops with them.
CB: So there are two parts of it. One is on ops and the other is socially.
FDS: Ah, well I was odd man out a bit. I did say, perhaps ill-advisedly when we were with the Lancs I said, ‘We have to discuss,’ which we did, ‘The possibility of bailing out and evading and we obviously are not going to evade as seven. That would be bloody silly. I do my division properly. I reckon there were three twos. I’ll volunteer for several reasons,’ I said. ‘One, I’m the only man on this crew who can make rabbit snares out of parachute wire. I’m the only man in this crew that can do [unclear] loud enough to know.’ I said, ‘Anyway, I know my way about, you don’t, but please yourself.’ ‘Big headed.’ I said, ‘That too.’ That too. No. I wouldn’t hesitate. I had the one slight reservation. I think Watson was unkind to himself really because he was very newly married. To be newly married on ops going into what looks like a living hell, and the general activity going on. It’s enough to frighten anybody that’s intelligent anyway. And if you’re frightened you slow down, don’t you? I suppose.
CB: But what do you mean by being unkind to himself?
FDS: Well, the very fact that you can, don’t quote any of this please. Don’t quote any of this.
CB: No.
FDS: Because I’d deny it. There you are. But unkind to yourself. If at some point in your life you desire to do something, and you know inside yourself you were desperately uncomfortable with doing it you’re not only heroic you’re being unkind to yourself aren’t you?
CB: Right.
FDS: No. Slow down. He wasn’t alone. I reckon four hundred aircraft. I reckon four hundred of them it was listed in many publications that fall back before they routed ops over. They didn’t know in our early days. They didn’t always route you over the target. You see on, veg, veg, you know on target with this we were very much on target. No. It’s, there was a drop back and it’s been noted in many. You must have read them surely. Which is why they routed people over target and round. That was bloody clever. And then they, [laughs] see why do you have people to train? I said, ‘Wind velocity is a dodgy thing so always check WV if you’re navigating. And even if, whatever part of the navigation you are and even, even if your crew are doing spot checks see what’s happening.
CB: You got the crew to help you with regular —
FDS: Hmm?
CB: You, you got the crew to help you with the wind velocity observations regularly did you?
FDS: Oh yeah.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: Yeah. I’m a strong believer in if you’ve got grounding in DR and you’ve got it and you could find the wind velocity and you’ve got a driver that’s obedient you’re alright. So, I said to Beaton, ‘You and I are going to get on very well, if I obey you and you obey me.’ I said, ‘You’re not going to be bossing me. I’ll boss you at least twenty minutes of it anyway.’ Well, you can’t have it. I think that must have happened with drop back. I can’t believe that a bomb aimer would sit there and sort of not get there as it were.
CB: You mean the whole crew was complicit in a way in running.
FDS: Well, I wouldn’t like to say.
CB: Right.
FDS: The others wouldn’t notice it. They’d be too damned busy. The wireless operator, well they’d be gunning and looking out for not bumping into, bumping into other aircraft I would think.
CB: So, in dropping back how would, how would that actually work?
FDS: We’d decelerate. De-throttle.
CB: Right.
FDS: Not noticeably, you know. Bring it up and you throttle back. You’re not just the [unclear] of it, you make a change. If you’ve got a headwind you used to keep going in that headwind. You could always blame the head wind. One classic occasion I can remember was, I can’t remember which one it was but obviously half the amount, half the number. Say there were two hundred, a hundred of them flew on the forecast wind and a hundred of us took our own. And the fellows who took our own got their earlier. The others came up later and we were flying back on a reciprocal course. So a hundred. Not very nice at all. You had to tumble quickly what happened.
CB: Normally after the bomb run you would turn which way?
FDS: After a bomb run well you’d run. You’d overshoot.
CB: Yes.
FDS: For the distance.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: You need to overshoot and then you’d turn. Not always starboard because if you did that always they’d be hanging about over there wouldn’t they?
CB: But you would go starboard normally would you?
FDS: There you are. I think so. I don’t know why really.
CB: You overshoot so you’re not hit by other bombs coming down, but you also do it to take the picture.
FDS: Oh, you are hit sometimes by bombs coming down.
CB: Was there, was there a prescribed time from the overshoot from release.
FDS: No.
CB: So what would you do?
FDS: It was assumed that you would drop your bombs and drop them in the right place, and they were right to stick to that assumption. Otherwise, we could have made the modifications on everything else that they could guess. No, you do as you’re told really.
CB: Yeah.
FDS: Mostly. If you wanted to draw a quick archivist comment that would be it. What is the account of bomber operations? I think, ‘Get on with it. Do as you’re told.’ And largely that works because it’s been based on other people’s experiences hasn’t it really?
CB: But how would the holding back work? How would it work for the crew holding back?
FDS: I don’t know.
CB: You were talking about earlier the crew held back.
FDS: Yeah.
CB: What would happen then? They’d get caught up back by the rest of the stream wouldn’t they?
FDS: They could be. I didn’t worry about them.
CB: No. As long as they weren’t in front of you.
FDS: Yeah. Quite. Nobody, I nearly said nobody, very few were in front of us. I think one of the great advantages we had was that we decided early on we, Beaton had that going for him.
CB: What was your worst experience would you say in the war?
FDS: Mine? [pause] I don’t know really. In terms of fright I suppose being frightened, that would be, yeah that would be the worst experience. Being frightened because it was, I’d never known it before.
CB: No.
FDS: I wasn’t afraid of everything in sight to survive. Prior to that I had no reason to believe I wasn’t going to survive. But actually the element of personal risk comes in. You’ve been hit, begin to believe in your own omnificence. You’ll survive anything. And up to a point I suppose it’s true.
CB: Yeah. Well, you did a lot of ops didn’t you?
FDS: Yeah. Hmm?
CB: You did a lot of ops.
FDS: Yeah. Yeah. I suppose I did. Yeah. Well, in fact I know I did. Actually I’ve no idea how much more than average. I don’t know what was the average overall. I know that most crews that were shot down were shot down in their first eight. And I know that I slept in the same shed as other people. The Committee of Adjustment would come round and take their kit out. That was, that’s a bit unnerving.
CB: Was it?
FDS: Not unnerving but it wasn’t, wasn’t quite the thing really. Perhaps, come around and take the kit before or after we were there [pause] Take the kit out and make room for the replacements.
Other: How long, did you have any sense of getting over it after, after the action had finished?
FDS: Older?
Other: No. Did you have any sense of getting over it? I mean it was a terribly stressful time I presume. So, today —
FDS: I don’t [pause] We always stress differently I imagine. I don’t know. There are great similarities but we’re all different. If I’m doing, give you an example that’s non - operational. Coming out of Gloucester there’s a causeway and there’s room for two vehicles going in and two coming out. I was coming out and for me everything stops to, I heard a police siren, and I thought what the hell is that bloke doing? He can’t be on my side of the road because there’s only two rows and two rows, a lorry there, a car here, a lorry de da de da. I thought what the hell is he doing? All this in a split second. And I thought the bastard’s coming up this road and if he comes up this road he’s going to have me off If he’s not careful. I can’t get him off. There’s not room to manoeuvre which I’ll certainly do if he’s coming at me. And the lorry there was just beginning to do that and I was just beginning to do that, and I thought well I’m not going to harm the lorry. And fortunately at that point he just stopped. He stopped hooting and it straightened. But there was a direct drop of about thirty feet there and you were two feet off it. That made you think a bit, you know. What do you do here, clever lad? But I’m not conscious of stress then at all. You know, I’m in command of myself and the vehicle. Frightened out of my wits but still in command. I think that’s the answer. People who go around in life hectoring other people being in command have a habit of surviving. Perhaps that’s what I noticed, I don’t know. Not a very good answer is it? I don’t know the answer.
CB: Why do you think after the war, why do you think after the war so few veterans from all the Services didn’t want to talk about what they’d done.
FDS: Well, they’d been living it for seven years, six years. I was newly married, got a new family to meet, and people to meet. I’d got to go to get a job. Too busy. And I don’t, I did, I haven’t got [pause] I hope I come across as a desire to do it now, quite honestly. I’m prepared to do it now because it seems a bit small minded not too.
CB: Well, it’s something that’s really interesting for people to understand what was going on.
FDS: I think the difficulty I see, and this is truth, I haven’t consciously lied at any point. I don’t think I would. I think people are tempted to lie, and I think some people most obviously lie and I despise that. If you’ve got the need to lie don’t go.
CB: Well, that’s been most fascinating. Thank you very much, Don Say
FDS: I’m sorry.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Frederick Donovan Say
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-07-12
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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.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ASayFD170712, PSayFD1705
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Pending review
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02:10:26 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Description
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Frederick Say went to Tottenham County High School and when he left school he went to study agriculture. He joined the RAF and was posted to RAF Tangmere and worked in the Operations Room as a clerk and was promoted to Leading Aircraftsman Special Duties. From here he was posted to Headquarters 10 Group. He was recommended for aircrew and after initial training in Babbacombe was posted to Canada for training in navigation, gunnery and bomb aiming. On his return to the UK he was posted to 196 Squadron where he and his crew commenced bombing operations, completing 29 and a half operations. After completing his heavy conversion training he was posted in June 1944 to 514 Lancaster Squadron as a bomb aimer and took part in the bombing operations in support of D-Day. Before leaving the RAF he worked in the Motor Transport section at RAF Watnall.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Great Britain
England--Devon
England--Nottinghamshire
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1943
1944-06
1945
12 OTU
1678 HCU
196 Squadron
466 Squadron
514 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
ground personnel
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
RAF Chipping Warden
RAF Tangmere
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/944/11387/PMakensL1701.2.jpg
05b7ba41508ba4dde289a303dae307f7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/944/11387/AMakensL170117.1.mp3
f837a144815b5928751ae6cb9c78ae50
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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Makens, Louis
L Makens
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Sergeant Louis Makens (1921 - 2018, 1442236 Royal Air Force). He flew six operations as an air gunner with 196 Squadron before being transferred to 76 Squadron. He joined a new crew as a mid under gunner and their Halifax was shot down 18/19 March 1944 on his first operation with them. He became a prisoner of war and took part in the long march.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-01-17
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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Makens, L
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DK: Right. So this is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Louis Maken.
LM: No. No. No.
Other: Louis.
DK: Louis. Sorry. Sorry. Louis Makens.
LM: My grandson. He don’t like it.
DK: Misinformed. I was misinformed [laughs] 17th of January 2017. If I put that there.
LM: Yeah.
DK: If I keep looking down I’m not being rude I’m just making sure it’s still working. I’ve only been caught out by the technology once. It was a bit embarrassing.
LM: It wouldn’t take a lot to catch me out.
Other: No. It wouldn’t.
DK: Right. Ok. What I’m going to ask you first of all was going back now what were you doing immediately before the war?
LM: I worked on a farm.
DK: Ok.
LM: Market gardening and ordinary agriculture on a farm.
DK: Ok. So and then war started. What made you then want to join the RAF?
LM: We had, we were called up weren’t we? We had to register and I went for an interview and they gave me the choice of what you’d like to do and not being very smart I volunteered for air crew.
DK: Right.
LM: And went back to work and I suppose it must have been about a few months. Something like. I was about nineteen I got my call up papers saying to report to Uxbridge.
DK: Right.
LM: That was where they had done all the interviewing.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And they asked you silly, well not silly little questions I suppose but half multiplied by half. That was one of the questions on, at the interview. And another one was if the Suez Canal got blocked how would the transport, how would they get cargo around to England?
DK: Oh right.
LM: And which was a long way around.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: The Cape of Good Hope, wasn’t it? And from then on I just had my papers come in. Called up. Report to Uxbridge and then from Uxbridge I went to a place called Padgate. We were kitted out at Padgate and I actually volunteered wireless operator air gunner.
DK: Right.
LM: And I’d done Blackpool in 1942 and there were some old hangars there where we used to do Morse Code [coughs] Morse Code in and I had a spell there and they asked for straight air gunners which was a lot quicker course.
DK: Right.
LM: Why? I don’t know why I volunteered for that. I don’t know to this day. Anyway, I volunteered and I was taken off the course there and from then on I had a life of leisure.
DK: Right.
LM: I went to a place called Sutton Bridge. That was a fighter OT Unit.
DK: Yeah.
LM: General duties. From Sutton Bridge the whole squadron moved up to Dundee and under the Sidlaw Hills. And there was a Russian aircraft landed at the airfield at Dundee.
DK: Oh right.
LM: And the camouflage was really marvellous.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And that was where I was on general duties up there as well. What we were doing going around with little bits and pieces. Anything. Anything there was to do which you’d gather what general duties mean.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: Everything. And then I was called to, I got my call up from —
DK: Just stepping back a bit you never found out what the Russian aircraft was doing there then.
LM: Yes. Molotov.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
LM: Molotov came over.
DK: Oh.
LM: I’m sorry about that I should have —
DK: Did you actually see him?
LM: Yeah. No I never. No. No.
DK: No. Oh right.
LM: Only saw the plane at a distance.
DK: Oh right.
LM: Oh yeah.
DK: Wow.
LM: And it was quite funny really because I wouldn’t have believed it. There was a Scottish lad worked with me and he said to me, ‘Louis,’ he said, ‘How would you like to my parents and just meet my parents and just have a cup of tea with them.’ They lived in Dundee.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I had to get him to interpret what they said. I [pause] Dundee was really broad and I felt a really Charlie because you had to say, ‘Sorry. What did you say?’ and I had, I had to say things like that. But from there on I got called back to a place called Sealand.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: And that’s where I met up with two lads who had already been the same thing as me further afield but they’d been on a wireless so they had decided to remuster as well. Quicker course. We’ll get in to action. Silly weren’t we?’ Anyway, Stan Gardiner was one of them and Harold Lambourn and how, I think Stan Gardener was a welterweight boxer. I didn’t realise that at the time.
DK: Oh right. Yeah.
LM: But I often wonder. We parted because they remustered as pilots.
DK: Right.
LM: And I remustered to straight air gunner. Well, while we were at Sealand we used to go with a Polish squadron and fly with a Polish squadron in Lysanders. Dive bombing for the ack ack training. And we used to fly up the Dee and almost looked up at the houses because you approached and then they’d quick climb and then dive on their guns.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But then I was posted to, from there I left them and I was posted to [home] house in London. That’s where we done the Lord’s Cricket Ground. Was it Lords or the Oval? One of those. And that’s where we’d done gas training and things like that and from there I was posted on to Bridlington and that’s where I done my gunnery, ITW for the second time.
DK: Right.
LM: And from there I was posted on to Stormy Downs.
DK: What did, what did the training involve then at ITW?
LM: At the ITW?
DK: Yeah.
LM: It was back to square one. You know what I mean by square one? Square bashing.
DK: Oh right.
LM: But we did go in to, Bridlington had on the front there was a shooting range. A twelve bore shooting range. Clay pigeons.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I won the competition and won twelve shillings and sixpence. And there was —
DK: You obviously went into the right duties then as an air gunner.
LM: I came away the best shot of the lot. I suppose I must have been. But no. But cutting it short there at Bridlington and then Stormy Down. From Stormy Down we went to Stradishall.
DK: Yeah.
LM: First we were on Wellingtons and then Stradishall was conversion on to Stirlings.
DK: Right.
LM: Now, I think —
DK: Just stepping back can you remember what it was you were flying at Stradishall? Just —
LM: Stirlings at Stradishall. I’m trying to think where I’d done my OTU. I’m not so sure where the Wellington, when I’d done the OTU on. I went to so many places. I’m not sure if I could swear blind.
DK: No.
LM: Where the Wellingtons were stationed. Where we, they had so many of them.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But I finished up at Stradishall and that’s where we were crewed up and already crewed up and I happened to be the seventh member of the crew.
DK: Right.
LM: Which I was a top gunner. A mid-upper.
DK: How did the crewing up work?
LM: Just, I was just introduced to them.
DK: Right.
LM: They were already crewed up.
DK: Right.
LM: But as they —
DK: They needed a gunner.
LM: As a yeah. They had to have a top gunner.
DK: Yeah.
LM: For the start of the four engines. Then finished Stradishall. And that’s where I’d done the odd circuits and bumps and that sort of thing. And one particular night I was laying in bed and I heard this machine gun fire and it was a Focke Wulf had come back that night. I got up the next morning. A Focke Wulf had come back and shot one of our planes down doing circuits and bumps and the only one hurt or I think I’m sure the news was that he got killed and he was Canadian. And he was a screened pilot. What we called a screened pilot.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Was one who, you know —
DK: Already done a tour.
LM: Already done his tour and I think he was teaching us to land.
DK: And he was killed in a, back in the UK while training others.
LM: Yeah. A fighter come back with the bombers to wherever they were going to or from and must have picked up Stradishall and that was how. So the next night we had to go. I was on the next night on circuits and bumps and of course the warning was if there’s a bandit in the area all the ‘drome lights would go out.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And of course, what happened? All the lights went out didn’t they? And we were still stooging around, stooging around, stooging around, waiting for well we didn’t know what was going to happen. Everybody was on edge and all of a sudden the lights come on. It was a dummy run. So we were a bit relieved about that but then after my OTU there and the, and the conversion at Stradishall I was posted to 196 Squadron Witchford.
DK: Right. Ok.
LM: As the mid, mid-upper gunner.
DK: Still on Stirlings.
LM: Still on Stirlings.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Yeah.
DK: So what were your thoughts about the Stirling then when you first saw it and flew in it?
LM: Well, as we went to Stradishall they stood behind almost on the edge of the road where we went.
DK: Right.
LM: And they were massive and if you can imagine what a Wellington was like. Quite low down.
DK: Yeah.
LM: You could almost touch the nose. These Stirlings. They’re twenty two foot to the nose in the air. I have to be careful what I say if this is going down on there. But —
DK: We can edit the bits out later.
LM: Well, yeah. You’ll better cut this piece out because I think what happened our pilot who he’d been out in Rhodesia, flying out in Rhodesia and I think when he saw them he got a fright.
DK: Really?
LM: We had [laughs] we had some near misses. Or near tragedies. When you come in to land you’ve got your three lights. Red too low.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Green. Lovely. Amber too high. We would come in on no lights at all.
DK: Right.
LM: Nose down. And I just used to sit there like that. ‘Christ, what’s he doing?’ And I could have landed the plane quite easily because when you sit in that top turret a beautiful view and I used to sit on the beam like that and check, check, check and I could get that to a tee. I’m not boasting about how. I couldn’t fly a plane anyway. But the bomb aimer, the wireless operator he had his parachute like that every time we landed and we came in —
DK: Not giving the pilot confidence is it? Or having confidence in your pilot if he’s doing that.
LM: No. None whatsoever.
DK: No.
LM: We’d been to Skagerrak mine laying and we came in this night and I got caught sharp a bit. Get down a bit. Down a bit. A bit high. Came in. Bang. We hit the ground, smashed the undercarriage up.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Soared up unto the air and of course came down again and the undercarriage had gone because we went down on to one wing and slid, as luck would have it we went off the runway onto the grass. We never did land on the runway or take off on it. There was either run off at the end or whatever. Oh, you have got to watch what you put on there haven’t you? [laughs] He might be alive. I don’t know what happened. Later on I was, we didn’t, we went on, went from Witchford to Leicester East. Irby.
DK: Right. Just going back to Witchford can you remember how many operations you did from there?
LM: Altogether there was six.
DK: Right.
LM: That was the seventh one. Number seven on the night we got shot down.
DK: Right.
LM: And that was the first time on the first raid we’d done with, first I’d done with Halifaxes.
DK: Right. So when did you convert to the Halifax then?
LM: Well, I didn’t convert. I was just, we were made surplus.
DK: Right.
ILM: We went towing gliders and that sort of thing and eventually that was what they called we were transferred to what they called the AEAF. That’s the Allied Expeditionary Air Force so therefore they decided they didn’t want a top turret. Extra drag. Which you would get wouldn’t you?
DK: Yeah.
LM: With the top turret on so we were made redundant in a way.
DK: Right.
LM: And there were six of us were taken off 196 Squadron and we were posted to Marston Moor and from Marston Moor we were then sent up to Holme on Spalding Moor. They had then fitted a gun emplacement, a beam if you’d like to call it that underneath the plane.
DK: And that’s on the Halifaxes.
LM: That was on the Halifaxes.
DK: It was like a belly gun in effect.
LM: A mid-under they called it.
DK: Yeah. Right.
LM: It wasn’t a turret as such it was just a, it was a piece of metal stuck on the bottom as near as near as I can explain it.
DK: Right.
LM: You had a .5 between your legs.
DK: Was that something the squadron itself had done or was it an official —
LM: It was what they were trying to get.
DK: Yeah.
LM: We were getting so many attacks from below.
DK: Right.
LM: Because as you know you can’t see below your own height can you?
DK: Yeah.
LM: It’s very difficult to see. You can see upwards but you can’t see below your own horizon.
DK: And were you aware at the time that a lot of the attacks by the Germans were from underneath?
LM: It was known.
DK: It was known.
LM: It was well known.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Oh yes. Yeah. That was well known. That was the idea of fetching this gun underneath.
DK: Right.
LM: And the Germans knew very well that we were [pause] well no protection underneath at all coming up from —
DK: So, you’re now with 76 Squadron at this point.
LM: That was 76 Squadron.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: Yeah.
DK: So, you’re now in the, in the belly.
LM: That’s it.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Well, I had never met my crew that I flew on that night with.
DK: Right.
LM: We went to briefing. We went, we’d done a little bit of training on it. There weren’t all that much more training to do. It was only sort of getting used to a .5 and that sort of thing and a fair old go on that.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And the first time I actually met my crew was when I was a prisoner of war.
DK: Oh right.
LM: Well, after I’d been shot down I should say.
DK: Right. So you only did the one operation [unclear]
LM: That was the very first one.
DK: And you were shot down.
LM: We were shot down the very first night. There was six of us went and I think there were three of us allocated to go that night.
DK: Right.
LM: March the 18th 1944. I should have been at a wedding.
DK: Can you recall where the operation was to?
LM: Yes. Oh yeah. Frankfurt.
DK: Frankfurt. Ok.
LM: Yeah. Frankfurt. And we were about twenty, twenty minutes from the target.
DK: Right.
LM: And everything was quiet. Not a very good thing in a way and we hadn’t crossed any borders as such for anti-aircraft or anything like that and every now and again the pilot would just call up and say, ‘Are you alright?’ And so forth, ‘Gunner.’ So forth. And the next thing I knew there was a blaze of bullets, well incendiaries, you couldn’t see the bullets. Incendiaries. And I sat in the turret like that you see facing the rear and the bullets came through, went between my legs. Almost. I was stood. They went between my legs. Well, there was the pilot looking out the front. There was the navigator [pause] could have been I suppose. The bomb aimer should have been in the, in the astrodome looking out. Top gunner in the top turret. The only two of us who saw the bullets were myself and the rear gunner.
DK: And this was from a German aircraft presumably.
HLM: That was [laughs] that’s hard to say.
DK: Oh right.
LM: I don’t know. We never saw the plane. It was head on.
DK: Right [unclear]
LM: So was it one of ours?
DK: Ah.
LM: Well, I’ll never know.
DK: No.
LM: I don’t think so.
DK: No.
LM: But they were fairly heavy. It weren’t small machine gun fire so it could well have been a night fighter. And when you think that no one up front saw the tracers at all.
DK: Were they an experienced crew do you know? Or —
LM: Were they —?
DK: Were they an experienced crew that you —
LM: They’d done, they’d done seven nights. They’d already done seven operations.
DK: Right. Ok [unclear]
LM: Yeah. And four that night.
DK: Right.
LM: Yeah. Yeah. They weren’t over experienced. Like I was I suppose. But, but they hadn’t, they, I sometimes think how ever I got away with being missed in that dustbin when you think of the midair of that aircraft wing as mid —
DK: Yeah.
LM: Fuselage.
DK: It’s, you’re in there then.
LM: That’s right. That little bit underneath.
DK: Yeah. Do you know what other damage was done to the aircraft then? Or —
LM: Well, we caught on fire.
DK: Right.
LM: Yeah. They hit the inboard. The inboard starboard engine and I thought well that’s all right. With the old extinguishers put the flames out. Anyway, we went on a little while and there was quite a, it was getting quite light then because we were on fire and the pilot, David Josephs was my pilot. Never knew him at the time.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But I found out later on and he said, ‘Prepare to bale out.’ Which is the first thing, isn’t it? So I opened my hatch up and just stood there. Kept on the intercom. Kept on oxygen and the top gunner he’d already got out of his turret and he came down and opened the back hatch.
DK: Right.
LM: And he must have thought because it was quite light because of the flames and so forth and he thought, I think he thought I’d been hit because I was still in the turret and standing up. He came back and he went to get a hold of me like that and I went, ‘Ok. I’m alright. I’m alright. I’m ok.’ Well, the pilot hadn’t told us to bale out then. But he did eventually say, ‘Right. Well, better get out. Bale out.’ So that was myself and the top gunner. We went to the back hatch and when you go out you have to roll out otherwise you’re likely to hit the tailplane or the fin.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: Which is easily done. So it was quite comical in a way. It must have been a comedy act. We stood near the hatch or laid near the hatch arguing who was going out first. I’d, I’d seen it happen. People who baled out and they’d extinguished the flames, the [unclear] switch or something like that.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And put the flames out and they’d flown back.
DK: Right.
LM: I thought I’m not going to be, I’m not going to be here on my own so we, Spider went out first and I toddled out behind him. But I went out with my arms folded like that because when I put my parachute on you don’t wear it all, you sort of have it beside you.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: So I quick put on my hooks.
DK: So you [unclear] then
LM: Clipped them on the hooks.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: And I think what happened you’re supposed to leave, lose speed count up to seven because you’re travelling at a hundred and something, a hundred and eighty mile an hour. The first thing I knew, bang. The parachute had, whether the slipstream caught my hands and my parachute, must have pulled the parachute, the rip cord.
DK: Yeah.
LM: The next thing I knew that was bang. Oh, the pain, the jerk on your neck. People don’t realise it’s a —
DK: As the parachute opened.
LM: Oh yeah.
DK: Yeah.
LM: It almost feels like you break, you know.
DK: So is it is it a chest ‘chute you’ve got then?
LM: Yeah. Chest.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Chest it was. No seated ones then. We always carried them and just stuck them in the little hole at the side of the, of your turret.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And anyway, I don’t know how long it was coming down but when I looked down I thought, oh shite. Water. I thought I can’t be over water. That’s one thing I always dreaded. Coming down in the, in the sea. And what it was the plane was on fire and that had gone down and there was snow on the ground and little hillocks that looked like waves.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: And [unclear] It just looked like a patchwork of little waves. Anyway, the lower I got they disappeared. Anyway, I hit, the next thing I knew I was laying on my back groaning. I can remember now as if it was yesterday I laid there and thought oh, oh. I sort of shook myself up and of course up I got and I tried to pull the parachute in and got caught on a tree.
DK: Right.
LM: Right on the edge of a wood. As I went to pull the parachute in I thought, oh Christ there’s someone there. One of my old crew. So I sort of called out. No answer. It was just somebody falling in.
DK: Yeah.
LM: It wasn’t a crew at all. It was a piece of grass that was just doing that with the back light, the back sight of the flaming plane where it had gone down on the horizon.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Was casting this little piece of grass going along. I could imagine someone pulling a parachute in.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Anyway, I couldn’t get the parachute off the tree. I tried to get it down and I had to leave. What I’d done I just curled up under a hedge and I don’t know where the hell [pause] escape kit. Lost it. I had it, you had it park it on the side of your leg and it must have come out as I was upside down or —
DK: What would have been in the escape kit you’d got [unclear] ?
LM: Oh, you’d got a map.
DK: Right.
LM: Chocolate. One or two. Quite little bits of ration material.
DK: Right.
LM: A compass, etcetera but I lost them and so I curled up under a hedge and I had to sleep until it was daybreak. And I got up the next morning and when I woke up and I thought now sun is coming up in the east. If I go towards the sun I might make my way to France. But I wasn’t anywhere near France, was I? [laughs] Not really. I wouldn’t have met, I don’t think I would have, I don’t know. But anyway, I knew I wanted to go east because of the sun coming up and Germany here, France going in that direction sort of business and I thought if I make my way that way I might be able to come up against somebody but I went and I travelled for a day and never saw anybody. The next day I was walking what do you do? I covered my, took my boots and covered them up. I was lucky in a way digressing a little bit normally you know the old flying boot we used to have?
DK: Yeah.
LM: The old fleecy lined things.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Huge things. Well, I hadn’t. My equipment hadn’t arrived at 76 Squadron so I borrowed the squadron leader’s equipment. His flying boots. And we had, I had an electrically heated suit.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Because it was cold. We are talking about twenty two frost and I had an electrically heated suit. That’s your socks and just a jacket and I had his size elevens flying boots. Normally your flying boots fly off which they will do quite easily. That just shows the force of the parachute opening doesn’t it?
DK: Yeah.
LM: And how I kept them on I can only imagine I had electrically heated socks inside them. That’s how I think, the only way I can think I kept those shoes or flying boots three times the size of mine.
DK: So they were wedged in there with the sock.
LM: They must have been fairly —
DK: Yeah.
LM: No end of people. That’s the, my pilot lost his.
DK: Yeah.
LM: He was walking about with a, when I saw him last, the first time I met him he had got pieces of rag wrapped around his feet and that was one of the problems. Getting frostbite.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I think I got a little bit of frostbite on that ear and it’s still there. But lucky I didn’t get any more and no one else did. Anyway, I eventually I got, I did walk into two, I’d compare them with our Home Guard.
DK: Right.
LM: Two old boys walking over a bridge and where the village was, God knows, I have no idea and these two old lads walked towards me and all of a sudden they walked towards, crossed the road towards me like that and he pulled out a big revolver and I, that’s it. So I put my hands up. ‘Flieger. Flieger.’ And they took me back to their headquarters all dolled out with Hitlerites and all that sort of thing on the wall and they weren’t very, they didn’t seem too bad. They were the oldest of people and they took me to their little headquarters and then they had to get the Army to come and pick me up and they took me to another, somewhere else. Got above, it was only a walk from somewhere else to there. Well then, they sent in ex-RAF. The Luftwaffe.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Two of them came and picked me up and I was a little bit lucky in a way because we were walking along. They didn’t bother too much about whether you’d got hit or not. The Germans didn’t care. If somebody hit you with a hammer even. We was walking along and it was a Hitler Youth I think. Something in that region. He came up, he said, a lot of them spoke good English. He said, ‘Did you raid Cologne? Were you on a raid on Cologne?’ I said, ‘No. No. No. No.’ I said, ‘This was my first raid. First time.’ Well, it was a lie because I’d already got the 1939 43 Star on my tunic.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And he didn’t think nothing. He couldn’t have been, he couldn’t have fathomed that one out because well he probably didn’t know what they, what it was anyway.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And he just went away because Cologne was awful one wasn’t it? That was an awful thing.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And eventually they took me to their barracks and they were good. They gave me, the Germans, they gave me a lovely piece of black bread and jam. I’d had one taste of it and I threw it across the bloody cell. I thought, oh Christ and I couldn’t eat it. I just could not eat it. Which I learned different later on. Well, I went and laid on this old bunk of a bed sort of thing and the next thing I knew there was a boot in my back and they, then they brought the pilot. They’d got the pilot.
DK: Right.
LM: And one, I think that was the rear gunner. They’d picked them up as well. And that’s the first time I had met my pilot.
DK: Bizarre.
LM: And we were on our own until we got on with the crew itself.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But for some reason David Josephs, name spelled Joseph, J O S E P and do you remember Keith Josephs?
DK: The politician?
LM: Yes.
DK: Oh yes. Yes.
LM: He was the dead spit.
DK: Oh Right. Oh.
LM: Exact. Exact. Well he palled, why I don’t know.
DK: Yeah.
LM: He palled up with me.
DK: Right.
LM: Not his crew.
DK: Did you think he was related then or —
LM: Well, I would have swore blind he was. He never said. We never spoke about private life. We never told each other what we’d done, or what we did or what we hadn’t done or anything like that. It was just you met them and that was it.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Like when we left we never left any, I often wish I had have done. Kept in touch perhaps with two of the lads I escaped with. I would have loved to have known what happened to them.
DK: No.
LM: But you don’t. You’re so keen to just carry on. Carry on. Carry on regardless of what goes on around you really. It’s —
DK: So were you then sent to a proper prisoner of war camp at that point?
LM: I was taken back. Now this is the bit that really peeved me at one time because I often think of it. They took me back to Frankfurt.
DK: Right.
LM: And I saw Frankfurt’s Railway Station what they were doing to Germany that we were doing or we were getting over in London and I thought the very same thing. There was people on the station with a, one particular person there was a woman with a little child and they’d got a basket, a linen basket like that between them.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And I suppose they were trying to get out. Mind you that was two days after they’d been bombed quite a bit then day and night you see. We were full incendiary. That was all we carried that night was incendiaries.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But that, then I’d done solitary confinement. They put you in solitary there and there was a raid on that night and that [pause] we had all sort of a, there was solitary confinement and there was a blind you could almost it was like a slab of blind and the light, you could even see the lights flashing through this sort of one of these old plated blinds sort of things.
DK: But flashes of the explosions.
LM: Yeah. Of the, of the raid.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Yeah. And I was there three days and they asked you all sorts of questions and a corporal he must, think he was a corporal he looked like it to me. Got a couple of stripes of some sort and he came down and he interviewed so forth to this. He’d got a big list where I’d come from. You only say what you know. Or you’re supposed to say name, rank and [pause] name, rank and whatever.
DK: I was going to ask that. If I could just take you back a bit did you have training as to what to do if you were caught as a —
LM: None whatsoever. We were —
DK: Ok [laughs]
LM: We were just told the general thing. Name, rank and number.
LM: It was a general thing. Name, rank and that’s all.
DK: So you had no other training if you ever were captured.
LM: No. No. that’s all we, never even had trained parachute jumping. Never had. Never had a [pause] The art is the falling over and rolling over you see.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Well, I hit the ground straight legged.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And I think that’s why I knocked myself out. I think that’s the reason. I must have hit the ground straight legged.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Instead of doubling up and falling over.
DK: Yeah. And rolling. Yeah.
LM: Which is the correct way.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I knew the way but you can’t tell how far off the ground you are you see.
DK: At night. Yeah.
LM: And the last fifteen feet or the last little bit was like jumping off the wreck and like jumping off a fifteen foot wall when you hit the ground quite hard.
DK: Yeah.
LM: So that was part and parcel. They’d never done, I don’t know if it was the pilot’s fault or not. I don’t know ‘til this day if he should have made his crew take part in —
DK: Training. Yeah.
LM: Escaping or whatever or what to say what not to say. No one else did. We never had any training of that at all.
DK: And, and dinghy practice. Did you ever have any of that?
LM: No. we were, I did learn to swim.
DK: Right.
LM: At Blackpool and if we could swim a width.
DK: Right.
LM: That’s all you had to do.
DK: So you had no training on what to do if you crashed on water, baling out or — [unclear]
LM: No, we had none.
DK: No.
LM: I think some did.
DK: Yeah.
LM: We had no training whatsoever.
DK: Wow.
LM: Never had. They just, all they told us was when you go out to roll over the hatch.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Rather than the other way.
DK: Avoiding the —
LM: I had seen a lad. He had knocked his teeth out. He’d hit the tailplane. But apart from that we didn’t. It was —
DK: Yeah.
LM: The discipline I suppose we were treated very leniently.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Because when I I thought I was going to get out of a church parade so when I joined up they say religion. I said none. I thought I’ll get out of church parade doing this and they put atheist on my dog tags.
DK: Oh right.
LM: So they were on until the day I lost them.
DK: Oh right. Can I just take you back then to Frankfurt? You were interrogated there after three days.
LM: Yes.
DK: Solitary confinement, so you’ve only given name, rank and serial number and that. What happened after? Next after that?
LM: They don’t [pause] they will keep you there and keep asking you questions and they showed me a list. I thought good God. They could have shown, they could have told me much more than I knew. I couldn’t. I couldn’t. If I’d have wanted I couldn’t have told them anything.
DK: So their intelligence then on the aircraft, the squadron —
LM: They knew every airfield. They knew every airfield and what there was. They got this map of every, almost every airfield in this country.
DK: Wow. Did they know who was based there on these airfields?
LM: They knew the squadrons as well. They’d got the squadrons down. My old squadron 196.
DK: Yeah.
LM: That was down there. I may have shown that because I thought 196 I just and the realised then that —
DK: Yeah.
LM: You don’t think that they’re using you know on the spur of the moment. I thought 196 and Witchford.
DK: So they had all that intelligence. Did they have names at all as to who the commanding officers were?
LM: No idea.
DK: No. No.
LM: No. I don’t. What on the German side you mean?
DK: On the other side. Yeah.
LM: No. I wouldn’t. No. No. There was the treatment we got in the prison camp we can’t grumble.
DK: Right.
LM: I mean we went over there.
DK: Can you remember which prison camp it was?
LM: Yeah. After leaving, after leaving Frankfurt.
DK: Yeah.
LM: On the old cattle trucks and we were going along and I thought oh whatever is that smell? Christ. And there was a lot of us in this cattle truck. I didn’t realise at the time it was an American and he had been, he must have been loose a little bit for a while before he got caught because he’d got frost bite and his foot had got gangrene and I’d never smelled anything like it. He sat with his shoe off and he was like that and I realised then what he’d got. And his foot was absolutely. I don’t know what it was like inside the sock but he’d obviously got frost bite and it had turned to gangrene.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And we called at a place called Sagan. That’s Stalag Luft 3.
DK: So it’s Stalag Luft 3.
LM: That’s the officers.
DK: Yeah.
LM: That’s the officer’s camp.
DK: Right.
LM: Stopped at the officers off or whatever there was to get off there and from there on we travelled through Poland by train and I can’t tell to this day how long so I weren’t one of those who made notes of where we were, what we’d done, it was just one of those things. You accepted what had happened and eventually arrived at a place called [pause] up in Lithuania [pause] Sally, what was the name of it?
Other: I weren’t there grandad.
LM: Anyrate, it was not, not all that far away from, now when you get to my age that happens you know. You lose your train of thought a little bit don’t you?
DK: I do now [laughs]
Other: Yes. So do I [laughs]
LM: But no, I —
DK: So it was a camp in Lithuania.
LM: Stalag Luft, no, Stalag Luft 6.
DK: Stalag Luft 6. Right.
LM: Up in Lithuania.
DK: Right.
LM: That’s right.
DK: Ok. Ok.
LM: Anyway, with the name Twy, I think it was [Twycross] or something like that. We were the furthest north of any camp.
DK: I was going to say that’s someway east isn’t it you were?
LM: Yeah. We were right up near the Russians.
DK: Russians. Yeah.
LM: Because it was a bit [pause] Dixey Dean. A great footballer wasn’t he?
DK: Yeah.
LM: He was our camp leader.
DK: Oh right.
LM: Yeah. Dixie Dean.
DK: Did you get to know him well?
LM: No. No.
DK: No.
LM: Oh no. Didn’t. Well, I knew him.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But he didn’t converse with very [pause] He could speak fluent German.
DK: Right.
LM: Been a prisoner of war for a long while and he used to go to Sagan the officer’s camp and converse with the Germans there on the conditions of camp and all that.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Because he knew the Geneva Convention backwards.
DK: Oh right.
LM: And when we could, 19th June 1944 when, the Second Front —
DK: Yeah.
LM: Now, they knew that in the camp but no one said.
DK: So, it was a decoy then.
LM: They wouldn’t let us know.
DK: No. Right.
LM: They knew that Dean and his escape, whatever they were radio, they’d got a radio because they used to come around and give us the news each night. Someone would come around and just and sometimes a German would do that.
DK: Yeah.
LM: The old goon would.
DK: So how big was the camp there? How many prisoners were there roughly.
LM: I don’t know but I’d hazard a guess. In our camp compound alone there would be one, two, three, four, five, six, sixteen, six, eight. Oh, three or four hundred if not more.
DK: Right.
LM: Yes. They were all officers. All NCOs.
DK: NCOs. Yeah.
LM: And then —
DK: And what were you in? Were you in sort of cabins or Nissen huts or —
LM: One long, one long hut.
DK: One long hut.
LM: There were bunks.
DK: Right.
LM: And if the weather was nice and we were going on parade and roll call then some of the lads would play up and they would nip up or make a count wrong. We reckoned they could only, they could only count in fives the Germans. So we said they could only count in their fives and the lads would play up a bit. But if it was raining.
DK: Yeah.
LM: We used to put a head out the end of the pit and they would come along and count you and we behaved ourselves then.
DK: Right.
LM: But there was a case where we came, we could, later on it must have been getting towards August we could hear the Russians from where we were.
DK: Right.
LM: The tales we heard about what happened to the Russian guards and the German guards when they got taken by the opposite side.
DK: Yeah.
LM: They didn’t take prisoners.
DK: No.
LM: They didn’t take either side. They didn’t touch the prisoners but the guards they shot them. So there was no love lost between them.
DK: No. So —
LM: Well eventually, yeah —
DK: As I say could you briefly describe what the camp looked like? Presumably you’d got barbed wire as a —
LM: Yeah.
DK: Watch towers and —
LM: Yeah. You had the old, I’ve got a couple of paintings upstairs that a fella had done in the prison camp.
DK: Right. Right. So it’s a compound thing.
LM: It was a big, what it amounted to was, was a big area.
DK: Right.
LM: And your huts one, two, three, four. Long huts. About must have been more than twenty yards I suppose all tiered both sides. You had an odd table in the middle and around the outside of that was your walking area.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Always had that. Then you had a warning wire. They called it a warning wire. That was just a little board that ran along. You mustn’t put your foot over that otherwise they would shoot you.
DK: Yeah.
LM: If you put your foot over the warning wire. Then you had your barbed wire.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And then the goons were up in their —
LM: In towers.
LM: Towers.
DK: And you were just watched the whole time.
LM: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah.
DK: So, what, what did you do to pass the time because days must have —
LM: Walk around the, we weren’t allowed to go out. Now, early on they were allowed to go out as working parties but there were so many RAF tried to escape.
DK: Right.
LM: Escape. And they stopped it. We weren’t allowed outside the camp. Once you were in there you didn’t come out until they wanted to move you which they did us. From the Russians you see.
DK: Right.
LM: And no, we weren’t allowed outside the camp.
DK: And —
LM: It was —
DK: And with the restraints there would have been were you treated well then? Or treated [unclear]
LM: In the camp there was no hard [pause] no. But I don’t think I would say I was treated badly. We went over there to kill them but to me we were treated fairly. Geneva Convention. They abided by that.
DK: And what was the food you got then?
LM: Well, that, now that’s sauerkraut.
DK: Right.
LM: And there was an American parcel and an English parcel. Now, the English parcels, well obviously England was struggling to even feed their own people, weren’t they? So they weren’t the serviceability of the package wasn’t very good because we would get in the British parcel or English parcel we would get condensed milk.
DK: Right.
LM: Well, that weren’t, that wouldn’t keep. But the American parcels were in a nice cardboard box and we’d get oh quite a little bit of chocolate etcetera etcetera and you know different things in there.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And used to tide us over. You’d only get a parcel between perhaps four or five or six or seven of you.
DK: And are these parcels that have gone through the Red Cross then?
LM: Yeah.
DK: So they were done, made up in Britain or America by the International Red Cross.
LM: They were already sent. Yeah.
DK: Somehow —
LM: They were the Red Cross. Yeah.
DK: Right.
LM: But they used to puncture them before they came. They couldn’t empty them but they could puncture the tins before they came in.
DK: Right.
LM: And this went on until when we, we knew the Russians weren’t far away. We could hear gunfire in the distance and we were told this and that, this and that. And then eventually they said we would have, they were going to move us out of the camp to another camp. So we deserved what we got in a way because there used to be what they called in the American parcel it was called klim. It was a lovely powdered milk. It was milk spelled backwards.
DK: Oh right. Yes.
LM: See. That was called klim. Milk spelled backwards.
DK: Yeah.
LM: We had, when you said did they treat us alright we weren’t badly treated as such at all but the food weren’t, it was a bit sparce. I mean we got a loaf of bread and that was black bread between seven.
DK: Right.
LM: And no argument as one would cut it up in seven pieces and you just had a slither of a loaf. No argument at all about how big yours was and how small it was or whatever.
DK: I suppose you had to get on with your fellow prisoners then.
LM: Oh yes. Yes. Because you could soon lose your old temper. I’ve seen that happen but not not very often. Not very often because when well I suppose in a way we were very, everybody was an individual in their way because we weren’t like the Army as such. We didn’t mix like the Army did because you were a crew on a crew.
DK: Yeah.
LM: You just kept your crew. You had somebody look after you when you went in for your meals and so forth in the sergeant’s mess and that sort of thing. But then we had, they told us we were going to evacuate to a port. We had to walk to a port called Memel. That was in the Baltic.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Well, we could hear the Russians firing and so forth and whatever was happening and we decided we couldn’t take all this stuff with us because we’d got quite, as we came out of the camp they were crafty in a way because before we came out of the camp we thought well we’ll not, we won’t leave anything. What people can eat or do so we had Oleo margarine and they were tins about that big. Quite a lot we had of that. And we stood them up and we were throwing these tins at each other. Had the bloody tins stood up. And there was also this klim milk. Now that was really you mixed that up and it would make, you could make a real nice cream of it.
DK: Right.
LM: So we thought we’re not leaving that. So what we’d done I don’t know whether you’d call it carbolic soap. What they used to call Sunlight? You know the old, what they used to wash.
DK: Yeah.
LM: The old ladies used to wash with. We grated that up. We put that in with the milk and we left it there and I reckon the Germans must have, they must have tried that and instead of them getting a nice cream there was this powdered milk. This powdered milk all mixed in with the little grated —
DK: Just soap.
LM: We even powdered up.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Just like the milk so they really couldn’t say look at it and think I ain’t very keen on this. So I, we did pay for it later on. And anyway they marched us to this port called, it was Memel and had to go down in a coal ship. We had to go down this hatch and you left all your, whatever equipment you’d got you had to leave that on the deck.
DK: Yeah.
LM: So we said, ‘We’re not going down there. Not going down a bloody hole in a ship and go through the Baltic.’ They said, ‘If you don’t go down we’ll put the hoses on you.’ And they threatened to hose us with the, they’d got these hoses on deck and so forth so we did actually go down in to the hold of the ship. But there weren’t room to sit. Not to lay down especially. You could just squat.
DK: Yeah.
LM: The trouble was that some of the lads all they had to escape was a ladder, a vertical ladder to this little sort of porthole and some of the lads got a bit of diarrhoea as well because it wasn’t long before the food sort of affected people.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And if they wanted to go to the toilet which a lot did. They couldn’t stomach, some people couldn’t stomach this sauerkraut and things like that so they did have to go to the toilet pretty regular. I was one of the opposite. Absolutely. And anyway, we went to go down in to the ship and away we go and they had what they called the old [unclear] and that was for the mines.
DK: Right.
LM: To ships against mines. We’d already mined that with, with these acoustic they were quite a huge mine. About, they’d be about fifteen foot long.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Twelve, thirteen, fifteen long what we used to drop and that was a bit of a risk because you had to —
DK: So you would actually drop mines in to the Baltic.
LM: Yes. Yeah.
DK: And were now —
LM: I hadn’t dropped them in to the Baltic but I had elsewhere.
DK: Yeah.
LM: The RAF had.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: And they would [pause] they would, that was a bit of a hazardous old job because you had to come down almost to zero feet. You cut your, you dropped your flaps just to sort of give you a bit of buoyancy and you cut your speed down as low as possible. Just above stalling speed. You’d be down to perhaps a hundred and twenty mile an hour and only about two or three hundred feet high.
DK: Yeah.
LM: So if you were lucky you didn’t go over a flak ship but if you did then they could just blow you to smithereens. So that was, people used to say that used to count as a half an op.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But it alright maybe it weren’t because you used to go there, come back and never see a thing.
DK: But you were still on an operation.
LM: You were lucky, you were lucky if you to just get by and —
DK: Yeah.
LM: And never even have anybody fire at you but no, we I suppose the prison camp weren’t too bad and we’d done three seventy odd hours on that boat and you were allowed up on deck one at a time so you could just imagine how long, I don’t know how many I wouldn’t like to say hazard a guess how many were down in the hold of that ship. Hundreds of us. Sitting there. And we came to a place called Swinemünde.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: You’ve heard of Swinemünde have you?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: Have you? Nuremburg was laying there. One of their battle cruisers?
DK: Right.
LM: They took us off the ship and we went, had to get in these cattle trucks and the barbed wire was across the centre of the carriage. You had a half a door, half a door where the prisoners could get in. The other half was for the guards to get in.
DK: Right.
LM: And we had to take our shoes off but what have we got and put them through the barbed wire into the side where the guards were. And then the Germans used to pee in them at night if they didn’t want to get out, couldn’t get out. They used to use them as a toilet.
DK: Wonderful.
LM: And while we were there there was a raid on or supposedly. It weren’t really a raid I don’t think because I learned afterwards that was only one plane and they put a smokescreen over the whole docks and the Nuremberg opened fire on that. It was an American plane, broad daylight and the cattle trucks you could see daylight appear between the wood. Those guns exploding, the vibration we weren’t all that far away from Nuremberg itself.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And so anyway that’s when they took us out from there. They took us across down to a place called [pause] it was quite a way we went. I don’t know the name of the place really. I couldn’t say because they were the same as us. They did block, there were no names on villages or anything like that.
DK: Yeah.
LM: We eventually arrived at our destination and I never heard this. I can honestly say I never heard it. Some of the lads who wrote, if you read the book called, “The Last Escape” they said the Germans, they could tell. They could hear them sharpening their swords, their bayonets. But I didn’t hear it. To be truthful I never heard any. Maybe if I’d heard it I wouldn’t have paid much attention to it anyway. So they unloaded us from the trucks and then made us line up in fives and I’d got this kit bag. As luck would have it I’d got my kit bag. When I got off the boat I’d got this kit bag with my name on and I grabbed that and so I carried that with me and whatever stuff you could carry on your own.
DK: Yeah.
LM: You, or somebody sorted out later on and they loaned us, took off, we come, they lined us in fives. The same old thing again and these, all the guards at that particular time that started off were young Naval lads.
DK: Right.
LM: And we reckoned they came off that they were coming from a Naval dockyard just to see. To escort us to this camp Stalag Luft 4B.
DK: Right.
LM: Not far from Stettin. Well, everybody had got their kit and I stood like that and with the kit bag down the front and this German lad came along and I’ve still got a wound, a star there I think. One of them, he stuck a bayonet in you see. He said, ‘Pick it up. Pick it up.’ So I looked at him and that’s where he stuck the bayonet. As luck would have it it went in to my finger and it came up against my belt. An old hessian sort of RAF belt. Oh. And they had to pick it up and hold it there while we were just waiting. Then they they all —
DK: Your hand’s bleeding presumably at this point.
LM: Very little.
DK: Oh right.
LM: Hardly any blood.
DK: Right.
LM: I reckon it just went right to the bone.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Quite painful. I’ve got a little scar there now which, which you can see some left me a little bit of a scar there. They’re still there today. And they started, we had to march off and it weren’t a march at all. We had to run. Well just imagine they started on the lads up the front and while they carried their kit they kept —
DK: Yeah.
LM: Jabbing. Jabbing. Jabbing, and one lad had over seventy bayonet wounds we counted on him when we got the other end and until they’d dropped their kit they kept sticking the bayonet in and so of course we being quite tail enders we were, it was like steeple chase. And then of course then they got on to us and we, when we started off we’d some little bits and odds and pieces what we’d accumulated.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Picked up here and there. When we got to the camp we’d got absolutely nothing. I’d got a shirt on, trousers, shoes and that was my lot.
DK: And everything else had been lost up the road.
LM: Everything we had to drop.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And they had machine guns all lined up beside this sort of, more or less an old cart track we had to run up and some bright erb at the back was firing a rifle or a, I believe it was the officer with a, with a revolver and we never stopped. Nobody stopped to find out who it was. We just had to run and we actually thought not combined but individually I think ninety nine percent of us thought we would run into a hole. A pit. We did. I did. I thought we was going to be shot because they’d already done that. That had already happened to prisoners. They’d took them and shot them and we again we thought this is what was happening. No one said that to each other. Never said it to each other but afterwards when we got to camp people said, ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘Well, I began to think that’s what was happening.’
DK: Yeah.
LM: And people did but they never spread it because no way would there have been any escape because they’d got machine guns lined up each side of this old dirt track and when we got to the other end I mean that was just, we were just covered in dust. It was in August so it was the middle of the summer.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And there was a fella who used to sleep right next door to me. His name was [Mcilwain]. I’ll never forget him. Well, in, while we were in the camp there was a little Pole and he was watching the Americans at the game of baseball when it was, we played it with a softball. And he was stood around here like that and one of the lads had a whack at the ball and it threw out and it hit him in the teeth and knocked his teeth out. He was a little Pole. Quite a small lad. And when we got the other end of the camp I was with [McIlwain] and [McIlwain] got hit with a rifle butt. And when we got, when we eventually got to the camp this little Pole said, ‘Cor,’ he said, ‘I was knackered.’ The language you used to pick up there. ‘I was knackered,’ he said. ‘But when I saw [McIlwain] get hit with a rifle butt,’ he said, ‘He just went like that and carried on he said, ‘I could have run on for miles.’ So, I mean there was a lot of, there was a lot of —
DK: Humour.
LM: Fun.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I mean, it was a place where you could see the funny side of it but not when, it wasn’t all that funny but later on when you look back.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And anyway, we were at that camp and then we stopped there until February 1945 and then —
DK: How were you treated in the second camp once you got there?
LM: Not badly. Not badly. All our huts were off the ground there. They were better huts.
DK: Right.
LM: And you went up a corridor in the middle and your rooms were off each side. Two, four. Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen. Sixteen in a hut.
DK: Right.
LM: Two there. Two here on each side of the door and they had a tortoise stove and David [Dewlis?] was on the bunk above me and I slept in the bottom one and the lad on the next bunk to me was a New Zealander.
DK: Yeah.
LM: A lovely lad. Long Tom we called him. He was Long Tom. He was about six foot three and he used to sing the Maori’s farewell and a little tear would run down his cheek. Oh yeah. He decided that, he didn’t make a habit of singing it but every now he would sing that little old song. I know the words to that right off. Oh yeah.
DK: I’m quite conscious we’ve been talking for an hour. Do you want to take a break or something.?
LM: I don’t mind. Yes. Yeah. Lovely.
DK: Yeah. Shall we just stop there for a moment?
Other: Yeah. That’s fine.
DK: It’s just I’m rather conscious.
[recording paused]
LM: Fine. Yeah. Yeah. Lovely.
DK: Ok. So I’ll put that back there again. So just to be — talking about the cold weather and the movements.
Other: Yeah.
DK: And prisoners. So just to recap then it’s, it’s February 1945 and you’re in the second —
LM: ’45. Yeah.
DK: And you’re in the second camp and they’re not treating you too badly. What’s happened then?
LM: January. February. They said that due to unforeseen circumstances, they didn’t say why, or why or not, or not we’d got to go. We’d got to move out of the camp and they were going to march us out of the camp. I think we were then what was there, there was somebody else interfering or something was happening and we had to move camp. That was up near Stettin we were and we could see vapour trails. While we were there vapour trails used to go up and we thought they were taking the weather. Apparently, what we were watching was the V-1s and V-2s take off.
DK: Right.
LM: Didn’t know that at the time but going back a little bit I remember a JU88 was fitted with jet engines before ours.
DK: Right.
LM: They had a jet engine fitted to a JU88. No. Yeah 88 not the 87. That was a Stuka.
DK: Right. Yeah.
LM: But the, the eighty eight, yeah. And we weren’t —
DK: You saw one of those fly by then did you?
LM: You could hear them.
DK: Hear them. Right. Yeah.
LM: And see.
DK: Yeah.
LM: You could see them when they came over and you would think that sounds unusual for an aircraft engine and —
DK: Yeah.
LM: And they must have developed that before we did because that was the Germans who brought on the atomic bomb wasn’t it? For the Americans.
DK: Yes.
LM: Their scientists.
DK: Yeah. And the rockets to the moon.
LM: Yeah.
DK: Yes. Von Braun.
LM: Yes. Yeah. And no we were told that we had got to move and we said the treatment we’d had we were not going to go out of the camp. Silly thing to say but there we are. We are not going to move. We are going to stay where we are because we got treated so badly to go to that camp we said we wouldn’t go out of this one and the major, he was an old Prussian. When you say Prussian they were the old Germans weren’t they?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: And I reckon he was quite an oldish fella. Upright. Real slim, upright. Lovely he was. And he said he would come with us so there would be no ill treatment at all. And we didn’t get ill treated at all. We said we’d come out but the number of people within one or two days had to fall out. Blisters on their feet, had diarrhoea or something like that and my pilot David Josephs, that’s what made me think he was a bit of a politician’s son, he was, David was taken off after a second, I think it was two days he walked with us. After then they had to take him off in the little bandwagon. Whether he went to hospital I don’t know. I never knew. Even when we came home I never knew what had happened to him.
DK: No.
LM: And I kept in touch with him. Oh yeah. We kept in touch. And but at, he was, walked for an hour and we’d have a rest but when you get up again your feet began to tell on you. But that didn’t make no difference to me I’d been so used to talking over rough ground and so forth that didn’t come hard.
DK: Right.
LM: But people used to say, ‘How did you get on with monotonous walking?’ I said, ‘Yeah. What you do, all you do was just look at the persons feet in front.’ And that was just, it was just a tag along behind each other.
DK: Did you know roughly how many people were in this column as you remember?
LM: Oh, I haven’t a [pause] The whole camp.
DK: So —
LM: And there was not just us.
DK: Right.
LM: There were lots of others as well.
DK: So it could be thousands or —
LM: Oh yes. Walking through Germany what they said one morning we got was if you get attacked which there was. I didn’t see any of it to be truthful but some of them were attacked by Typhoons flown by New Zealanders and the idea was half of you would dash. We used to walk through tracks usually. Never, if you went through a village that was occasionally and the funny thing when we went through a village we used to stand up, pull ourselves up and sing and march. And the Germans didn’t like that and the guards didn’t like it either. And then after you got through the village it was like this, sort of striding along but when you walked through a village you put your parts on and started singing. But there was some got shot up.
DK: Did the villagers react to that at all?
LM: They left, the would leave water out but we weren’t allowed to touch it.
DK: Right.
LM: Because there was so much change of water. I don’t think it would have affected me at all.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Because I’d even later on I even drank out of a blasted river and so I don’t but other people it upset very quickly.
DK: Yeah.
LM: People were suffering with diarrhoea and that sort of thing and anyway we started off and a lot fell out. A lot fell out with diarrhoea, bad feet and that sort of thing. And we would have what they called after eight days you’d have a rest.
DK: What happened to those who did fall out and couldn’t —
LM: Took them back to somewhere. Hospital or something like that to give them a bit of treatment I think.
DK: Right.
LM: I couldn’t say. I don’t know what happened to them.
DK: Ok.
LM: I think, well they got back because David he got back.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And we used to write to each other just at Christmas time.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And —
DK: So how long were you on this march for? How many days roughly?
LM: February [pause] And I actually wrote a letter home. Air mail home to my mother on April the 29th. So we were walking from more or less I think somewhere in the middle of February.
DK: To the end of the war basically.
LM: Yeah. February. March.
DK: April.
LM: April. The end of April. But I had, we at the end of the march we had to during the march we could barter sometimes with the farmer. And I had a lovely Van Heusen shirt which had been sent to me by somebody so I swapped this shirt for a kilo of fat pork. Well, we had been walking across Germany with [unclear] and a biscuit perhaps a day. So you can tell what our stomachs were like. They weren’t very lined at all.
DK: Yeah.
LM: They weren’t lined at all.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And I swapped that. I said to Tom and, two of us. Long Tom and Leftie and we’ll fry it down. We’ll cut it into like chips and we’ll fry it down because to eat it as raw meat you couldn’t do that so that’s what we thought we would do. We stuck it in an old klim tin.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Lit a little fire and that night we were in this barn and the old rats would run over you and we got lousy as well. Oh, crikey yeah. And they were, they were big lice as well and we went and curled up and went to sleep. Made a sleeping bag and I used to tuck that right under your head so that no rats or anything could get in with you. And they used to run over you but you used to sort of knock them off.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And squeak and go off ahead and that night we went and [laughs] in the barn and I heard Tom, Long Tom up he got, out he went. The next thing Leftie the other side of me he was gone. And do you know I feel sick. Sick as a [pause] I feel. I’m not being sick I’m not going to. I didn’t buy that stuff to be sick. No way. And I wouldn’t go out. I laid there and I would not be sick. And I thought I’ll imagine I’m drinking a cup of cocoa and I was drinking this cup of cocoa and in the bottom of it was these chips. So it was, it was so awful that had [pause] we had lost all the lining off our stomachs. You passed blood. You would actually pass blood.
DK: So over these weeks then did you have the same German guards or were they changed?
LM: The Germans. Oh, you never knew who was with you.
DK: Right.
LM: Yeah. Some, they didn’t walk all the way with us —
DK: I was going to say —
LM: We would have different guards.
DK: You wouldn’t have different guards all the time then.
LM: Oh yes.
DK: Yeah.
LM: They were all old. Usually the old ones.
DK: Right.
LM: The old Luftwaffe as well.
DK: Right.
LM: And we walked. There was, I think there was something like, yeah, something about four hundred miles we’d done or something similar to that and then they were going to take us back towards the Russians. We’d just come over the River Elbe and I said to my two mates, Long Tom and Leftie, I said, ‘I’m not going back over that blasted river.’ They said, ‘Well, you know, I don’t fancy going back to the bloody Russians the other side.’ So we had said if we see a chance we’ll make a run for it. Well, we were going through this. We always walked through woods, lots of woods off the main track and so forth so we got a gap. ‘Ok, Tom.’ Off we, we ran off. Off we went. Mind you the guards I don’t think they were shooting at us. Never hit us anyway. They was a few shots going off but we carried on running and we came to a river. A little river. It was about as wide as this room and mind you this was time, that was in March time so a bit cold. So we thought if we cross the river, we were playing games I suppose, if we cross the river the dogs won’t be able to pick us up.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But the river was running quite, quite fast and there was little saplings been cut down beside the river so I picked one of these up and I gave it to Leftie and Leftie went across and held this stick you see and chucked one in the water, walked across sideway. So I went across and I held this stick for Tom to hold on to a branch and then come across this what we’d laid in the river. And there was a shot rang out and Tom lost his balance and he went backwards in the river. Got all his clothes on so he got out obviously and we made our way as we thought we had heard of [Saltau?] and that was where the Americans were.
DK: Right.
LM: We thought if we get to the Americans we’d be alright. Well, we got to the edge of a, it was a sort of a spinney we went through and then we came to the finish of the woods was that were open fields. So we stopped there and we decided we’d sort of camouflage ourselves. We’d put a bit of stick in. I had a, I had a German type Africa Corps hat which was a mistake I found out later but [pause] So we put this hat on and I’d got that and somebody knitted it somewhere along the line and we waited until it had got slightly dusk and then we decided we would come out of this little old wood and make our way as we thought towards Saltau. We just came out and we could hardly believe it. We turned left. I can see it even now. Turned, came out of this little wood. We turned left and walked along and we went, ‘Bloody hell.’ There was three blokes laid in the ditch. A little ditch. It wasn’t a ditch as such it was just a dry ditch. Say it that way.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Three Americans err three Australians. Three Australians laid in that ditch just been shot down and they had got escape equipment and everything. But they were also full of beans. Eggs and bacon. So just imagine us three weighing about seven stone and they had just, we’d just walked across Germany. Four or five hundred miles across there and they had just been shot down full of beans. And we walked at night and potato fields, it didn’t matter what was in the way we just walked according to the compass. And I remember particularly we came to a fence of barbed wire. A bit silly. We climbed over the fence of barbed wire. We had to walk across and all of a sudden we started to go in and in and in. Our feet began to get rather mud wet. They come up and I said to the others, I said, ‘Run. For Christ’s sake, run.’ And we ran and we ran through a bloody bog. We didn’t realise how silly we were and we came to another barbed wire, another fence and climbed over that. That was to take the animals out.
DK: Oh. Ok.
LM: That’s what we reckoned.
DK: Yeah.
LM: To keep the animals out of this.
DK: Bog. Yeah.
LM: This bog. We got the other end we took our shoes and socks off and wrang our socks out and they were full of this sort of mud. And anyway we carried on and we used to stop for about have a sort of an hour and then sat down and you would sweat, sweat, sweat when you were walking. Then you stop for five minutes. Ten minutes you’d freeze. Really we were so weak I suppose that, of course the Australians weren’t weak they weren’t weak were they?
DK: I was going to say they were —
LM: They were, oh they were fit as fiddles.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: Oh yeah and anyway we, we dodged here, dodged there and carried on and eventually we came up and we heard people in the foreground as we were going in front of us. They were German troops. Walked right into them. So I reckon he was a middle of the range officer and of course they caught us and we had to go over and he looked at us and I reckon he thought what a shower and he gave us some little tablets or sweet or whatever you’d like to call them. They were about an inch long and about a half inch wide and like the old throat lozenge.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Remember the throat one?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: Well, these were white. I reckon they were vitamin tablets. He handed them out to us and he got the corporal to walk back with us to a little village called Bispingen. And we came back to this little village and that’s where he left us. In a hotel.
DK: Right.
LM: We were put up in this hotel and that night we went out. All six of us went out. We was talking to the German people which was no man’s land then you see.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And we were saying to the woman there, one woman Tom was talking to, he could speak fairly good German and about Saltau, she said, ‘oh,’ this is the honest truth this is, ‘Don’t go. Don’t go to Saltau. The Americans are there,’ she said, ‘They shoot anything that moves.’
DK: Yeah. They still do.
LM: That was a yarn but she said that’s what the Germans said.
DK: Yeah.
LM: She said, ‘Don’t. I wouldn’t go to Saltau.’ So we, we stayed there. Lovely hotel. We weren’t allowed to go upstairs.
DK: So —
LM: We had to sleep downstairs.
DK: So you were put up in a hotel by the Germans.
LM: Yeah. Yeah. They left us there. They didn’t want us. We were, we were a menace.
DK: Do you think the Germans at this point knew the war was lost and it just wasn’t worth —
LM: Yes. Yes, because another time they might have shot us mightn’t they?
DK: Yeah.
LM: And anyway, we were in no man’s land so they were retreating quite badly. And anyway, one particular day the sun was shining lovely. We set outside this hotel enjoying ourselves and there was a German lorry came around from the little village to where the centre of the village was. Another hotel further up the road. Came around the corner. All of a sudden it stopped and out they got and made a dive for it. Couldn’t make much out of it you see. And then I heard this plane and then looked up. There was one Spitfire. One Spitfire just going along. Of course, we, we were from, they knew us.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I mean they weren’t going to shoot us were they? They knew. There was us sitting on the front of this blasted hotel, ‘Oh yay.’ I thought you, daft sods weren’t we? A Spitfire up there never knew who we, I said to Tom, I said, ‘He could have turned around and shot us, Tom. Couldn’t they?’ But no. They were our friends weren’t they? You could see the funny side of it. Ignorant weren’t we? Plain ignorant.
Other: Yeah.
LM: Didn’t care. Anyway, we sat [laughs] they gave us a bowl of soup each day. They made a bowl of soup and there was pork cut into little old squares but they weren’t, they weren’t really all that nourishing. Weren’t all that good. Anyway, we were very pleased with it. And then a young lad came down to us. He said, ‘A Panzer. Panzer. A British Panzer.’ So lovely. Away we go. We ran up and around the corner and thought double double. There was a bloke on a half track or one of these little Bren carriers it was.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: We had to double up to them. Didn’t know who we were you see because I’d got this blasted African Corps hat on and so, anyway we had to run up to them and he stood there and when he realised who we were and then of course they gave us cigarettes and so forth. But they then put us in the hotel right at the top of the street where we ran to when they was coming in to the village. So the next morning I wrote a letter. One of the Army lads gave me an air mail to write home and that was how I remember the 29th of April when I first wrote home to my mother to say that I was ok. And the next morning they said, ‘Right. The truck will, you get in the truck it will stop twice. The second time it stops you get out and you will go back to the [echelon].’ That’s the depot isn’t it.’
DK: Yeah.
LM: So Long Tom, Leftie and myself. We got in one truck and the three Aussies got in another. So we’re, off we go. Off we go. Funny. Eventually we stopped. The Army lads said, ‘What are you doing here?’ Well, we said, ‘You’ve got to stop twice and we’re going back to the [echelon].’ He said, ‘We weren’t stopping,’ he said, ‘You should have been in the other truck.’ So there’s us three.
DK: Oh no.
LM: We’re on patrol with the blasted Army. They gave me a rifle and put me on a half-track and I thought they said the war was over for us. It doesn’t look much like it. We’re going along the road and they’re firing at bloody copse over the other side. A little old copse there.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I suppose Germans are in. They was firing. These people was firing at something. The lads up the front. So here we carried on. We went, we had a stop at this little village and we weren’t very nice. The Army weren’t very nice.
DK: Do you want me to stop?
LM: Can you turn —? Yeah.
[recording paused]
LM: Yes.
Other: Yeah.
LM: Yes.
DK: Right. So I’ve got it switched back on again. So there we go. We’ll move that there. So you’re now with the British Army.
LM: Yeah.
DK: What’s happened next then?
LM: Well, while we were with them on their, on patrol we got an old vehicle. A little old sort of a Austin 7.
DK: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
LM: In one of these villages and Tom said he could drive you see and we got this thing started. It started up and we were driving around the village in this little motor and we called and went in the shop. It was a baker’s shop. They sold everything I suppose not just bread, they had cakes and everything in there and they couldn’t wait to give us stuff. We weren’t in uniform as such. I mean not really. We were, we were looked like bedraggled bloody gypsies really. I mean just imagine what we were like. Thin as rakes.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And we went in a shop and the German women said, ‘Your bread.’ And the bread we had, the old black bread that weren’t nice at all. That had got a thick layer of Greece on the bottom. But when we, they gave us a loaf of brown bread that was like cake. It was just like cake to eat. Their brown bread. Ordinary brown bread after eating black bread and but anyway we, eventually we got back. They dropped us off and two days we were there on patrol and then they took us back. We got back to the [echelon] and had to go through a de-louser.
DK: Yeah.
LM: DDT. Take all your clothes off. Shave because that’s where the lice grow on and when I came for a medical well first of all they were spraying DDT out of a hose from a container with no masks on. I mean that stuff now. That hangs in people’s bodies. You can’t get rid of it can you?
DK: Yeah. It’s banned, isn’t it?
LM: DDT.
DK: Yeah. It’s banned.
LM: And they were just spraying this all over you, under your arms, everywhere. And I wonder how many people got affected with that. The Army lads were doing it.
DK: It’s carcinogenic. It can cause cancers.
LM: They did all the spraying. Awful stuff.
DK: So its banned now.
LM: But anyway, we had to shave yourself and and the doctor said to me, he said, ‘Ahh,’ he said, ‘Impetigo.’ I said, ‘I don’t think so sir.’ He said, ‘Yes, that’s what I —’ I said, ‘ I don’t think so.’ I said, ‘It’s lice.’ I said, ‘That’s where I’ve scratched myself.’ ‘No. No. No. No.’ So he gave me one of those blue bottles. Years ago you used to get these bottles of blue weren’t they?
DK: Yeah.
LM: From your medical —
DK: Yeah.
LM: Perhaps you don’t remember. You’re not old enough to know that. They were poisonous stuff sort of business. And you’d get them an old blue bottle about that tall. I never used it. I come home and just washed myself. It went. It wasn’t impetigo at all. It looked like it I suppose because —
DK: Scratching.
LM: And you could, the lice was nearly as big as my little nail. They were huge. Just think of them crawling over yourself.
Other: Oh, I feel sick now.
LM: We never had any in the camp though. It weren’t ‘til we came out on the march until we got lousy. There was no lice in the camp whatsoever.
DK: So how did you get back to the UK then?
LM: I came back. We were taken to [Machelen] Airfield.
DK: Right.
LM: Picked up by, they kitted us out with Army clothes then.
DK: Right.
LM: Took all our old, took our old rubbish away and gave us a new Army uniform sort of business and I was picked up on a, I can’t tell you where, I’ve no idea where we actually got to. The airfield we flew from in a Dakota.
DK: Right.
LM: And I sat in this Dakota and there was a lad came up in the, on the aircraft. He said, ‘Have you flown before?’ I looked. I said, ‘Yes. Yeah. Yeah.’ He said, ‘Oh that’s alright,’ he said, ‘We just wondered if you had never flown before.’ I never said nothing. I thought no. He don’t know any different does he like.
DK: No. I suppose some of the Army POWs may not have flown because they would have been shipped out of there.
LM: That’s right.
DK: Captured. And that was the first time they flew.
Other: Yeah.
LM: Of course, there were lots of them. I mean we had lads we called them the Wizards of Oz. There was three of them. I don’t know how they came in our hut but I reckon they swapped over with some RAF lads.
DK: Right.
LM: That’s how we always reckoned they were, they kept themselves to themselves but we reckoned, we used to call them the Wizards of Oz. there was three of them. They never give any, never said nothing you know didn’t talk much. They were Army boys really and they swapped I reckon.
Other: Oh.
LM: With three RAF lads.
DK: So did, do you think you were flown back from somewhere in Germany?
LM: Yes. Yeah.
DK: So you were in Germany.
LM: Yes
DK: So can you remember where you arrived back in the UK?
LM: Yes. Brize. Not Brize Norton. Cosford.
DK: Cosford. Right. Ok.
LM: Cosford. Yeah. Came back to Cosford. I think it was Cosford we came back. If it weren’t Cosford we landed at that’s where we got rekitted.
DK: Right.
LM: At Cosford. What was the other one where they brought all the, repatriated all these prisoners a little while ago?
DK: Oh Lyneham.
LM: No. No. No. Down that same place.
DK: There’s Brize Norton.
LM: Brize Norton.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Not Brize Norton. Was it Brize Norton?
DK: Yeah. There’s Lyneham and then Brize Norton and —
LM: Lyneham was another one.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: I think it was Cosford I came back to.
DK: Right. Ok.
LM: And they sent us on leave for six weeks. All they gave me was four for some reason. They only gave me a pass for four weeks. I didn’t mind. I didn’t, I weren’t bothered all that much.
DK: Was there any sort of debriefing about your time as a POW? Did they ask you any questions?
LM: Yes. When we came home they, we had to go and stand in front of a board.
DK: Right.
LM: And they did, just weren’t all that interested I don’t think. I don’t think they didn’t seem to worry much. I mean, we, I don’t think they were enquiring about names or anything like that. They just, well, to be honest I don’t think they didn’t give a shite about us.
DK: No.
LM: They couldn’t wait to get us home and get us on leave it seemed to me and of course I don’t think they wanted us in the RAF all that long or whether they did or not I don’t know. We were probably getting paid too much and anyway when we came home you had the chance to remuster. I volunteered. Like a bit of a silly bugger I volunteered to go out to Japan.
LM: Right.
That’s why. I said I’d fly, I said I’d love to go and fly out to Japan now and fight out there. I thought what a bloody a dickhead wasn’t I?
Other: You didn’t know did you?
LM: What. No, he said, ‘No. We wouldn’t let you to do that again.’ They said no. Wouldn’t be allowed to do that. And anyway, I took a course on, back to Morse Code.
DK: Right.
LM: I was going to do that sort of thing and I thought oh no. This isn’t for me and actually I couldn’t concentrate at all. I couldn’t concentrate. My concentration was just gone so I remustered then to a teleprinting course and we used to send, write letters home. How quickly you can pick up a typewriter.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And you had an old metronome on the desk in front of you.
DK: Yeah.
LM: You had your big blackboard. You know I expect. And no numbers or letters on the keyboard. You had to feel them. Always work from the middle bar. And, ‘Oh, shit I’ll never do this.’ But how quickly —
Other: Where is your typewriter?
LM: Huh?
Other: What happened to your typewriter, grandad?
LM: Don’t mention about my typewriter what I bought and my [pause] they gave my typewriter away.
DK: Shall we turn this off again? [laughs]
LM: They couldn’t wait. I paid forty five pounds. No. sorry. Not quite that. I thought I’ll go upstairs the other night. I thought I’ll go up. I’ll do a bit of, I’ll get my old typewriter out of the spare room because my right hand isn’t very good now. I had a bit of a stroke but I had that. That was like what they called deprivisation.
DK: Right.
LM: And I get a little pension for that. But I was ages before I got it. Nobody came. I went in A1 obviously. I came out a down B2. Never said nothing about giving me a pension though. Not a thing. Couldn’t give a damn.
DK: Well presumably, well you clearly weren’t in the best of health when you came back.
LM: No. No.
DK: But was there any medical care that you received or —
LM: No. No. I went. No. No one bothered.
DK: No.
LM: No. No. No. If you went sick you went sick. If you didn’t you didn’t. Simple as that and I just —
Other: [unclear] ever since.
LM: I took the, then I thought this seemed good to me I said what I’ll do because they didn’t mind you remustering. They knew what state we were in I suppose.
DK: Yeah.
LM: For we weren’t in the best of mental state I don’t think then. We’d got so lax and not having to do anything. Sort of just walk around a bloody compound and I mean I weren’t too bad I was only thirteen months but some of them four or five years and I took a driver’s test and I came out the, out in Blackpool and the School of Motoring. The initials —
DK: Oh, the British School of Motoring [[ yeah.
LM: Up near Blackpool. Weeton.
DK: Right.
LM: In Blackpool. And the corporal said, another lad in the back, they were Austin 7, 10s like, he said. Went out the back around these you could see the hills in front of you in the distance, sort of the wasteland at the back of Blackpool. We got away to the front, still a bit of waste ground. He said, ‘Now, I want you to get to the top of that hill in top gear.’ And there was a gateway down there. I put my foot right down and went up that hill like a bomb. Yeah. No trouble. We got pulled up and loaded on and the boy in the back he said, ‘You scared the life out of me.’ I said, ‘Why?’ he said, ‘Well you nearly hit that gate post.’ I said ‘[unclear] Through there. I said, ‘He said, the corporal said to me he wanted me to get to the top of the hill in top gear.’ He wanted me to stall it you see, didn’t he?
DK: Yeah.
LM: Wanted me to start off on a hill but I didn’t. I foot rode up this blasted hill.
DK: So, what year did you actually leave the RAF then?
LM: I had two ranks.
DK: Right.
LM: Warrant officer air gunner and an AC2 driver.
DK: So you left as an AC2.
LM: Yes [laughs] Yes, I don’t, but I passed. I could drive anything when I came out.
DK: And what year was that that you came out then?
LM: 1946.
DK: Right.
LM: Came out in ’46 and started work in, my leave was up on the 6th of September 1946 and I started work on the 6th. On a Tuesday.
DK: Doing what? What was your career after that then? What did you do?
LM: Well, I thought I really loved to work on the land.
DK: Machelen Right.
LM: I loved the horses.
DK: So did you?
LM: Especially.
DK: Did you go back to —
LM: No. There wasn’t no money in it then was there?
DK: Right.
LM: So, Vic Bale, how I knew, I went to school with him he ran foremen men at Fiddlers Garages at Stowmarket.
DK: Right.
LM: He said to me, he said, ‘Lou,’ he said, ‘Are you —.’ Oh before then I, yeah that’s right. Yes. Yes. He said, ‘Lou, are you looking for a job?’ I said, ‘No. Not really, Vic.’ I said, ‘Not for a while. Just see my leave out and I’ll have a look around,’ I said, ‘There’s plenty of place in Stowmarket.’ He said, ‘Well, my dad you see has just gone as a foreman down at the old chemical works.’ He said, ‘There’s a firm, a Swedish firm going to make boards, building boards from straw.’ So I thought well I knew old Harry, his dad. I knew him well. So I went down. ‘Yes, boy.’ He said, ‘Yes, boy. You can start tomorrow if you like.’ I said, ‘Lovely Harry. I’ll start. Make it Tuesday.’ I said, ‘That’s the end of my leave.’ So I went and that’s where I started and I was the first one to start there. Then there was another lad. He was a Dunkirk lad.
DK: Right.
LM: Frank [Wasp]. He joined the next day. And then another lad he was in the Army he was a PT instructor. He joined on the Friday. So that we three started off at [unclear]
DK: [unclear]
LM: And the bloke who came to show us how to run [unclear] hadn’t a bloody clue. He hadn’t a clue. Not any idea.
DK: So just stepping back a bit have you stayed in touch with any of the, either your crew at the time or those that you escaped with?
LM: Well. No. Never. I’d have loved to. This was what I was saying earlier on. We never kept, the only one, now I had a letter come from some while ago now from the flight engineer.
DK: Right.
LM: When we were shot down. Did I know, he’d got my address from David Joseph’s wife —
DK: Right.
LM: Because David used to write to me. Well, when I say write it was a postcard at Christmas and all we wrote on it, “How are you? Ok? Having a nice time? Cheerio.” And that’s all that was said.
DK: So you stayed in touch with your pilot for a few years.
LM: Only on a —
DK: On a card.
LM: His mother used to write to my mother.
DK: Right.
LM: During the war. During that war and David he, what made me think he was a Joseph, the old Keith Josephs offspring they lived in Shakespeare Country.
DK: Right. Yeah. They must be related.
LM: Then I got —
DK: Yeah.
LM: Then I got a card come from him. “We’ve changed our address. I’ve now bought a farm at Bourton on the Water.” So we were on, me and the wife were on holiday. We called at Bourton on the Water. There’s a river runs through the street there isn’t there?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: A lovely place.
Other: Bourton on the Water.
LM: And I went into a Post Office. I said to the lady I said, Mock Hill, Pockhill Farm it was called. I went into the Post Office. I said, ‘Hello dear.’ I said, ‘You wouldn’t know the whereabouts of a David Josephs who live in Pockhill Farm would you?’ She said, ‘Yeah. They’re just up the road there on the right hand side.’ But he had died then. He’d had a brain haemorrhage.
DK: So you never met him again.
LM: I never met him. No.
DK: I’m rather conscious of time. I’ve just got one final question.
LM: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: And it’s really about how after all these years you feel about and you look back on your time in the RAF and a POW. How do you feel about that now? Is it something —
LM: I sometimes wish I’d have taken, what I ought to have, I sometimes think why didn’t I get a reserved job on the land? I could have been I don’t know. I wouldn’t have been I don’t know. I wouldn’t have been in a position I finished up with now at anyrate.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I had a good number when I, when I retired. A production manager at [unclear] when I retired so I wouldn’t, I was well looked after. The old governor I think sometimes that was a good thing that I went through that because otherwise I think I would have been on the farm until the day I died.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Or the time I retired. But I didn’t and —
DK: So in a strange way it was —
LM: It altered my life altogether because, yes.
DK: Some good came out of it.
LM: Because I suppose in a way I wouldn’t have gone, well a little example. When I was at school we had one day out in a year. Sunday school.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Had to go to Sunday school every Sunday. Stowupland and Creeting St Peter. I used to live at Creeting St Peter and that we used, they’d come from Stowup and pick us up at Creeting St Peter. Now, I’ve never been out of the village because we used to get to Jacks Green, that’s just nearly into Needham and somebody would ask, ‘Can you see the sea yet?’ That’s how naïve we were. Hadn’t been out of the village. When I went to London that was the first time I’d ever been in London in my life.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And I got on the Underground and it didn’t bother me at all.
DK: Yeah.
LM: No, I just asked a porter. I wasn’t afraid to ask and mostly the black ones were ever so helpful. Oh yeah.
DK: Better turn this off quick.
LM: Well, they were and in those days —
DK: Yeah. Yeah. No.
LM: I’m sorry Sally but —
Other: No, that’s fine, grandad.
LM: I didn’t say that.
DK: It was actually because we had full employment then that there weren’t enough people to work on the Underground so recruitment was actually done in the West Indies to get people.
LM: Oh right.
DK: To come over and work on the Underground and London Transport. Ok. Well, at that point we’d better stop. Well thanks very much for that.
LM: Yes.
DK: I’m turning this off now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Louis Makens
Creator
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David Kavanagh
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
2017-01-17
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.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMakensL170117, PMakensL1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Description
An account of the resource
Louis Makens worked as a farm worker before the war but volunteered for aircrew. He discusses his training on Wellingtons and operations flying Stirlings with 196 Squadron including a crash landing, and glider towing. His Halifax was shot down 18/19 March 1944 on the way to Frankfurt. It was his seventh operation, but his first as a mid under gunner with 76 Squadron from RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor. He became a prisoner of war and discusses that as an extra gunner with a new crew, he only got to know his pilot David Joseph during captivity. He describes his capture and treatment and the conditions at Stalag Luft 6, the contents of Red Cross parcels, and the prisoners' attitude to the guards. He describes the conditions on the long march through Germany away from the advancing Russians. Eventually he found the advancing Allied army. After the war, he was remustered as a driver and was demobbed in 1946. He found employment with Stramit manufacturing strawboard building material.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Lithuania
Poland
England--Yorkshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Lithuania--Šilutė
Poland--Świnoujście
Poland--Tychowo
Lithuania--Klaipėda
Temporal Coverage
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1944-03-18
1945-02
1945-06-19
1946-09-06
Format
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01:42:22 audio recording
Contributor
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Julie Williams
196 Squadron
76 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bombing
evading
Fw 190
Halifax
Initial Training Wing
Lysander
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Bridlington
RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Sealand
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Stradishall
RAF Witchford
shot down
Stalag Luft 4
Stalag Luft 6
Stirling
strafing
the long march
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/785/9340/PTurnerHA1801.1.jpg
ee4d9c570a3678bd6343b3c5957fb700
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/785/9340/ATurnerHA180829.1.mp3
e8342d61f314b839367caf2cfbcc9535
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
Turner, Bert
Herbert Alan Turner
H A Turner
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Bert Turner (b. 1923, 1607412 Royal Air Force). He completed 31 bombing and supply operations as a flight engineer with 196 Squadron. He was shot down twice.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-29
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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Turner, HA
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MH: We’re now running. So, we just had Bert, thank you for giving your time up and also to Peter for giving his time up as well. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command. The interviewer is Martyn Hordern, that’s me. The interviewee is Herbert Turner. The interview is taking place at the Tri-Services and Veteran’s Support Centre, Hassell Street, Newcastle, Staffordshire. Also present is Peter Batkin, a friend of Bert. The date is the 29th of August 2018. So, we’ve obviously just, when we’ve asked you Peter, Bert sorry that your date of birth was the 23rd of December 1923. Where were you born?
BT: London.
MH: Whereabouts in London?
BT: 99 Ledbury Road, Paddington.
MH: Paddington.
BT: I think it’s Paddington. I wouldn’t be sure.
MH: No.
BT: It’s either Paddington or Kensington.
MH: What sort of family did you come from? A large family, a small family?
BT: Mum and dad and six kids.
MH: And where did you —
BT: I was the youngest but one.
MH: Right. I’m just opening my bottle of water of here so apologies for the fizz. Had your dad served in the First World War?
BT: Yes, he was in the RAF, in the RFC.
MH: Right.
BT: As it was then. I found a photograph the other night of my dad in his tropical kit for the Dardanelles.
MH: Right. So he’d served at Gallipoli.
BT: Hmmn?
MH: In Gallipoli. The Dardanelles. Wasn’t it Gallipoli, yeah?
BT: Ahum.
MH: James, dad was in Gallipoli as well.
BT: He, yeah, my dad and his three brothers fought in the First World War.
MH: So, what was life like growing up in the 1920s in London?
BT: We were alright. We probably, practically lived in Kensington Gardens and the parks and that. And they say, they say it was the hungry years. I didn’t know. I never went hungry. We always had something on the table. Mum was main cook and that was it. We, I went to school at St Stephens in Paddington. Did all my schooling there from the time I was three ‘til I was fourteen. Then I got a, I started work. I worked at Lyons in Cadby Hall, as an office lad. I didn’t like that. Went to McVities Biscuit factory and I finished up in the London Co -op as a delivery boy until I joined up.
MH: So —
BT: And that —
MH: At that point you were you were sort of like as I say a young teenager just before the war started.
BT: Yeah. Well, we in the Scouts and the Cubs and then I transferred to the ATC. 46F Squadron in Kensington. I’m trying to think. It must have been what? Nineteen 1940, 1939 I suppose, I joined the ATC. Of course, we went all through the blitz. But as, as I remember it all I ever wanted to do was fly. That was the be all and end all. I mean Ball and Mannock and all of those, they were my heroes and —
MH: And where did that come from. Do you know that?
BT: I’ve no idea because nobody [laugh] nobody else in the family wanted it but my my idea was I wanted to go straight in to the Air Force as a lad. A boy. And my mum wasn’t having that. Only rogues and vagabonds were served, went in the Services.
MH: What was your dad’s view having served in the First War?
BT: Dad never, dad never argued with mum. They were both short, small people. Mum was just under five foot and dad was just over five foot. About five foot two. But only slight people. Very. But I can’t remember them falling out. They never fell out in front of us.
MH: No.
BT: I’m not saying they didn’t fall out but —
MH: So so you mentioned —
BT: A pretty, a pretty average sort of life.
MH: Yeah.
BT: It was a family and that was it.
MH: How did, how did the Blitz affect you because obviously you were in London and it’s 1940?
BT: Not a, not a lot. We used to go, we used to go out fire watching at the shop in Barlby Road. We were, we used to go messaging with the ARP and that sort of thing. But it never seemed to, I know it sounds ridiculous but it didn’t seem to affect life.
MH: No.
BT: It, life went on.
MH: Yeah. But you could see the after affects I assume of the raids.
BT: You’d get up in the morning and there had been a bomb here or a bomb there sort of thing and you saw different things I mean, like toilets hanging on a wall and that sort of thing. It seemed remarkable. But my, my life just seemed to carry on sort of thing until I was seventeen and a half and then I went to Acton and volunteered. And mother wasn’t very pleased about that. ‘You’ll go quick enough but —’ she said, ‘They’ll send for you quick enough.’
MH: Yeah.
BT: I said, ‘Yes, but I want to go in the Air Force, mum.’ So, that was it.
MH: Did she have to sign you in at that age or were you old enough to sign yourself?
BT: No. I signed myself in [pause] and mother didn’t speak to me for ages. She didn’t, didn’t want to know. We’d already got, I’d already got two brothers in. One in the Air Force and one in the Army and mum said that was enough. But I said, ‘It’s got to come mum. I’ve got to go.’ So that was it.
MH: And the truth be told you wanted to go though.
BT: I wanted to go. Yes. Oh yes, I was. I thought it was going to be all over before I had my chance. But I went to Acton and volunteered and I had to go to Oxford for three days for, you know I don’t know what they called it, an interview with, and exams. And they told me I could go in as a flight mech and [pause] I could study to be a pilot if I wanted. Fair enough. And they called me up on August the 2nd 1942. I went to, from [pause] went to Penarth for seven days where they kitted us out. And from Penarth we went to Blackpool where I did my square bashing and, in civvy digs. We were there ‘til December I think it was and we marched out to Halton in December ’42.
MH: And that’s when you went to a, to a squadron then, did you?
BT: No. No. That was, that was training school.
MH: Right.
BT: I started my flight mech’s course and they put a notice up on orders. They wanted flight engineers. So we, a lot of us volunteered and we had to go down to London for our medicals and I was accepted. And about February we were posted to St Athans in Wales where we did our flight engineer’s course. And [pause] we had a funny experience there. We were all out on the, not the outside the hangars where the school was for a NAAFI break and all at once somebody says, about four or five hundred blokes stood around and all at once somebody shouted, ‘Jerry.’ And everybody drops to the ground and looked and three, three German aircraft flew across. The only thing was they were wearing RAF roundels [laughs] They were captured aircraft. But that was amusing. And then it was 1943, mother died while I was at St Athan and that was a blow. We [pause] we didn’t get over that. But I finished up, I passed out at St Athan. I think I got about sixty five, seventy percent. It was a pass anyhow through and I got my tapes and my brevet. We moved from St Athan to 1657 Con Unit at Stradishall, just outside Newmarket and while I was there I crewed up and met my crew, Mark Azouz, John Greenwell, Leo Hartman, John McQuiggan, Teddy Roper, Pete Findlay and myself. And we started flying Stirling 1s and we did our day circuits and bumps. Started night circuits and bumps. And we did a couple of circuits and bumps with the instructors on board and the skipper screened, turned around, he said, ‘I’m getting out,’ he said. ‘You take it around for one yourself and put it to bed.’ And my instructor said, ‘If he’s getting out I’m getting out. You’re on your own.’ [laughs] I thought fair enough. Off we went. Undercarriage up and away we went. Anyhow, skipper said, ‘Undercarriage down.’ And the undercarriage wouldn’t play.
MH: And this was the first time you’d flown solo as a crew.
BT: Yes. So well, we did all we could think of which I don’t suppose there was much. Told them downstairs that we were having trouble with the undercart. Anyhow, we eventually, we had to try to wind it down by hand. We got one leg down but we couldn’t get the other one. So, we got one leg down and that was tighter. They decided that we were going to have to land at Waterbeach. Then halfway to Waterbeach they decided the best thing was to land it on Newmarket Race Course. So, skipper put her down on Newmarket Race Course.
MH: And you got the one leg back up again.
BT: One leg up and one we, they managed, we managed to break the lock on the starboard, no, port, port leg and the skipper took her in and we landed and I think she was, she was a mess. And we all got out and climbed out and we were all standing on one of them rings and the ambulance driver came up and looked at us and he counted us and he turned around and, ‘What, nobody hurt?’ And we, nobody had a scratch so that was it. And then we were called in the flight office the next day and wingco was very annoyed. He told us we’d broken his aeroplane. That was, that was the end of that. Anyhow, we got away with it and we finished up we were posted to 90 Squadron at Tuddenham just before Christmas and we did, I don’t know, it was six or seven trips. We did a mine laying to Sylt, Kiel and that sort of thing and then at the time they were busy bombing the French factories for the Doodlebugs and that. And we did a couple of them. And then they posted us away to Tarrant Rushton to go glider towing and para dropping. We went [pause] we went to Tarrant Rushton, we were only there for oh, a couple of weeks, a couple of three weeks as I remember it. It doesn’t, doesn’t gel very easily but I don’t think we operated from there. We, we took over Keevil from the Americans in around about March ’44 and we were glider towing and doing supply drops in France for the SOE.
MH: What sort of stuff were you taking over to the SOE? Did you know what you were taking?
BT: No. No. It was all in canisters or baskets or anything. Occasionally we would have a couple of bods we’d take over. SAS people initially. A lot of them were Poles.
MH: Were there, was those trips quiet trips or —
BT: Sometimes, it was but we did [pause] D-Day came up and they decided that we’d got to, all aircrew had got to fly with sidearms so they issued us all with .38 pistols and you can imagine nineteen, twenty year old kids playing cowboys and Indians. But we woke up one morning and went out to an aircraft and they’d painted the white stripes for the invasion. That was, all came as such a surprise that nobody knew anything about it until it was done. But the mechs were standing on the wings painting these blooming white stripes with brooms. Then D-Day came up. We were ready to go on the 5th. But no. We were ready to go on the 4th and it was cancelled. And then they gave the order that we were going on the 5th and we took the paratroops over D-Day on the, we took off on the 5th you know.
MH: Yeah.
BT: Early morning to —
MH: What planes were you flying then?
BT: I beg —
MH: What planes were you flying then?
BT: Stirling 4s. Yeah. We took twenty paratroops over, dropped them off and that was it.
MH: What was that like that you were flying across then?
BT: Do you know, do you know Peter will tell you, I’ve said this so many times before. It was one of the quietest trips I remember.
MH: No flak. No —
BT: We, we saw barely anything. It, it surprised, it, it sounds ridiculous when you first say it but as far as I was, we were concerned it was one of the quietest of our trips.
MH: And the paratroopers. Do you remember what —
BT: The paratroops went in.
MH: What battalion were they from?
BT: Hmmn?
MH: Do you remember what battalion they were from or [pause] Do you remember what —
BT: No. No. No. No, we didn’t have a lot to do with them. Chatted to them and all this, that and the other, you know.
MH: British I assume.
BT: Yes. Yes. It, it was just another trip. And then we did a trip to France and a delivery for the SOE. Arms and whatever and we got there and when you went on these SOE things all you were looking for is five bonfires and we found it. And when we got there Jerry was waiting for us and it got nasty. First, we went in, dropped what we got, came out of it. There was a light flak gun busy after us but we got away with it and he never touched us and we flew in and checked for a hang up. Well, on a Stirling there’s a step and it’s across along the width of the bomb bay and the bomb bay on a Stirling is three different sections. That’s why it can’t take big bombs. And in this step there was three little glass windows only about the size of a tin. You know, a pea tin top and you held a torch against one end and someone looked at the other and if they could see the torch you hadn’t got, the light, you’d got no hang-ups. If they couldn’t you’d got a hang-up. And we had three hang-ups of containers.
MH: Just hadn’t been released from their old —
BT: They hadn’t dropped. So it was skipper turned around and said, ‘Well, they never touched us that time. We’ll take them back.’ Which thinking about it afterwards was a stupid idea but we didn’t think about that at the time and I said, ‘Well, somebody will have to give me a hand.’ I said, ‘Two of them I can drop myself but the other one’s the other end of the aircraft.’ So, ‘Well, McGuigan can drop the other one.’ So, fair enough. And when you drop them you just pull a bolt back and they drop. But they drop without a parachute. A parachute won’t open for some reason. I don’t know why. So anyhow, skipper goes and we go around and just as Leo said, ‘Drop them,’ dropped a, Jerry hit us and he put the starboard outer out of action, damaged the starboard inner and peppered us a bit. None of us were touched. Fair enough. We came out but the skipper shouted for me and I went up and he turned around and said, ‘The starboard outer won’t feather.’ I said, ‘Well, use the —’ [pause] he said, ‘The starboard’s running out.’ ‘Feather it.’ He said, ‘It won’t feather.’ I said, ‘Oh.’ So I said, ‘Get Pete out of his turret,’ because the torque on the prop on the starboard outer could possibly take the rear tail up. The fin and rudder. So we got Pete out of his turret and just as we got Pete out the props flew off somewhere over France and we flew back. We landed, landed at a place called Colerne just outside Bath. And they were, they were surprised to see us naturally so, but they were flying Mosquitoes and Spitfires. And I remember the CO there turned around and very unpolitely, turned round at the skipper and said, ‘I don’t know whether you’re a fool or a hero bringing this abortion in here.’ But anyhow the skipper got a DFC for it and we went back to Keevil.
MH: What, what was it like? You’ve had, you said your early flights were fairly sort of just dropping mines and that. I take it you’d never been really shot at had you in those first flights before you did your —
BT: Oh, we’d been shot at but not as badly if you know. It was just part of the —
MH: Yeah.
BT: Somehow or another it [pause] it didn’t seem to be a part of the equation that you got [pause] I don’t know why.
MH: And, and so and then you go to drop these supplies off and you go back round again.
BT: Yeah.
MH: And then you get hit.
BT: My point, thinking about it afterwards it was supposed to be a secret mission [laughs] Well, Jerry’s there shooting at you. These blokes have got to pick, down there have got to pick these containers up and they’re not light by any manner of means and disperse and get them off and Jerry’s on the doorstep. So all you’re doing really is handing it to Jerry.
MH: And what, what were your thoughts when the plane got hit?
BT: What can I do?
MH: Did you ever think you’d never get back?
BT: No. It never. Do you know, I can’t remember that at all. In any, I got, in any event I could never think of, it never entered my head that we were going to get hurt. Then after that it was we did a, there was an Operation Tonga as I remember it and it was a massive air drop to the south of France of containers for the French. Free French. That was, I think that was the only time that we flew then with other aircraft at daylight. Then I got married. I married a WAAF on the station. We got married on the Thursday. We had three days leave in London. We got, came, we went back and they shut the gates for Arnhem. And on the 17th of September we took a, took a Horsa to Arnhem and we went again on the Monday and it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all. The opposition we met was practically negligible. On the Tuesday we had apparently there was Air Ministry issued an order that all intelligence officers were to fly a mission. Well, my skipper was a Jew, as was the bomb aimer and the intelligence officer we had was a Jew so I suppose we would keep it in the family and he decided to come with us and of course they just gave him a helmet with a mic and a, earphones on. No, no oxygen mask or anything. And I used to go up second dickie when bomb aimer went down to the bomb aiming position but he’s sitting in my seat. So I’m halfway down the fuselage and in a Stirling that’s it. You can’t see anything. You’ve got to stick your head out the astrodome to look around sort of thing and flying along quite happily. Go to, got to the [unclear] where we turned in to the target and we were flying along quite happily and all at once, ‘There’s flak over there.’ [pause] ‘There’s flak.’ The skipper turned around. He said. ‘There’s flak where?’ He says, ‘Over there.’ He said, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘That’s port.’ He says, ‘And the other side’s starboard.’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And it’s a long way away don’t worry about it.’ I thought to myself things are getting tricky. Jerry’s getting naughty. So I went down and stuck my head out the astrodome. Oh, well away in the distance is a few bursts of flak. We went in and we dropped our Horsa and went back home again. And then we went again on the Tuesday and Jerry got organised and it was rough. We had a rough and we were jocking through this lot the skipper turned around. He says, ‘Flak,’ he says, ‘I wish I’d got him with me now.’ He said, ‘I’d show him flak.’ We got away with it. They knocked us about a bit and we got a few holes in but we were fair enough and we, we got back and that was our thirtieth so we thought that’s it. No more. A rest. And on the Wednesday night they told us we’d got to do another one on Thursday. We’re short of crews. Fair enough. So on the Thursday morning we goes out to the aircraft and the skipper walks along and his scratching cats are missing and he’s got a bar on. What’s this? So, he anyhow, the skipper’s got his commission. Pilot officer. He got awarded a, promulgated with the DFC same day. So, we’re on for Arnhem, Thursday. Go out to the aircraft. Run it up. We couldn’t get revs and boost on. I think it was the outboard inner. One of them was playing up anyway. Doesn’t matter. Couldn’t get it to turn. ‘Take the spare aircraft.’ So you had to move everything that we were carrying to the spare aircraft and the rest of the lads had taken off so we were about twenty five, thirty minutes behind them taking off and skipper said to Leo, ‘Cut corners. Let’s get back with the lads and we can go over together.’ But we got there just as the lads were coming out and we had to go in on our own and it was rough. We got shot up a bit and it happened. And while we were over Arnhem this is a bit cheeky but still I went second dickie. McQuiggan, the wireless op went down the back because we were carrying baskets. Big baskets that had to go out and two Army dispatchers were flying with us and McQuiggan went down the back to supervise that.
MH: Were the dispatcher’s jobs to push the stuff off?
BT: Yeah.
MH: Was that their job?
BT: Yeah. Well, the Stirling had a big hatch at the bottom, in the, at the bottom of the fuselage near the tail where the paratroops dropped out and we used to have to push a, an A frame down and peg it in to stop the paratroop bags wrapping around the elevators. So McQuiggan’s down there doing that and we went through and as I say Jerry knocked us about a bit and we got through and McGuigan come up from the back and I went back to my own station and McGuigan come up and he, he’s covered in blood from head to foot. I looked and I thought where do you put a dressing? And I don’t know, ‘Where are you hit, Mac?’ He turned around and he said, ‘The elsan.’ I said, ‘The elsan?’ A shell must have burst under the aircraft, and the elsan, the chemical toilet is held down by three bolts and it had taken off and it had thrown it all over McQuiggan. And elsanal fluid is the same colour as Jeyes fluid and he’s —
MH: He’s not covered in blood.
BT: Anyhow, we got, we’re flying along and skipper asked Ginger for a course to Brussels. We’re flying on two engines. Well, we’re moving on two engines and I looked out the astrodome and I’ll never forget it. I looked up and there’s six fighters and I thought they were Tempests. And I wouldn’t mistake a 109 for a Tempest. A 190, yes. And I still say they were 190s. The Air Ministry said there were no 190s flying [unclear] Anyhow, they decided that we were going to be their meat and they, they came for us. Well, the rear gunner shot the lead aircraft down. The lead fighter blew up. I saw it with my own eyes. But then they got nasty and skipper gave the order to abandon aircraft and we baled out over a place called Niftrik and we, the Army picked us up. We got landed, four of us finished up in a farm house in Holland and, but they gave us egg and bacon. Then the Royal Horse Artillery picked us up, took us back to their camp, give us a night’s kip and put us in a lorry to go back to Belgium. And just as we were moving off, well we got to a crossroads somewhere or other and the Redcaps, Army Redcaps waiting there. ‘You’ve got to leave this and get out, sir.’ So we got out and we were lay in a ditch for I don’t know and in the finish we, we were walking across a field in Holland and the Americans picked us up and took us in to Veghel. And we got in to a Veghel, we spent the night there. And the next morning the Green Howards relieved that and the paras were coming out of Arnhem and I can’t think of the general, was it who was on the ground but he came out and there was a staff car waiting for him and he had, he went in the side car err in the staff car and before, there were five actually. Another crew bloke I don’t know he was now got in with us and we went in that to Brussels. We spent the night in Brussels and flew back to England the next day. We got in to England on the Sunday. The put us in a coach to take us to the Airworks in London and of course it was almost passing my home so I turned around to the driver and said, ‘You can drop me here. I’m going to see my dad.’ And, ‘You can’t.’ I said. ‘I’m going to.’ I said. So, I got out and I’m carrying a box like a wooden box, a tomato box with peaches and grapes from, and apples from Holland. And I got out the car at the, on the Western Avenue and I stopped a bloke in a car and he took me home [laughs] And I gave him a peach and oh he was quite happy. And I, we lived in quite a big house in London in Chesterton Road at the time and you had to go all round the house and in through the scullery door at the back and the dark passage from the scullery in to the kitchen. And just as I walked up the passage my dad come out of the kitchen and he took one look and passed out. And my brother was with him, he was on leave and he came out and he said, ‘What are you doing here? You’re dead.’ Thanks very much. They’d had telegrams, “Missing believed killed.” Because none of the boys had seen us. Seen us bale out.
MH: No.
BT: I had something to eat. My dad took me to Paddington Station. Well, my dad paid my fare back to Keevil. I never had that money off the Air Force either [laughs] And I’m standing on Paddington station, a sergeant. My trousers were ripped, I’d got no collar and tie, I was wearing a bit of orange supply chute around my neck, got no cap. I was wearing one flying boot and one flying boot that I’d cut down because I’d got an ankle wound and two MPs parading up and down in front of me and clearly they could see [laughs] And eventually they come across to me. ‘Sergeant, you’d best come with us.’ And they took me to the RTO and the RTO officer gave me a bed and they woke me up with a cup of cocoa. Put me on a train for Keevil and when I got back to Keevil of course I’d got no money. I got no money for the bus. One of the airman had to pay my fare. The bus driver wouldn’t let me on the bus without the fare. So, when the airmen paid my fare and I got back to Keevil and I thought well, I’d better go and see the wife, so —
MH: Bearing in mind you’d only been married a few days at that point.
BT: Yeah. I’d been married a week exactly when we were shot down and she’d been told that she was a widow. So anyhow, I walked in, up to the cookhouse and she come running out and the first thing she said to me was, ‘You stink.’ ‘Thanks very much.’ Anyhow, I finished up, I went up the billet and had a wash and had a shower and went to sick bay to get my ankle dressed. Hospital. So they put in the blood wagon and sent me over to Ely. And I’d hopped all over Holland, I’d hopped halfway across England, I got out the ambulance. I had to hop all over the hospital and they x-rayed it and all the rest and, yes. Fair enough. Nothing wrong. Dressed it and put it back and I went back to Keevil in sick bay. Well, my wife had to go in hospital for an operation about three days later so I turned around to the quack, I said, ‘Can I go in the blood wagon to see the wife at Ely?’ ‘You can’t,’ he said, ‘You’re, you’re a stretcher case.’ I thought thanks very much. So we, anyhow we finished up we stayed at, I was in dock for ten days I think and on the Saturday they let me out and I got, I was sent on survivor’s leave. And my wife came with me, and we had to travel from Keevil to Stoke on Trent. We got to Bristol and we had to change stations at Bristol. Anyhow, we got on the train and like all wartime trains it was packed and I’m standing there and the porter slung a case in and of course hit my ankle and didn’t know what it had done at the time of course. But I finished up the journey sitting on kit bags and God knows what. And when we got to my wife’s home my wife took the dressing off and had a look and it had knocked the scab of the wound. So, anyhow, I had my leave and went back and while we were on leave we, they’d moved from Keevil. I think they’d gone from Keevil to Shepherds Grove. And we got, when I got to Shepherds Grove we, I went and reported sick and I’m back in bed again. And anyhow it all went well in the finish and that was it.
MH: Could we just go back to when you got shot down and you parachuted out of a plane had you ever parachuted before? Had any training to parachute?
BT: Never had any training at all apart from someone saying, ‘Well, you put the chute on here and you pull this. Oh no, we never had parachute drill. We had dinghy drill but I never, we never had —
MH: What was dingy drill?
BT: Eh? They used to take you to the local swimming pool.
MH: Baths.
BT: Swimming baths, and they’d throw a seven man dinghy in the water upside down and you wear a flying suit and a Mae West and you’d got to go in there, swim in, swim to the dinghy and turn it upright. It’s quite a job and it was. On the bottom of the dinghy there’s two hand holds and you have to hold these hand holds, pull them towards you as much as you can and then jump on the bottom of the dinghy to turn it over.
MH: Right.
BT: You finish up underneath it and that was, that’s the only dinghy drill we did.
MH: And what height did you bale out at then?
BT: Around about three to four thousand feet.
MH: And did the parachute open straight away or did you have to have a rip cord?
BT: On, on rip cord.
MH: And did anything happen on the way down?
BT: Yes. Jerry tried to kill us.
MH: Would you mind just sort of giving a bit more detail to that?
BT: Well, we all, we all baled out. The rear gunner was killed in the aircraft. The navigator went out the front and I went out of the parachute hatch and we were shaking hands on the way down and a Jerry fighter decided we were his meat and it was very naughty. But he didn’t notice the Thunderbolt behind him and the Thunderbolt, American Thunderbolt shot him down. But they shot the skipper. The skipper was killed.
MH: On the way down.
BT: On the way down on his ‘chute. Well, he was wounded. He died in hospital. So I was told.
MH: And when, when the Germans were flying at you could you feel the bullets whizzing past or, or was you just, is that what —
BT: It’s no good saying yes.
MH: No.
BT: I can’t remember.
MH: But you knew what they were trying to do?
BT: We knew what, as I say the navigator and I, Ginger and I we flew, we dropped together. We dropped in a field together and because [pause] Germans wear field grey, well, we were lying there in a field and there is a grey bloke, a grey dressed bloke dressed, heading for us. And Ginger turned around, he said, ‘Bert, shoot him.’ I said, ‘You shoot him.’ He said, [laughs] ‘I’ve lost my gun.’ And it was a good job we didn’t shoot him. He was a Dutchman wearing one of them navy blue boiler suits that had been washed and washed [laughs] and just looked like Jerry field grey.
MH: So, that point where you dropped down were you, were you behind German lines then or were you —
BT: It was a very fluid situation. Nobody knew who was where or any, if you understand what I mean. There was no front line or, it was all the time I was in Holland you couldn’t say where you were. You were in safe ground sort of thing.
MH: Yeah.
BT: It, one minute you’d be talking to your own Army sort of thing. The next minute there were Jerries but [pause] we saw, we saw a Jerry, a Jerry Tiger tank. It came looking round. Smelling around. But we had nothing to with the job. Didn’t get involved with it.
MH: What was, what was going through your mind then? You’ve been shot down, you’ve been parachuted, the Germans are trying to kill you on the way down, you’re now not quite sure where you are. What was going through this young man’s mind?
BT: I don’t know what was going through my mind. All I knew, all I could say, think was we’d got to get to the Army. We’ve got to find it [pause] I know it sounds ridiculous but I can’t remember being scared. I should have been. I should have been but I can’t remember being scared. At times now I have nightmares but it didn’t seem to work then.
MH: No. I take it you weren’t given any training how to, you know if you parachuted over enemy territory how to evade the enemy.
BT: Pardon?
MH: Were you given any training to evade the enemy?
BT: We were given lectures. You know. What to do and what not to do but it —
MH: And how did that bear out in reality when you actually got there? Did it actually make sense?
BT: It didn’t bear out because there was no one to help us if you understand what I mean. We didn’t, we didn’t run in to civilians. The only time I saw any civilians during that period was when we landed and we were taken to a farmhouse. They took us. We went in to the farmhouse and there must have been the district in this farmhouse trying to, wanting us, getting round to us you know and they couldn’t do enough for us.
MH: No.
BT: But when, once the Army picked us up I don’t, I don’t think we spoke to a civilian until we got to Brussels.
MH: And your ankle injury. How did that, what was that? What had you done to yourself?
BT: Well, the only thing [pause] I don’t know. I was the only one who was scratched apart from Pete. Pete was killed. I didn’t realise I’d been touched until we landed and then when we dropped off I felt it. But whether [pause] the only thing I could think of was a piece of shrapnel. But where it went heaven knows. There was no, nothing there. Still got the scar for it.
MH: I can imagine.
BT: It wouldn’t heal. Once the scab had been knocked off it wouldn’t heal and I was in dock oh quite a while. I remember the Group MO came to, to visit and he looked at it and they were, our, our, the squadron doc was looking after me and he turned around and he said, ‘What are you doing?’ And he said, ‘You can’t do anything else,’ he says. ‘Just keep pouring it in.’ Yeah. But at the time I was under the weather. I was having boils and I had a Whitlow on my finger and that was, that was amusing. I I went home on leave with a Whitlow and that night, oh God I was in agony and my dad came in to me and he said, ‘What’s the matter?’ And I said, ‘My finger.’ ‘He says, ‘Go to the hospital in the morning.’ So I went to Du Cane Road Hospital and they had a look. ‘Oh yes. Sit down. Sit. I’ll send someone to you.’ So I sat down and two blokes came and they were rugby three quarterbacks I think. They were both about seven foot tall and fifteen stone like Peter and they said, ‘Are you the airman with a Whitlow?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Come on.’ And Du Cane Road is a teaching hospital and they took me in a theatre and there are all these seats up there and we sat down at this table and he turned around and he said, ‘Put your finger —', he put a block on the table, ‘Put your finger on there,’ he said, and he sprayed it with some blooming stuff and it was, yes, and he was chatting away quite happily and he picked up a scalpel and he banged on my finger and it just went thud and then he promptly cut it all the flipping way down and wrapped and turned round, ‘Come on.’ And we went to the plaster of Paris place and they put a splint on on my hand. Then they bound my hand up like a boxing glove and I said, ‘How can I get my jacket on?’ Fair enough. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We’ll pin your jacket up, put you in a sling. Fair enough. Then he gave me two pills. He said, ‘You’ll want them tonight.’ So, I said, ‘Thanks very much.’ ‘Now, you can go home on the bus.’ ‘Thank you very much.’ So anyway, I went out of the hospital on the bus and I’m standing at the bus stop and these two old ladies standing there. I heard one say to the other, ‘That poor boy,’ she says, ‘I wonder how he got his arm — [laughs] I thought to myself, I wonder if they would smile if they knew it was a Whitlow. But that was it and then for the next four months nobody wanted to know me. I used to go back to camp and oh, nothing. Go away. Go on leave. And I was on leave on and off for about four months. Then what, I don’t know how true it is or what it is but they were on about something that we’d been behind enemy lines and we’d come back and if we went again we could be shot. What it is I don’t know but anyhow, it was—
MH: They didn’t want to be associated with you just in case you got shot down again or something.
BT: No. Anyhow, we they decided that we could [pause] I stayed on leave and I was home on leave with the wife at night. Just got in bed. Gone to bed. The doorbell goes so I go to the door. ‘Yes?’ Telegraph boy. Well, I’d still got a brother in the Army and I thought, Derek. No. “Flight Sergeant Turner.” Oh. “Return to unit.” Oh. The next day I go back to unit. ‘Wing Commander Baker wants you.’ ‘Oh, right.’ Goes to see Wing Commander Baker. ‘Ah, Turner. I want to do some flying.’ ‘Yes,’ What’s that to do with me? ‘But my navigator and my flight engineer are sick.’ I said, ‘Oh.’ ‘Well, Greenwell’s decided he’ll fly with me. You don’t mind do you?’ Well, how the hell do you say no to a wing commander? So, ‘Yes, sir.’ So fair enough. ‘We’re doing a cross country tomorrow.’ Fair enough. So we do a cross country with Wing Commander Baker. Now, my pilot was good. I’m not saying Wing Commander Baker was bad but my pilot was good. And the Stirling that they got ready for us they filled with Australian petrol. So, when we come in to land we’re down the runway. Oh dear. A few nights later he decides we’re doing a bullseye on Leeds so we do a bullseye on Leeds and they put the same petrol in the plane and we come down [pause] oh dear. And Wing Commander Baker turned round, he said, ‘That’s twice I’ve done that.’ And Ginger said, ‘Yes, I know sir. We were with you both times.’ ‘No need to be nasty, Greenwell.’ ‘No sir.’ Turner. 19th of February the tannoy goes. ‘Flight Sergeant Turner report to Wing Commander Baker.’ ‘Yes sir.’ Down to Wing Commander Baker. ‘Ahh Turner. My navigator is better so we don’t need Greenwell.’ So I said ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘But Morgan is still bad.’ ‘Yes sir.’ ‘Well, I want to operate.’ Oh dear. That’s a bad idea. ‘Yes.’ ‘You don’t mind do you?’ ‘No sir.’ ‘Right.’ So, December, February the 20th and we know the war’s nearly over and they’re trying to keep Jerry this side, this side of the Rhine. They don’t want him to reform on the other side of the Rhine so they’re knocking down all the bridges on the river to stop him and we got the job. So we flew to Holland and we attacked this bridge at the Waal. On the Waal at a place called Rees and it was a nightmare. It was the worst night. The worst trip I ever had. And then just to cap it all Jerry jet jobs were on the job. So we were shot up by the flak and shot down by a Jerry fighter.
MH: Jet fighter that shot you down was it?
BT: And out of the, out of an aeroplane I jumped again. I landed in a pig sty up to my flipping knees and I didn’t know whether I was in Germany or Holland or where I was. I’d no idea. I was on my own. And then a soldier came marching through the blooming door and he said, ‘Where is he?’ I said, ‘Who are you after?’ Oh, he said, ‘You’re English.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘I was told it was a Jerry.’ I said, ‘No.’ So we went back. I went back to them and I was, I was no how. I remember him giving me a glass of rum and they took us back to a place called Tilburg, I think it was. and flew us home in an air ambulance. But Wing Commander Baker and Flight Sergeant Gordon were killed. And that was the end of my flying career.
MH: What were your thoughts the second time you floated down from a plane?
BT: I couldn’t tell you what I thought. I don’t know. I don’t, honestly. As far as I know I was terrified and [pause] at —
MH: What sort of height did you drop from this time? Similar sort of height?
BT: Hmmn?
MH: What sort of height did you parachute from this time?
BT: About seven thousand feet.
MH: Oh, that was a bit further up.
BT: And we were pretty high.
MH: I take it the two that lost their lives were they did they lose their life in the plane or as a result of the plane crashing? Didn’t they get out or —
BT: I don’t know. I don’t know. All I remember is Baker telling us to bale out. The navigator, bomb aimer and the wireless op and myself got out.
MH: What was it like suddenly seeing these jet powered planes? I take it you’d heard about them before then or —
BT: No. It was the nearest thing I could put it down to it’s the same as looking at one of these sci-fi comics. You know. It just didn’t seem real.
MH: No. Extremely quick.
BT: Hmmn?
MH: Were they flying extremely quick?
BT: It seemed they were there and gone you see before you looked, you know. It [pause] it’s, it’s an episode I can’t really remember and I’m not sorry about that.
MH: No. I can appreciate that. So, at that point you then become a twice holder of the Caterpillar Club badge.
BT: I I never got the second one.
MH: Didn’t you? Oh right.
BT: No. I did get the first.
MH: Oh right.
BT: The first, on my jacket. Oh God. Excuse me.
MH: And I take it, do they come from the manufacturers of the parachutes?
BT: The first one [pause] this one the adjutant of the squadron applied for it and got it for all of us. But the second one I heard nothing at all.
MH: Can I take a picture of that before we finish, Bert? If that’s ok?
[pause]
MH: So they owe you one then.
BT: Yeah, they owe me, they owe me the train fare from blooming Paddington to Keevil. Well, my dad my dad paid.
MH: Yeah. Yeah. So, so that was the, that was it for your flying then after that second one.
BT: Yeah. I finished flying then. I went to [pause] I went to Gillingham in Kent in the office. I was tootling around there and the Warrant Officer Powell came to me one day. He said, ‘Ah, Mr Turner.’ I’ve got my WO for Arnhem. When I got back to Shepherd’s Grove, I think. Shepherd’s Grove. Not, yeah Shepherds Grove, the wing commander was a South African captain and he turned around and told, he said, and he turned around, he told me, ‘I’ve put you in for an award,’ he said, ‘They refused it. So you’re having your warrant. Money will do you more good anyhow.’ And that was it and I went to Gillingham and Warrant Officer Powell came to me. He says, ‘I’ve found a job for you.’ I said, ‘Oh, yes?’ ‘Yes.’ He says, ‘There’s an orderly room at Roborough.’ He said, ‘I want you to go there and run it.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m not —’ ‘Oh, you’ll manage.’ He said, ‘You’ll manage.’ He said, ‘You’re in charge.’ I said, ‘Am I in charge?’ He said, ‘You’re the only one.’ So I went to a little aerodrome just outside Plymouth. A place called Roborough, and I think it was run by ex-aircrew. Every, everywhere you looked there were aircrew that had finished. Of course, the war had finished and it was, it was, it was an eye opener. We went there and as I say I was orderly room clerk and station warrant officer. The CO was a chap called Hill. Henry Horace Hill. He was a flight lieutenant observer and he used to mess at Plymouth and he used to travel by motorbike and sidecar from Roborough to Plymouth.
MH: When did your demob come along then?
BT: Yeah. Then demob came and I went bus conducting. I went down the mines. I tried, I went to oh, TI Industries, Simplex and I couldn’t settle anywhere. I don’t know why. But then I went to a place Cartwright and Edwards to, on a pot bank. And I started dipping and finished up on the kilns and that was it. I finished up. I did thirty five years working for a pot bank.
MH: Any thought of going back to London? Was it always that your wife —
BT: It’s never bothered me. I like, I’ve been down to visits but when mum died the family broke up. It, of course the problem was we were all away from home at the time. I mean my brothers were in the Air Force, in the Army and I married as I say and I came up to Stoke on Trent. Derek married and he went to Manchester. We corresponded for a bit and then then somehow or other it, you know how it is. Things don’t go as you plan and we lost touch. I don’t know where any of my family are now [pause] No idea. But [pause] I haven’t, I don’t miss London at all.
MH: So when we just go back to when you, just for my benefit and I suppose the people who will listen to this interview. What was your, what did your job entail on the Stirling? What was your —
BT: Main, mainly you were watching petrol consumption and changing tanks.
MH: To balance the plane out and —
BT: No. For, a Stirling’s got fourteen petrol tanks.
MH: Right.
BT: At least. It can fit another six. I know it sounds stupid but it is. There’s a little bomb bay at the root of the wings and it’s room for three bombs. Or three petrol tanks in each.
MH: Each side.
BT: Wing each side. We had, one holds three hundred and twenty gallons, two hundred and forty and then as it gets towards the it’s [pause] [unclear] of petrol but you had to change tanks. But you always got rid of your small tanks first.
MH: Now then, you ended up flying, was it Stirling 4s was the last Mark you flew?
BT: Yeah. Yeah.
MH: Now, were they, how did they differ from the, I think you said you flew Stirling 1s at the start, didn’t you?
BT: Well, there was no front turret and there was no mid-upper turret on a Stirling 4. They took the turrets out. And there was a big hole cut towards the rear of the fuselage where the paratroops jumped or dropped out.
MH: And that, the plane was principally marked as a Mark 4 because they did it for parachutists and —
BT: Yeah.
MH: Dropping supplies.
BT: Yeah.
MH: And what have you.
BT: Yeah.
MH: So did you lose some of your crew from when you first started?
BT: Oh yes. We lost a mid-upper gunner. Yeah. A mid-upper gunner that we’d [pause] Teddy Roper. We lost him. I never heard what happened to Ted. He, he was an Essex boy as I remember. Essex or Kent. And he had a girlfriend Penny [ Lopey ]
MH: The things you remember.
BT: The things you think of.
MH: Yes. And did you keep in touch with any of your crewmates after the war?
BT: The last one, Leo. The last one.
MH: Yeah. Leo Hartman.
BT: Leo Hartman. He died at Christmas.
MH: Oh dear.
BT: Yes. I’ve got a copy of his logbook.
MH: Was that the logbook you mentioned to me earlier on when we first met?
BT: Hmmn?
MH: That you had lost your logbook.
BT: Yeah.
MH: And you said that you had a copy of one of your crewmate’s.
BT: Yeah. Yeah.
MH: So, you kept in touch with Leo all the way through up until he passed away.
BT: Well, we did. Just Leo didn’t go on the last one. Leo. Leo, when we came back from Arnhem Leo went to London and he never, he never, he went to Uxbridge and stayed there ‘til the end of the war ‘til he was demobbed. But we kept in touch. I kept in touch with Pete Findlay until he died. But McQuiggan wasn’t interested and Ginger, the navigator he was too far away. He was up, he lived at Fencehouses in Durham.
MH: Right.
BT: That way. And we went in, he went to take up, to a pub. Became a landlord I believe. He got a DFM for the trip we did to France and he died of cancer. Thirty odd years. He was sixty something when he died. And I I met Pete [Bodes] brother and his wife.
MH: That was your rear gunner.
BT: Yeah.
MH: Was that a difficult meeting?
BT: Yes. They want particulars and it’s not nice. Did he get, did it hurt? I don’t think being hit by a cannon shell hurts. But, he had a girlfriend on the station, a WAAF and she had that you know that purple mark on her face.
MH: A birthmark.
BT: Yeah. And it was rather bad and she’d been up to, for some reason and [pause] and I had [pause] when you get talking like this it, it comes back.
MH: Like I said before if there are things you don’t want to talk about then just say.
BT: But, no. It [pause] it’ll pass.
MH: So, we’ve got all these thirty one, thirty two missions that you’d fly in the end.
BT: Thirty one. Yeah.
MH: What was life like in between? You watch these television films of, sort of flying boys down the pub and then back to reality.
BT: I get so cross at times when I watch these films. It’s, I mean I watch the Dambusters and I’m ready to hit someone.
MH: Because it’s not how it was.
BT: They get it so wrong. Well, I mean they’re, they’re supposed to have advisors and when they get the basics wrong it’s time to pack up. Now, you take the Dambusters. It’s nothing. It’s wrong, but it’s nothing. They’re having egg and bacon before they go. They sit down for a meal in the film. You didn’t have egg and bacon before you went. You had egg and bacon when you came back and blokes used to joke, ‘Can I have your egg if you don’t come back?’ And if you look, you watch there’s three Lancasters taking off in line abreast on a grass aerodrome. On a grass airfield. Carrying mines? They’d dig in.
MH: You’d take off one after the other on a hardstanding. A hard strip.
BT: Used tarmac runways. You know, I mean it’s only [pause]
MH: But that’s film for you, isn’t it?
BT: Yeah. Oh yeah.
MH: I think we’ve, we’re probably coming very close to the tape running out. Not that there’s a tape
BT: Yeah.
MH: But another fascinating hour and a half. Is there else that you think you need to tell me? You want to tell me.
BT: I don’t think so. It’s, I mean, I’ve always [pause] I’ve always thought I had a good war. I had a pretty clean war. It’s only when I think of the last op that I get a bit maudlin. It, I was lucky. But I met some decent people. I, we go, we are very fortunate we’ve, we’ve got in with a group, “D-Day Revisited,” and we go to France every June. And we go to Arnhem because I make a point in September of going to Arnhem and going and seeing the lads. I take a wreath to the skipper and he’s still the skipper seventy odd years later. But we go to, go to a little village in France, Arromanches and we were there this year and Pete turns around to me and said, ‘Bert, two blokes here want to shake hands with you.’ I thought right. Turned around and there’s a group captain and an air vice marshall. And I turned around to him, I said, I pointed to groupie, I said, ‘That’s God.’ I said, ‘And that one I don’t know.’ But I mean they’re nice chaps. They’re, they talk to me as if we’re equals and all the rest. You wouldn’t dream of it happening [laughs] I mean, I don’t, I don’t think I spoke to our group captain, and I couldn’t tell you his name, in all the time I was on the squadron.
MH: Different times.
BT: But we meet these chaps and they seem to be interested.
MH: I don’t think they seem to be, I think they are Bert. I think they are being polite.
BT: Did you say you wanted a photograph?
MH: Right. Right. So, I think I’ve asked all the questions. Thank you for giving your time. I know there’s some difficult things we’ve talked about but as you say, you know —
BT: I’m sorry if it’s been boring.
MH: Quite the opposite. It’s been fascinating. Its been absolutely fascinating. It’s been a privilege to sit and listen to you.
BT: It’s —
MH: And I think the important thing is in the future people will be able to listen to your words.
BT: Oh.
MH: And the things that you did, and I think we have to remember you were a twenty something young man, weren’t you?
BT: Well, this is it. We were. We were kids. We were, we were enjoying ourselves. We, it was a big adventure.
MH: Yeah. When you get older you start to look back and think well as you get older and experience affects you do different things.
BT: Oh, that’s a different matter, isn’t it?
MH: Yeah. It is. Right. I’m going to turn the tape recorder off. We’ve been going for oh an hour and twenty six minutes so its twenty five past, twenty six minutes past two.
BT: Oh, are you alright, Peter?
PB: I’m alright. Yeah.
MH: Peter has been very well behaved. I’m very grateful, Peter for your time as well.
PB: You’re welcome.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Bert Turner
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Martyn Horndern
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-29
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ATurnerHA180829, PTurnerHA1801
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Description
An account of the resource
Bert Turner was a member of the Air Training Corps before the war. He volunteered for the Air Force and was called up 2 August 1942. After training he became a flight engineer with 196 Squadron. He flew some bombing and mine laying operations before the squadron was transferred to Transport Command. He remembers dropping supplies to the Special Operations Executive and paratroopers on D-Day. His Stirling was hit by anti-aircraft fire on a supply drop over France but they managed to return to England. He was later shot down by Fw 190s over Holland. His rear gunner was killed he describes how they were attacked while on their parachutes. He was wounded in the ankle by shrapnel. He evaded and met up with Allied troops. After returning to operations after a lengthy convalescence, he was shot down a second time by a Me 262 over Germany. He discusses the role of the flight engineer on Stirlings. When Bert returned to London he decided he was so close he would go and visit his father not knowing that he had received the telegram saying he was missing presumed killed. When he saw his son he thought he was a ghost and passed out.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
Netherlands
England--Dorset
England--Suffolk
England--Wiltshire
Netherlands--Arnhem
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1943
1944
1945
Format
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01:23:36 audio recording
Contributor
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Julie Williams
1657 HCU
196 Squadron
90 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
bombing
Caterpillar Club
crewing up
evading
flight engineer
Fw 190
ground personnel
Heavy Conversion Unit
Me 262
medical officer
military ethos
military service conditions
mine laying
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
perception of bombing war
RAF Keevil
RAF St Athan
RAF Stradishall
RAF Tarrant Rushton
RAF Tuddenham
shot down
Special Operations Executive
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/490/8374/PChineryDR1601.1.jpg
24ea6131656a7cc40953bc11c4d29e72
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/490/8374/AChineryDR160824.1.mp3
a0e263be47ec05ddaa15883d376f78fa
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
Chinery, Donald
Donald Robert Chinery
D R Chinery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Chinery, DR
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Donald Chinery (1921 - 2017, 1465877 Royal Air Force) his log book, and the log book of J Millar. Donald Chinery flew operations as an air gunner with 61 Squadron.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Pam Winter and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JH: My name is Judy Hodgson and I’m interviewing Don Chinery today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We are at Mr Chinery’s home, and it is the 24th August 2016. Thank you, Donald, for agreeing to talk to me today. Also present at the interview is Roger Winter, Don’s son-in-law, and Pam Winter, his daughter.
JH: Don, can you tell me when and where you were born, and something of your family and early years before the war? Can you tell me when you were born?
PW: When were you born?
DC: Well, I was in a little village called Upper Sheringham, that was just up the hill from Sheringham.
JH: And what date? What’s your birth date? Your birth date?
DC: If I told you, you’d know as much as I do [laughs].
RW: Give it a try, Don!
DC: 14th of August 1921, that was when I was born.
PW: He knows!
JH: And what did you do before the war? What were you doing before the war?
DC: Would you believe it, I was a baker.
RW: At Lushes, Lushes in Sheringham.
DC: Lushes at Sheringham which was right on the corner of [unclear] Street.
RW: And they had a tea room, didn’t they? Lushes Bakery and tea room.
DC: Yeah.
JH: OK, and did you have family at home, did you have brothers or sisters?
DC: I’ve got 2 brothers and 2 sisters.
JH: Were they in the family business?
DC: I don’t know where they are now, mind you.
JH: No, so you were the only one who was the baker? You were the only baker?
DC: Yeah, when I left school.
JH: Right.
DC: That was what I straightaway went to do.
JH: And so how old were you when you joined the war?
DC: When I joined the Air Force?
JH: Yes.
DC: Oh, I dunno, 20-odd?
RW: Yes, what year did you join?
DC: I joined in, er [pause], once I got in the air.
RW: No, this is only your flying, when did you actually join the RAF?
DC: I joined in 1960.
RW: No.
DC: 60 something.
RW: No, it would’ve been 1939, 1940?
DC: In 1940, I reckon, I joined up in 1942.
RW: Right.
DC: I reckon it was.
RW: Yep, and what did you do when you first joined up?
DC: [laughing] Got up to anything I could!
JH: Where did you do your training?
DC: I was trained the right way.
RW: Yeah.
JH: Where did you do your training?
RW: Where was your first station? Where was your first aerodrome?
DC: My first aerodrome was in Norfolk, RAF station Bircham Newton.
RW: Yes? Oh, North Norfolk, North Norfolk near King’s Lynn.
DC: I forget, it was in North Norfolk.
RW: Yeah, near King’s Lynn, near King’s Lynn.
DC: Yeah, next door. Just over the border actually.
RW: Yep, yep.
JH: And what did you do there? What did you do at that station?
DC: What did I do?
JH: Yes, what were you doing there?
DC: Like everybody else, nothing [unclear] [laughs].
RW: But was it basic training, was it? Basic training?
DC: Yeah [pause], I had several different aerodromes I was on, I forget half of them.
RW: Yeah quite. So what did you do before you became an aircrew?
DC: Well I was just an ordinary AC plonk, and I volunteered then for -
RW: Aircrew.
DC: Aircrew [pause].
RW: Yeah, so that’s early in ’43 then, [pause] so your first log entry is in August ’43? August 1943? [pause]. Up in an Anson, an old Anson?
DC: An old Anson.
RW: Yeah, yeah?
DC: I remember [unclear], I can.
RW: When you were flying in a Stirling. When you were flying in a Stirling.
DC: When I was flying.
RW: Stirling, the Stirling Bomber.
DC: Yeah.
RW: What happened?
DC: Bloody old thing!
RW: What happened?
DC: I got out of it.
RW: What happened before that?
DC: Well, [unclear] the old Stirling?
RW: Yeah, you were coming in to land with the Stirling.
DC: Well, come in, just touched down, and the undercarriage just packed up. So it landed, finished up on its belly and we finished up in somebody’s cabbage patch! Is that what you were getting at?
RW: Yeah, and did you go over - it went straight over the A10 I think, didn’t you?
DC: Yeah [pause], er, I had some good times.
RW: Yep, and was the aeroplane OK after that? Was the aeroplane OK?
DC: Yeah, apart from the undercarriage [laughs].
RW: It says in your log book you wrecked it, wrecked the aeroplane it says here.
DC: Yeah [pause] bits and pieces, here and there [laughs].
RW: Are there any other?
JH: What positions was he in, in that airplane?
RW: Where were you in the aeroplane?
DC: Where was I when? When it went down?
RW: Yeah, when you were flying.
DC: I was rear gunner, what was known as ‘Tail End Charlie’ [laughs].
RW: Where - so when you done your training, you then went straight to 61 Squadron?
DC: No, I was at, er -
RW: 196 Squadron? 196?
DC: 196 Squadron, yeah, that was at Waterbeach.
RW: Right, ok, and then from Waterbeach, you went onto 61 Squadron?
DC: Yeah.
RW: OK. What was it like being on an operational squadron for the first time?
DC: Bit scary.
RW: And you met lots of new friends?
DC: [unclear] Bit scary when I got onto squadron work, I mean before you got on a squadron, you was doing square bashing out here and yonder [pause].
RW: Yeah, so there was nobody shooting back at you then? There was nobody shooting back at that time before then?
DC: [laughs].
RW: Hmm, can you remember your first operational trip?
DC: My first operational – I think it was [pause],[unclear], I don’t remember which me first was .
RW: Schweinfurt? Schweinfurt?
DC: Schweinfurt, that’s it yeah.
RW: Ball-bearing factory, ball-bearing factory [emphasis].
DC: Skellingthorpe.
RW: Right, and you had some bombs catching fire on that trip? Your log, it says you had some incendiaries on fire, do you remember?
DC: Oh, I forget all that.
RW: Right [pause], can you remember the rest of the crew?
DC: I can remember the- er mid-upper gunner as though it was yesterday.
RW: What was his name?
DC: His name was Miller, Jimmy, Jimmy Miller and we had a terrible time one day, and we got diverted, and we got diverted up Scotland, a little place called Ayr, and ‘course we got – we got stuck there with the weather. And Jimmy Miller, my mid-upper gunner, he originated from Motherwell, which was just down the road from where we were diverted to, so of course we got stuck there and he asked if he could go home, ‘cause he only lived down the road, he said from here to Motherwell and they said ‘yes’. And I shall never forget his old father, the old man, we sat in a pub in Motherwell, couldn’t have knocked a pint back, Jimmy, I said to mid-upper gunner, the old fella looked at me and said [adopts Scottish accent] ‘Jimmy don’t drink’ ‘cause I had [unclear] quick. I said ‘no, he don’t drink anything alcoholic – I like a pint meself’, I said, ‘he’ll always have a glass of lemonade [unclear]’, the old man looked and said [adopts Scottish accent], ‘I’ll tek you doon ma clog’ so he took us to his Working Man’s Club, took old boy as well – Jimmy.
RW: How old was Jimmy at the time? How old would Jimmy be?
DC: He was my mid-upper gunner.
RW: Yeah, how old would he be, mid, early twenties?
DC: Same age as me.
RW: Right.
DC: Round about, you know, give or take a week or two. I shall never forget his old father, [adopts Scottish accent] ‘Jimmy don’t drink!’ [laughs].
RW: So did he buy Jimmy a beer?
DC: I think it was a long and straight one! ‘He don’t drink any alcohol’, I said, ‘I love a pint meself’, I says, ‘he’ll always have a glass of lemonade’. Old fella looked, ‘I’ll drink him down the club’, he says [laughs], so he took us down the Working Man’s Club, bought me a pint (which I loved) and he bought [laughs] a glass of lemonade for Jimmy!
RW: What did Jimmy say afterwards?
DC: Well, what did he call me afterwards, Jimmy [laughs], I’d hate to repeat his words!
JH: Did you play darts? Darts, in the pub? Did you play darts in the pub?
DC: Did I [unclear] play anything
RW: What
DC: I shall never forget that pub in Waterbeach
RW: In Waterbeach?
DC: Yeah, when I was stationed there. Went in this pub and [pause] ordered what I wanted to drink, [unclear] we was up Scotland at the time. Our man looked at me and said ‘Jimmy don’t drink?’ I can imagine him saying it now. ‘Course I had [unclear], I’d like a pint meself and he’ll always have a glass of lemonade, ginger beer. Old fella says ‘I’ll take you down me club’ and he took us down the Working Man’s Club. He bought me a pint and he got a glass of lemonade for Jimmy.
RW: Are there any of the Operations you done that really stand out? Are there any of the Operations that really stand out to you?
DC: You had all sorts of courses that you had to go through before you really started on Operations, but I shall never forget that time we went up Scotland.
RW: Are there any of the raids that particularly you remember?
DC: Remember?
RW: Any of the trips you did?
DC: Did I remember any [unclear] trips I done?
RW: Well, you got one here where you were badly shot up.
DC: Practically remember them all .
RW: Mmm, yeah, and is this the one where you couldn’t get over Beachy Head? When you’d been to Toulouse?
DC: Where?
RW: Toulouse? In France.
DC: Yeah, we didn’t mind them little trips, we always reckoned we got an easy one if we got a little trip over – just over Channel
RW: Yeah [pause] Do you remember having a collision over the target? Do you remember here you had a collision?
DC: That one, yeah.
RW: In France again, in Tours.
DC: [unclear] mess up then [pause].
JH: What happened?
RW: Can you remember what happened?
DC: No.
RW: Right, but you bent the aeroplane it says in your Log Book. It says you bent the aeroplane.
DC: Er, when I finished up in the allotments.
RW: Yeah [whispers] different one [pause].
DC: In the middle of these allotments and they sent a bloody tractor out.
RW: Right.
DC: An old-fashioned tractor.
RW: That was at Waterbeach?
DC: Yeah, and they hooked us up and pulled us off his cabbage patch [pause].
RW: Do you remember getting diverted to Exeter?
DC: No, we got diverted to Exeter didn’t we.
RW: Yeah, do you remember that?
DC: Yeah [pause] but I told you the one at Waterbeach was the best [unclear].
RW: [laughs] Right.
JH: Did you see Jimmy Miller?
DC: I was once at the bar and he [unclear] the other.
JH: Oh right.
DC: And I was well known at this pub and they says ‘tell you what, you can’t pull a pint from where you are’, ‘I know I can’t but I can still get one and I’m going to pull one, I’m gonna lean over the counter and put the pump’, I says, ‘I’m going to push it, I’m gonna push one’ and that’s the only time I remember pushing a pint.
RW: What – can you remember the first time you went to Berlin?
DC: First time I went to Berlin, can I remember?
RW: Yeah.
DC: No I can’t, not offhand.
RW: But would you have been apprehensive about going? Going all that distance? It was a long way to go wasn’t it?
DC: It what?
RW: A long flight.
DC: Yeah, I shall never forget Jimmy’s father, I shall [unclear] old fella [adopts Scottish accent] ‘Jimmy don’t drink’. No, no Jimmy didn’t drink, he’d drink me under the table.
JH: When you went up in the aeroplane, was it cold? Were you cold?
DC: That was bloody cold [laughs].
JH: Right.
DC: [unclear] when you got all your flying gear on, you got, er, an inner suit which was, er, more silk than anything, then you got another one on top o’ that, and then you got another one on top and you finished off you’d got about five layers of clothes on before you got all your flying gear on.
JH: And you were still cold, still cold?
DC: Bloody cold [laughs].
RW: He reckons his flying helmet made him bald! Is that right? Your flying helmet caused you to lose your hair.
DC: That’s what took me hair away.
PW: There’s a picture of him and my mum getting married there somewhere and he hadn’t got much hair then!
RW: He was the only one in the family with no hair!
PW: He’s still got more than you, Rog!
RW: No comment! Can you remember anything about D-Day? Can you remember about the trips you did on D-Day?
DC: D-Day?
RW: Yes.
DC: I don’t remember D-Day, I remember VJ-Day.
RW: Yes, but on D-Day you were involved in two Operations and it must’ve been very busy with all the ships landing and lots of noise, ships firing salvos. Can you remember anything?
DC: No.
RW: No? [pause]
JH: What do you remember then, do you remember VJ – VJ Day?
DC: [unclear] of equipment, I was [unclear] when we was getting demobbed they was asking for different things and you just sat them on the counter and pushed them to one side and when it come to the Log Book, I slapped mine on the counter and instead of pushing it over the counter. I pushed it back and it dropped in me kit bag.
RW: Is that how you managed to get Jimmy’s as well. You got Jimmy’s Log Book as well. You got Jimmy Miller’s Log Book as well. So did you do the same with Jimmy? [pause].
RW: He’s got no idea how he got it.
PW: No, he’s never sort of said.
DC: He has [unclear] Jimmy Miller
JH: Why, why have you got his book? Why have you [emphasis] got that?
DC: I haven’t got his book.
RW: No, you’ve got his Log Book.
DC: This was his.
RW: Yes.
JH: Why have you got it?
DC: Well, it was a souvenir as far as I was concerned and remembers old Jimmy Miller.
RW: Yes.
DC: ‘Cause he was, he was.
JH: Your friend.
DC: He was a good mate o’ mine [pause] and I told you when he took me home, I shall never forget that.
PW: So he obviously died then.
JH: Did you see Jimmy after the war? Jimmy, did Jimmy see you after the war?
DC: I lost all touch wi’ him.
JH: You lost touch?
DC: Yeah.
RW: Shame.
JH: He went back to Scotland! [laughs].
DC: [unclear] lost – lost touch with one another [pause], but there was just this – I remember this – old Jimmy Miller [pause].
RW: Can you remember the trip you did in the, in the [pause] -
DC: Old Jimmy Miller.
RW: Yeah.
DC: Never forget him.
RW: Do you remember the trip you did after the – after hostilities had finished you went on a sight-seeing tour, you took a Wimpey with Flying Officer Ratcliffe and you went on a sight-seeing tour, to Cologne? And you took ground crew I think, did you? Did you take some ground crew with you?
JH: Do you remember? [pause]
RW: The top one [pause].
PW: Has he got his magnifying glass?
DC: They – they was er trips we done after hostilities ceased, we took any member of ground crew and then let them go over and see the -
RW: What had happened?
DC: Devastation and so forth.
RW: And you took a photograph of Cologne Cathedral didn’t you? [pause}.
DC: I tell you where you not said anything about this, [spells out word] K O L N.
RW: Yeah, Cologne, spelt in the German.
DC: That’s how it was spelt there.
RW: Yep.
DC: But that ain’t how we spelt it!
RW: No, No, but you took a photograph, I think, of the cathedral? You took a photograph of Koln Cathedral?
DC: I, I [pause] I remember after the war finished and we was there taking people, ground crew, air crew, anybody over to see the devastation, various places, I [unclear] down here but can’t read them properly, there’s Antwerp, Bonn, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Essen [pause] Monchengladbach, [pause], Heysel and Tottenbank I think, [laughs], that’s worth a bob or two that is.
RW: A lot of memories there Don. So how did you end up at Bassingbourn? How did you end up at Bassingbourn?
DC: How did I end up, I dunno, I just ended up there when they asked you where you’d like to be stationed, you know, these places, I put in for Bassingbourn.
RW: But wasn’t that an American base at that time? Weren’t the Americans there at the time?
DC: [unclear].
RW: No, Bassingbourn, was it, I thought the Americans were there.
DC: Oh yeah [pause] they were dead funny they was. You went in [unclear] the mess hall, ‘course you queued up and got your grub, sat down, these Yankees used to come in and get their, mixed the bloody lot together, slinging [unclear] banging on the table, [unclear] the table and they just got down – you never, never think people be like eating grub, they used to go tackle it, go into it as though they’d never seen a plate o’ grub at all [laughs].
RW: So.
PW: Why would he have got stationed there if it was an American base?
RW: I dunno. So what were the Air Force doing there with the Americans there? What was the RAF doing on an American base?
DC: I know we went to the American – they were stationed there, we went to visit.
RW: Yeah, oh right.
DC: Of course when I went to visit we, well they got their plate of grub there, bang [emphasis] their bloody knife down stuck in the table [laughs].
PW: But he was stationed there, wasn’t he Roger?
RW: Yeah. How long were you at Bassingbourn? How long were you there?
DC: At Bassingbourn?
RW: Yeah, were you demobbed from Bassingbourn? Were you demobbed from Bassingbourn?
DC: Yeah and you know where I went then, where I went for demob.
RW: No?
DC: I went to Wembley.
RW: Right.
DC: We went to Wembley Stadium and went down and all your clothes were laid about, and you took what clothes you want and home you went.
RW: Right.
DC: Oh I – [pause] people have asked me many, many, many times if I enjoyed it, I enjoyed every minute I was in the Air Force because I wanted to go in the Air Force when I was a child, as I told you before I think [pause].
PW: I think he was the only one in his family that went in the Forces.
RW: What was it like when you qualified and went on to 61 Squadron and were given the best aeroplane in the world to go and fly? How did that feel?
DC: Well, you can’t explain it really, you got in the aircraft – I might’ve told you before you slid down a – like a plank which was over the rear wheel and into your turret. You get in the turret and let your legs drop in, and then you had to feel behind you, you could shut the doors, close the doors behind you and they’d lock and you was stuck in there [pause].
RW: What did you do before you went on an Operation, what did the crew do before you got into the aeroplane?
DC: Sat there smoking.
RW: Then what happened? When you got to the aeroplane?
DC: When you got in the aeroplane?
RW: No, before you got to the aero – before you climbed aboard you all stood round –
DC: [laughs] you know [unclear], put a bottle on your feet [unclear], your feet one on top o’ the other and you sat there, and you got to light a candle and hand it out o’ the bottle. If you didn’t light the candle, you had to pay for the next round [laughs] not [unclear] me.
RW: But what happened when you all got to their aeroplane before you went up the ladder, you all stood around the wheel?
DC: Having a natter and then you got up and you walked round the back, and you looked at the old tail wheel and you just had a piddle on that! All piddled on the tail wheel.
RW: And that was the whole crew did that? The whole crew did that?
DC: Yeah.
PW: Well, I’ve never heard that before.
DC: Lovely [pause] - I’d go back again, I will never forget it as long as I live when we landed in Scotland, when Jimmy took me home.
RW: What about one day when the phone rang and you answered the phone, you answered the phone one day? What was the Group Captain’s name?
DC: What was the?
RW: Group Captain, when he rang you up, you answered the telephone [pause] do you remember?
DC: No.
RW: You answered the telephone and pretended you were somebody else.
DC: No.
RW: No? What was the Station Commander’s name? Station Commander on say 61 Squadron? Who was the Station Commander?
DC: Bomber Harris.
RW: [laughs] yeah.
DC: He was the Station Commander [pause], wouldn’t ask any member of the crew to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.
RW: Yep and I believe you met Churchill once? You met Churchill once?
DC: Went where?
RW: Winston Churchill.
DC: Oh.
RW: You met him once .
DC: Oh Winston, he was a good old warmonger he was.
PW: Didn’t you meet Douglas Bader as well? No?
[pause]
RW: Did you get in the hoops at Bassingbourn? Did you get in the hoops at Bassingbourn?
DC: Yeah [pause].
RW: And was it the Waggon and Horses, the Waggon, that used to be –
DC: Waggon and Horses .
RW: Yes? Just outside the aerodrome. It was a pub built at the same time as the airfield.
DC: We never used to go to main gates, had to go there, we used to nip through a gap in the hedge, straight in old boozer [laughs].
RW: So what was it like when you’d finished with 61 Squadron and you were out of all that danger? How did all that feel?
DC: Well, felt great relief, you ain’t got o’ go through all that again. I said, I enjoyed every minute of flying.
[pause]
JH: How many tours, how many missions did you do?
RW: How many trips did you do, how many operational trips?
DC: How many did I do? Actually I done one too many [pause] instead of doing thirty, I went on to do another twenty, carried straight on, so I done fifty like that, and our governor, he said we want you to do one more trip, there’s an extra-special one. Well it was extra-special, we went to Peenemunde I think it was, that was the name of it and that was, er, Hitler’s birthday but when we dropped the bombs he’s scarpered, he’d gone into Berlin.
RW: Was that, did you overfly that and go to North Africa? Did you overfly and then go to North Africa?
DC: Yeah [pause].
RW: Can you remember that, look – where you’d been to Tours and you’d had the collision and went to Exeter. What does that say there? In your Log.
DC: Two engines out of commission, port main plane bent [pause] awarded a DFM. You know what that is?
RW: What’s that?
DC: DFM, Distinguished Flying Medal.
RW: Right, any idea what happened to that?
DC: That’s about here somewhere.
PW: I don’t think it is, that one’s missing isn’t it Roger?
RW: Hmmm. Who presented you with the medal Don?
PW: Hang on Roger, he’s looking for it, there’s a box there with three in there I think, but not the one Roger’s mentioned.
DC: Load o’ ol’ rubbish that is.
RW: What, the box? I made that! [laughs] That’s his darts box.
RW: Don, who presented you with the DFM? Who gave it to you?
DC: Can’t hear you.
PW: How many medals are in that box, Roger? Four, yes that’s all I’ve ever seen.
RW: They’re only just ordinary – [background noise]. Can you remember who awarded the DFM to you. Can you remember who pinned it on you, who presented it?
DC: Whatsername got the DFM, yeah, can’t think of his name now, he was a Welsh boy if I remember rightly.
RW: What, who got the DFM? Who won it or did you get it? [pause]. We can’t find any record of him receiving that. When I spoke to the chap about the Legion d’Honneur, he told me what medals he’d been awarded and that wasn’t one of them, so that’s a bit of a mystery, but Pam seems to think her aunt had it and turned it into a brooch, but we don’t know.
RW: When you were demobbed what did you do after that?
DC: What did I do after I got demobbed? I went back down in the baking trade for a time and then I got talking to a bloke in a boozer, he was a manager of the Atlas and I got [unclear] and he says,‘you’re a silly fool doing what you are, why don’t you come down and work [unclear]’, I said, ‘I don’ wanna come down to work as I don’ wanna do no shift work’. He said, ‘you come down here and I’ll give you a job, you won’t have to do shift work, I’ll put you straight on day work’ and he did put me straight on day work.
RW: That was the local asbestos cement factory. And you ended up there over 25 years, you got a long service award. You got a long service award at the Atlas?
DC: I got a – we had a bloke what worked down the Atlas, we used to call him Flipper, he used to walk [makes hand slap noise] and one foot used to - slap, slap, slap – but if you was walking behind him on any day you got [unclear] bloody water.
RW: [laughs] He wouldn’t creep up on you, would he? You’d hear him coming!
DC: Slap, his old foot used to go.
PW: He worked at the bakers in Royston when he first came out or when they first got married, he used to get up at four o’clock in the morning, and cycle four miles every day to get to the bakers, and unfortunately the habit of getting up at the crack of sparrows has never gone away. He’s up here and they’re supposed to help him get dressed and stuff in the mornings, they come to get him up, he’s up and dressed and sometimes –
RW: When he worked at the Atlas, he was always there over an hour before he need be in the morning, always.
PW: Habit of a lifetime.
RW: But he doesn’t remember being married or anything really.
PW: Well, he never, ever talked about my mum after she died, it was like he totally switched that bit of his life off.
RW: So then, didn’t you do ten-pin bowling when you were at the Atlas, they had a ten-pin bowling team.
DC: When I worked down the Atlas.
RW: You went ten-pin bowling.
DC: Yeah.
RW: You had a team from –
DC: Used to go down Mill Road.
RW: And Stevenage, Stevenage?
DC: We used to go to Stevenage then we got in at Mill Road
RW: That’s now a John Lewis store, it’s one of the depots.
PW: Warehouse.
RW: Is it still?
PW: I wouldn’t have thought so now they’ve got the big one at Trumpington.
RW: But you were quite good at it, you were quite good at ten-pin bowling, you were quite good at it, ten-pin bowling.
DC: Yeah.
RW: Did you win any trophies?
DC: Tom Burgess was manager there and I used to go fishing with his son, and he got on to me, why bike up Rawston, all [unclear] when you could have a job down the works, why don’t you come down works. I said, ‘I don’t want shift work’, he says, ‘you come down there you won’t do shift work, put you straight on day work’ and I went straight on day work.
RW: Better money as well, more money? Paid better than baking? Pay was better than baking? The pay was better than the bakehouse?
DC: It was.
RW: And nearer home, closer to home as well.
DC: Yeah, it was on my doorstep, weren’t it.
RW: Yep, what else did you do when you retired, no, before you retired, you were something to do with the church lads’ brigade at one time.
DC: Yeah.
RW: Do you remember any of that?
DC: I remember that quite well [pause].
RW: Can you remember any stories?
DC: I had a – they gave me a peaked cap, which I’d never worn in me life, this very peaked cap on, these church lads got marching down road and I had to walk infront.
RW: But you had the swagger stick, you had a cane.
DC: Yeah [unclear] a little stick.
JH: Ask him if he remembers any of his church lads.
RW: I was one of them! We’re all quite incestuous because my uncle is Pam’s godfather and my uncle played the - pumped the organ for their wedding, drinking a bottle of beer whilst he was doing it [laughs]. What about – you played football as well.
DC: I remember Jackie Woods playing football. We always called Jackie Woods when he was playing football – we used to call him the ‘ankle tapper’, oh he’d be a devil coming up behind you, get your foot out and he’d just give a tweak of his foot and hit yer ankle.
RW: His wife lives here now.
JH: Oh.
RW: And her granddaughter is one of the carers [laughs], amazing! And she’s in her nineties, yep. Do you remember any of the football outings or anything? Football outings?
DC: Do I remember any outings?
RW: No?
DC: No, can’t remember anything.
RW: There was a lot of people from the British Queen used to be in the team I think.
DC: British Queen?
RW: Yeah.
DC: Where’s that?
[everyone laughs]
RW: You spent enough hours in there [pause].
DC: Norman Clark, I remember him.
RW: Bert Gibson? Bert Gibson?
DC: [laughs] Bert.
RW: He was the landlord.
DC: Used to bang on the back of that old seat, Miriam would look in. ‘Bring us a lump of bread and cheese’, that’s what he used to tell Miriam, she [unclear] ‘here y’are father’, bring him a plate, got a great slice of bread about that thick and a bloody great onion, he used to [unclear] have a lump [unclear] bloody great onion and -
RW: But he was a landlord during the war and he wouldn’t serve Americans.
JH: Oh dear.
RW: He didn’t refuse them, they would come in and say ‘can I have a pint of beer?’ he’d say, ‘I’ve just sold the last pint of beer’ or ‘my last pint of beer’ which he was correct, he had just served a pint of beer, so he didn’t refuse them he just the wrong or different words so they assumed he hadn’t got any beer left, but he refused to serve Americans [laughs], yes [pause].
PW: What’s he doing Roger?
RW: He’s just had his drink.
JH: I’d like to thank you, Donald, for allowing me to record this interview today, thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Donald Chinery
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Judy Hodgson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-24
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AChineryDR160824, PChineryDR1601
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Format
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00:56:09 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Don Chinery was born in Upper Sherringham on the 14th August 1921, and after working as a Baker, he joined the Royal Airforce in 1942 serving as a Rear Gunner.
His first station was RAF Bircham Newton, where he did his training, and flew in Stirlings and Ansons.
He tells a story about how his Stirling landed and the undercarriage did not work, he mentions how he went over the A10 and landed in somebody’s ‘cabbage patch’.
After training, he went straight to 196 Squadron at Waterbeach, and then moved on to 61 Squadron, where he served on Lancasters.
His first operation was the ball bearing factory at Schweinfurt, but also completed operations to Antwerp, Bonn, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Essen, Heysel and Monchengladback, as well as taking part in operations on D-Day.
After completing 51 Operations, Don returned to his first job as a baker.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Belgium--Antwerp
Belgium--Laeken
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Norfolk
Germany
Germany--Bonn
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Schweinfurt
England--Stevenage
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Herefordshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
196 Squadron
61 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Cook’s tour
Lancaster
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Bircham Newton
RAF Waterbeach
Stirling