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Title
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Mercier, Gordon
Cyril Gordon Mercier
C G Mercier
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Gordon Mercier (1924 -2024). He flew operations as a mid-upper gunner with 171 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
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2021-10-21
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Mercier, CG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: It’s Harry Bartlett interviewing Gordon Cyril Mercier on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre at Lincoln. It’s the 21st of October 2021. Gordon is ninety six and three quarters old, and he served from 1943 through to 1947 in Bomber Command and Gordon was a mid-upper gunner. Now, Gordon, now we can make a start? Can you, can you tell me a little bit about your early life please?
GM: Yeah. I was born in Jersey in 1925 and I had a very bad childhood. I was always ill. Always ill. I spent so much time in hospital it was unbelievable. My mother used to say when I was born, the doctor said, ‘You won’t have him long mother but he, but treasure him while you’ve got him.’ And here I am [laughs] ninety six. I came, I went to school in Birmingham, High Street Harborne in Birmingham and I was fourteen at the start of the war. And the moment the war started I helped the ARP people. I used to carry the stirrup pumps for them when I was fourteen. When Mr Churchill came on the phone, on the radio in 1940 to ask for volunteers to join the LDV which was the Local Defence Volunteers sixteen and over. I was fifteen and I went and joined the Home Guard. And I was in the Home Guard until I joined the RAF in 1943. My nickname in the Home Guard was Sealevel, and I spent all those years, and I was a very very good shot. It was amazing. I just, it didn’t matter. I could hit anything. Not with a revolver but with a rifle I could hit anything.
HB: I think just, just to explain your nickname. Do you want, do you want to tell us how tall you are?
GM: [laughs] I’m only about [laughs] I’ve shrunk. I was only about five foot two.
HB: Right.
GM: And I was —
HB: That explains Sealevel.
GM: I was eight stone. I used to, I was eight stone. I boxed at eight stone in the RAF. Anyway, I joined the Home Guard. And then I was in a Protected Occupation so I couldn’t join the forces. The only forces you could join in those days was the submarines or aircrew.
HB: What was your Protected Occupation, Gordon?
GM: I was, I worked in a factory making munitions.
HB: Was that, was that in Birmingham?
GM: In Birmingham. Yes. I worked in factory. From fourteen, I worked in, I was a fitter in the factory.
HB: Do you know the name of the factory?
GM: Belliss and Morcom.
HB: Ah right. Yeah.
GM: Belliss and Morcom. The factory. And I, I decided that I wanted to join the Air Force. I’d always been interested in the Air Force from the very, I’d always had the comics and everything all about the Air Force. I had, “Flight,” every week and all this sort of thing but, so I went to Cardington in March 1943 to take the exam to join the Air Force. I believe there was two hundred of us who came through and fifty two of us finished. And, and as we’d gone, as we’d gone through all the exams, exams, medicals and psychology and you had written exams, and all this sort of thing and you passed at the end. You passed and there was fifty two of us. We took the King’s Shilling on that day, and on that day I joined the Air Force in 1943 at seventeen and a quarter. I was called up very shortly afterwards and I started in the RAF in London. We, it was my first posting to London where we got kitted out and all this sort of thing. Three weeks in London. I did some boxing, got knocked out and decided I didn’t want to do any more boxing after that [laughs] So, and then I was posted to 14 OTU at Bridlington which was the Operational Training Unit at Bridlington, as an aircrew cadet. I believe we had about sixteen weeks there and you passed out [pause] You passed out and I was posted to Bridgnorth for a fortnight. Because it was Bridgnorth I used to come home at nights, at the weekends, and I got seven days jankers for being back late. But I never did the seven days jankers because I was posted the next day to Stormy Down in South Wales. And I’d been there a fortnight when they called me in to the adjutant’s office and said, ‘You were on jankers and you never did it. You start now.’ [laughs]
HB: Oh no.
HB: So, I had —
HB: A long memory.
GM: Yes. I did that, and I don’t know how many trips we did but we flew in Ansons and there were three of us in training. One sat in with the pilot and winded the undercarriage up, one sat in the rest position, and one sat in the turret and you fired two hundred shots. You had collected your two hundred bullets and you painted the bullets a colour. Red, blue and green. And you put your bullets in, and the plane would fly out and you’d shoot the drogue. And you all had a go and you swapped over until you all three had fired and then they dropped the drogue and you had to collect it on the, on the airfield and count your shots, because the, how many red bullets holes, and blue bullet holes, and green bullet holes there were.
HB: Right.
GM: And you got a, you got a score from those bullet holes and we did a lot of flights. They didn’t stint of the training. We did an awful lot of flights. I don’t know. It’s in my logbook but I did an awful lot of flights.
HB: Yeah. Your logbook does list a lot of training flights.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Right, right through.
GM: Right through.
HB: All through the —
GM: Yeah. And after training you passed out as a sergeant, and I passed out and I had passed out at Christmas. Christmas ’43. I came home on leave as a sergeant.
HB: Right.
GM: And then I had a week, a fortnights’ leave, and I was posted to 14 OTU, Bridlington. No. Not Bridlington. Abingdon. 14 Operational Training Unit where you got crewed up. The system for crewing up was very strange. All the officers and men shared the same dining room. You were given a fortnight to form a crew. It was the pilot’s job to find a crew, and I met a fellow called Ken Adams who said, ‘Shall we go and find a pilot?’ And we walked round, and we met Warrant Officer Digby. He was the pilot, and said to Mr Digby, ‘Would you like a pair of gunners?’ He said, ‘Certainly.’ And when you’d finished, after the three weeks they had a crewing up meeting in the hangar. Seven seats. Rows of seven seats all the way along. All the way through the hangar. Pilot, bomb aimer, navigator, wireless operator, flight engineer, mid-upper gunner, rear gunner, and those were the, and you sat in those seats as a crew. But not all the seats were full. All the people who were standing at the back that hadn’t crewed up had to fill in the places.
HB: Right. Yeah.
GM: To fill in the places. But we were. We had formed a crew.
HB: So, you’d got the full seven.
GM: We’d got the full seven. Yes. My skipper’s name was Warrant Officer Digby, the bomb aimer was named [Wamm] and he was a southern Rhodesian, white. The navigator was Johnny Dibbs. The wireless operator was Brown. I can’t remember his first name. The flight engineer was [pause] oh dear.
HB: Robertson?
GM: Robertson. Yes. Robertson, and he was quite, he was forty so he was quite old. The rear gunner was Ken Adams and, have I missed anybody out?
HB: Well, there’s one missing. Yeah.
GM: The bomb aimer.
HB: He’s a bloke who used to stay in the middle of the aircraft and man a gun there.
GM: No. The mid-upper. Me.
HB: Exactly [laughs]
GM: Yes. And then there was me.
HB: You remembered everybody bar yourself.
GM: That was me.
HB: [unclear]
GB: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Then we started flying in Ansons, in err Whitleys, and on our second trip in the Whitley, I think it was our second trip we went, we bombed the, the hill in the middle of the Irish Sea. What’s that mountain called? Rockall.
HB: Rockall. Yeah.
GM: We bombed it with, with nine pound bombs, and on the way back an engine packed up so we landed in the Isle of Man.
HB: Oh right.
GM: At Jurby.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We landed in Jurby. So that was the first time that we didn’t get back to camp. This happened a lot of times, and we were known as, ‘Land away Digby and his crew.’ We finished our training at 14 OTU, and we were posted to Riccall for conversion to Halifaxes. And, so you went from two engines to four engines and you all flew together. And we weren’t at Riccall very long, and we passed out at Riccall, and we were sent to 51 Squadron, Snaith, and we started our bombing career on the 9th of June. And our first trip was Amiens. Is it there?
HB: Yes. Yes, it’s there.
GM: And our second trip was a disaster.
HB: Oh, no. Sorry. You’ve, on your logbook you’ve got Massy Palaiseau.
GM: Massy Palaiseau, oh that’s, sorry.
HB: That was your first one. Yeah.
GM: That’s right. That was Paris.
HB: And it was Amiens.
GM: Paris.
HB: Amiens. That was your second.
GB: Paris.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Amiens was the second.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And on my second trip, Amiens, we were flying over, towards the target and I said to the skipper, ‘There’s a plane being attacked below us,’ because I could see tracer, and that plane that was attacking the plane below us, as he broke away, he must have seen us and he managed to get one shot in to our nose. The bomb aimer was sitting in the nose, and it blew his behind off. And the plane was flying like this [pause] because it was gulping air in.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Due to its form.
HB: So, the nose.
GM: Yeah.
HB: The nose having disappeared.
GM: Yeah. Yeah.
HB: It was sucking air in.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We got back to England and that was the first time I’d ever heard of Darkie. The pilot used Darkie. ‘Hello Darkie. Hello Darkie.’ And all the amateur radio operators in the country was, were called Darkie, and they had to listen out every night, and if you got a bomber you were fifteen miles away from him.
HB: Right.
GM: Because he couldn’t hear more than fifteen miles. And he had all the aerodromes in his book. ‘Hello Darkie. Hello Darkie. Can you find us an aerodrome please?’ And an aerodrome lit up over there, and it was called Dunsfold, and we landed at Dunsfold. They didn’t bother about us. I had to run to the control tower to ask for a doctor and an ambulance and the bomb aimer was very badly injured and the navigator had got a bit of shrapnel. A bit of stuff, metal in his leg but he, no not the bomb aimer. The navigator had got a bit of stuff in his leg. They were seen to. So, we had to go back by train.
HB: Right.
GM: Which was quite an experience in those days.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We got to London and we got in the Tube with all our gear, and they had a collection for us on the train and they gave us about a hundred fags. They’d been all the way down the train collecting for a crew that had crashed and they gave us the hundred fags we got. Packets of fags.
HB: Blimey.
GM: And then we got back to Snaith.
HB: Yeah, that was in [pause] that was C6 E-Easy. Yeah. What happened to the, what happened to the aircraft?
GM: Oh, I don’t know what happened to the aircraft.
HB: So, you never, that never —
GM: No. No.
HB: You never saw that back again.
GM: No.
HB: No.
GM: He put the wheel in, he put the wheel in a trench so, but the plane was fine.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Except for this one hole.
HB: Yeah.
GM: You know.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And the bomb aimer went to McIndoe’s hospital.
HB: Right. Yeah.
GM: Had sixty skin graft operations and he lived. He came back to visit us. We went for a drink in the pub. Put him on a, put him on a bike. Took the pedals off, put him on a bike, his crutch went through the wheel and he fell off and broke his arm. His name was [Wamm].
HB: Yeah.
GM: And he was the bomb aimer. We had a new bomb aimer. Eventually we got a new bomb aimer called Smith. Ted Smith. Oh no, I can’t remember his first name. Smith he was, and he flew all the rest of the trips with us. I flew spare. That’s why I did more than the rest of the crew.
HB: Right. Yeah.
GM: I flew with a Flight Lieutenant Gilchrist, I think.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Like that. Yeah. I flew a couple of spare trips because we hadn’t got a crew and then when we got a crew we, because in those days you get a weeks’ leave every month you know because there was, two crews to every plane.
HB: Oh, right. Yeah.
GM: But only if you lost a crew. You didn’t get your leave. If you lost a crew, you didn’t get your leave.
HB: Yes. So that’s, that’s around June. You’ve got Gilchrist as your pilot.
GM: Yeah.
HB: That’s, that’s towards the end of June.
GM: Yeah.
HB: That one. But, blimey. Yeah. Right.
GM: What? What happened?
HB: It’s alright. You just have that and then at the end of June you fly a daylight operation to the Maquis at Mimoyecques.
GM: Mimoyecques. Mimoyecques.
HB: Yeah. And you’re hit by flak again.
GM: Yes. We got hit by flak but only hit. Nobody was hurt. Just holes. There was, always holes in our plane. And then we came to the fateful day of our last trip. No. Something nasty happened. We were due to fly to Kiel. We were due to fly to Kiel and there was something wrong with the plane and we turned back. The CO was very, very angry about us turning back and we went to bed and they woke us up at half past six in the morning. We’d only just, we didn’t get to bed ‘til about two. They woke us up at half past six and said, ‘You’re flying.’ And we were briefed to go and attack the Gneisenau ship in Brest Harbour. As we took off, we hit the bump on the end of the runway. The plane wouldn’t come off the runway, we went through the trees. An engine, engine went rogue. It wouldn’t stop. Got faster and faster. The plane was shaking to bits. We asked for an emergency landing. We dropped the bombs in a reservoir and we came down to land on the runway. Because we were, the plane slewed off the runway and we were heading for the petrol dump and so the skipper opened up another engine and turned the, slewed the plane around and we hit the bomb dump, the side of the bomb dump. Right there. The big, they’d got a big [pause] We hit the side of the bomb dump. The CO came out in his, in his [pause] ‘You’re all posted. Get off my ‘drome.’ That was his exact words, and there were three people injured. Only slightly. Only slightly. They all went to the, they were taken to the, but they all came back with no problem. The only time a clearance chit got signed in one hour. It used to take two days to get a clearance chit signed because you had to sign. It had to be signed.
HB: Yeah.
GM: You had to hand your bike in. You had to do this and do that and you had to find everything and our, our clearance was and we were at, by 2 o’clock in the afternoon we were at the bus stop waiting for a bus to take us somewhere.
HB: And the whole crew.
GM: The whole crew. Yes. Because the ones that were, they were only slightly injured. We were all in the rest position when we crashed. We were all in the rest position, you know. Ruined the aeroplane anyway.
HB: Do you know that in your logbook?
GM: Yeah.
HB: This is purely for the purposes of the tape.
GM: Yeah.
HB: For people listening to this. In your logbook on the 17th of August 1944.
GM: Yeah.
HB: You did an operation to Brest. DNCO.
GM: Not carried out.
HB: And it says, “One engine u/s [pranged].”
GM: That’s all.
HB: That’s all it says in your logbook.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And that is the story you just told me.
GM: Yeah. Anyway, he sent us back to Riccall again.
HB: Right.
GM: To the Conversion Unit, and the skipper said, the CO said, ‘Oh, it’s nice to have a crew that have got experience. Do a couple of trips for us.’ And we, we flew a couple of trips, I think it was, at Riccall. I don’t know. They were only training trips.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And the pilot, the CO said, ‘You’re fully trained. There’s nothing wrong with you. You can go back on ops. Where do you want to go to?’ ‘51 Squadron,’ we all said because we’d got friends. He picks the phone up [laughs] speaks to the wing commander. No. Group captain he was. Speaks to the group captain, ‘I’ve got a fully trained crew that want to come back to you.’ ‘What’s the pilot’s name?’ ‘Digby.’ ‘Don’t send him here. Send him somewhere else.’
HB: No.
GM: He said, ‘You can’t go there.’ So, he sent us to Breighton. 78 Squadron, Breighton.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And our first trip at Breighton, believe it or not was Kiel. It’s almost, it’s almost poetic.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And I can remember the skipper saying, ‘We’re going. We’re not turning back.’ And we went to Kiel, and we were the last wave and you could see the, you could see the fires for miles. You could see the fires from two hundred miles back, on the way back, because the whole place was, the whole of Kiel was ablaze. We got, we, the Master Bomber told us to bomb on the edges. ‘Bomb on the edges. Bomb on the edges. Don’t bomb in the middle. Bomb on the edges.’ And we went to Kiel. We did five trips at Snaith. I think it was five, and the CO called us in the office and sat us down and said, ‘You’re posted.’ And the skip, I can remember the skipper saying, ‘What have we done wrong?’ He said, ‘You’ve done nothing wrong but you’re the, you’re the, most experienced crew and we’ve been told to choose the most experienced crew to send them to a new squadron being formed called 171 Squadron in Norfolk.
HB: Can I just ask you —
GM: Special duties.
HB: Can I just ask you something Gordon?
GM: Yes.
HB: In your logbook.
GM: Yeah.
HB: I’m, I’m just curious really. You’ve done the Kiel operation on the 15th of September.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Which was a night op.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And then on the 17th of September you do a daytime op to Boulogne.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And you’ve got a little note in your book saying —
GM: We saw a dinghy.
HB: Gun positions which are obviously Boulogne.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And then you’ve got dinghy sighted and reported.
GM: That’s right. We found, we sighted a dinghy. We went around and around it. Got it and sent a message back.
HB: And did you know, did you ever find out what happened?
GM: No. No. We never found out.
HB: No.
GM: But we did report it. We found a dinghy.
HB: Right.
GM: You know.
HB: Yeah, you, yeah you were at, you were at Breighton ‘til the end of September. You’re right, you only flew —
GM: Yeah.
HB: Five ops.
GM: Can I tell, tell you a very special story now?
HB: Of course, you can. Yeah.
GM: This is absolutely, I used to live with my aunt. I did not live with my father. I used to live with my aunt and she had a brother. His name was Jack [Elson], and he flew in Lancasters as a gunner and I had a weeks’ leave while we were at Breighton, and he had a weeks’ leave, and he came to his aunt’s and I went to my aunt’s and we had a weeks’ leave together. On the first day we went to the pictures and the girl that took us to the seat, her name was Mona, he chatted her up and they were friends. And by the end of the week, they were in love. We both went back to camp on the Friday. Both. He left on that platform and I left on that platform. We were both flying on Tuesday and he was killed. He was killed on the Tuesday and he’s buried in Lyons, in France.
HB: Oh, sad.
GM: Yeah. But that’s just by the by.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Yeah.
HB: But that’s there, you know.
GM: There but by the Grace of God go me, you know. Yeah. Anyway, then we were sent to special duties, 171 Squadron and all brand new aircraft. Never been flown other than their delivery with this very special wireless equipment in the, in the, in the middle. Two great big things, and we had a new wireless operator. A special wireless operator and his name was [pause]
HB: A Scottish name.
GM: A Scottish name. Yes. Yes. He lived in —
HB: MacDonald.
GM: MacDonald. That’s right.
HB: Can I just say for the purposes of this interview —
GM: Yeah.
HB: You have written some brilliant notes and I’ve abandoned doing notes. I’m following yours because they are far better than mine. Yes. Sergeant Macdonald who operated the —
GM: Well, I did that a long time ago.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Because I thought I might forget.
HB: Yeah. Well, you’ve got him down as he operated the secret wireless jamming equipment.
GM: That’s right. And the operations we did were the strangest operations you ever flew because you flew out in to the North Sea and you flew around an oblong course for two hours. And there would be two planes, two planes, two planes, two planes, two planes, two planes, and we always flew at eighteen thousand feet and the other plane flew at eighteen thousand five hundred feet so that you didn’t, and you were both in the same place going up and down while he operated the Mandrel. I know the name of the one equipment was called Mandrel, and he operated these jamming, and while these formed on the screen that the Germans could not see the planes lifting off from England. The first time they’d see them was when they went through the screen. So, all, all the people were told not to fly at eighteen thousand or eighteen thousand five hundred feet. And then when our stint was finished, we used to go and bomb a place. We had a, we had a small bombing. Some, a few bombs to take and we used to go and bomb. I think a lot of them were holiday places on the coast although we went to Monchengladbach once I think. And the, we did thirteen trips and our last trip, which was our worst trip was Leipzig. Why we were sent to Leipzig I do not know.
HB: It’s alright. I’m just having a quick look to see if I can find that [pause] Leipzig. Leipzig. Oh sorry. Was that your last trip with 171?
GM: That was my last trip altogether. As we approached the target at Leipzig, we were coned by about fifty searchlights and all hell broke loose. The skipper chose one searchlight and we went straight down it. Straight down the searchlight. When we were at about three thousand feet from the ground I started firing my guns at the searchlight, and believe it or not it went out. There was no side of the plane left. All the side, the whole side of, the whole side of the plane was missing. It was draughty and the skipper said to the navigator, ‘Give us a trip home, and we don’t want to go near any mountains.’ He said, ‘I don’t even know where we are.’ And we got back. Got back to camp and we landed and the CO came out and he looked at the plane. He said, ‘You’ve ruined another one.’ He said, ‘Digby, you’ve finished.’ He said, ‘You’re finished. Don’t do any more.’ And so that was —
HB: That was your stand down.
GM: That was our stand down and we finished.
HB: And that was, sorry that was the whole crew stood down then.
GM: Yes. No. Except for, except for the flight, the special wireless operator.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Because he had to carry on.
HB: MacDonald. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: He got another crew. He died. He died at Christmas.
HB: Oh.
GM: This Christmas just gone. Last Christmas. Yeah.
HB: And did you, did you keep in touch with him?
GM: No. No. But my flight engineer’s son did.
HB: Oh right. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Kept in touch with him. I kept in touch with my skipper’s daughter, and I know his granddaughter and his grandson. They kept in touch with me.
HB: Did the whole crew survive the war?
GM: Oh yes. We all survived.
HB: Right.
GB: We all finished. I got a cracking job. I was posted to Number 1 Squadron. Spitfire squadron at Hutton Cranswick as a flying controller assistant.
HB: Well.
GM: I did that for about a year and then one day, I became a flight sergeant and one day they called me in to the office. They said, ‘You’re posted.’ And I said, ‘I’m posted?’ He said, ‘Yes. To Llanbedr.’ I said, ‘Where’s Llanbedr?’ He said, ‘In North Wales. They have, they want a controller.’ I said, ‘I can’t be a controller. I’m a near beginner.’ He said, ‘They’ve got nobody else to send.’ So, I went home for the weekend and got arrested when I got there because I should have been there two days earlier. And the CO, the CO he was only a, he was only a wing commander and you won’t believe this [pause] he’d, he’d been, he’d disgraced himself fighting or something and he’d been brought down from group captain to wing commander and he was in charge at Llanbedr. And it was being closed. And they used to fly Martinets.
HB: Oh yeah. Yeah.
GM: And they used to fly Martinets. They used to have a drogue a mile away. A mile away. And these drogues used to fly over to a place called Tonfanau in Wales where there was an Anti-Aircraft Gun School and the anti-aircraft used to fire at the drogues. I flew a couple of times. I had a couple of rides just for fun and that. Martinets they were.
HB: Oh no.
GM: Yeah. Anyway, there is one or two little, little stories in between that I’ve missed out. When I was stationed at Snaith one of the officers came from Birmingham and he said to me one day, ‘Gordon, do you want to go to Birmingham?’ ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘We can go for the weekend, you know.’ I said, ‘Can we?’ He said, ‘Yes. I’ll fly you there and I’ll fly myself there.’ So, he flew us to Castle Bromwich.
HB: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: He flew us in a, in a Tiger Moth. I was supposed to be the navigator [laughs]
HB: Yeah.
GM: We got lost the one day. In the end he said, ‘I’ll fly down and see if you can see the name of the station.’ [laughs] So I looked at it, and they’d started putting the station names back because they were all obliterated in the war but they started putting them back and I said, ‘Oh yes.’ I gave him the name of the station. He said, ‘Ok. We’re going this way,’ and we got, we got to Castle Bromwich.
HB: No. Yeah. Because, yeah Castle Bromwich there was a factory there wasn’t there?
GM: Yeah. There was a factory at Castle Bromwich.
HB: That made the, made aircraft, didn’t they? They constructed them.
GM: Yeah. Did parts of them.
HB: Yeah. Well —
GM: My mother, my mother made Spitfire parts at Fisher and Ludlow at Castle Bromwich.
HB: Right.
GM: And she was a lathe operator.
HB: Oh right.
GM: In the war.
HB: Yeah. That’s good. So, just, just going back because, because we’ve got you, you know getting in trouble.
GM: Yeah.
HB: When, you said to me before we started the interview about you somewhere down the line you went from flight sergeant to sergeant.
GM: No. I went from sergeant to flight sergeant, and then I became a warrant officer.
HB: Oh.
GM: Yeah.
HB: I wondered if you’d got busted down you see.
GM: No. No. No.
HB: Ah, no. I misunderstood what you said.
GM: No. No. I made a mistake there.
HB: No. I was going to say. No. That’s fine. That’s fine.
GM: Yes.
HB: Yeah.
GM: No. I got to warrant officer.
HB: Oh great. Yeah.
GM: I was the actual controller at Llanbedr and —
HB: When would that have been Gordon? That was —
GM: After I’d left Hutton Cranswick but of course I’d got, I’d got no dates for those.
HB: Yeah. So that, so that, we’re now in to late ’45.
GM: ’45.
HB: Yeah. Late ’45.
GM: About ’46. Probably ’46.
HB: Yeah. So, so how long, so you, you said to me earlier that you stayed in ‘til ’47.
GM: That’s right.
HB: So, what, so did you just carry on as a controller?
GM: Yeah. At Llanbedr.
HB: All the way through.
GM: All the way through. Yes.
HB: Til ’47.
GM: Yeah. And it was being closed. I can remember the, I walked in to the office and the CO said to me, threw me a folder, ‘Mr Mercier, here’s your first job.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ He said, ‘I want an inventory of the WAAFs quarters. Everything in the WAAFs quarters. I want to know exactly what’s there in the WAAFs quarters because it’s all being shipped away and we want to know what we’re going to ship. So, here’s all the, you go around. Five hairdryers. There was a half a one. Eighteen barrels. None.
HB: Barrels?
GM: Barrels. Yes. Eighteen barrels. None. I don’t know what the barrels were for or where they came about but there were all these sort of things on the list. Sort of bedding for, I think the bedding was about thirty three sets of bedding and thirty three beds. Those were all there, you know. Pillow cases. None [laughs] Because the WAAFs had gone and they left shortly after. They all left after I got there, and I gave him the list back. He said, ‘We can put it in a van.’ He could practically, he said, ‘I thought we’d have to hire a pantechnicon to take it all away.’
HB: Good grief.
GM: Anyway —
HB: Good grief.
GM: He was, he was a smashing bloke. He used to say, ‘Don’t forget to come on my parade on Sunday unless you’ve got something better to do.’
HB: It sounds as if it was starting to get a little bit relaxed in 1947.
GM: Oh, it was more than relaxed.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And he was, he was, he’d been brought down in rank.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Because he’d disgraced himself. When I came back to work I worked at Triplex. When I came back to work.
HB: Yeah.
GM: I worked at Triplex making aircraft windows and the first, my first boss, no, my second boss was Wing Commander Duncan Smith. He was a Spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain.
HB: Was he?
GM: And his son is the MP. His son’s the MP. Duncan Smith. And when he was sixteen, he had a mini on our car park when he was sixteen, and he used to drive it around like a mad thing. Around and around the car park at night.
HB: Yeah.
GM: That was Duncan Smith.
HB: Wow.
GM: And his dad was a wing commander. Duncan Smith.
HB: Can I, can I just you know if you’re happy to carry on for a while.
GM: No, it’s alright.
HB: Can I just take you back to, you did your training.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And your OTU, your Operational Training Unit.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And you get posted to your first squadron. 51 Squadron.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And it’s a question I always like to ask. What was the social life like?
GM: Oh, it was great. Marvellous. We used to have a dance every week and the girls used to come from factories all around and they’d bus the girls in. The girls used to come from factories all round. There would be about six or seven buses full of girls coming from factories and you used to have a great big dance in the big hangar. We used to have great, absolutely great time, and you made friends with the ground crew and all that sort of thing.
HB: Yeah.
GM: It was, it was a grand time. I’ve got to admit that on my second trip I was terrified. I really was. I was really, really terrified. But I must say that I was never frightened again. Never. It didn’t frighten me at all, and I don’t know why that was but it didn’t because I gave, got to the point where if it happens it happens.
HB: Yeah. I can understand that. So is, you’re lucky enough to do all of your ops —
GM: Yes.
HB: As one crew apart from losing Sergeant [Wamm].
GM: That’s right.
HB: You’re lucky enough to do all your ops with the same guys all the way through.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And you come, you come to the stage when you’re flying your last few operations and you’re going to end up at Llanbedr. How, how did, how did you cope? Well, not cope that’s not the right word. How did you see the crew reacting as you come off to finish?
GM: You didn’t. You didn’t because we finished. We finished on that day. The next day we were posted to Kirby and at Kirby we were reassigned our posts. The next day we were reassigned our posts and we were given a weeks’ leave. We were given a weeks’ leave and a chit, and then you’d be told where you were going. They’d send you a message. Send you a letter.
HB: So, literally within three days the guys —
GM: Within three days we were split up.
HB: The guys you had spent —
GM: All that time with.
HB: Two years with.
GM: Were gone. All different places.
HB: All gone to different places.
GM: Yes.
HB: Right.
GM: I don’t know where any of them went.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Not one.
HB: That’s, yeah. Did you, did you meet your wife while you were still in the services?
GM: No.
HB: Or was that when you came out to work?
GM: We met after that.
HB: Right. So, what, so you’ve, you’ve been told you’re finished. You’ve gone to Llanbedr.
GM: Yeah.
HB: You’ve tried to resolve where all the stuff from the WAAFs quarters have gone, and the place is closing and you’re going to be demobbed. What, was what was your feeling at that time?
GM: Well, you didn’t. You were given a number right at the beginning, and all the people that were in the Air Force before the war were number one. They were released. All the people. The ones that had been in the Air Force longer were number one. The ones that were, and number two and number three and I was about number 178. And your number, your number came up. You heard what number it was each, sometimes it says number 111. Oh. I’ve only got another sixty eight.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Until your number came up and the CO had got a big parade, and he called me into the office and he gave me this slip of paper. He said, ‘Are you coming to my parade on Sunday?’ I said, ‘Yes. Yes, of course I am.’ He said, ‘No, you’re not. Read your piece of paper. You’ve been posted to demob.’
HB: Wow, where did you actually demob? Do you remember?
GM: I think it was West Kirby.
HB: Right. And what, what was that process like?
GM: Very strange. You handed your uniform in. I wish I’d, you could have kept it and I wish I’d have kept it but it was a lot of stuff and I didn’t want to carry it but I’ve regretted it ever since that I didn’t bring some of it back with me. And you were given a suit. You were given shirts, underpants and a suit. Shoes. Socks. Everything. And it was all in a, it was all put in the box, and you were given a ticket home. And you went through the gate with your box in your arm and there was about fifty spivs outside the, outside the airfield. ‘Buy your box.’ ‘Buy your box.’ ‘I’ll buy your box for you.’ ‘I’ll buy your box off you.’ ‘I’ll buy your box off you.’ And they were sending, I think they were getting five pound for a box. And some of them, you know, ‘Here you are. Here you are. I don’t want it. I don’t want it.’ I said, ‘No. I’ve got nothing else.’ But a lot of them sold them to these spivs.
HB: Oh right.
GM: I think it was a fiver they were getting for them. And they were white fivers in those days.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: And on D-Day we were all given a white fiver, a fiver and sent home. Only kept a, kept a skeleton staff on the aerodromes on D-Day. On VE Day.
HB: VE day. Yeah. Right.
GM: VE Day.
HB: Yeah.
GM: I got home just in time for the evening festivities.
HB: And what was that like?
GM: Well, the whole, the whole country was mad.
HB: Where were you living then? Had you gone back to your —
GM: In Harborne. I was living in Harborne and I was on my way to my auntie’s but I got dragged into a party on the way.
HB: Dragged in.
GM: Yes. I, I was never a drinker.
HB: No.
GM: But I used to drink but I was, I couldn’t hold my liquor very well but there was a lot of booze that night. And they kept stuff. They’d taken food out that they’d been saving for years. You know, tins of these, tins of that. I went into this one house in Harborne. I knew the people and they said, ‘Come in, Gordon. Come in Gordon. Lovely to see you.’ Put my box down. And then when I went I took my box with me to my auntie’s.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Just up the road.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And how, how long did it take you to sort of come to, because it’s obviously we all know that was, that two years or so was very very intense.
GM: Yeah.
HB: You know, and you know like you say you, you just reached the stage where you thought, well if it happens it happens.
GM: Yeah.
HB: But how sort of long or what sort of, what sort of period of time do you think it took —
GM: Well —
HB: To get yourself back to Civvy Street.
GM: Well, you went back to Civvy Street straight away because your firm was obliged by law to take you back.
HB: Right.
GM: They made a law that every firm had to take back for six months. They had to guarantee you six months work or six months wages and I went back to Belliss and Morcom’s. But I didn’t like it in the factory and I, I left to be, I became a milkman. I became a milkman with a horse and cart delivering milk.
HB: Did you enjoy that?
GM: Well, I’ve got a story. I don’t know whether you, are you still taping this?
HB: Absolutely. Yes. This is, it’s important we know.
GM: Well —
HB: How your feet came back down to earth basically.
GM: I got, I got a job at [pause] that’s Alexa telling me to take my tablets.
HB: Do you want to have a break to take your tablets?
GM: No.
HB: No. Crack on then. Crack on.
GM: Yes. I I got a job as a milkman and had a horse called Ginger, and Ginger didn’t like nuns, GPO huts in the road, shadows. He didn’t like them. He used to shy at shadows. I’d been delivering. I’d been working for them about three months and we’d, he knew the round better than me. He used to stop at everywhere and we used to do, we used to do Knowle, and then Dorridge and then back to Knowle which is near Solihull. And we used to have to go, after we’d finished Knowle we’d turn around the corner from the pub and we’d go up a hill. Up a great big hill to the other half of the route and this one day [laughs], one day we turned the corner there was an elephant [pause] The horse took one look at this elephant and he went berserk. I had a girl with me because she used to deliver. There was two of us delivering milk. He, he galloped and I got the reins and I got my feet and I said to her, ‘Jump off. Save yourself. Save yourself.’ And the crates of milk were falling off the back all the way down, up this hill and of course by the time he got to the top he was absolutely shattered and I managed to stop him and I tied him to a tree and I lit a fag. I can remember lighting a fag. And the woman came out. ‘Shall I ring the Dairy for you.’ ‘Yes, please.’ I’m smoking this fag and the Dairy bloke, and he looked at all the milk in the road and he kicked the horse.
HB: Oh no.
GM: So, so sorry. He really, he kicked the horse and he shouldn’t. He was the, he was the, the boss of the Dairy and the farm and all the horses and everything. It was most unkind.
HB: You’ve got a visitor.
GM: Oh, it’s my paper coming.
Other: Paper boy.
GM: Come in John. I’ve got the interviewer here.
Other: Oh, sorry.
HB: Do you want me to, do you want me to, no it’s alright. I’ll just pause the interview. Bear with me.
[recording paused]
HB: Resuming the interview that was paused so that Gordon could take his tablets and speak to his, his visitor. Right. So, we’ve got the elephant frightening a horse. Frightened horse. Blimey. So, you went to work as a milkman, and then obviously you started to get right back into civilian life.
GM: Yeah. Yeah.
HB: And what not.
GM: Then I went to work. Decided I wanted to go to work, and I went to, I applied for, my uncle worked at Triplex and he said, ‘There’s some jobs going at Triplex. Do you fancy doing that?’ And so, he got me an interview.
HB: Right.
GM: And they took me on at Triplex.
HB: You know, when we go right back to the beginning.
GM: Yeah.
HB: I’m just a little bit intrigued. You were born in Jersey.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And obviously your mum and dad were in Jersey. Did they [pause] Oh right. Obviously.
GM: There’s a very strange thing I’ve got to tell you. My father was a Francophile. He loved France. And when he was a lad in Jersey, when they were eighteen, they had to join the Jersey militia. It was an army. Because of the unruly going on with the eighteen year olds. But he and his friends decided to join the French Foreign Legion. He was stationed in Aleppo in the French Foreign Legion, and he went, and when war was declared on the Monday morning, he had a letter from the French Foreign Legion calling him back to France and he went.
HB: Right. So, when did you leave Jersey to come to England?
GM: I was about three, I think. They brought me back here.
HB: So that would be like the ‘30s.
GM: Yes. It was the ‘30s.
HB: Mid ‘30s.
GM: Early ‘30s. Yeah.
HB: Right. So, so your mum and dad were separated then.
GM: No. No. No.
HB: Sorry.
GM: Then he went. When he went on the 3rd of January err the 3rd of September he went back into the French Army.
HB: Right.
GM: Yeah.
HB: But by that time, you were obviously living over here.
GM: Yes.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We didn’t hear from him at all for, ‘til 1942. And in 1942 a man came to the door. He said, ‘I’m from Special Branch. You’ve got a husband named Jack Mercier.’ She said, ‘Yes. He’s dead.’ He said, ‘No. He’s not dead. He’s alive and he wants to come back to England.’ She said, ‘Well, I hadn’t heard anything so I assumed he was dead.’ In 1942, by then you see. And he said, ‘No. He’s alive and he wants to come back to England.’ We had a lot of interviews. Wanted to know all about him and everything, and then we had to give him forty five pounds which was a lot of money in those days for his fare back from Spain. And he’d got to get to Spain on his own so he walked about six hundred miles from France down to Spain and then he got a ship from Spain to England. And they came from Special Branch again and said, ‘We want seven pounds please.’ ‘What do you want seven pounds for?’ ‘For his fare.’ ‘His fare from where?’ She said, ‘Oh, he’s been in Scotland six weeks. He’s been interrogated as a spy.’
HB: Right.
GB: But they decided that he’s not a spy and he can come home.’ So, we had to give the seven pounds for his fare to bring him home. I never got on with my father. The moment he came home I left. My auntie took me straight away and she said, ‘Come and live with us.’ Never got on with him.
HB: That’s a shame. Yeah.
GM: He was quite brutal.
HB: So, he’d been, so he’d obviously been a prisoner of war.
GM: No, he got, he was in unoccupied France.
HB: Oh, he was in Vichy. Right.
GM: He was in Vichy France.
HB: Yeah. Right.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Oh yeah. Of course. ’42.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. That explains it.
GM: Yeah. I think he was somewhere, somewhere in the middle of France somewhere.
HB: What, just going back to your time, you know.
GM: Yeah.
HB: If you could just put your mind back to when you did your training and what not.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And you became part of Bomber Command. What do you think? It’s quite, it’s almost a bit too specific but what do you think was the best part? If there was a best part of your time.
GM: Well, you felt as though you were hitting Germany. And because I came from Jersey which was occupied by the Germans and badly treated by the Germans and, and I wanted to, I wanted to fight, and we really did. I mean we, Bomber Command, Hitler should have packed it in. I mean we just kept on destroying. I mean all these cities were destroyed totally. In this country we lost six hundred and fifty thousand houses to the bombing. In this country. They must have lost six million.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. And how, when you look back now do you, do you have any strong feelings about when you look back? Or —
GM: No. No. It had got to be done. It had got to be stopped.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And you, you really felt as though you were really taking the war to them because we were, I mean London was bombed sixty seven nights in a row. So, you, you really felt as though you were doing your bit.
HB: Yeah. It’s, it’s something that a lot of people are interested in because, you know in some cases a lot of people think it’s so long ago.
GM: Yeah.
HB: But all of the people who were involved they, they do have very different views when they look back as, as to what they contributed. How they, how they, how they —
GM: Well, of course.
HB: Were involved.
GM: Dunkirk. Dunkirk was the pivotal point. We were beaten. There’s no doubt about it. If he’d, if he’d have attacked then we couldn’t have defended ourselves at all. But as I say when I joined the Home Guard I had a, we had a stick. A broomstick and a knife on the end. That was our first weapon. We used to practice arms drill with the stick until we got, finally we got one rifle, and we all were allowed to touch it [laughs] And then we got we all had a rifle and every night we went out we took our rifle out with us every night.
HB: And then you then went back to work the following day.
GM: Went to work the following day. Yes.
HB: Yeah.
GM: I was on, I was on duty, Home Guard duty when Coventry was bombed and we were taken by, by a lorry that would be shovels to, to Coventry and our job was to clear the roads. Make the roads passable. And we spent three days in Coventry where we had, we had tents. We were just tidying up. That was the first time I’d ever seen a dead body. The very first time. Probably the only time I’d ever seen a dead body.
HB: Yeah. Yeah that’s, yeah —
GM: That was Coventry.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And we all our job was to make the roads passable for transport. Shifting great big pieces of, you know six of us moving great big pieces of concrete out of the way.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Yeah.
HB: What [pause] what we’ve talked about that side of it. What, what do you think was your, your sort of happiest memories of, of that time? If, you know, I mean because there must have been some fun.
GM: Yes.
HB: You must have had fun.
GM: I was always happy in the Air Force. I loved it. Couldn’t cope with it sometimes. They made me take a parade once which was [laughs] which was horrible because my voice isn’t that loud. I could shout a bit but because you’re a sergeant you had to take a parade, and I got them marching up against the wall of the hangar and that. Hit the wall of the hangar in front of them. I couldn’t say turn around or anything. That, that was one moment that I remember where I regretted being a sergeant. I also made the cook do another dinner because the dinner they’d put out that day was vile and I was on what do you call it? Mess duty.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And my job to go around the mess for any remarks about the food and anything. The whole place was, ‘This food’s rubbish.’ ‘It’s rubbish.’ ‘It’s rubbish.’ I made the chef prepare something else.
HB: I bet you checked your food after that for a while, didn’t you?
GM: I had to be careful where I went, I must admit. I didn’t go anywhere near the cookhouse I’ll tell you. But that was when I was flying control at Llanbedr.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: But with 21 Squadron they flew Spitfire 21s at Fifty, at One Squadron. There was one squadron and there was another squadron called the Baroda Squadron. All Spitfire 21s, contra rotating props and they used to take off like that. Go straight up. They were a fantastic plane.
HB: Did you ever get to go in one?
GM: Four hundred and fifty mile an hour.
HB: Did you ever get to sit in one?
GM: No. No. No. I don’t think. Never sat in one. But I was there a sizeable length of time.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. It was —
GM: I was there a long time.
HB: Well, well ’45 through to ’47.
GM: I’d never done any office work and I walked in to the office and they said, ‘Your first job is to do the Wilmotts.’ I said, ‘What on earth is a Wilmott?’ ‘A Wilmott is the station, the readiness of all the aircraft stations in the country,’ he said,’ And if there’s anything wrong with the aircraft, with the aerodrome, they issue a Wilmott and that Wilmott has to be plotted so that every station knows if there is anything wrong with any other station.’ So, I’d got this pile of, little pile of Wilmotts they’re called and I’d had to look and find the aircraft and put number one runway is out of action because they’re resurfacing the [unclear]. Put it back and then take the next one. Leuchars. Leuchars. Flying control is not operating today so no planes in or out of Leuchars, and write it down so that if anybody was sent to that they’d put out a Wilmott to see —
HB: Right.
GM: What the status of the station was.
HB: Status was.
GM: And I remember it took me all day. The whole day, I think. Morning, sort of morning, dinnertime, afternoon and evening you know, I was still doing these Wilmotts. Putting it in.
HB: I’ve never heard of a Wilmott.
GM: No. Wilmott it was called and, and then a job I did like doing was on the waggon at the end of the runway.
HB: Oh yes. Yes. I’m with you. Yeah.
GM: Yeah. And you used to have two aldis lamps, and two verey pistols. A green and a red. A green and a red. And you had to, and I can remember watching the planes landing and watching them and then all of a sudden, this Spitfire came and he’d got his wheels up. He hadn’t got his wheels down. Prang, I fired off, moved and it went off.
HB: Blimey.
GM: And he was only a few feet from the ground by the time I’d fired it. I thought to myself I’d nearly blotted my copybook there.
HB: Yeah.
GM: He hadn’t put his wheels down.
HB: That, that would have been expensive.
GM: Yeah. Another thing that happened which was most amazing was I was on the waggon this one day and it had been raining very heavy and the sun came out and a flock of swans, about six swans flew over and they thought it was water and they all flew down to land on the runway and of course they crashed. Every one of these swans. Because they thought it was water and I’m watching these swans and all of a sudden, they crashed. All these swans rolling around. They got up and they waddled around and then they started running and took off again.
HB: Blimey.
GM: A load of swans.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Yeah. About five or six swans crashed on the runway.
HB: You know if, if you go back to 171 Squadron.
GM: Yes.
HB: And you were, you were flying these special operations.
GM: Yes.
HB: With this special jamming thing did they, did they use the aluminium strips?
GM: Yes.
HB: At the time.
GM: Yes.
HB: Was your aircraft doing that as well?
GM: We, we had special ones. When we’d finished our flight we didn’t put any of the aluminium strips out until we’d finished our flights, and then we’d go, some of the targets. I can’t remember the targets. We did go to Monchengladbach once I think while we were at [pause] I don’t know, give me a target from 50, 171 squadron. Give me.
HB: Right. That would be [pause] Liege.
GM: Liege. Yes. So, so, we were not far from France that day. Going round and round. Then as soon as your stint had finished we bombed Liege.
HB: Right.
GM: And as we went out we had very special strips of foil. Ours were fifteen feet long. The ones that the bomber, the main force took were, were only strips like that.
HB: What was that?
GM: Ours were fifteen feet long.
HB: What’s that? About three feet long.
GM: Something like that.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And they stayed in the air longer.
HB: Right.
GM: They didn’t fall so flat. They stayed in the air longer so, so our, our two planes would look like thirty planes heading for Liege.
HB: Right. Right. Yeah, that, that sort of makes sense now to me. Yeah. It’s alright. I was just looking back because you were on 51 Squadron when it was D-Day weren’t you?
GM: Yeah. We just arrived at 51 Squadron just before D-Day.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. [coughs] excuse me. Oh yeah, because that’s when, that’s when Sergeant [Wamm] got injured, weren’t it?
GM: On our second trip he got wounded.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Gordon, I can only thank you really. It’s, it’s, you know, I’m not just saying this it really is interesting. It’s really interesting you know and to know that it wasn’t all deadly serious all the time.
GM: No. Oh no.
HB: That’s —
GB: No. I can, I’ll tell you something. You’re not recording this now?
HB: Yeah. Yeah, we are recording you. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Oh right. Well, when I was stationed at Stormy Down as a cadet with a white flag in my hat, we had a visit from Anna Neagle, a film star.
HB: Oh right. Yeah.
GM: And she did a show for us. It was a show and she came in to the airmen’s mess and she said, ‘I will dance around with the youngest airman in the room.’ And it was me.
HB: Oh lovely.
GM: So, I [laughs] danced with Anna Neagle. I don’t know whether, she was in, who wants to sing in Barclay Square film.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Yeah. And that —
HB: Oh yeah. She was a big star.
GM: Yeah.
HB: She was a big star.
GM: Anna Neagle. Yeah. So, I danced with Anna Neagle.
HB: Ooh, now, there’s a memory for you.
GM: Yes. Yes, it is.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Funny things happen.
HB: Yeah. Oh, that’s great. Right. So obviously you got your job at Triplex.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And life moved on and you got married.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And you got your family.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And eventually you ended up here in Alvechurch.
GM: Yes. It was all fields. This was all fields.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And there was a hut at the end of the road and we were given a number. We got there at 7 o’clock and were given a number. The hut opened at ten, and I think we got in for an interview at about 12 o’clock and as we walked through the door he said, ‘There’s only one property left. It’s a bungalow, a two bedroom bungalow at the beginning of the site. Do you want it?’ And my wife said, ‘Yes, please.’
HB: Wow.
GM: And that was number 2, Rise Way.
HB: Brilliant. Right. Well, I think we’ve sort of come to a bit of a conclusion for the interview Gordon.
GM: Yes. Thank you.
HB: And I really do appreciate, and thank you very much on behalf of the IBCC.
GM: I hope it —
HB: But more on behalf of myself.
GM: [Unclear}
HB: Oh, yes. I think it’s great for you to do this. I’m going to end the interview bit now.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Because obviously we need to have a break and get something to eat, but as I say I do thank you for that.
GM: Do you want to come down the pub for a pint?
HB: The time is now coming up to half past twelve.
[recording paused]
HB: This is recommencing the interview at twenty to two in the afternoon, having had our lunch, a very nice lunch and still interviewing Gordon Mercier. In a chat over lunch, we’ve had two or three things, little things have cropped up, but I think Gordon it would be nice to tell us about it, Gordon.
GM: Yes.
HB: You were telling me about a training flight where you shouldn’t have been over the sea but —
GM: That’s right. We, we were doing, we were going a compass swing and —
HB: Who’s, oh that’s right because you had somebody in the aircraft with you, didn’t you?
GM: We had a WAAF. We didn’t have a WAAF this time. We had one of the air, one of the ground crew.
HB: Right.
GM: But we were out for a compass swing and an engine, engine test but my skipper decided to do some low flying and we went over a field full of German prisoners of war putting hay, taking hay, and they made a lot of rude signs at us and so the skipper turned the plane around. We flew towards the prisoners of war again and as we got there we went straight up in the air and blew them all over. But by then we were facing out to sea and there was a ship, a ship down and we hit a flock of birds and one engine went out. Immediately went back to base and asked permission to land, emergency landing, three engines. We landed and we were called in to the office to explain ourselves and the skipper said, well, we were doing this, ‘We went out for an engine test and a compass swing and we hit a flock of, a flock of starlings,’ he said, and just a flock of starlings. And the CO said, ‘Why is my engineering officer holding two, two seagulls?’ And another story, we were going to bomb Dunkirk Castle, and there were about two hundred planes and we took off as normal but the wheels wouldn’t come up and the skipper asked the flight engineer if we’d have enough petrol to go and get back. He said, well we could get back but we couldn’t get back to camp. We’d have to land somewhere in the south of England. So, we, we went on but we were very slow so that by the time we got to the target all the other planes had finished bombing and we crossed the target on our own and the German, Germans occupying the Castle were firing rifles and pistols at us. But our bombs went straight through the middle of the courtyard and broke down one of the walls. And then we got back and we had to land at Manston because we hadn’t got, and Manston was the most amazing sight. It was the first time I saw a jet plane take off. They’d got them at Manston. I’d never seen, didn’t know we’d got any jet planes. That was at Manston.
HB: Were you on the ground or in the air at this time?
GM: We were on the ground.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And we, we heard this noise and we saw this Gloster Meteor take off. We didn’t know what it was. It was a jet plane.
HB: That’s just [pause] I don’t know.
GM: They used to use them for catching the flying bombs.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Because they were faster.
HB: Yeah. And was it, was it, was it Manston you were telling me about where you had FIDO?
GM: No.
HB: Or was that —
GM: That was at Carnaby.
HB: Right.
GM: There was a very severe fog one night when we were coming back, and all the, all the ‘dromes were fogged out and so we had to land with FIDO at Carnaby. Carnaby aerodrome. And I believe they landed ninety six planes at that aerodrome using FIDO.
HB: And what was it like coming in to land then with FIDO?
GM: It was like going into hell because all you could see was flames.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Flames. Just, it was just flames. You couldn’t see the ground until you were about twenty feet from the ground.
HB: Well, yeah.
GM: But you could land the plane.
HB: Just, just mentioning jet aircraft towards the end of your operations in ’45.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Did you ever come across German jet fighters?
GM: No.
HB: Didn’t. You never saw them.
GM: Never saw them. No. Never saw any.
HB: Because you did quite a few daylight operations, didn’t you?
GM: Yeah.
HB: Before, you know by then. No. I was just curious because obviously at that time they were flying the Messerschmitt jets, weren’t they?
GM: I will mention one other target we attacked. We attacked an airfield called [unclear]. But on that day, it was a Sunday morning and on that day, there were four thousand five hundred allied planes over Germany. All bombing and fighters. Fighters and bombers. There were four thousand five hundred planes in the air over Germany.
HB: That’s the allies. Yeah.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We saw two lots of Boeings in, in convoy, you know.
HB: Wow.
GM: And we, we bombed [unclear] airport and our bombs went straight down the runway. You couldn’t miss.
HB: Yeah.
GB: It was one of those.
HB: Yeah. That’s, yeah that’s interesting. When we were chatting over lunch you were saying about the jobs the WAAFs used to do.
GM: Oh yes. They used to do. We used to have a WAAF come with us sometimes when we did a compass swing.
HB: Could you, can you explain what a compass swing is please Gordon?
GM: Well, the compass had to be checked that it was doing its job properly, and there were compass operators and they were nearly all WAAFs and they used to come with us when you’d fly straight line, straight line, straight line, straight line and she would make sure that the compass was working properly.
HB: Right. Right.
GM: It was called a compass swing.
HB: Yeah. So, you obviously that was something you really did appreciate once you were in the air.
GM: Oh yes. Got the compass for just in front of the pilot, wasn’t it?
HB: Yeah.
GM: She was fiddling with the —
HB: Yeah.
GM: Set, set, calibrate it I think it was called. They used to calibrate the compass.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: And the WAAFs did that job. One of the jobs that they did.
HB: Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s lovely. That’s lovely. Well, Gordon thanks. Thanks for that extra bit. I’m pleased we had lunch and we had a chat.
GM: Yes. Thank you.
HB: That was really nice and I’ll, I’ll finish the interview now because I just need to work through some of the paperwork.
GM: Yeah.
HB: So, the time is coming up to ten to two. So, we’ll terminate the interview now.
[recording paused]
HB: This is a further interview with Gordon Mercier. It’s Tuesday the 23rd of November.
GM: Yes.
HB: And we’re at Gordon’s house near Birmingham and we just wanted to go back over a few things, Gordon. We’ve just been chatting because obviously as an air gunner you were in that small group of people who, an awful lot of air gunners were lost and you survived. So, we thought we’d like to know what the life of an air gunner was like from, you did your training and that was fairly arduous but, but you know we just wondered what it was like day by day to be an air gunner on a, on a Halifax.
GM: I found it very satisfying. I, I had the best view of anybody in the aircraft. I was sitting on the top. I never flew, I only flew once as rear gunner and I hated it and all the other times I flew mid-upper gunner. The only trouble with being a mid-upper gunner was when you were facing forward the wind came through the holes where the guns are and you absolutely froze. So, if you turned forward it was uncomfortable. Other than that, it was a very comfortable seat and it was easy to get in. Up a little ladder and hung your parachute on the hook just by the seat where you get in and it was very comfortable and the view was fantastic because in daylight you could see for miles and miles and miles.
HB: Did you, did you have any extra duties when you were in there? To, to tell the pilot about things.
GM: No. But I, I told, you had to keep your eyes open. Especially for other aircraft in the, in the stream. That was the most important job actually because all of a sudden you’d realise there was a bomber sitting just on top of you and you’d got to get out of that without hitting him. And we had that several times, and that was the important job that you did that wasn’t written in to the contract [laughs]
HB: Yeah.
GM: And also, when we went, we went to Villers Bocage we’d been told to bomb at ten thousand feet and if you couldn’t see the target you were to come down to five thousand feet. Some went down. We went down. And some didn’t go down. So, the bombs were coming down from above us which was a very, very tricky moment and I can remember one bomb being very close to us as it went past. A stream of bombs. And that was when we bombed the panzer division in Villers Bocage and —
HB: It’s nice you used to word tricky.
GM: Pardon?
HB: It’s nice you used the word tricky.
GM: Oh yes.
HB: For that situation.
GM: Yes. Yes.
HB: I can think of other words.
GM: Yeah. I must, I’ve got to admit very humbly that I was terrified on our second trip. I was really, really terrified. The bang when they hit the nose of the plane, and the getting the bomb aimer out. I heard all about it and I was terrified but I’ve got to admit that I was never frightened again ever and we had some very tricky situations.
HB: Yeah.
GM: But it was very satisfying being a gunner. You felt as though you were doing a good job.
HB: Yeah.
GM: You just had to keep awake and keep warm.
HB: How did you keep warm, Gordon?
GM: The Halifax had a good heating system in the fuselage. It was, it was quite good and we had electric boots which you plugged in. You plugged into the aircraft and it warmed your feet. And you had fleecy boots of course and you were as warm as toast except when you went forward. And I can remember my eyebrows froze. Eyelids froze because of the cold when it was minus fifty, and that was the coldest day I flew in and the engines, the oil went into lumps and you could hear the engine rumbling.
HB: Oh.
GM: With these lumps of oil.
HB: Blimey.
GM: It was, it was minus fifty degrees it was.
HB: So, what height would you be when that was happening?
GM: Twenty two thousand feet.
HB: Yeah.
GM: At twenty two thousand feet we could get to twenty two easily but the Lancaster could get further.
HB: Yeah.
GM: It was lighter than us but it could carry more. We, we carried a lot of bombs. I think twelve five hundreds’ we could get in. Or two four thousand and some smaller bombs and mines. They were, they were big. The mines were big.
HB: Yeah.
GM: I hadn’t, I had to, on two occasions I had to get out of my turret and close the door which had come open.
HB: The side door.
GM: The door you went in to the aircraft. And it was up in the air and me being small I could hardly reach and the skipper said, ‘Don’t forget to put your parachute on in case you fall out.’ [laughs] The wind coming through from that door. And I closed the door for him. And twice that happened.
HB: How had it come open?
GM: Well, just vibration, I think.
HB: Oh yeah. Yeah. I suppose.
GM: Just vibration. Yeah.
HB: So, what, what sort of clothing did you used to have to put on, Gordon?
GM: Well, we had fleecy boots, four pairs of gloves, a gauntlet, a mitten, a woollen mitten. No. A gauntlet, a glove, a woolly mitten and next to your skin surgical, like a surgical glove. Silk. Silk glove. So that if you had to do anything with the guns you took the three pair off and just left the silk glove.
HB: Right.
GM: Because if you touched the guns your fingers stuck to the guns.
HB: Right.
GM: Because it was so cold it would fetch your fingers, the skin off your fingers.
HB: So when, so after you’d, after you’d taken off for an operation obviously everybody talks about as you’re flying towards.
GM: Where ever.
HB: Perhaps the Dutch coast.
GM: Yes.
HB: Or whatever, you used to test fire your guns.
GM: Yes. We used to test.
HB: How did everyone look on that? How did they do it safely when you were taking off in a bunch.
GM: Well, we used to fire down. Fire down at the sea. And the rear gunner used to fire down at the sea. We [laughs] went on a, we went on a trip when we were converting into Halifaxes, and we had to go and bomb Rockall. That little mountain in the middle and we had to go and bomb Rockall and on the way we’d to test our guns. That was in the exercise. The skipper said, ‘Are we ok navigator to test the guns?’ And the navigator said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘What do you mean, Titch?’ I said, ‘I can see land in front of me. Down there. I can see land.’ He said, ‘No. The navigator said we’re over the sea.’ I said, ‘We’re not over the sea. It’s land.’ And he’d missed a leg out on his plan [laughs] He’d missed a leg out on his plan, so his plan showed us over the sea and we were still over the land.
HB: Oh dear.
GM: And Liverpool. Nearly fired my guns at Liverpool.
HB: Blimey.
GM: Yeah.
HB: I suppose he got in trouble for that did he?
GM: Who?
HB: No?
GB: No. No. No. No. The only time we got in trouble was when we went to North Creake. Our first trip at North Creake. Familiarisation they called it. New planes, and we flew, flew anywhere. We just flew round swinging the compass and one thing and another. We went out to sea to fire my guns and there was a trawler and there was a crowd of birds around it and I was firing my guns and we hit this crowd of birds. One engine packed up so we asked permission to land immediately and we landed and we went in front of the CO. ‘What happened? How did you come to hit a flight of birds?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We were flying over the coast and we just hit this flight of birds.’ He said, ‘Oh yes. Really birds.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ The skipper said, ‘Yes. Just birds. Just a flight of ordinary birds’ He said, ‘How come [laughs] the engineering officer has got five seagulls in his office.’ How come he’d got five seagulls in his office.
HB: You shouldn’t have been there.
GM: No. We shouldn’t have been there.
HB: I don’t know.
GM: Yeah.
HB: I don’t know.
GM: But they used to, the clothing was adequate. Really good clothing we had.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We had a bomber jacket and extra long johns.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And very modern vests. Very warm.
HB: Yeah.
GM: They came up to your neck and everything. But you used to get cold here and here, under your chin and your eyes used to get cold. Especially if you were looking forward, which you had to rotate the turret.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And —
HB: So, so on a normal, so how would it work then? How would you be told as an air gunner that you’re going to be flying on operations?
GM: Oh, we, in the morning the skipper would tell us, ‘We’re flying tonight, lads.’
HB: Right.
GM: And he, they used to go to the, the navigator and the flight engineer and the pilot used to go to a briefing. And then before the op the whole crew went to a briefing and the chair, there were seven, seven seats and seven seats and everybody and then there was a big map of Europe on the wall and the CO would come out with a big stick and say, ‘Your target for tonight is Monchengladbach, and your route is this way — ‘’ This way. ‘Be careful of this area here because there’s a lot of flak there. Do a dog leg here.’ The navigator had got all the details and they told us, and then the weapons officer used to come in and say you’re carrying so many bombs, and so many of this, and we used to carry Window which was strips of silver paper and the strips of silver paper were about a foot and a half long. But when we were flying with 100 Group our, our silver paper was fifteen feet long. We didn’t have so many of them.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And you used to, before you hit the coast the [pause] I’m sure. I think the wireless operator had to put the, the silver paper in in through the —
HB: And that went down a chute.
GM: A chute. Yeah. It went down a chute and, so that fifty planes would look like five hundred planes on the radar.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Because each piece of silver paper would have been lit as a blip.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And, and when, when we used to fly with 100 Group our fifteen feet long stayed in the air longer, but it didn’t say there was that many.
HB: Yeah.
GM: But and they were all a distraction. Used to usually drop the silver paper just before you changed course.
HB: What was it? As a sort of a deception sort of thing?
GM: Well, yes. That’s right.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. So, you’ve been in. You’ve had your briefing.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Did you have, did you do anything separate as an air gunner?
GM: No.
HB: Or was that it?
GM: No. No.
HB: That was just it.
GM: You were altogether.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And then after briefing you used to go for a flying meal.
HB: Yes.
GM: Bacon. Eggs. Bacon and eggs. Sometimes there was chips but we always had bacon and eggs. And big portions as well.
HB: Right.
GM: We used to collect our escape kit and our parachute and an orange and a block of chocolate which you distributed in your pockets.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And you’d wait for the, the bus, the waggon to take you out to the aeroplane about an hour before you took off. You used to go the, and sit on the grass or play football or something like that altogether.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And the ground crew were just finishing off.
HB: What was, can you remember what you had in your escape kit, Gordon?
GM: Oh yes. There was a map. It was only a small box. There was a map. There was a compass. There was some nutritious bar of stuff. I don’t know what it was but they invented this bar of stuff to eat. And there was a whistle, I think. No. We used to carry the whistle. We used to have the whistle always with us. We always had the whistle in case you fell in the sea. [unclear] a compass. Pipe smokers had a pipe and the pipe converted to a compass. Just broke it open and the compass was inside the barrel of the pipe. But the main thing was the map. It was a big map of Europe and all on silk. A silk map. Very posh.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We, it was just a small box which you just slipped in to your pocket. Into your breast pocket as it were.
HB: Did you, did you carry, did you carry photographs of yourself with you?
GM: No. No. Oh, that was one thing you did before you took off and before you collected your parachute. You collected your parachute. You had to empty your pockets so that you’d got nothing to identify yourself with at all.
HB: The reason I ask was I did interview somebody once who showed me some photographs they took. They had. And they took them with them in case they were shot down so they could be used on false papers.
GM: Oh. Well, I hadn’t heard of that.
HB: No.
GM: We, we were, we were told to clear everything out. Especially bus tickets.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And all that sort of stuff. Anything that could identify you or your squadron.
HB: Yeah.
GM: You know, like postcards from the family with your address on. You don’t. All that had to be taken out and put on the —
HB: So, you’ve had your briefing. You’ve been to dispersal.
GM: No. We’ve had our briefing. We’ve had our dinner.
HB: You’ve had your dinner.
GM: We go and collect the parachutes
HB: Yeah. And then you’re waiting at dispersal and the truck comes.
GM: The truck comes, and they’ve usually got two or three crews, and it takes you all the way around the perimeter and drops them off at each plane.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And usually the CO comes around. Just a little chat. And then at a certain time the skipper says, ‘Time to get aboard lads.’ And you just get in and of course I, I only sat in the rest position. I didn’t get in to my turret until we’d taken off.
HB: So that was sort of in the middle of the aircraft.
GM: Yes.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And there was a lot of room in the Halifax.
HB: Yeah.
GM: There was room for eight of us to sit in. Or seven of us to sit in.
HB: Yeah. Yeah, so you, you’ve gone into the plane. You’ve gone to the rest position.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Did you have, did you have any duties at all for take - off? Or was it just —
GM: Just I’d cock my guns
HB: Yeah.
GM: No. I couldn’t cock my guns until we were over the sea in case there was a mistake. We used to cock the guns. We were soon over the sea anyway.
HB: Yeah.
GM: So, that’s the only thing I had to do was make sure that my gunsight was working. Cocked the guns. Make sure that all four were all cocked.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And ready to fire.
HB: Did you, did you always have the same turret? I think you said to me in the last interview that you were comfortable in the Boulton Paul turret.
GM: Yes.
HB: Because it was big and you, you know you fitted in. You had plenty of room.
GM: Yeah.
HB: But did, did you always have the same turret or did you have to change?
GM: It was all, I only flew in the Boulton Paul turret.
HB: Right.
GM: When I did the one in the rear it was a Frazer Nash turret.
HB: Yeah.
GM: The rear gun had a Frazer Nash turret.
HB: So how, so when you were in that turret, what, what guns had you got?
GM: Four. Four 303 Browning machine guns.
HB: Right. And I presume they were calibrated to, to converge, were they?
GM: It was one of our jobs on the ground to calibrate the guns so that it didn’t hit any part of the aircraft.
HB: Right.
GM: That was one of our jobs. We had to calibrate the guns.
HB: Because that’s one of the questions a lot of people ask is how did you manage to not shoot your own tail off?
GM: No. They’d been calibrated so that you used to turn your gun round at the plane and press the, I think we used to press a button. I think it was a button, and so that when, when it was revolving, and when you’re firing, when it hit the, looked at that, the bullets didn’t fire. It stopped the guns from firing.
HB: Right. Right. Yeah. Ah that, that’s, that explains it then.
GM: Yeah. Because you could hit the front of the aircraft quite easily.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And you could hit the tail quite easily as well.
HB: Yeah. I can believe it. Yeah.
GM: But you, you calibrated. That was one of your jobs. To calibrate it. When you did a, if you did a pre-flight flight, used to do that.
HB: So, when obviously, when you’re flying at night your vision is, is, is absolutely essential. Your, you know, your skills at looking out into the night. How did you protect your eyes when you were flying at night?
GM: One thing we used to do was we used to have a pair of goggles which we used to put on while we were waiting if it was daylights or, and we were going to be flying at night we used to wear these goggles. A pair of like sunglasses.
HB: Yeah.
GM: So that when you, you took them off and put them in the plane you’d stopped your eyes from going.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Suddenly in to dark when you wouldn’t be able to see anything.
HB: Yeah.
GM: But wearing these glasses, which you were given they, they were very useful.
HB: Yeah. So once you, once you were up and you’re flying. You were flying towards the target.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Would you get much of, much information from the pilot or the navigator or anybody else to tell you what was happening? Where you were going or —
GM: There was always conversation going on. The skipper was asking the flight engineer if all the engines were ok. He was asking the wireless operator if he still had contact with his wireless. And the bomb aimer used to sit next to him and he only used to go in to his position when we were getting, getting close to the target.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And the navigator had his little, he had a curtain all round him and he was, he was giving the skipper instructions of a course to fly. Every, all, every, all the time he was chatting.
HB: Yeah.
GM: The flight engineer and the navigator were doing most of the talking and the skipper was asking questions and everybody else was in their own thoughts as it were.
HB: Yes. Yeah. So as, as you come in you’re coming in towards the target. Obviously, we know the risks were flak and night fighters.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And that sort of thing.
GM: And other planes.
HB: Yeah. And the other planes are all around you. Your own side.
GM: Yeah.
HB: What, can you, is it possible to describe or to tell me what it was like to fly towards a target through the flak?
GM: Well, one of our trips we went was Hazebrouck it was called, and it was a railway. A railway marshalling yard in France. And that was the worse flak I ever saw and the flak was just coming up before. The flak was firing when the planes weren’t there and we were flying along this flak and then we had to go in to it and that was a bit scary, you know. You couldn’t help it. Suddenly you had to go through it because the target was there and if you didn’t turn in to the target you wouldn’t. The flak was, was enormous, the amount of flak there was. Hundreds of flak bursts.
HB: So, sitting in your position in the, you know.
GM: You could see it all.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. So, and, and so that that would be like I suppose flying through a giant firework display.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Almost. But with quite nastier consequences.
GM: Well, you could smell the smoke from the, as you flew through it. The ones that exploded you didn’t worry about because they missed you. It was the one that you didn’t see that hit you.
HB: Yeah.
GM: But it was the amount of flak they threw up, the Germans was enormous. Absolutely hundreds, hundreds of bursts of flak.
HB: Yes.
GM: And nearly always at the right height as well. They’d, they’d got good range finders.
HB: Yeah. What, what were the, what were the searchlights like?
GM: Well, on our last trip we were coned.
HB: Yeah.
GM: By searchlights. About fifty on us. This last trip was our worst trip ever and we were coned and the only thing you could do was to dive down one of the, one of the searchlights which is what the skipper did because they couldn’t change the, where the shells were bursting quick enough because we were going down. And in actual fact I fired my guns at a searchlight. The one we were flying down. It went out.
HB: Oh right.
GM: And that saved us.
HB: Yeah. Was the —
GM: The moment it went out the skipper said to navigator, ‘Which way?’ He said, ‘How the hell do I know?’
HB: So, was that what, was that something you trained for or just something you did?
GM: Something happened. It was —
HB: Yeah.
GM: It had never happened before.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We’d never been hit by searchlights before.
HB: Yeah, because when I’ve talked to others they always talk about the corkscrew.
GM: Yeah. The corkscrew is for fighter.
HB: Yeah. What was, what was the corkscrew manoeuvre then?
GM: It was depending which, where the plane was. You, I, the gunner or the rear gunner had to tell the skipper, ‘Corkscrew right.’ ‘Corkscrew left.’ And if you said, ‘Corkscrew right,’ he turned the plane that way, that way, that way, and that way, and raised, went up and down while he was corkscrewing.
HB: So, he was constantly changing left to right.
GM: Left to right.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: So that the pilot, if the plane was behind you he’d have to readjust every time.
HB: Yeah. What was that like to experience?
GM: Ah, it was like being in a merry go round. You were thrown this way and that way but it only happened to us twice and I don’t think it was necessary actually but the rear gunner called it the two times we did it. And corkscrew right or corkscrew left. Down. Right. Down. Right. Up. Down. Right.
HB: So, so this was —
GM: With, with the Halifax you could do it like. It would behave like, like a merry go round.
HB: Yeah.
GM: It was a marvellous plane for that.
HB: So, so the tail gunner had called it. Were you ever actually attacked by night fighters?
GM: No. The only time we were attacked was on our second trip and that’s when we lost our bomb aimer. I’d, I reported to the skipper there was a plane below us being attacked. He said, ‘Keep your eyes open.’ And I could see the tracer going and I couldn’t see the other plane that he was firing at. And then the tracer stopped and at that moment the one shell hit us right in the nose. Blew the nose off.
HB: Right.
GM: And the bomb aimer was sitting with his legs like that and it exploded under his bum. And the plane was, was doing this all the time then because it was filling with air and then it couldn’t take any more air, so the plane was going like that all the time. It was really uncomfortable. That’s was the only time I was really terrified.
HB: Yeah. Did, I don’t suppose you ever saw the aircraft that —
GM: No.
HB: That did the attack.
GM: No. Never saw the aircraft.
HB: No.
GM: I thought it was a Fokke Wulf 190 that I saw a shape going away but I reported it as a Fokke Wulf 190.
HB: Did you lose, did the other plane, did we lose the other plane? The other aircraft. The first one that was attacked. Did we lose that one?
GM: I don’t know.
HB: Oh right.
GM: I mean he was way below us.
HB: Oh right.
GM: He was way below us.
HB: Right. Right. Yeah.
GM: And I saw the tracer but it didn’t see the plane he was firing at.
HB: Yeah. So, so you’ve been out there and you’ve gone through the flak and the searchlights.
GM: Yeah.
HB: You’ve done, or you’re doing your run to the target.
GM: The bomb run. It was called the bomb run at that time.
HB: What, did you have a job to do while that was going on? While the bomb run was going on?
GM: No. The only job we had to do was keep our eyes open.
HB: Yeah.
GM: For everything. At that moment the bomb aimer, the bomb aimer took over the plane.
HB: Right.
GM: ’Steady. Steady. Steady. Left. Steady. Right. Steady. Steady. Left. Right. Bombs gone,’ and the plane would go wumph.
HB: Yeah. It would jump up in the air.
GM: It would be up in the air.
HB: Yeah. And what would, because obviously you used to take photographs as well. Was that done automatically?
GM: It was done automatically.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: When the bombs were released, it was done automatically. We had some very good photographs of our bombs.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Especially in the daylight ones.
HB: Yeah. So, you’ve, you’ve dropped your bombs. You’ve turned away. You’re heading back.
GM: Yeah.
HB: You’re heading back home. So, what, what are you, what are you sort of experiencing now? What are you feeling now?
GM: Elated actually.
HB: Yeah.
GM: To think you’ve gone over the target, and you’re on the way home but you’ve still got to keep your eyes open.
HB: Yeah. Was that a bit, a bit risky?
GM: Well, believe it or not I think it was when we went to Monchengladbach, we [pause] we went over the coast and there was a flak ship firing at us. All of a sudden, the flak started out of nowhere. Flak in the night, and of course they were a burst of colours. They were sort of glowing, and this flak ship was firing at us, and you didn’t know that it was there until it happened.
HB: Right.
GM: So —
HB: And obviously they moved them about.
GM: Yeah.
HB: So, yeah you could never really predict where they were.
GM: No. No.
HB: Yeah. So then —
GM: Then —
HB: Yes. So, so you’re on the way back.
GM: Yeah.
HB: You’re feeling elated and you come in. You know you’re coming back to your airfield.
GM: Yeah.
HB: What was, what was your procedures for landing then as, as an air gunner?
GM: No procedure for me other than to keep, keep my eyes open because there were intruders at that time. There were intruders. You could be fired on as you were landing by the German, especially they used these JU88s as intruder aircraft and you had to keep your eye open right until, right until the moment you landed. But we didn’t. We were fortunate. We didn’t have it.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We did land on the FIDO twice which was a very, very strange and frightening procedure. I think Carnaby took in ninety six planes in about half an hour.
HB: Blimey.
GM: Because everybody was running out of petrol.
HB: Yeah. And of course, Carnaby was FIDO fitted, wasn’t it?
GM: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
GM: There was three.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Woodbridge, Carnaby and Manston were the three aerodromes that were fitted with FIDO.
HB: Yeah. Blimey. Yeah.
GM: It was like diving into hell.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Because you couldn’t see a thing because of the fog. You couldn’t. Until you were fifteen feet from the ground you couldn’t see anything. The pilot just dived in to the, you could see the lights under the fog. And then when you got to fifteen feet you could see the ground.
HB: That’s low, isn’t it?
GM: It is low. Especially if the ground’s not your runway.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Yeah, but —
HB: So, just going back a little bit when, when you did all your training and, and all that sort of thing one of the things you would have probably have been trained to do was the procedure for ditching.
GM: Oh yes that was, we did that.
HB: Ditching over water and that sort of thing.
GM: We did that at 14 OTU which was at Bridlington.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And it was November. It was cold. It was snowing. And we went, got in the bus for dinghy training. We were taken to the harbour and there was a pile of Mae Wests on the floor. They said, ‘Right. Put your Mae Wests on. What we want you to do is to jump into the sea. Swim to the dinghy. Get in the dinghy. Turn it. Get out of the dinghy and turn it over.’ The next crew was, next ones would jump in to the sea. Turn the dinghy right way up. Get into the dinghy. Turn it over and come back. And I’m sitting there. I’m standing there thinking I’m going to be first. So, I grabbed the Mae West and I put it on. He said, ‘Who’s first?’ I said, ‘I am.’ And I realised that they’d got to put the wet, wet Mae Wests on when they came out. The people after us had to put the wet Mae Wests on and it was freezing cold. Of course, the Mae West was dry and I was a good swimmer, so jumping in and swimming out to the dinghy was no problem. One of the fellas with me doing it wasn’t a very good swimmer but he managed it, you know.
HB: Yes.
GM: He, he couldn’t help turn the dinghy over. Tricky to turn the dinghy over in the water, and it was cold.
HB: So, at what, if you were in an operations or doing this training.
GM: Yeah.
HB: At what stage would you actually inflate your Mae West? How would you do that? Or when?
GM: Oh, not until you were out of the plane.
HB: Right.
GM: You couldn’t, if you inflated your Mae West I wouldn’t have been able to get out of your turret.
HB: Yeah.
GM: No.
HB: So how would you inflate it?
GM: Pull a toggle. It had got a little lever. A little button like a, like a Boy Scout’s toggle.
HB: Yeah.
GM: It was on the Mae West and you just pulled it, whoosh.
HB: So, was it gas filled then?
GM: Gas filled. Yes.
HB: Yeah. Because so the Mae West must have changed because I think early on they must have blown them up didn’t they? With a tube.
GM: Well, you could blow it up yourself. It had got a tube on it so that if you were in the water any length of time you could top up the air in the Mae West. It was sticking out on the side.
HB: Yeah.
GM: You just grabbed it and blew in to it.
HB: Right.
GM: It was —
HB: So, I mean I mean you’ve got a crew of seven. Did, could everybody swim?
GM: I don’t know whether everybody could swim. Everybody was taken for swimming lessons to make sure.
HB: Oh right.
GM: One of the things we did at OTU we did was the swimming baths. We had, but I think most people in our days in school you all went to swimming every week at school.
HB: Yeah.
GM: You know, when you were nine, ten you all went swimming.
HB: Oh right.
GM: I was a good swimmer.
HB: Right. Ah. So on, so on operations on the Halifax.
GM: Yeah.
HB: I presume the pilot, the skipper would actually call for, you know warn you that you were going to ditch.
GM: That’s right.
HB: What would, what would then follow? Who would do what? Do you know?
GM: We would, everybody would, I would get into the rest position and the rear gunner used to get in the rest position and we used to brace ourselves. You had to put your arms, your arms, your head used to close your fingers and put it behind your head and sit like this in the rest position.
HB: You were crouched over. Yeah.
GM: Crouched. Well, sitting down.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And you would tightly hold your head. I can’t put my arm up there now.
HB: Yeah [laughs]
GM: Used to put my head down and hold it. When we, when we pranged, that’s one thing we had to do, because you was careering across the runway and then you stopped dead.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: You know.
HB: So that, so if you were going to ditch then you would be in the rest area.
GM: That’s right.
HB: I presume the bomb aimer and navigator would then obviously have to come back away from the nose.
GM: Yes. Everybody would come back away from the nose or as many, and I think there was about six of us [pause] No. Five because I think the bomb aimer used to stay with the pilot to help the pilot on the crash landing.
HB: Yeah.
GM: But everybody else came to the rest position in the middle of the aircraft.
HB: Yeah. And you would have come out obviously if everything went right. You’d try and come out the door I presume.
GM: Yes. The door and then you’d have to swim.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Because the door was away. Was the nearest the tail.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: And the idea is you got on to the wing and the [pause] the dinghy used to throw itself out.
HB: Oh right. Yeah.
GM: The dinghy used to self-eject with the smash and the dinghy would, and it was tied and it was, we’d all got knives, and you had to, you had to make sure you’d got the dinghy tight, but you had to free it from the aircraft in case the aircraft went down.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: And then you’d pile into the dinghy. All of you.
HB: Is that something you wanted to avoid?
GM: Definitely. We, we never got, we never, never, never got near to ditching in the sea at all. Never.
HB: Yeah. So, yeah, I was, I was interested in that because a lot of people have talked about ditching, but how you actually got to that level of training and expertise is of interest.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Because some guys I’ve spoken to have talked about doing what they called dry dinghy training.
GM: That’s right. Dry.
HB: On the airfield.
GM: Dry dinghy training. We did that. That was at Conversion Unit.
HB: Right
GM: You did. It was one of the things you did when you converted from, we flew in Whitleys believe it or not. Whitleys [laughs] and changed to Halifax.
HB: Yeah. So, as, as the war, you know you came into the war sort of ’44/45. That time.
GM: Yeah.
HB: What, what changes, what were the biggest changes you saw, Gordon happen, happen?
GM: Master bomber.
HB: Yeah.
GB: That was the biggest change. The master bomber orchestrating the raid. He would bomb to the left of the green indicators. Bomb to the right. Take the bombs forward. And he did the instructions. ‘Don’t bomb in the middle two. Waste of bombs. Bomb on the edges. Bomb on the edges.’
HB: Yeah.
GM: Which spread the target area.
HB: Yeah.
GM: They used to put target indicators down as well which was marvellous. They would tell you what the target indicator colour was every day. Every time you went, ‘The colour of the day is green,’ so that the Germans would light up fake targets.
HB: Oh right. Yeah. Yeah.
GB: But if the, they used to change the colour of the target indicator. Sometimes green, sometimes red, sometimes yellow.
GM: And —
HB: And they were and the master bomber would call the height as well I presume.
GM: No. No. We were all the height we were given. We were told to fly at such and such a height which was between eighteen and twenty two thousand feet usually, at night. The master bomber, if the target indicator wasn’t on target he’d called up the backers up would obliterate that target indicator and they’d put another target indicator down and he’d say, ‘The new colour is — ’
HB: Right.
GM: Made up a different colour for the next target.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. That’s, yeah. Yeah that’s —
GM: The whole time you were on the bombing run the master bomber was talking to you.
HB: Right.
GM: Every minute.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: ‘Bomb to the left of indicator.’ ‘Bomb to the right of indicator.’ ‘Bomb forward.’ ‘Bomb forward.’ ‘Take it more forward.’
HB: Yeah.
GB: In fact, on one of our trips we had to go round again because he moved the target and we’d already passed it.
HB: Oh right. Right.
GM: So, the skipper said, ‘We’re going around again.’ We only did it once, and that was a bit hairy because you had to go around and join the bomber stream again and come back in again.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. That’s doesn’t sound nice.
GM: No. It wasn’t.
HB: No. So, so obviously the majority of the bombing that you did was at night but on daylight you must have done some daylight operations, well I know you have because there’s a couple in your logbook.
GM: Yeah. I did a lot of daylights.
HB: Yeah. What, what was your feeling? This might sound a bit strange, but what was your feeling about being able to see clearly what you were bombing?
GM: Well, there was, you could see the target. Especially if it was marshalling yards like Hazebrouck. It was, the target was very plain, you could see it entirely but the master bomber was there as well. He’d say, ‘Bomb to the right. Bomb to the left again.’
HB: Yeah.
GM: But —
HB: And what did, what was you, what was your overall feeling then as you’re seeing this target clear as day and the bombs are going down? What, what was your overall feeling on that?
GM: Well, the minute the bombs were going down you felt as though you had done your job.
HB: Yeah.
GM: You’d actually done your job so it was all you had to worry about was getting home. From the moment you dropped your bombs you already knew your course you had to take. The skipper and the navigator had all, had got that, were told that so that you immediately went on to that course, and then did a couple of dog legs before you crossed the coast again.
HB: And when you got, when you got, you obviously you, you end up with your end of tour, you know. You’re told that you’ve, you’ve come to the end of your tour.
GM: Yes. That was our last trip.
HB: Yeah.
GM: That was the worst trip we ever did. There was no side left of the plane, on the one side. All gone. I was just looking at looking at, just looking at metal. Bits of metal, and —
HB: So, so you had a bit of an escape there then.
GM: Well, yes because my, I hadn’t fired my guns so that the bullets saved me from damaging. It saved me from my leg getting damaged without a doubt because there was damage to the bullets itself because it took the whole, took the whole lot of the left-hand side of the plane out, from the front nose and there was a great big hole all the way to the tail and they, they hit us a lot of times. But the searchlight went out. We were still flying. I think if a Lancaster had had what we’d had it wouldn’t have made it, but the Halifax was, was so rugged, and it really was.
HB: Yeah.
GM: A very strong aircraft.
HB: Yeah. So how, when you say the ammunition saved you.
GM: Well —
HB: I hadn’t thought of this.
GM: Ammunition.
HB: How did, how did the ammunition get to the gun?
GM: The ammunition was here and here.
HB: Either side of your legs.
GM: Like four. And you used to feed the ammunition into the four guns. There were four panniers of bullets. You feed it into the guns, cock it and so you’ve got the first gun done. Then do the second gun, do the third gun, do the fourth gun. And these, these troughs as it were where the bullets were coiled up, and they were all here. Right here. And all the damage was there and the —
HB: So, yeah. So, from your thigh down you’ve got the bullet panniers.
GM: Yes. When, when we got home it was obvious that the bullets had saved my legs because I never had a scratch. Never had a scratch.
HB: So, the shrapnel obviously that ripped through the side of the aircraft was bouncing off the, it’s amazing they didn’t go off.
GM: Yes. Well, no because they were facing that way.
HB: Oh, of course.
GM: So yeah.
HB: Yeah.
GM: They were facing the point.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: They then made, the bullets were facing outwards.
HB: I see what you mean. So, that the angle of the bullet —
GM: Yeah.
HB: The shrapnel didn’t hit the explosive bit. It hit the nose.
GM: It hit the nose.
HB: Wow.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Well, that was a lucky escape surely.
GM: Yes. It was.
HB: Yeah.
GM: The CO came. Came out in his car. He took one look at the plane and he said, he said to [unclear] and Digby, ‘Well, Digby you’ve had enough. Call it a day. You’ve finished your tour.’
HB: Just like that.
GM: He said, ‘Because you’ve ruined another plane.’ [laughs] He said, I can remember him saying that.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And the next day we were, we were posted.
HB: But did you, did you actually get to go out for a last end of tour drink?
GM: No. Not really because we went to briefing and next morning we handed our, all our stuff in. The bicycles had to be handed in and everything. I think it took two days to get to, you had a, a leaving chit to fill in.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And you had to go to the MO. You had to go to the, all sorts. You had to go to all of these actions handing in this, that and the other thing.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. And that was it.
GM: That was it.
HB: That was it. Finished.
GM: We went to Kirby.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Never saw each other again.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We just, ‘Cheerio chaps. Have a good — ’and I was very lucky. I was posted to 1 Squadron. Spitfires.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Flying control.
HB: Yeah. Well, Gordon, I’ve got to say I could sit here all day. You know.
GM: Yeah.
HB: We’ve had a, we’ve had, you know well over an hour.
GM: We haven’t.
HB: And I really do thank you for that, because —
GM: I haven’t bored you to tears.
HB: No. You could never bore me, Gordon. But I’ve really appreciated it. It’s been a really good interview. I mean we’re coming, we’re coming up towards quarter to twelve so I think we’ll perhaps finish the interview there.
GM: Ok. One thing I would say to you, on our training there was one part of our training that we did when we were posted to Driffield and we were taught how to escape.
HB: Oh right.
GM: We were arrested at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. We were searched. We were given dungarees. Only dungarees. We were given a meal, and at 8 o’clock at night when it was dark, we were taken out in a truck and we were dropped two at a time in the countryside. This was on the Thursday and we’d got to get back to camp on Friday on Saturday. Get back to camp and Sunday was the day we should have been back by. And we were in Yorkshire. In the Dales. And you had to get, you had to fend yourself. You’d got no money. You’d got nothing to eat. Get back to camp. Teach you how to escape. We got on the bus and said to the bus driver, ‘I’m ever so sorry. We’ve got no money. Can we have a lift?’ He said, ‘Of course you can, lads.’ He took us. He took us to Scarborough. Took us to Scarborough. We slept under the, slept under the, slept on the beach. It was warm. It was summer.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We slept on the beach. We went to a, we went to a café and said, ‘Have you got any scraps that you want to throw away because we’ve got, we’re in the Air Force and we’re, we’re trying to escape and they’ve given us no money. And have you got any — ’ ‘Of course, you can. Come in’ We had a meal. A proper meal. We did that twice. Did that twice, and we got back on the Saturday. So, we got back. We had a, got on the bus again.
HB: You must have had some very caring bus drivers.
GM: We went to the bus driver and said, ‘Look, I’m ever so sorry. We’re in the RAF and we’ve been told that we’ve got to, got to get back to camp without any money. Is there any chance you can let us on the bus?’ He said, ‘Course, you can.’ And he dropped us at the gate.
HB: Oh no.
GM: And that was our experience of learning how to escape.
HB: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder how many buses there were in Germany and Belgium. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Oh, well, you couldn’t ask for a ticket [laughs]
HB: No.
GM: Yeah. The only, only German I knew at that time was, ‘Hände hoch.’ ‘Put your hands up.’
HB: Yeah. That would come in handy I suppose. Yeah.
GM: That was the only German I knew.
HB: Yeah. I tell you that’s lovely. A lovely bit to finish on that Gordon.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Thanks ever so much. I really do appreciate it.
GM: Now, are we going to the pub?
HB: Well, the tape’s still running. Do I have to admit I’m taking you to the pub? [laughs]
GM: No. No.
HB: On the tape [laughs]
GM: We can close the interview if you like.
HB: I’m closing the interview now.
GM: Yeah.
HB: It’s a quarter to twelve.
GM: I wouldn’t mind —
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 Gordon Mercier
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harry Bartlett
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-10-21
2021-11-23
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
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02:15:42 Audio Recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMercierCG211021
PMercierCG2101
PMercierCG2102
Description
An account of the resource
Cyril Mercier was born in Jersey in 1925. He joined the Home Guard in 1940 and the RAF in 1943. After initial training, and training on gunnery at Bridgnorth he joined 14 Operational training Unit at Abingdon, where he crewed up. He trained on Halifax, eventually joining 51 Squadron at RAF Snaith. On his second operation to Amiens his aircraft was damaged and the bomb aimer was injured. The pilot made a Darkie call and landed the damaged aircraft at RAF Dunsfold. On their journey across London on the Underground dressed in their flying gear, the passengers had a collection for them of 100 cigarettes. He and his crew joined 171 Special Duties Squadron which operated Lancasters using Mandrel jamming equipment. His last operation was to Leipzig. The aircraft was coned by searchlights and badly damaged. He was posted to RAF Hutton Cranswick as a controller’s assistant with 1 Spitfire Squadron. After being posted to RAF Llanbedr he was demobbed from the RAF.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944-08-17
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Surrey
England--Norfolk
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Leipzig
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
100 Group
14 OTU
171 Squadron
51 Squadron
78 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
animal
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
civil defence
crash
crewing up
demobilisation
FIDO
Halifax
Home Guard
Lancaster
Master Bomber
military discipline
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Breighton
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Dunsfold
RAF North Creake
RAF Riccall
RAF Snaith
RAF Stormy Down
searchlight
tactical support for Normandy troops
take-off crash
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1135/11674/PSnookT1801.2.jpg
137dd66e818f1d402186e607d2a8fd6b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1135/11674/ASnookT180215.1.mp3
9ff814d0899d0cb6cb145b2b6d6a72b7
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
Snook, Tony
Tony Snook
T Snook
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Tony Snook (b. 1925, 1813151 Royal Air Force) as well as his service release book and photographs of his crew. He flew operations as an air gunner with 115 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Snook, T
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: Right. So, this is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre.
TS: Yeah.
DK: Interviewing Tony Snook on the 14th of February 2018 at his home. Right. Ok. So, I’ll just put that, if I just put that there.
TS: Yes. Yes.
DK: I’ll, I’ll keep looking down to make sure it’s still, still working.
TS: Yes.
DK: Ok. So can I first of all ask you what were you doing before you joined the RAF?
TS: School.
DK: Ah.
TS: Well I left school. I was at Maidstone Grammar School. I left school in 1942.
DK: Right.
TS: When I, that was sixteen and, no. Seventeen. That’s right. And you were allowed to join the Air Force for aircrew at seventeen, at eight, seventeen and a quarter and then they kept you waiting for a year until eighteen. Then they called you up to Regent’s Park and you was, but you were actually sworn in.
DK: Right.
TS: And you got a number there. That, in, in 1942. That’s right. And then I went in in 1943.
DK: Right. Was, was the Air Force something you chose then? Is it something you wanted to do as opposed to —
TS: Well, I want to because I joined the, I went, the ATC. The school had an ATC squadron and I rose up and became a sergeant in the ATC and we used to go to camps. To West Malling just outside Maidstone which was a night fighter station which had Beaufighters and Defiants and Havocs. That was Douglas Boston with a searchlight in the nose.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Which used to illuminate supposedly and the Defiants flew alongside and shot it down. It didn’t often happen unfortunately. But anyway we used to go there and, that’s right 1940 I was fifteen and we were there and we were sent out to sweep up around the dispersals and things like that, you know. Just to, make do with us really. And the corporal, the engine, the engine fitter said, ‘Have you ever flown?’ I said, ‘I’m fifteen years old. How could I fly during the war?’ He said, ‘We’ll see what we can do.’ So anyway, the pilot came along to the Beaufighter. He was a flying officer then and he said, ‘Do you want a trip lad?’ So I said, ‘I’d love one.’ So he took me up in this Beaufighter. I stood in the well behind the pilot holding on to his seat. Well, it was still wartime. How would, how would health and environment think about that nowadays? [laughs]
DK: No health and safety.
TS: Yes. Anyway, that, but that was that but you know I was interested in aeroplanes anyway naturally. But that was wonderful I thought.
DK: So what did you think of your first flight then when you were —
TS: Wonderful.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Yeah. Because I could see. Just there was the chap’s head. And he was a Flight Officer Widdows who died about twelve years ago.
DK: Right.
TS: His, because I look at the Telegraph every day to see if I’m in it [laughs] But he was in there. He lived ‘til a hundred as an air commodore.
DK: Oh right.
TS: And his wife was about five years ago she lived till a hundred and she died about five years. So both of them lived ‘til a hundred.
DK: A hundred. Yeah and that was at —
TS: And —
DK: Sorry. Go on.
TS: Well, I mean then I was in. Because after that, we had actually what I first joined at the school was what they called the OTC. Officer Training Corps which was Army naturally.
DK: Right.
TS: And then I transferred to the ATC when it started. And so therefore at seventeen and a quarter I went into the Recruiting Office and applied to join for aircrew and they said alright. We went up to the house. Air Ministry house in London.
DK: Right.
TS: What was it called?
DK: Is it Ad Astra house is it?
TS: Ad Astra house.
DK: Ad Astra House. Yeah. Yeah.
TS: Something like that.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And you were given a medical and a small education test. And then you were sworn in and given a number. And you also were given a little silver badge which you put in the lapel of your jacket to say that, because you know people used to think oh, he looks a hairy, he’s not in the Service. We used to wear this little badge.
DK: Oh right.
TS: A little silver badge.
DK: Is that to stop people perhaps turning on you then and —
TS: Well, it might be. I mean it didn’t often happen —
DK: No.
TS: Very often.
DK: No.
TS: I mean surely they could see that the lad was probably not old enough to be in the air anyway. And I went in finally in November 1943.
DK: Right.
TS: Yes.
DK: So where was your first posting to then? In November 1943.
TS: ITW at Newquay.
DK: Right.
TS: Because I went in as PNB.
DK: Right.
TS: And I passed through ITW. Then they sent us to Theale near Reading.
DK: So that’s the PNB. Pilot, navigator —
TS: Bomber.
DK: Bomb aimer.
TS: That’s right. Yes. Yes.
DK: For the recording.
TS: And they sent us to Theale, outside Reading which was an EFTS. Elementary Flying Training School.
DK: Right.
TS: Which had Tiger Moths. And we did twelve hours there and I soloed after seven and a half and then completed the twelve. And then they had, this was just after the invasion, they didn’t lose as many as they expected. And there were rumours going around that so many people were [pause] if you were chosen as a pilot or that you wouldn’t. You know you probably might be made redundant. And this did happen a lot. The Air Force weren’t very kind at times, you know.
DK: No. No.
TS: No. Because naturally if we were PNB most of us that’s what we wanted to be. A pilot.
DK: Yeah.
TS: So anyway they thought I’d make a better air gunner [laughs]
DK: Was that a reflection on how you flew then or —
TS: No, because I got a good report from my instructor.
DK: Oh right.
TS: About flying. I mean after I soloed in seven and a half hours.
DK: Right.
TS: Which wasn’t bad.
DK: So it’s literally because they thought they wouldn’t need so many pilots then.
TS: Well, going forward when we went to Heavy Con Unit, flew Lancasters then we obtained an engineer.
DK: Right.
TS: And who was it? A pilot who they didn’t want. And you’ll see it on his, on the photo there.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. Oh right.
TS: With his pilot’s wings. And he was the engineer. They sent them to St Athans and gave them an engineer’s course. And there were lots of them so really I suppose that I was lucky because I kept flying because I met people who were with, started with me earlier on and they were doing one might say menial jobs about. And then I went to, they sent me to Stormy Down in South Wales to start the gunnery course. We didn’t used to fly from Stormy Down. We flew from an aerodrome nearer to Cardiff. Right on the coast. Which is now Cardiff International Airport I think and I can’t remember the name of it. It belonged [pause] I saw it began with P. But anyway we flew in Ansons there with the gunnery exercises and then after we’d done that we went back to Stormy Down and took the last exams and passed out and given our little brevets which that’s one there.
DK: Yeah. For the air gunner.
TS: Yes.
DK: Yeah. So, was ,was the air gunnery something you took to quite well then?
TS: Oh yeah. I’m a very, I suppose really I’m very, I was service minded. I wish I’d stayed in. But nothing mattered to me. I did what, you know.
DK: Yeah.
TS: It was what I liked so —
DK: So what sort of targets did you used to have to shoot at?
TS: Drogues behind the mainly Miles oh [pause] Miles, anyway. It was —
DK: Miles Masters was it?
TS: Masters. Something. Yes. Yes.
DK: So, they’re pulling a drogue and you’re —
TS: That’s right. Yes.
DK: Shooting at that.
TS: And the, to differentiate which gunner had, had got hits on the target the actual project, the bullet itself was painted with a soft paint and that used to make a mark on the drogue.
DK: Right.
TS: When it went through.
DK: Oh right.
TS: So anyway, did that and then after that I was, and one or two other off from Stormy Down went to Upper Heyford. North of Oxford.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Which was an old permanent station. A lovely place it was. All brick built and a lovely place. But we didn’t fly from there because they were laying, they were putting runways down. I think they were getting, the Americans had it afterwards. Maybe you remember that F 111s —
DK: Yes.
TS: Used to fly from Upper Heyford.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
TS: Anyway, we went to Upper Heyford and we, it was a lovely place as I say. And on the second day there, we had a sort of induction on the first day we were all put in to a big room. So many pilots, so many engineers, so, not, sorry not engineers, so many navigators, bomb aimers, and wireless op and two gunners and they said, ‘We’ll be back in an hour. Sort yourself out in crews and make sure you like him because you’ve got to fly with him.’ And that’s what they told us. So in an hour’s time all the people got together. I mean another gunner that I said, ‘Come on, Ron. Let’s join up together.’ And who do we look? ‘He looks alright.’ So we went over with Johnny Rimer, an Australian. So, that’s how we crewed up.
DK: Do you think, do you think that worked well?
TS: Yes.
DK: Because you’re, it was a bit unusual. The military normally you’re told here, there and there.
TS: That’s right.
DK: But with this —
TS: Yes.
DK: You had to sort yourselves out. It was very unusual.
TS: It was unique. No doubt.
DK: Yeah.
TS: It’s never happened since. You don’t get anything in the service which you sort of pal up with somebody and say maybe, I don’t know, a tank. It might be with a tank. It might be. I don’t know.
DK: Yeah.
TS: But that’s how they used to do it and it worked. Because I can never remember anybody saying, ‘Oh, you know, I don’t like you. I’m going to get out,’ because it didn’t happen. Everybody stayed the same. Yes.
DK: And is that where you found your pilot then was it?
TS: That’s right. Yes.
DK: And what was your pilot’s name?
TS: Johnny Rimer. John Rimer.
DK: John Rimer.
TS: An Australian.
DK: Right.
TS: From [pause] well, near Melbourne Australia. In fact we used to send, write and send Christmas cards right up ‘til the time he died which was two years ago.
DK: Oh right.
TS: Yeah.
DK: So there, can you remember the other crew you met up with there? Would have been your navigator?
TS: Yes. George, the navigator.
DK: George, the navigator.
TS: George, like, and he’s there anyway.
DK: Right.
TS: That’s George I think. There.
DK: Right.
TS: And he came from Warrington. But I can’t remember. It’s funny really I can’t remember his surname. I remember George.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Because that’s all it was to us. George.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And Eddie Harrison was the wireless operator.
DK: Right.
TS: Ron Stedman. Ron Stedman was the mid-upper gunner.
DK: The bomb aimer?
TS: The bomb aimer. The bomb aimer. Swettenham. Len Swettenham from London. The East End of London.
DK: Right.
TS: And he went out to Australia after the war and Johnny Rimer sponsored him.
DK: Oh right.
TS: He went out there. And that was the crew. And I’m the only one left of them. Everybody else has gone.
DK: So your flight engineer then. He came along later.
TS: Later. At Heavy Con Unit. Yes.
DK: Right.
TS: And he was the only one that was put into the crew.
DK: Yeah.
TS: He, you know, he didn’t say, look around and say, ‘I want to join them.’
DK: And can you remember his name?
TS: Yes [pause] Dick Tinsley. And they’re big farmers at Spalding.
DK: I’ve met him.
TS: Dick. Yes.
DK: Yeah.
TS: As a matter of fact I couldn’t remember his surname. He, funnily enough he was a bit the odd man out. He wasn’t very much of a beer drinker which we all were.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And I was in, I was invited to East Kirkby.
DK: Yeah.
TS: To the Lancaster.
DK: Yeah.
TS: In Lincolnshire. And my friend at the Golf Club is one of the, I think he’s one of the trustees. Paul [Mutitt]
DK: Oh right.
TS: He leant me a magazine and in the magazine was a reunion in Holland for the Manna trips.
DK: Right.
TS: And there was Dick Tinsley with a frame, you know.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: To help walking. So obviously he wasn’t very good on his pins. But whether he’s still there or not I don’t know.
DK: Well, I saw him. I interviewed him for the IBCC on the 4th of June 2015. So he was still alive then.
TS: Yes. 2015 was when this photo was taken.
DK: Oh, ok.
TS: When they all did the trip to Holland.
DK: Because rather oddly I actually live nearby. I’ve since moved but I lived just up the road from where he was.
TS: Did you really?
DK: And I got to know his son. Also Richard Tinsley. And they, they knew the lady that my wife and I were renting a house off at the time.
TS: Oh yes. Yeah.
DK: So I went to see Dick Tinsley the senior and interviewed him then. And as I say it was 115 Squadron.
TS: Squadron. Yeah.
DK: And he said then he was a pilot, co-pilot. So he trained as a pilot.
TS: Yes.
DK: But as you say ended up as a flight engineer.
TS: They were never regarded as co-pilots.
DK: Yeah. Flight engineers.
TS: They were flight engineers.
DK: Yeah. That’s strange. Well, I think, I’m pretty sure he’s still alive.
TS: Is he?
DK: I haven’t heard anything to the contrary.
TS: No. No.
DK: Would you like me to find out or —
TS: Well, it’s a long time ago.
DK: Yeah. Well. I’ll ask anyway.
TS: Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
DK: I’ll let you know.
TS: No. I’d be interested to know if he’s still alive.
DK: Yeah. I was still in touch with his son just a few months ago.
TS: Were you?
DK: I’ll speak to his son.
TS: Yes.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Well if you take my phone number you can just give me a ring sometimes.
DK: Yeah. Sure. Yeah.
TS: And tell me.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Anyway, where did we get to? Heavy Con Unit didn’t we?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: That’s right.
DK: And do you remember where the Heavy Conversion Unit was?
TS: Yes. Langar, outside Nottingham. And as a matter of fact there was a factory next door to the airfield which reconditioned Lancs which had been damaged and they brought them there and they repaired them. And we did the course on heavy, on to Lancasters there. And that included which we didn’t know, I mean from Upper Heyford we were always flying in Wellingtons. Hercules engine Wellingtons which I forget now which mark they were but anyway Wellingtons have Merlins and we always had Hercules Wellingtons. And of course we did lots of cross countries but nothing outside. When we got to Heavy Con Unit we had to fly longer cross country’s down into the middle of France and back. And on two of them we had engine fires.
DK: Right.
TS: On the port outer. We didn’t, I mean, it was dangerous yes but I mean the graviner put it out straightaway and we just flew the rest of the trip on three engines and feathered the props and —
DK: So, what, what did comparing the two what was it like flying in a Wellington? What were they like as aircraft?
TS: Well, it was flying. On the other hand of course in Wellingtons there was only one turret so one of us used to go in the turret and one of us used to sit by the pilot because it had a, although the pilot’s sitting on the left hand side always and there was a seat. Some of them even had dual control. They used to sit there for the cross country. And another thing you used to go down and look through the astrodome and things like that.
DK: Right.
TS: Yes. Yes.
DK: So you got to the Heavy Conversion Unit then.
TS: Yes.
DK: Was that the first time you saw the Lancaster?
TS: Yes. Yes, it was.
DK: And what was your impressions when you saw that?
TS: Well, we reckoned it was a wonderful aeroplane anyway [laughs] and we, we had an instructor who, who was a bit wild and he used to throw it about. When he did a corkscrew you knew you were in a corkscrew. Yes. You know, he was the type of chap who if anything was in the fuselage through said, through you know you’d get parachutes coming up off the ground and going down like that and then flopping down. He was, he certainly used to throw it about. No doubt about it. But they put up with it.
DK: Yeah. Can you remember his name at all?
TS: No. He was, I honestly can’t remember his name.
DK: So the —
TS: Because after John, after John was passed out by him which wasn’t very long anyway we used to fly without an instructor after that on, you know cross countries, practice bombing trips with little twenty pound bombs and, but as I say these two cross countries from Langar down into mid-France and back again.
DK: Right. And you mentioned the corkscrew manoeuvre.
TS: Yes.
DK: What was that in aid of then?
TS: Well, you see you were sitting, sitting in the turret and you, ‘Skipper, enemy port quarter, five hundred yards.’ And you’d inform the skipper about it and then you would say, ‘He’d turn, ‘Prepare to corkscrew port.’ And then as he started to turn on his, the skipper would put, because you always turned into the attack. Turned in. Dived down. Turned to starboard. Back up. Over the top. Down and like that. That was a corkscrew.
DK: So it —
TS: And the rear gunner was expected to keep up a dialogue all the time that the attack was happening.
DK: Right. So, what, how would you describe your role as a rear gunner then? You’re sitting there and what is it you’re supposed to be doing for your —
TS: Well, you’re searching all the time. I mean not when, not when we were going to Italy bringing troops home. Things like that. But if you were anywhere near where there may be fighters you were searching. Going from port to starboard, port to starboard, port to starboard all the time. And looking up.
DK: So —
TS: It was better for you to look down in the main because —
DK: Yeah.
TS: The mid-upper looked up of course.
DK: Right. So you had to work as a team with the mid-upper gunner then.
TS: Yes. Yes. He didn’t, he would say anything if it was important but your dialogue was with the skipper.
DK: Right. So from the Heavy Conversion Unit then, you’ve then gone to 115 Squadron.
TS: That’s right. Witchford. Yes.
DK: At Witchford.
TS: Yes.
DK: So that was your first posting then.
TS: That was the posting. It was around about February 1945 anyway.
DK: Right.
TS: Yes. Yes.
DK: And, and you mentioned before, just before we put the tape on, the recorder on, the type of Lancasters they had there.
TS: I think they were Mark 1s when we first went there but they were gradually replacing them with Mark 3s.
DK: Right.
TS: They had had, in fact in my Lancaster, I’ve got a big book on the Lancaster and it does show 115 with Hercules. They are Mark 2s.
DK: Right.
TS: But funnily enough I mean the Hercules was a wonderful engine but the Lanc preferred Merlins.
DK: Merlins. Yeah.
TS: So they were reequipping them with Packard Merlins and paddle blades, you know.
DK: So by the time you got there then all the Mark 2 Lancasters had gone had they?
TS: Gone. That’s right. Yes. Yes.
DK: So how many operations did you then fly with 115 squadron?
TS: We flew five.
DK: Right.
TS: Three Manna trips. And there were two that won’t be recorded anywhere which I did.
DK: Right.
TS: And they won’t find anything about them.
DK: Right.
TS: No.
DK: So where were they to then?
TS: Well, they were just over somewhere.
DK: Oh ok. So that wasn’t with your crew then.
TS: No.
DK: No. Ok. So you did five altogether then.
TS: That’s right. Yes. Yes. Two nights. They were both to Kiel. And one to an oil refinery in the Ruhr. These were daylights. And one to, daylight to Bad Odesloe in North Germany and and the island in the North Sea [pause]
DK: Oh, Heligoland.
TS: Heligoland that’s right.
DK: Yeah.
TS: That was the last one.
DK: Right.
TS: Yes. Yeah. And coming back from it was a bit, it wasn’t amusing because the ground crew didn’t like it. Coming back from Bad Odesloe we used to fly in loose vics and after you know you got away gradually they broke up and we were formating with one. And just crossing the Dutch coast near Sylt and bang, bang, bang, bang three anti-aircraft burst right on our nose. A terrific clang and I said to the skipper, ‘I think we’ve been hit.’ Anyway, nothing seemed to be the matter but when we got down it had gone through the elsan [laughs] And the poor ground crew had to, I mean it hadn’t been emptied before the ground crew they had to clear this up. They weren’t pleased.
DK: Oh dear. So was that the only time you were hit by gunfire then or anti-aircraft fire?
TS: I think it was. That was the only time. I didn’t know of another time. No. No. No.
DK: No. You never saw any German fighters or anything like that.
TS: I did see one over Kiel.
DK: Right.
TS: And it was one of these. I think they used to call them lone wolfs. A FW190. And he was well above us and he dived down but some, he just went off. Kept going down. I could see him against the, where the, you know where the fires were down below. Going down. He just went down. It was an FW190 and I think they called them lone wolf.
DK: So the operations then, the bombing operations were all in daylight.
TS: No. The Kiels were night time.
DK: Oh right. Ok. Ok.
TS: Both. Yes.
DK: Right.
TS: Yeah. It was when the pocket battleship was hit by somebody from 115 Squadron actually.
DK: And was it your crew?
TS: And did a lot of damage to it.
DK: Was that your crew by any chance?
TS: No. It wasn’t. No.
DK: Oh [laughs]
TS: I remember very much the pilot who whose aircraft did do it and he was one might say, a bit of an uncouth sod [laughs] He used to eat peas off a knife. But he was a skipper and —
DK: Yeah.
TS: And I think it was his crew that did it. Yes.
DK: Right. So you mentioned earlier just before we put the recording on your pilot then went back to Australia.
TS: That’s right. Yes.
DK: So what happened to the rest of the crew then?
TS: Well, the mid-upper came with me to another crew and the rest just disappeared.
DK: Right.
TS: And I never heard. The only thing I did hear, Len Swettenhan, the bomb aimer he went on. He was taken off flying altogether and he told me that he went out to Singapore and he did quite well for himself because he was got put in charge of a stores down there [laughs] And I think he did quite well out of it. The pilot. Naturally Johnny went back and became a doctor in Australia.
DK: Right.
TS: Dick Tinsley, I’ve no idea what he did. He just disappeared.
DK: Yeah. I can tell you what he did.
TS: Well, he —
DK: He took up with farming so —
TS: Went to farming.
DK: Farming yes when I saw.
TS: Well, they were. When you’re going through you often see Tinsleys.
DK: Yeah.
TS: On those things in the field.
DK: When I saw him in the fields at the back they had about four hundred head of sheep.
TS: Oh really.
DK: So it was the sheep farming he were in to.
TS: Yes.
DK: And he did mention that post-war he just took up with the farm again.
TS: That’s right.
DK: That’s been passed on to his son now.
TS: That’s right. Yes. Yeah. Of course, they were, they were a big farmers weren’t they?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: And who else? Oh Eddie Harrison. He was just given menial jobs until he was demobbed. And then when he came from Liverpool. He went back to Liverpool and worked for the Liverpool Harbour Board. The Mersey Harbour Board. And funnily enough I didn’t hear ‘til later on through the Squadron Comrades letter that he’d moved to Oulton Broad. So I phoned him up and arranged to meet him at the pub at Gillingham. And we met there and had a drink and then he went off. And I’d gone away on holiday. When I came back I phoned up to make a [pause] and he’d died while I was away.
DK: Oh. That’s a shame.
TS: George. George was, I don’t, he was a lovely fella. A chap I always admired. Navigators. They used to sit at that desk with a chart and take us out there and back again not seeing anything. And really they were wonderful. How they could goodness only knows. They really were wonderful. George [pause] nobody, I asked the rest of the, you know the crew that like Johnny and Len Swettenham and Eddie if, because Eddie, George lived at Warrington which wasn’t very far from Liverpool. But he’d had nothing to do with him. No. No. He just disappeared. So that’s, and of course Ron Stedman, the mid-upper gunner, the last of the crew I’ll tell you in a minute. But he is not here anyway. But that was the, how the crew broke up.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And we went with a Flight Lieutenant Cantrell.
DK: And to which squadron did you go to after that?
TS: Oh, it was still 115.
DK: Oh, still in 115.
TS: Yes.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
TS: Yes.
DK: If I could just take you back a little bit you mentioned that you did three Manna.
TS: Manna trips.
DK: Manna trips.
TS: That’s right. Yes.
DK: So how did you feel about that? Were you —
TS: Wonderful. Wonderful. And one of the things that gave me great satisfaction, more than dropping bombs probably was when we were flying about five hundred feet and I looked down. There was an old gentleman with a black, a black Homburg walking along the dyke and he took his hat off and went like that. And I thought that’s wonderful. And funnily enough the other thing too with regard to Mannas that when we, when I went back to live in Kent at Bearsted there was a chap came and lived in the same road who’d been on the, he’d been in the army in Holland and he’d married a Dutch girl. And she was one of the people around Amsterdam Racecourse waiting for this food to be dropped. And you could see them all around and German soldiers all the way around.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Because [pause] I forget now where it is though I have read it that we started those Manna trips and we had no, no permission from Germany. They, although they’d been approached about it they hadn’t given anything. And I believe, I understand that another thing I’ve read is that because how it happened was that Prince Bernhard and Queen Julianna were living in London and they, through the Underground they learned how bad the Dutch were for food because the Germans had flooded their fields with salt water and things like that. And they approached Winston Churchill to ask if he could do anything. And that’s when he started. He gave the Air Force the order to do these Manna trips. And the Americans did it as well.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: And in fact there was a major major major something. He was a south African on the squadron who used to wear the South African khaki uniform and he was one of the people that helped to develop these panniers which they put in the bomb bays and filled with food.
DK: Right.
TS: And this lady, when she learned that I was one of them she was overjoyed.
DK: So you could —
TS: Yes.
DK: You could see the people waving to you [unclear]
TS: Yes. Yeah. They were all standing around it.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: Because we dropped into Amsterdam Racecourse and the other one. The other big [pause] Amsterdam. What’s the other big city in the Netherlands?
DK: Rotterdam? Or —
TS: Rotterdam. That’s right.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Yes. Yes. In fact, I think Rotterdam is now the big international airport isn’t it?
DK: Yeah.
TS: But that’s where we dropped them. There. Yes.
DK: So what sort of height were you at then when you —
TS: Well, we used to fly over the Dutch coast at about five hundred feet.
DK: Right. And do you know what sort of foodstuffs you were taking?
TS: Well, potatoes. You know. Dehydrated potatoes. Things like that. And lots of tinned stuff.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Yes, all kind of things which you could drop which would, which would be you’d think you know would put up with being dropped.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And we always used to get our chocolate ration and things like that and throw them out. I used to throw them out the back [laughs]
DK: So with 115 then you’ve now moved to a different crew.
TS: Yes.
DK: And did you fly any more operations with the second crew then?
TS: No more operations. The war finished then you see.
DK: Right. Ok.
TS: Because Johnny, the war finished when Johnny was taken away.
DK: Right.
TS: It was three or four days after the war finished.
DK: Right. And I’ve got, just for the recording here I’ve got a picture of you and you crew and the Lancaster behind it. Can you came them all now? Who’s who?
TS: Yes. That’s Dick Tinsley.
DK: Dick Tinsley. Yeah.
TS: Yeah. That’s George the [pause] George the navigator. Eddie Harrison the w/op. John Rimer the skipper. Ron, now [pause] what was the bomb aimers name?
DK: Ok. So that’s the bomb aimer.
TS: Yes. And me.
DK: Oh right.
TS: And Ron Stedman the mid-upper.
DK: Ah. Yeah. And was that your Lancaster at the back there?
TS: No.
DK: No.
TS: No. I mean people say, ‘Oh, you did all those?’ ‘No. That was the Lancaster that did it not us.’ And they asked what, what we meant and there was bombs on for bombing trips.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And windmills for Manna trips.
DK: Oh right. Oh, the windmill’s a Manna trip.
TS: Yes.
DK: Oh ok. Yes. Dick, Dick Tinsley has got that photo.
TS: I don’t doubt it. Yes.
DK: [unclear]
TS: Because how it happened was when we were, when we knew Johnny was going we went down to the photographic section and got hold of a WAAF down there.
DK: Right.
TS: And we stood and took, she took that photo for us.
DK: Well, I’ll definitely speak to his son. As I say when I saw him a couple of years ago he, well as you say he was walking with a bit of difficulty but I’ll see if he’s still around.
TS: Yes.
DK: I’ll let you know.
TS: Yes. I would imagine that he must have had something to do, or you know goes over to East Kirkby to the, at times because he’s not very far away from there.
DK: No. No.
TS: But he might be so incapacitated now. I don’t know.
DK: I’ll have a word with his son.
TS: He’s probably about two years or more older than me anyway.
DK: Yeah. So the war’s come to an end then.
TS: Yes.
DK: What were your plans then? What were you going, intending to do?
TS: Well, I wasn’t intending. I wanted to stay flying. That’s all. Which we did.
DK: Right.
TS: And when the crew broke up and then of course some weeks after that they started these trips to Italy bringing troops home. We used to fly down there and bring twenty home at a time.
DK: Right.
TS: And of course there was no need for both of us to go and Ron wasn’t terribly keen so I used to go all the time. We did three of those. And I used to look after the soldiers on the way back and probably give them a cup of coffee if they had —
DK: Can you remember where you picked them up from?
TS: Yes. Bari.
DK: Right.
TS: On the east coast of Italy.
DK: Right. And how many did you have in the aircraft each time?
TS: Well, there was the, that’s right, five of us because the mid-upper never used to go. And twenty troops.
DK: Right.
TS: Yes. And we used to put the officers in the bomb bay at the front [laughs]
DK: So some of the, some of the soldiers presumably hadn’t seen England for some years.
TS: Oh, they’d been in the eighth army.
DK: Yeah.
TS: They hadn’t been home for four years or more.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Never seen. And I met one, I don’t know how I came to meet him actually but he hadn’t been home for four years and we took off from Bari in the morning and we dropped them at, we used to use two aerodromes. Either Glatton near Peterborough or Tibenham just over the other side of the 140. Tibenham there because they had customs facilities and we dropped him at Tibenham and he was home for tea.
DK: Wow.
TS: But of course, you know it took, it used to take a bit of time coming from Bari. It’s not like the jet age.
DK: Yeah.
TS: When you do it in a couple of hours. It used to take us five and a half hours or so to —
DK: So, you were going over the Alps presumably then were you?
TS: No. I’ll tell you another thing. We always flew down to Marseilles.
DK: Oh right.
TS: Straight and then across the north of Sardinia to Naples and then to Bari. And we weren’t allowed to take parachutes.
DK: Oh.
TS: Because it wouldn’t have looked very good if we’d had parachutes and the twenty troops didn’t.
DK: Didn’t. Oh, I see.
TS: And that was it. The only one who had a parachute was the skipper. And he had to sit on his of course. The first time we went down we got near Naples and of course they, well luckily there was no one within sight of us anyway although there were Lancasters behind us coming down. And we asked Johnny Cantrell, we’d like to circle around Vesuvius and have a look down the crater. And that’s what we did. We circled around, had a look down a crater and then on to Bari. And the last time that I went down there we stayed there. We went down on November the 30th 1945 and through bad weather in England they kept cancelling the trip. Day after [pause] So we got up to Christmas and we’re not going to get home for Christmas and they gave us the option of either going to a holiday. We were, by the way at that time we had flown from Bari over to Pomigliano outside Naples and that’s where we were, then we landed there. And there’s a picture in my Lancaster book. All the Lancs at Pomig’ and our aircraft is in there somewhere.
DK: Oh right.
TS: But anyway, we went there and they gave us the option of either going to Rome or a holiday resort down south of Naples. Well, we, we chose Rome. So they took us in a QL Bedford. Most uncomfortable. About five hours on the drive up to Rome and we spent three days at Christmas in Rome.
DK: Right.
TS: In a football stadium. That’s right. And they, we had a wonderful time there. A lovely Christmas dinner with an Italian tenor singing to us. And we came back on January the 3rd. And that is a bit of a sad time for me after that because when we got back, the second day after coming back the gunnery leader called me in and he said, ‘You’re going off to an instructor’s course. Gunnery instructor’s course.’ So I said, ‘Oh, alright then. Yes. And then I’ll be back.’ And he said, ‘No. You won’t be coming back.’ So I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to go then. So cancel it.’ He said, ‘You’re going and that’s all there is to it.’ So I went. I went over to Andreas on the Isle of Man first of all and I wrote to the, I wrote to the crew. Never had any reply. Then I wrote to another skipper who was a friend of Johnny’s and he told me that ten days after that they were all killed. And in, I don’t know whether it’s in that Lancaster book but in one Lancaster book I have it gave every, the registration number of every Lancaster that was built and what happened to it.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: And on February the 3rd 1946 they were out on a cross country and it blew up over Red House Farm in, in, [pause] over, near Warwick anyway.
DK: Right.
TS: Yeah. Leamington Spa.
DK: Right.
TS: Yes. And they were all killed because, and do you know the only reason I got to know this because I went home on a weeks leave around about that time and I’d taken a pair of shoes home. I used to take my shoes home and have them resoled. And the little boot mender in the village said, ‘Tony. What are you? You’re not here.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Well, in the paper you were one of a crew that was killed.’ And my name was in there. How it had got in there I don’t know. But anyway that’s how I found out about it.
DK: Oh dear.
TS: And I tried to find out what happened. No, no one would say. No.
DK: And that was your pilot then.
TS: The pilot.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And then strangely enough when I left Andreas and I went to the Central Gunnery School at Leconfield —
DK: Yeah.
TS: And I passed through there and went and they said, ‘Would you like to come back, Tony?’ So, I said, ‘I would like to come back here,’ because they had nice cricket facilities and rugby and it was a nice place to be. An old peacetime drome. So I went back to Andreas and they called and I went back to Leconfield.
DK: Right.
TS: As an instructor at the Central Gunnery School. And going back from leave from there one, I used to go up from Kings Cross from Kent and there used to be probably a paper train where you could go in and sleep for the night. And then they’d go off about 5 o’clock in the morning back to Hull you see. And anyway, down the cab was Bill Quinn. The wireless operator. I said, ‘Bill.’ He said, ‘I know what you’re thinking, he said, ‘Do you know what happened? I had sinus trouble that morning and they wouldn’t let me fly.’ So somebody else took his place.
DK: And rather strangely your name was down as one of the crew then.
TS: That’s right. Yes. Yes.
DK: Yeah.
TS: Yes.
DK: If, if you’ve still got the book has it got the serial number of the aircraft?
TS: Well, I don’t. No. I don’t think I, the book, this book I got with all the numbers in it I got from the Suffolk Library.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
TS: I don’t think mine has. I’ll get it out in a minute.
DK: Yeah.
TS: And just have a look at the back.
DK: You can’t remember.
TS: I don’t think it has. No. I can’t remember.
DK: No. No. You can’t.
TS: Numbers like that are so long.
DK: So it’s February.
TS: About February the 3rd it was.
DK: 1946.
TS: Yeah. It was the only Lanc that crashed around about that time.
DK: Yeah. I’ll have a look into that for you.
TS: As a matter of fact I thought that we were the last one or our, that aircraft was the last one that 115 lost. But some [pause] when I left Kent and come up to Norwich and working here and in the building next to our works a chap was interested in aeroplanes and he said, he said, ‘Tony,’ he said, ‘I saw an advert in the paper asking anybody who, about that time to get in touch.’ And I got in touch with these people and apparently whether they, because they went over to Lincolns and then to of all things Super Fortresses afterwards. And on, over North Norfolk they were they were either on an exercise affiliating with fighters and one crashed into them and that these were relatives who were asking if anybody remembered them.
DK: Right.
TS: And then as I say I went to Leconfield and I stayed there until November ’47. Then I came out. And I had a lovely time there.
DK: Just stepping back a bit. The relatives were trying to get in touch with which accident? Sorry. That was another one was it?
TS: Another one. Yes.
DK: Another one. So a plane.
TS: Yes.
DK: Did it hit a Lincoln or a Super Fortress?
TS: It collided with it.
DK: But it was —
TS: It was either a Lincoln or a Lancaster.
DK: Right.
TS: One of the two.
DK: So it’s around the same time.
TS: Around about the same time. Yes.
DK: Same time. Right. Ok.
TS: Yes. And they doing you know a big air exercise with the fighters affiliating with bombers probably intercepting them.
DK: Right.
TS: Which was very unfortunate. But it was so unfortunate when things like that happen. I mean Johnny Cantrell and his crew had done, they had done about fifteen I believe when we joined them and of course they go and do that and then they’re all killed.
DK: Oh dear.
TS: I have some ideas on it but I’m not going to —
DK: No. No
TS: Tell you.
DK: Fair enough.
TS: In there. You appreciate that.
DK: No. No. That’s fair enough. Right. So when did you actually leave the Air Force then?
TS: November ‘47
DK: Right. Ok. And what career did you go into after that?
TS: Well, I got married by the way.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
TS: In February the 10th. In fact it was our seventy first wedding anniversary last Saturday but my wife died three years ago. But that was our wedding in 1947.
DK: Right.
TS: And I had nothing to do. I mean I’d never done anything before going in the Air Force and I had some screwy idea pf another friend of mine because we lived in Kent in among fruit orchards of buying up the fruit in an orchard and that didn’t work out. So I went to work for a company called Serck, S E R C K whose headquarters was in Birmingham. And funnily enough they used to make the oil coolers for the Hercules engines.
DK: Right.
TS: They also made the oil coolers for the Concorde.
DK: Right.
TS: They developed that using fuel going through the matric to cool the oil. Which was a good idea but sadly they’ve gone now. They were sold to BTR. A load of asset strippers.
DK: Oh dear. The old story. So all these years later how do you look back on your time in the Air Force?
TS: An adventure. Yes. it was. Yes. It was. How I would have felt after doing thirty ops I don’t, I might have been nervous and one thing and another because lots of people were. I mean the great time when Bomber Command were really desecrated in a way was ’42 ’43 and up to almost the invasion in ’44. And when we went, when we went as I say we were sprogs really when we went there. And the Germans, you know they were so few, short of fuel. I mean the ones over the Ruhr. I did see some. This was in daylight but there were so many Spits around us and one thing and another that none came near us. But, whether, whether I would have felt different but altogether it was a great adventure. There’s no doubt about that.
DK: Ok. Ok that’s great.
TS: Yeah.
DK: Let’s stop it there shall we?
TS: Yes. Alright then.
DK: On that positive note. Well, thanks very much for your time. That’s been absolutely marvellous.
TS: Well, I hope it’s you know I’ve been —
DK: No. It’s very good.
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 Tony Snook
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
2018-02-14
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ASnookT180215, PSnookT1801
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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00:49:17 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Tony Snook was an air gunner and served on 115 Squadron in the later stages of the Second World War. A member of the school air training corps, he had his first experience of flight when his squadron partook in a summer camp. He describes how an opportunity to stand behind the pilot of a Beaufighter holding onto his seat came about. He enlisted as a PNB (pilot, navigator, bomb aimer) in November 1943, after leaving school. Following initial training he successfully undertook elementary flying training, however, after D-Day there was an excess of pilots, and Tony was moved to an air gunnery course on the Isle of Man. He describes meeting his crew and arriving at RAF Witchford in February 1945, where they joined 115 Squadron flying Lancasters. Five operations were undertaken before the end of hostilities. He describes the only time they came under fire and, unfortunately for the ground crew who cleaned up the aftermath, the major damage was to the elsan toilet. As members of his crew were discharged after the war, Tony was allocated to another crew. He describes several operations to Bari, Italy to repatriate soldiers from the Eighth Army in Lancasters that ferried twenty passengers and five crew. In 1946, Tony was posted to a gunnery instructor course and then to the central gunnery school at RAF Leconfield. In February 1946, shortly after his posting from 115 Squadron, his crew were all killed in a tragic accident. Tonywas discharged in November 1947, he regards his flying career as a great adventure, but appreciates that flying operations in 1945 were completely different from those undertaken earlier in the campaign.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Netherlands
Italy
England--Kent
Wales--Bridgend
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
Italy--Pomigliano d'Arco
Netherlands--Amsterdam
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-11
1945
1946
115 Squadron
28 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Beaufighter
bombing
Flying Training School
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Langar
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Witchford
sanitation
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1058/11437/PPackhamG1610.2.jpg
58c4a9d2c6787baca9a3a0abe04e24a8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1058/11437/APackhamGH160825.1.mp3
a83e7a7090890f9795d36e04d3cb1040
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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Packham, Geoff
G Packham
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Geoff Packham (b. 1922, 161076, 1214349 Royal Air Force), photographs and documents. He flew operations as a pilot with 550 Squadron from RAF North Killingholme and became a prisoner of war after being shot down in June 1944.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Geoff Packham 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
2016-08-25
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Packham, G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: We’ll ignore that then. OK, so today is Thursday 25th of August 2016. I’m in Hersham in Surrey with Geoff Packham. And also with us is Gary Rushbrooke who we’ll also hear on the tape in a bit and I’m just going to talk to Geoff generally about his life and the RAF and Bomber Command in particular. So, what I’d like to start off with, Geoff, if you will, is just a little bit about your childhood and your background and your parents, just to give a bit of context about your early life, if you like. Where were you born?
GP: Well, I was born in Sheffield, which isn’t far from here of course.
AM: No.
GP: And my father was in the RFC. I have his cap badge still. He was a Lieutenant in the RFC and then they became the RAF of course later on and he actually was posted to an airfield near Canterbury on the London defence and he was flying Sopwith Camels and SE5s, that type of thing. And one day, he was up on patrol when he got shot down, well we think he was shot down by the flak because there was activity in the air and he’d been sent up to patrol, and the big guns of Kent there, used to just fire off. Anyway, poor old Pop’s aeroplane was, err, err, his engine was set on fire and of course they didn’t have parachutes in those days, so poor old Pop had to come down with his aeroplane and crashed very, very badly. Unfortunately, they had just one little seat belt in those days and he got — that broke. It was tied to the tail or something. Anyway, he shot out over of the top and hit his head on the Lewis gun, that was on the top, and was unconscious when he hit the ground about forty feet away. Well his aeroplane of course was still blazing, of course, and some villagers from nearby were looking for the pilot and couldn’t find him. Anyway, he was in the bushes and he finished his flying in the hospital for Officers at Blackpool.
AM: Right. What year are we talking about here?
GP: Pardon?
AM: What year are we talking about here?
GP: Oh, that was 1918.
AM: 1918.
GP: Just towards the end of the War. But they had this squadron there. He was in 50 Squadron. So of course, I was brought up in the aviation world and when the War came of course, I was in Sheffield. I left my Grammar School in 1938. Firth Park Grammar School. And I took a job with the Town Hall, in the audit department. Anyway, this lasted for a couple of years and during that time, we had the Blitz and a couple of Blitzes on Sheffield and by this time, my father was an ARP Warden and I went out to help him with the incendiary bombs and things that were running around the place, and of course this decided me that I’d, I was eighteen at the time, I’d join up in the RAF and [coughs] and go and help out with the War.
AM: Just before we get to the RAF bit then. What was it actually like being in the Blitz?
GP: Oh, it was quite amazing ‘cause they used to drop these mines and things and incendiary bombs, and all we had was a stirrup pump and a bucket of water or some sand to get these things out and even in Broomhill, where, at the south west of the city.
AM: I know it, I know it.
GP: It was bad but of course the main part was the factories and the centre which got bombed.
AM: ‘cause it was armaments. Quite a lot of Sheffield was armaments wasn’t it.
GP: Oh yes. And there were quite a lot of casualties and things. So I joined up and just after the Blitz and my first posting was to Cardington for registering and uniform and things and that was the blue sheds at Cardington and from there on they kept posting me to various stations because they were waiting to get me in to the Training Scheme in Canada, for flying.
AM: So what year was this? Forty —
GP: This was nineteen forty —
GR: Early 1941.
GP: One. Yeah. And all 1941 was taken up with ITW, the training section and you see the stations in there [sound of pages turning], and I was posted up to a station in Acklington, just north of Newcastle, to do odd duties, and eventually I got on to a boat which took me to Halifax in Canada and from there —
AM: What was that like? What was it actually like on the boat? Where did you sail from?
GP: Oh, that was a big boat and there were a lot of submarines and things around, so it was zigzagging all the way across the Atlantic and it was bad weather of course. It was —
GR: Of course this would have been August 1941.
GP: Yeah, that was —
GR: Which was the height of the Atlantic U-boat war and everything so —
GP: Right, yeah.
GR: Yes, it would have been a very dangerous crossing.
GP: Yes, anyway we got there and they took us across to Calgary and in Calgary of course, we got a fine reception because a lot of the people out there were English people who’d emigrated after the First World War and they wanted to know what was happening back home etcetera. So I made lots of friends there and eventually passed the — there were two stages – the Tiger Moth stage and the Oxford.
AM: Had it been decided what you were actually going to be, at this point?
GP: Well they put me on the twin engine ones for the second part of the training. So I was obviously going on Bombers.
AM: So had it already been decided you were going to be a pilot at this stage?
GP: Well that's decided after the first stage of training.
AM: Right, OK.
GP: In the Tiger Moths. I was lucky there because I always seemed to be dubbed with difficulties and I went up on my first solo and the — It was a lovely day, no problem, and the instructor just sort of said, ‘Well, off you go then.’ We'd been doing a bit of drill and spinning and things and he said, ‘OK, well, straight out and go around and come in and do a few landings.’ You see. So I did this. Anyway, in between that time — Oh, the last flight, the wind had blown up the Rockies. It used to produce a strange sort of change of winds and things and the wind had changed and I didn't even look at the wind sock [laughs] and I wondered why I was going a bit fast, but fortunately, it was on the approach. It seemed fast, but I couldn't understand why. But there was a nice long concrete runway, because Air Canada used to use it for civil purposes, you see. And so I managed to stop, and then they came out and started grabbing the wings because the wind was blowing up and they were frightened it would turn over.
GR: Terrible, isn't it.
GP: I got through the test anyway and with a good result and then went on to Oxfords and it got very cold in the winter time and eventually, I think it was January '42 by this time, and I — They gave me a railway ticket and said, ‘You've got a boat going back to England.’ As they did to all the course, and we were one of the first courses out there you see. They said, ‘Go to Halifax and report there.’ And you got three weeks to do it. It takes about four days for the journey and by train, of course, all the way from Medicine Hat there, by that time and to —
AM: Yeah, I'm just visualising.
GP: Nova Scotia, and some of the boys stayed if they had girlfriends. I just went and had a look round Winnipeg and Montreal.
AM: On your own, or with friends?
GP: On the way. Pardon?
AM: Were you on your own or with friends? With other chaps?
GP: No, I was on my own by that time.
AM: Right.
GP: We were allowed to do what we liked so long as we got to Halifax by a certain time, you see.
AM: By the right date.
GP: It was all very informal. So, we — I got across and we went back to the UK where I was shuffled round all over the place. And you'll find most of these stations here and the most I did was as a Staff Pilot at, err, in South Wales. I was flying Whitleys then. I've done most of my time on Whitleys.
GR: Was that while you were still training, or had you done your training?
GP: No, no. I was [pauses] what happened was that they wanted pilots to fly the Whitleys with gunners in the back and we had a Lysander coming upon us with a drogue on the end that they shot at and they did that over the Bristol Channel. So, this was, um, err, let’s see. Porthcawl.
GR: Yeah.
GP: Is the nearest place. Stormy Down was the station and I was there for a year all together because in between, they'd already posted me twice to Brize Norton which had Whitleys towing gliders.
GR: Right.
GP: And for a very short period, I went twice to Brize Norton and came back to my little place in —
GR: So you'd been sent to do, not training, but you were flying as a Pilot Instructor for the other people.
GP: Yes but I didn’t do many hours at all and I don't know why they sent me there. And from there —
GR: 'cause you'd have been expecting to go to an Operational Base.
GP: That's right.
GR: Sure. Yeah.
GP: And at Brize Norton, of course, they were training the Army Pilots to fly the gliders.
AM: Right.
GP: The Horsa gliders. So, um, yeah. I was there for a little while. And then of course, finally to my great pleasure, I got posted to Bomber Command. And I was very lucky because I got the Doncaster set of airfields where I went through the Operational Training Unit. But by this time, I’d got sort of, I should think something like eight hundred hours flying Whitleys.
AM: Flying Whitleys.
GP: And things like that, you know. And it was a piece of cake.
AM: You must have been far more experienced than a lot of the others at that stage.
GP: Yes. I went to one place, by the way, in there and it was on the Wash.
GR: Yeah.
GP: It was an experimental Unit and we had the old Battle of Britain pilots with their Spitfires and we had Wellingtons and we — All fitted with camera guns and it was a station where they were experimenting with tactics to get away from and shoot the other bod down, you know, but I think that’s —
GR: That was Herne, wasn't it?
GP: But — No, no. That's at Bournemouth. It's Kings Lynn, you know.
AM: Yes.
GR: Sutton Bridge.
GP: Sutton Bridge. Yes.
GR: That's it. Yeah. Just before you went to Stormy Down.
GP: Yes. Anyway, yes, it was Finningley, of course, for the Bomber training and I did some time on Wellingtons. In fact, it was a Wellington where we — we used, for dropping. They were dummy raids. When a big wave went out, we went on a decoy and dropped some information, you know, leaflets and things.
AM: Leaflets, yes.
GP: To the French. And also, some, the aluminium foil that we used to use as a diversion to make the Germans think that they were —
GR: Window.
GP: Window. So, there were a few things on the way which were interesting.
GR: Which was quite good because Finningley, Worksop, Windholme.
GP: That's right.
GR: Was all near Sheffield, so you were based near home.
GP: And I was very fortunate because I got a motorbike and my brother and I — I had a brother who also was a pilot. He'd been to America but on the way [telephone rings] he'd burst an eardrum.
AM: OK, we've just paused for the telephone, but we're back. So, we've been talking about the fact that for almost two years, before you went to your Operational Training Unit, you'd been effectively piloting for other trainees learning to shoot and all the rest of it.
GP: Over two years. Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
GP: So, yes, it took a long time to get there but we finally made it and I had this motorcycle of course.
AM: That’s right.
GP: So with my brother who’d been across to America, but because he’d bust his eardrum, he was put back. He was going to be a fighter pilot and he would have made a very good one but he had to come down quickly because there was a tornado coming along and he burst an eardrum and they put him off and he finished up supplying [coughs] food to the Chindits in Burma etcetera, on DC3s. But, so there were three pilots in the family of course. Anyway, he rode motorbikes as well and we did that after the war, but yes, um —
AM: Were you — so all these two years when you were doing piloting, were you anxious to go on Operations? Or were you happy where you were?
GP: Oh yeah. I’d been wanting this right from the very start.
AM: Right.
GP: I was a bit unlucky in that respect. Or lucky.
GR: Or lucky.
GP: But anyway, in the end, I managed it and I got decent reports and I got a crew that selected me actually.
AM: How did that work?
GP: [Laughs].
AM: How did that happen?
GP: And they’d heard that I’d had a lot of experience etcetera and I’ve got the Bomb Aimer’s little letter here that suggested that they chose me because, you know, because of my experience they thought it was better than none. [Laughs]. So, I got a very good crew with me but of course I was spending a lot of my time riding back to Sheffield to see my parents because they’d got two sons, one out in Batavia and places like that. Burma. And me. I’d been out for a year longer of course. Brother Pete was just a little bit younger than I was. So. Anyway we got on well and eventually, I was very fortunate in being just in time to do the first D-Day raid.
GR: ‘Cause you ended up going to 550 Squadron.
GP: Yeah, that’s it.
GR: At Killingholme. And you arrived there on the 24th May 1944.
GP: That’s right.
GR: Yeah.
GP: And it was just in time to — Normally, they gave a couple of flights with the Flight Commander, just to get you experienced on the raid itself but I was lucky that, but unlucky in one way but I went with the Flight Commander. Yeah. And it was the first raid and we raided a coastal battery on the Cherbourg peninsula there.
GR: And I’ll just interrupt to say —
GP: So I had a sort of supervision there.
GR: That your first Operation was on the night of D-Day.
GP: It was.
GR: Because on the night of the 5th of June going into the 6th of June — So your first ever Operation was on the eve.
GP: Yeah.
GR: And then your next Operation was you flew to Paris – was actually on the 6th of June.
AM: Was on D-Day.
GP: That’s right. Well we’ve got some information on there [turns pages] Now wait a minute.
AM: I’ll take copies of this after, if I may.
GP: Yes. Oh yes.
AM: Were you aware, then, so it’s the 5th of June – how aware were you of —
GR: D-Day.
AM: What was actually happening? And you know, that it was —
GP: Oh, we saw them going across actually as we crossed our coast. We saw the fleet and yeah, we have actually a certificate here [sound of pages turning].
GR: So what was the first Operation like? Did it all go smoothly?
GP: Err, it was, yes. Oh, here we are.
AM: Here we are.
GP: That was the original copy.
AM: I’ll take a copy of that, if I may, afterwards.
GR: Yeah.
AM: What was it actually like then on — You’re an experienced pilot, but here you are on your first Operation. Describe it to me.
GP: Well. I was under supervision there you see, of course, which was a little bit of bad luck I think. But, no, I was excited. I’ve always liked danger. [sound of pages turning] You know, we used to race motorbikes and things eventually. No problems as far as that is concerned. But that was the first raid. Incidentally, that bloke, eventually, when I got shot down —
AM: When you say ‘that bloke’ you’re talking about the Com—
GP: Yeah. My Squadron Leader.
AM: Yes.
GR: Yep.
AM: Yep.
GP: He gave me his old aeroplane. And he took a new one and it made quite a difference actually. Because we were both shot down on the same raid, ten days later actually. You can’t believe it, can you? There were three of us shot down out of eighteen that took part. But, yes, it was the same Peter that, I got blasted on Sterkrade.
AM: Yes. We’ll come back to that.
GP: Oh yes. Here we are. We’ve got all these. [sound of pages turning] This is the first raid on D-Day.
You can have a look at all these.
AM: OK.
GR: Yes. There’s a certificate’s given to you for —
AM: Yes. So I’m looking here at a Diploma. La Croix de Guerre. A citation certificate. The — a Valeur Militaire, which hopefully I’ll be able to copy afterwards.
Other 1: Certainly.
AM: What was it actually — I need you to describe to me what it actually felt like.
GP: Well that was an easy raid.
AM: Um.
GP: But —
AM: By ‘easy’ —
GP: Very vital.
AM: Why do you say it was easy?
GP: Well there wasn’t too much flak, ‘cause —
AM: OK.
GP: It was in France.
AM: Umm.
GP: Germany was the worst place to go, of course. And I only did two more. The second one I got shot down on Germany, you see, another [unclear].
AM: So how many Operations all together?
GR: There were seven Operations all together and the first [counting] one, two, three, four, were all over the Normandy coast. But within the space of eleven days, after three years of being in the RAF, in the space of eleven days, seven Operations and shot down on your seventh.
GP: That’s it. Yeah.
AM: Tell me about that then.
GP: Well. It was — night flying was very difficult because the Germans by that time had got a very intense flak system going and they had a very good radar system. Not only on the ground, but in the air. And all these night fighters, some of whom got up to two or three hundred victories, because they were guided on to the aircraft, and they were put in a position where they could see us, but we couldn’t see them ‘cause we were just looking out with our eyeballs, of course. So. And this is what happened to me on the way back from this thing. Anyway, the flak hit us on that last raid and we’ve got — There is a description of that.
AM: I’ll find that.
GR: Yeah.
AM: Let’s find that afterwards. You tell me in your words.
GP: OK. That isn’t quite accurate, but —
AM: Put it down for a minute. Tell me in your own words.
GP: Yes. What happened was that, on that raid, again it was night time and it was about 2 o’clock in the morning on Sterkrade and that again was in the Ruhr which is a heavily defended place. And we got hit something like about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour before we actually got to the target. So, one engine went out and then the second one followed it. Both on the same side. And there was a hole in the nose of the aeroplane. There was a little fire started which went out fortunately. And some of my instruments were missing. And all the hydraulics had gone.
AM: Right.
GP: So we — Oh, the first thing was, we were flying at eighteen thousand feet and everybody else was up at twenty, because we were using an old aeroplane. And there again you’ve got the details of that in the papers. But the Squadron Leader had been using previously etcetera and he got the new one. Anyway, we’d been two thousand feet lower than everybody else all the way of course, which is —
AM: Sitting duck.
GP: And I staggered along with the — I had my bomb aimer, the navigator was helping ‘cause by this time we could see markers going down over the target. The navigator and the radio operator. And they’re all working on this problem down below.
AM: On the hydraulics.
GP: On the hydraulics and such like.
AM: What was the flight engineer doing?
GP: The flight engineer was down below.
AM: He was down there as well.
GP: Yeah, there was a crowd down there and I didn’t know what was going to — because I was having to fly the thing manually of course. And keep it in the air on two engines. So, anyway we were flat out on the other two and we got to the target eventually and we’d lost height obviously but when we circled round we couldn’t open the bomb bays. So we’d got six and a half tons, I think it was, on the aircraft and still quite a bit of fuel so it wasn’t a nice situation and after about five minutes we decided we’d better leave the area ‘cause it was getting too hot. And I set course for — tried to miss the big towns in Holland and we’d only just passed over the — oh, we were still in Germany when we had two fighter attacks on us [laughs] which — At least the gunners shouted. And I did my corkscrewing to evade him.
GR: On two engines.
AM: Even though you’ve only got two engines.
GP: Oh yes. And they could see him at two o’clock in the morning so it was obviously fairly close, and yeah, so we lost more height and more height and what I’d intended was to try and get to the English coast, drop the crew off and then head out to sea.
AM: When you say ‘drop the crew off’, you mean —
GP: Do what I could do with my dingy and my —
AM: Abandon.
GP: Mae West and hope somebody would rescue me, but there was no chance of that after the fighter attack, you see. Anyway.
AM: So where did the fighter get you? You’ve already lost two engines, your hydraulics aren’t working, your bomb bay won’t open.
GP: Yeah. That’s it.
AM: And then the fighter, where did the fighter get you?
GP: And actually, the gunners tried to fire but the gun turrets wouldn’t turn ‘cause they’re on the hydraulics.
GR: ‘Cause of the hydraulics.
GP: So everything was against us. I don’t know why they bothered firing. You know. Anyway. The fighter disappeared, fortunately and we were just over the Dutch border by that time so I bailed the crew out. And they went off and the last thing the bomber mentioned as he went, he was the last one out, he should have been the first. But he’d lost a boot. Tried to kick the — There was a little panel down below that they dropped through and I checked them all out through the front, you see, I got time to do that, and then I left of course and I had to close the throttle on the other two engines to keep the aircraft, well, flying really but I had to take off my mask and helmet and all the communication cables and things like that and the seat belt and things. When I left the controls, I’d been fighting those for a long time then, the aircraft started going down in a spin and the tendency is for you to be thrown around and pulled towards the back of the aircraft so I had a job trying to get down into the little hole that they’d left in the bottom. Anyway, eventually I pulled my parachute cord as soon as I got out and I must have been, well, I hadn’t tightened up my straps. I couldn’t do that. They’re uncomfortable to sit at the tension that you’d normally fly, you know, [background aircraft noise] so they were on but they weren’t tight enough and as I fell through this hole, I fell through the harness and I was left sticking head downwards on my parachute when it opened you see. Anyway, all the others got out ok. But, oh, I’ll continue with my story anyway. But, yes, I managed to pull myself, I was very fit in those days, and I managed to pull myself and hold on to the straps which of course swings the parachute, you know, when you’re pulling on one side and that was fortunate because when I hit the ground, it was right on my backside. The old coccyx took it, and of all things, I landed — It was pouring with rain. Absolutely pouring with rain. It was June and it was a wheat field that I landed in and it was June when all the crop was up.
AM: Yep.
GP: And not only that —
AM: Slightly softer landing.
GP: They explained that to me afterwards that I would have killed myself ‘cause it’s like jumping off the ceiling with those sorts of parachutes. It’s quite a hard landing. And as I was on my backside, it must have been on the upswing of the parachute when I touched down, because I didn’t feel any shock.
AM: You didn’t damage your back. You know, so as you’re coming down, you probably had too much to think about but you’ve left the plane, that’s still —
GP: It’s all very dark.
AM: Could you see what happened to the plane, or was it – Had it gone too far by then?
GP: Well no. It landed fairly close to me.
AM: Right.
GP: So I wasn’t very far away from it.
AM: ‘Cause it’s still got a full bomb load on it and lots of fuel.
GP: And it all went up. Yeah.
AM: Right.
GP: And it landed on a farm in [unclear] and killed seven people unfortunately. I’ve got a picture of the memorial there.
AM: But you wouldn’t have known that at the time. You knew that afterwards.
GP: Well I couldn’t do anything about it.
AM: No, no. And you wouldn’t –presumably you wouldn’t have known anyway at the time.
GP: It was an area where there wasn’t any big buildings but there was a village and this was the interesting thing, that as I’d landed, I just screwed up my parachute and it was in the wheat field and nothing else I could do. But I saw by the glow of the fire that — a church steeple and it was the village steeple, so I made my way. I knew that the War would be over fairly shortly after. We thought in about six months. So, I went to the church to find help which was our briefing as Bomber pilots, of course. If you wanted to get help, you normally went to a church. And I went and sat in a graveyard for the rest of the night and it was only about three hours because it was June and it was about two o’clock I think when I got out of the aeroplane.
AM: Can you remember how you actually felt at this point?
GP: Yeah. [laughs]
AM: Are you really scared? Were you —
GP: Well no, no. It all happens very slowly. I think when you race motorbikes, it’s the same sort of thing, you know.
AM: It’s like slow motion.
GP: Everything seems to slow down. Yeah. And your decisions – I’ve had a lot of experiences in civil flying when I’ve had engine troubles and all sorts of things happen. I’ve been flying passengers around with one engine gone on a twin.
AM: But not with a full bomb load.
GP: And I didn’t tell them either. [laughs]
AM: So you’re sat in the graveyard. Then what?
GP: It’s funny but there was no fear at all.
AM: No.
GP: But I was feeling miserable because it was pouring down with rain still and I was sitting on this — somebody’s resting place and it was a bit hard, so in the morning, I peeped over the wall to the vicarage when I heard a noise and it was the vicar’s wife. I’ve even got the name of the vicar who helped me actually. But it was the start of an Underground movement. This is where the story gets interesting because they got me into the Underground movement and —
AM: What did the vicar’s wife say when she saw you?
GP: [laughs] Well, she looked at me, and you know, well I was in uniform of course so she knew what had happened ‘cause —
AM: Seen the plane.
GP: Things going bang just beside of me [laughs] and yes, I was given a civvy suit and a cardboard collar [laughs] as a tie and a little green Carte d’Identité which said I was deaf and dumb, with a picture on. Yeah, a picture of me. Eventually. And, so I started off down the KLM Line. The Dutch KLM Line.
AM: Dutch KLM Line. What does that stand for?
GP: Well, that was the name they gave it.
AM: Ok.
GP: It was —
GR: All the escape lines had different names.
GP: Yeah, they had different names for all these escape routes.
AM: So, like the Comet Line and things like that.
GP: Yeah. Anyway, you went from safe house to safe house etcetera and amazingly enough, at one of them, they said, ‘You’re going to be joined by another aviator.’ And guess who it was. It was my mid- upper gunner, old Jackson. And he was a bus driver from Salford and he’d joined right on the limit for them. He was thirty-four years of age when he joined and I was only twenty-two by that time, you see, and he looked like Methuselah to me because he’d – They’d dressed him up, you know, in civvies and from there on, we went down this Underground line together. Well, we always walked separately, you know, about thirty metres behind each other and we always had a guide. An armed guide. Who would take us to the next place, you see. Anyway, I got some pictures of one of the helpers. ‘Cause a lot of them were shot after the War. Well, during that time of course, when they were caught. But anyway, we went all the way through and we went through Brader which was a Leave Centre for the Germans during that time and it was full of Germans and there was me, you know, fresh-faced little bloke with a thing.
AM: Deaf and dumb.
GP: And if anybody had asked me for my passport, or even shouted, I would’ve turned round, you know. [laughs]
AM: You couldn’t speak. You were dumb. Or supposed to be.
GP: [laughs] I’d have said I was Russian or — it wouldn’t matter, you know. But, I was deaf and dumb. It was as sophisticated as that. And I’ve got a full report on the KLM line until it got to the border in there, which is interesting. Anyway, we finally came to Antwerp in Belgium and we were put in a flat with — And I’ve got a picture of the lady who was there, and the rest of it. We stayed for three days and we ate beautifully.
AM: Still just the two of you or had other people —
GP: There were two of us, yeah.
AM: Still just the two of you.
GP: Oh, all the rest had been picked up except for the bomb aimer who went a different route down the escape things. He was caught eventually. But they were sent off to the NCO Camps and I was an Officer of course, so I got sent to a different camp.
AM: Oh, hang on. You’d not been caught yet.
GP: Yes, so we finished up in this flat and we were fed well and a very nice woman there and of course we chatted and the Front was advancing, of course, towards Belgium by that time. And then they said, ‘Well, we’re going to go and try and get through to the lines,’ you know, ‘We’re going West.’ And they were going to put us in an ambulance and bandage us up and take us. [laughs] Anyway, we went out to this place and we got into a car to take us out to the ambulance and all of a sudden — Oh, we were being escorted by a great big bloke who was supposed to be the girlfriend of this, the one in the flat, you see. Er, sorry, her boyfriend.
AM: Her boyfriend.
GP: And yeah, we thought we were on the way and all of a sudden he pulls out a gun and said, ‘OK. So for you, the War is over.’ And this is the fascinating thing, he turned out to be — [laughs] It’s all in here and it really should be read because it’s a lovely, lovely story. [sound of pages being turned]
GR: Which we will do, but tell us who he was.
AM: We will do. Carry on telling me. We’ll come to the [unclear]
GP: A character called René Van Muylem. And he was a Belgian who had Nazi sympathies.
AM: Right.
GP: And what had happened was that he’d got hold of the papers from one of our SOE agents who were being landed in France to help set up these lines, you see. And they’d captured this bloke, taken his papers off. Oh, René had them. And then he started organising the thing. Of course, instead of running up the line and picking everybody up, he just stayed there.
AM: Waited at the end of it.
GP: And a hundred and seventy-seven airmen were caught with the same system. And they used a flat, the flat that I was in, and a café for the two places in Antwerp were —
AM: They were all picked up.
GP: They were put. Yeah.
AM: It’s like drawing you to the centre of a spider’s web.
GP: Yeah.
AM: Just drawing you in.
GP: That’s right.
AM: Did the woman in the flat know about — Was she an infiltrator as well or was she a goodie?
GP: This is what worried me, because I didn’t know whether she was one of them or one of us. So, nothing happened actually because the papers weren’t allowed to be released until fifty years afterwards. And that was to avoid —
AM: Reprisals.
GP: Revenge attacks and things like that. So it wasn’t until 1995 that they were released and I’ve got a picture of, I’ve got another paper from the Escapers Society which explains all this, about it.
AM: Right. In the meanwhile, so for you, the War is over, then what happened?
GP: Oh, that was it. Well of course we went off to the place where they interrogated us. Still in Belgium. And then we were taken to Frankfurt.
AM: What was interrogation like?
GP: Well it wasn’t tough. I think the Germans were beginning to realise that they were losing the War and they were afraid of, you know, retribution afterwards, of course. So, they interrogated. It wasn’t pleasant. They threatened you, but, that sort of thing, but they obviously weren’t going to beat you up and things, so it wasn’t bad. And while I was in Frankfurt, this is another interesting thing, we had an air raid and it was night time of course. Another RAF one. And we were all sent down to an enormous underground shelter and there were all these Germans in there and there was thirty of us.
AM: Were you still in uniform? No, you weren’t in uniform by this time, were you? ‘Cause you were in disguises.
GP: No, I’d got civvies. And old Jack had too. Anyway they, yeah, they put us down there and put us in a little corner but I expected to be, you know, strung up from the roof because Frankfurt had been absolutely battered for a long time and in the morning, we came out and all I could remember seeing was the cathedral spire. Everything was as flat as a pancake, you know, it had all been bombed. I’m amazed that the Germans were so, you know, controlled. You know. Yes. Anyway, so there we were. Oh, I missed out just one little bit. We were put into Antwerp prison first and waited until there was thirty people there and then they took them all down for interrogation together.
AM: Together.
GP: Frankfurt thing. So. And we were the first ones in, so they were picking out one a day, I calculate, because it took about a month before we were shifted from Antwerp jail. From where we watched the fighter bombers attacking the local airfield at Evère. And it was — it wasn’t a very pleasant place. We used to have to amuse ourselves by killing the bugs, you know. They were full of blood and things. [laughs]
AM: What about food? Did they feed you ok?
GP: Yeah, oh, the — In Frankfurt, that was the second time I’d been Blitzed, you see. A third time. We’d had two by the Luftwaffe and then this one by the [unclear]. You can’t believe it can you? Anyway, from there I was taken up to Bath. It was an Officers’ place. So we didn’t have to work or anything like that. And the others were taken over to — I don’t know whether it was Sagen [?] or — but anyway, they had one of these — that was the navigator and well, all the rest had these marches when the Germans —
AM: Long march, yes.
GP: Were trying to get them West to keep them out of the Russians’ way.
GR: Just backtracking, did all the crew get out? Did all —
GP: They all got out, yes. And we met again at the squadron afterwards. You know, after the War. But they had this long walk to do and — nasty for them. And I was all the way up near Lübeck and it was so far that they decided that they’d send us Flying Fortresses to get back home. Which was rather nice. We were right by a Luftwaffe airfield. A fighter airfield which had been mined etcetera so we were delayed while the —
AM: How long were you there though, before the end of the War? How long were you there when —
GP: Well I wasn’t long there. I was in the prison camp by August and we came out in May.
AM: So, for nine months.
GP: ’45.
AM: Nine months.
GP: Nine months, yeah.
AM: What was that like?
GP: The prison camp, it was fine and it was run by an ex Luftwaffe pilot from the First World War so he was very good and he was very strictly according to the rules and things. The only trouble was, of course, that we’d bombed all the railway lines and all the junctions and things and they couldn’t get Red Cross parcels through, except on a very small scale and so we got very thin and also of course, we were writing letters but they never got home.
AM: No way of getting them.
GP: Because there was no, even the Red Cross couldn’t get them through, so my parents of course, all this time, had got the message that I was missing but no news, and of course, as time went on, with brother Pete still fighting the Japanese, it wasn’t a happy position.
AM: No.
GP: And this is another thing, of course, that very fortunately, one of those letters that I wrote home, which didn’t get there, was read out by Lord Haw-Haw. The whole thing. I’ve got a copy there. Over the radio. Well my parents didn’t listen to the broadcast, but we got letters. Well, Mum and Pop got letters from all over the place.
AM: We’ve heard —
GP: ‘Did you hear that your son was alive?’ You know. ‘He’s in the prison camp.’ You know, sort of thing. And I was asking them if my motorbike had been sent back from the squadron, and things like that. You know, [laughs] so, yeah, old Haw-Haw.
AM: Fame.
GP: He was a friend to me.
[laughter]
GP: I’ve got a wonderful, wonderful thing here. You must reproduce that.
AM: I will do.
GR: Oh, we will do.
GP: It’s an explanation of why he was actually — It’s a whole thing of why he was hung.
GR: Hung. Yeah.
GP: Hanged.
GR: Hanged after the war.
AM: Yes.
GP: But that is a real gem of a thing because — I think it’s written by the son of the lawyer who actually was taking the trials at Nuremberg.
AM: Right.
GP: But yes, so, you can photograph all these things, yeah.
AM: I will do. I’ll look at that after. So you’ve been there nine months. Were you able to — Did you know how the war was progressing? Had you got any news of that?
GP: Oh yeah, well, a little bit, yeah. We had a radio etcetera in the thing. And in fact, apart from getting very thin, we used to entertain ourselves. And one of the big entertainments was the arrival weekly — Our toilet facilities were very basic there. It was a long trench with a pole and you sat on the pole and that was it. But they had to empty it you see. Every week.
AM: When you say ‘they’, who’s ‘they’?
[laughter]
GR: The prisoners.
AM: The prisoners had to empty it?
GP: Yeah. [laughs loudly] Anyway, there’s six horses pulling a tank, you see, with a cap on it. A sprung cap. And what they used to do, oh, and a pipe which used to down into the Mess. And we’d all stand around. There was about two thousand of us in this camp. We’d all stand around and the bloke would throw in some petrol or something, and it lit. And it blew the top off and of course all the air went out and produced suction in the pipe. [laughs] And the old six horses would go off and that was the job done. It used to amuse us, you know. We had little — We had, from the Red Cross, who’d been able to operate previously, we had twelve chess sets and the, er, we had the Canadian champion chess set man and he used to lie on a bunk. We used to have bunks, three deep, you see, in these wooden huts with about a hundred and forty people in them. The huts were built off the ground so you couldn’t dig a tunnel or anything. And in any case, it was so far from anywhere, it wasn’t worth trying, you know. But he used to lie on his thing and he’d say, ‘OK, well, you move your things and tell me what you’ve done on your chess sets.’ And he’d play eleven people and he’d win every time. And he’d got a memory of everybody’s move.
GR: So he was playing eleven different people at once.
GP: And we used to have little shows and things, but time went very quickly because we knew the War was finishing. And then the Russians came, of course. And that was a tricky moment because we were let out of the camp. Well, the Germans disappeared.
AM: So the Germans just went.
GP: And we got out of the camp. And then the Russian — It was the people behind the front, they weren’t the actual soldiers, came charging in and we’d commandeered bicycles [aircraft noise] from anybody we saw, and things like that, and we were killing anything we could find to eat, you know, and things like that. Anyway, the Germans had let us keep our ordinary watches on. Our private watches. Perhaps somebody was riding a bicycle, or they’d got a watch on and these Russians would just, you know, say, ‘I want that.’ Sort of business. And if anybody refused, they shot them. Or killed them. You know. We had three or four people actually killed. So what we did was, to lock everybody back into the [unclear] camp again. It was an amazing situation. Only for a short while. But it also took in the time when we were de-mining the airfield of booby traps and things like that.
AM: Again, when you say ‘we’.
GP: Well, I was one of the bods who was given — about a hundred of us, you know, stayed out. Well, we had our bunks still. And we got out of the place.
AM: Okay. But who did the de-mining?
GP: Pardon?
AM: Who did the de-mining? Who actually did it?
GP: De-mining, yeah. And booby trap, looking for, you see and things like that.
AM: But who?
GP: And that took — No, I didn’t do that.
AM: No, ok.
GP: But anyway, yeah, after about, oh, it’d be a couple of weeks, in which time, I’d already sat in a Focke- Wulf 190, one of their airplanes! And been hauled out by a Russian actually. Yeah. Because he thought it was going to be mined and if I touched anything it might blow up, you know. But anyway, it was all good fun and eventually we were taken off by Flying Fortress and flew back into England. Yeah. So it was quite a trip and all very exciting, but when you go through a place like Breda, and you’re sitting in a tram or a bus, we used to use bicycles and all sorts of things to travel, and people are looking, you know, opposite you, and looking at you and you wonder whether they’re German, or, you know, ‘cause there was a lot of [unclear] intelligence people floating round, Gestapo and things. And even the bods with tin helmets on and things, you wonder whether they’re going to stop you, and things. And with this little green pass it would have been hopeless. If they’d talked to me, I would have involuntarily, sort of, [laughs] responded to them and turned my head or something like that.
AM: When the Flying Fort— There were two thousand, did you say, there? Did you say there were two thousand of you in the camp?
GP: Yes, yeah.
AM: So when the Flying Fortresses turned up, how long did that take then to actually get you all out?
GP: Oh, I don’t know, but, oh, and I went in the hangar you see, and pinched a whole load of tools, ‘cause I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to get something out of these bods.’ [laughs] And I got this little bag of tools, well it was quite a heavy one, and tried to get on the Fortress and they said, ‘We won’t get airborne with that lot.’ And I had to throw half of them away and I’ve still got some millimetre spanners in there. And I had an electric drill and all sorts of things.
GR: Oh God.
GP: That I’d pinched from the Luftwaffe.
[laughter]
AM: So where did you — What was it like when you landed back then? Where did you land back in the Flying Fortress?
GP: Well, um, I don’t know where we landed actually.
AM: In England or —
GP: Then, what happened was that Princess Elizabeth, before she was Queen, had a house in Ascot.
AM: Yes.
GP: And the first thing they did was send the Officers, some of the Officers, there to just generally feed them up and get them back to a decent weight and things and give them time. They could go to lectures if the wanted to and we had a little WAAF to look after us and things like that.
AM: Did you have to be de-loused?
GP: Yeah. And we used her house in Ascot there. It’s now a big administrative building, but, in Sunning—
AM: Sunningdale?
GP: Not in Ascot. It was Sunning—. Sunningdale. Sunningdale. Yeah. So. And we had a little time there and then I was posted off to Ely as an Assistant Air Traffic Controller.
AM: At what point did you get to go home and see your parents?
GP: Oh, I was able to go home.
AM: More or less straight away.
GP: Yep. So, but, yeah. So that was a little bonus. But I stayed in the RAFVR because they weren’t quite sure about whether we were going to fight the Russians and things like that, so I stayed there and eventually I got my green ticket, you know, that allowed me the commercial pilot’s licence and then started looking for a job. But I didn’t get a job for six years. Yes, BEA, of course what had happened was that I’d been in the prison camp without flying for, you know, um —
AM: Nine months.
GP: Nine months at least, so — And all the jobs had gone by that time and they were mostly transport aircraft pilots who were given the jobs, so — And it wasn’t until 1952 and I was on my honeymoon.
Other 1: Yes.
AM: I was going to ask you where you met your wife.
[unclear background conversation]
GP: Taken there. She’s sixty years of age there, do you know.
AM: Gosh.
GP: We were retired and that’s just at the bottom of the road there.
AM: Yeah.
GP: Anyway.
GR: Did you meet your wife after the war? Or had you already known her?
GP: No, I met her after the war because what I’d done was to go back to my audit department, you see.
AM: I was going to ask what you did in those years before you actually got your job in flying again then.
GP: Yes, so, it was a good time because brother Pete came back from Japan and we raced motorbikes. These sort of things.
AM: When you say you raced motorbikes. What level? [sound of aircraft]
[sound of pages being turned]
AM: What? Where? Gosh.
GP: That’s us. [laughs]
AM: I’ve got some wonderful pictures here, for the tape.
GP: Oh, yeah, but I —
AM: Of Geoff and his brother on motorbikes.
GP: Don’t take that. This sepia, I tried to wipe something off and it’s —
AM: And it’s —
GP: Those are my nephews and things.
AM: Gosh.
GP: But there’s some lovely pictures there.
AM: I’m sure I can scan one of them.
GP: Yeah.
GR: So would that have been speedway? Was that —
AM: With motorbikes.
GP: We used to do grass tracks, trials, hill climbs and even the road racing at Cadwell Park and things.
GR: Oh yeah, I’ve heard of Cadwell.
AM: Yeah. So, but, so —
GP: Those were in Belgium, I took those.
AM: So you went back to the audit department at the town hall.
GP: So I went back to the audit department.
AM: But had the time of your life on motorbikes.
GP: And there, I met my fate, you see because I was an auditor and my wife was a cashier in the education department and by chance, I happened to be given that. We used to swap over these departments to audit, you see. I was given the education and there was a great big conference room with a mahogany table and a whole load of busts and things around the side looking at you. And I used to sit there and the cashiers’ office was right by. There was Stella and a good friend. She’s still living. As two little girls in the cashiers’ office, you see, and she used to bring me ledgers and journals and things to look at, you see. So, we had a six — we had a five-year courtship because she was looking out for an old Mum who had a very violent husband and she wasn’t in a hurry to get married and of course I was racing motorbikes with my brother, so we were both in the same boat really.
AM: Well, not quite.
[laughter]
AM: You were enjoying yourself on motorbikes.
GP: [laughs] That’s right, yeah. Well eventually, yeah, we decided that this was it and by sheer chance I met — oh, no, an advert came up from Sabena and they were short of pilots, you see, and they wanted a dozen to make up their fleet and I wrote in to them and I’d got my commercial by this [unclear] from the RAF really. Anyway, yeah, I was one of those selected, so I threw up my job and it was a bit of a gamble because I had to go over there and my English licence wasn’t good enough for the Belgians.
AM: ‘Cause what was — I was going to say, what was Sabena? That was Belgian.
GP: Commercial, yeah. So I had to take all my exams. There were about twelve different subjects and things in it and I also had to pass a medical every six months and things and flying tests and the rest of it. So I took a chance and they put me in Brussels of course. Well, you know, Brussels, and I could have gone and seen this woman of course but I didn’t because I still wasn’t sure.
AM: Still wasn’t sure whether she was a goodie or a baddie.
GP: Anyway, I passed the exam. I think partly because I took one or two of them in French which I could speak anyway and they were laughing at my accent [laughs]. Always used to do that. Yes. And from there on, I did ten years with them and then Stella had little chicos and we had to evacuate the Congo. And that was quite a thing. It was war-time footing and I was without sleep for two consecutive nights occasionally and still flying the aeroplane.
AM: Was this commercial aircraft then or passenger or —
GP: Sabena did it, yeah. We had our internal lines in the Congo.
GR: Because the Congo at the time was Belgian wasn’t it.
AM: Oh, of course, Belgian Congo. Of course.
GR: And that’s why the Belgians would have used their civil aircraft to evacuate.
GP: That’s right.
AM: I understand. I’m with you.
GP: There was two blacks fighting it out too. Tshombe and Lumumba. And they were trying to get the Belgians out. There were a lot of Belgians used to work down there, of course. It was a very good place. Especially Katanga, the — And Elizabeth. They were very, very wealthy places ‘cause they had the gold mines, the copper mines and all that sort of thing and Léopoldville was the centre of the place. Anyway, we had to go and get all these people out from their places and it was a question of twice as many people, on occasions, than there were seats for them. And they were sitting in the aisle and in the toilet and they were in the cockpit with us and everything. And the aircraft were overloaded and things and we were having to — on the return journey, and we were so overloaded that we could only take a little bit of fuel so we’d have to land in all these odd places in Africa on the way back. My job was the captain, you see, was in those days, getting the women and children out first, was to put on — there wasn’t a lot of steps to our aircraft and stand at the top and stop anybody else coming in. We used to get some people saying, ‘I’m the Ambassador to so-and-so. And I need to get —’ [laughs] And you’d say, ‘I’m sorry, you can’t get on here.’ And while the First Officer used to — the only people who were left in the Congo really were the Air Traffic Controllers who were usually English. Amazing isn’t it. But it was a time when my wife had just had the babies and of course I could get home and sleep for twenty-four hours, take her out to lunch and back on the job.
AM: Where was she —? Where were you living? Where was she living?
GP: We were in — She was in Brussels.
AM: In Brussels.
GP: We used to live just outside and we had this little — a dozen of us. The other pilots and their wives, if they weren’t flying, would look after the one whose wasn’t there. But we used to fly — one of the reasons why Sabena was good was because they used to pay twice as much as BOAC but of course we used to work twice as hard, you see, so, but in the end, it was the children that decided me to pack up the flying and by sheer chance, here again you know, someone’s looked after me, they were starting up the Flight Ops Inspectorate in the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation. They’d had an accident at Hounslow, where an aircraft had piled in to a load of council houses and killed a few people and they found out it was overloaded and under-serviced and things for repairs and things and they needed some check and they were looking for airline pilots of course, because when you check a company out, you’ve got to check the pilots as well. As the cruises will. So, we used to look at the ops manuals and training manuals, look at the standard of things and then give a certificate to fly certain type of aircraft in a certain part of the world depending at the facilities at the — you know, what sort of training they have and that. And it turned out then the most interesting job I’ve ever had because they gave me all-weather operations so I flew the Trident, before the pilots did of course, with the manufacturer, and I flew that right to the very end of my career, in 1982. There’s a lovely picture I think of my last — [pages turning] oh, that was the one with the Concorde and that’s before there was a Concorde aircraft available. They hadn’t got one then.
AM: So you flew — Did you fly Concorde?
GP: And that’s a mock-up for the —
AM: Did you fly Concorde?
GP: No, no, I — Unfortunately. That’s a bloke from Stansted, our —
AM: We’re looking at a photo in the album now.
GP: And that’s me at the other end.
AM: Right.
GP: And I’m with the Inspector you see.
AM: Got you.
GP: And they made him into — When I retired, this is —
AM: He became you, yeah.
GP: I only did about five years on this. So I used to do the simulator. Oh that’s old [unclear].
AM: No, I’ll look at that. I’ll look at these afterwards. Can I ask you one last, one last thing. So the — going back to the escape line, and the flats and the lady who you didn’t know whether she was a goodie or a baddie, but you eventually did find out.
GP: Yeah.
AM: So how did you find out? When the papers were released, I think you said.
GP: Um, well, it was, hang on.
AM: Did she turn out to be a goodie or a baddie? A goodie I assume.
GP: She was a goodie.
AM: Good.
GP: Yeah. And yes, she was clean and I felt so sad but by this time it was fifty years later.
AM: Did you meet her? Did you go and meet her?
GP: No, I didn’t, no.
AM: No.
GP: I don’t know whether she was alive or not. But anyway, we can — whatever you want to talk about.
AM: OK. I’ll —
GP: We’ll go through these in a bit.
AM: We’ve got lots of papers to look at, so I’m going to switch off now and start looking at these.
GP: Ok.
AM: And get my scanner out.
GP: Well there we are. That’s the hill where my aircraft was —
AM: OK. Who put the memorial up?
GP: Well, now of course, the whole place is built up.
AM: Yes.
GP: And by sheer chance, my mid-upper gunner, old Jack Jackson has a daughter who’s married a Dutchman and they took these pictures.
AM: Who actually erected the memorial though?
GP: Um?
AM: Who actually erected it? The Dutch people?
GP: Oh yeah. And that’s the — the thing on there, that’s part of the aircraft. That’s the aluminium that’s come off the aircraft.
GR: Just before you go on, that Dutch escape line was actually — The whole thing was turned by the Germans in 1942. From 1942 onwards, the Germans controlled all the SOE coming into Holland. They knew what was happening and everything.
GP: Yeah.
GR: And, as I understand it, ‘cos I spoke to a couple of other chaps who were turned over, exactly the same as you. And I believe after the war, the big bloke who got his gun out to you, he was hung.
GP: He was. No, he was shot.
GR: Shot. Yeah, I know he was —
GP: In a baker’s yard. And the story is here.
AM: We’ve got the story of that as well.
GP: Oh, I see.
AM: Ok.
GR: But I do believe all —
AM: So the bloke who actually turned Geoff in, [reading aloud] ‘Robert René Van Muylem is a very interesting and complex character. He was finally arrested in Paris in 1945 whilst working as a bartender at Camp Lucky Strike. It was one of the US Army Air Force Repatriation Centres and was where, unfortunately for him, he was recognised by Second Lieutenant Robert Hoke of the 388 BG, one of the airmen he betrayed. He was sent back to Belgium and thoroughly de-briefed and he was executed in 1947.’
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 Geoff Packham
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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APackhamGH160825, PPackhamG1610
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:21:22 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1944-05
1944-06
1945
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Alberta--Medicine Hat
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Nova Scotia--Halifax
Alberta
Alberta
Canada
Nova Scotia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Description
An account of the resource
Geoff’s father had been in the Royal Flying Corps and Geoff joined the Royal Air Force at RAF Cardington. He was posted to various stations before going to Halifax in Canada to train as a pilot on Tiger Moths and then Oxfords.
On his return, Geoff was posted to RAF Stormy Down on Whitleys and RAF Brize Norton where he trained army pilots to fly Horsa gliders. He was also posted to fly Wellingtons at the RAF Sutton Bridge experimental unit.
Geoff was eventually posted to Bomber Command and trained on Wellingtons at RAF Finningley. They did dummy raids, and dropped leaflets and Window. Geoff went to 550 Squadron at RAF North Killingholme in May 1944. He completed seven operations within 11 days and was shot down on the seventh. The first four operations were over the Normandy coast, starting on 5 June 1944 around D-Day.
Geoff describes how his plane was shot on its way to Sterkrade in the Ruhr. They baled out just over the Dutch border. Geoff landed in a wheat field whilst the aircraft hit a farm, killing seven people. Geoff found the church and was given clothing and a false identity card. He went down the escape line with his mid-upper gunner to Antwerp. They were betrayed by the Flemish collaborator, René van Muylem, who had set up a false escape line.
Geoff was interrogated and taken to Frankfurt. He was then sent to Stalag Luft I prisoner of war camp in Barth for nine months. There was little food but it was otherwise acceptable. His parents learnt he was a prisoner when his letter to them was read out by Lord Haw-Haw. The Germans left before the Russians arrived. Geoff was returned on a B-17.
Geoff was posted to Ely as Assistant Air Traffic Controller and stayed in the RAF volunteer reserve until his commercial pilot licence was granted.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
550 Squadron
Air Raid Precautions
B-17
bale out
bombing
civil defence
Dulag Luft
evading
Horsa
memorial
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
prisoner of war
RAF North Killingholme
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Sutton Bridge
sanitation
shot down
Stalag Luft 1
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Whitley
Window
-
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
A name given to the resource
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
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Makens, L
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
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/924/11167/ALeithJM170112.1.mp3
58862b6cf0fd639127eb573cee163a3e
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
Leith, James McKenzie
J M Leith
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flying Officer James Leith (b. 1924 186914 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 429, 624 and 148 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by James Leith and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-12
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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Leith, JM
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Flying Officer James McKenzie Leith at 2.30 on Thursday 12th of January 2017 at in his home in Fulwood, near Preston, Lancashire. So, Jim, if that’s alright to call you Jim, just for the record please would you confirm your date of birth and where you were born please.
JML: 21 5 ‘24. Bathville, Bathgate.
BW: And that’s near —
JML: Scotland.
BW: Glasgow, Scotland.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Yeah. What was your family life like? You had mother and father at home. Did you have brothers and sisters?
JML: Yeah. Two brothers.
BW: And were they —
JML: And two sisters.
BW: And were you the youngest or were you right in the middle or the eldest?
JML: Middle. Yeah.
BW: And what was your home life like in Glasgow or Bathvale? Was it a nice little village, you’d say?
JML: Yeah. A very good village because my grandfather was the local policeman.
BW: And where did you go to school?
JML: Bathgate.
BW: And did you stay in Bathgate throughout your school years?
JML: Yeah.
BW: And —
JML: I left school at fourteen.
BW: At the standard age.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And what did you then go on to do?
JML: I went working at the local swimming pool. Learning the people on a course of course first to get trained. Then learn people how to swim.
BW: And so you —
JML: Came it came in very handy later on I can assure you.
BW: So you were a swimming instructor in that respect.
JML: Yeah. Well, I was training to be a swimming instructor. Yeah.
BW: Ok. And how long were you doing that for?
JML: Probably two years. Yeah.
BW: And after that did you remain at the swimming pool or did you go on to another job? Did you take a job elsewhere?
JML: I went in the forces. Into the forces after. From being there. The swimming, the trainee swimming instructor.
BW: So you’d have been only sixteen.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And did you join the RAF first or was, did you join another branch?
JML: Well, I was in the Air Training Corps etcetera. Yeah. Stayed with them for, I don’t know. Quite, quite some time. The ATC as it was called.
BW: And were you always interested in joining the RAF then?
JML: Oh yes.
BW: As a young boy.
JML: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: What attracted you to it?
JML: I don’t know. I just, I just liked it. My brother was in the army. My elder brother. He was in the army. And my sister who was older than me as well, only just, was a trainee nurse. So next in the, on the list was Jamie. And I, and as I say I went the ATC and I was quite happy we got into the RAF when the time came. Yeah.
BW: And what specifically did you intend to do in the RAF? Were you initially trying to be a pilot or or —
JML: No.
BW: In the [unclear] or something.
JML: I was just going to be in the RAF and leave it to them. Definitely.
BW: And so you joined before war actually broke out.
JML: I went in the —
BW: Because you were only [pause] Or was it just as war had started? It was ’24, and you were sixteen. Yes. So it would be 1940, wouldn’t it? So war would have started while you were —
JML: Oh yeah.
BW: Just joining up.
JML: Definitely. Yeah.
BW: So, was the, was the onset of war something that compelled you to volunteer more than the interest or was it just everything came together?
JML: Yeah. In general, I joined the ATC. The Air Training Corps. I joined that and eventually got in to the RAF.
BW: And where did you sign on? In Glasgow?
JML: Edinburgh.
BW: Edinburgh.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And what happened from there? Where did they send you for training? Do you recall?
JML: London, funnily enough. From one capital to the other. London.
BW: Do you know whereabouts at all? Or not?
JML: No. Don’t ask me that. No.
BW: Ok.
JML: No.
BW: And so you, did you apply at that time to be aircrew or did you once in the Air Force stick at a ground trade or as a mechanic or something or did you want to go as aircrew?
JML: Aircrew.
BW: From the start.
JML: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Do you recall where you did your aircrew training? Your gunnery training.
JML: Yes. Let me see now. That was under [unclear] Stormy Down, Cardiff.
BW: Stormy Down.
JML: Yeah. Stormy Down.
BW: Ok. Yeah.
JML: Have you heard of that one?
BW: Yeah.
JML: Yeah. Stormy Down. Yeah.
BW: And as an air gunner what aspects of your training can you, can you recall that you had to do?
JML: Well, being in the aircrew and training at Stormy Down I just automatically seemed to slot in and become an air gunner. And we used to fly out over the Bristol Channel towing, towing a drogue behind an aircraft and the air gunner flying in Whitleys.
BW: Whitleys.
JML: A Whitley. I think it was a Whitley if I remember rightly. And the rear gunner there shooting at a drogue as it went along to try and pass the test that your eyesight was good etcetera and you could see alright. Yeah. That more or less was it, I think. Probably there about, I would think at least two months. Maybe even more. Training. Yeah.
BW: And did you do any ground training with the guns at all?
JML: Very little. Very little during the period when we were at Stormy Down because it was all mostly in the air. Firing from the ground came later somewhere else but I’m trying to think where it was but I can’t think at the moment. On a beach somewhere. Somewhere in Yorkshire. Probably at Bridlington.
BW: So from Stormy Down you moved up to Bridlington to do some further gunnery training.
JML: Air gun training, yeah. Definitely.
BW: Ok. And then Dalton and Lyneham —
JML: That’s right.
BW: I believe.
JML: Yeah. That’s, that’s further training there. We went on to aircraft.
BW: And at this stage did you crew up with the guys that you were going to —
JML: No.
BW: Follow through with training?
JML: We just went with anybody.
BW: Ok.
JML: Because most of them were training as well. Yeah.
BW: And from your training as a gunner which seems to have finished at Lyneham do you recall what happened after that? Did you go to a Conversion Unit?
JML: Where did I go from Lyneham? [pause] Yeah. Yeah. We moved on to —where did I move on to? A Conversion Unit. Bloody hell.
BW: That’s alright. If it’s, if it’s escaped your memory don’t worry. But I’m just curious if you met your first crew at the Conversion Unit or whether you met them when you got to your squadron.
JML: That was it. It was a right mixture at the time [pause] Yeah. We crewed up at, yeah. We more or less became a crew eventually at the Conversion Unit.
BW: And can you recall who your fellow crewmates were?
JML: Yes. The first original ones were, there were the three Canadians. The pilot, flight sergeant [pause] now then. Charlie Bois. C H A R L I E B O I S. I think that was how you spelt it.
BW: Ok.
JML: Charlie Bois. And the navigator was Jim Cameron.
BW: Jim.
JML: Jim.
BW: Yeah.
JML: Cameron.
BW: Cameron. Ok.
JML: Canadian. The bomb aimer was Joe Senecal. S E N E C A L. Now then.
[pause]
BW: You have a wireless operator and a couple of gunners in there.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Of which one, one is you.
JML: I’m trying to think of the [pause] I think what was he called? I’m thinking about the flight engineer [pause] Well, I think it was George Messenger. Because he was with us a long time so George was probably there then.
BW: Ok.
JML: Mickey Neville, wireless operator.
BW: Davy Lambert, gunner, along with me. That should be seven, I think.
JML: Yeah. That’s right.
BW: Yeah.
JML: So Davy would be the mid-upper.
BW: That’s him. Yeah.
JML: And where were you based with 429? Do you recall?
BW: Yeah. This is all in my head and it’s just all rumbled up. I’ll get it. I’ll get it in a minute.
[pause]
JML: It’s a bugger, isn’t it?
BW: Do you think it was in Yorkshire?
JML: Oh aye. I never moved until I went abroad. I was there all the time.
BW: There were a couple of bases. One at East Moor and the other at Leeming.
JML: Leeming. That came up. That. Leeming. Leeming Bar it was called in them days.
BW: And what was your accommodation like there? Your barracks.
JML: Oh good. Yeah. More or less nissen huts. Yeah.
BW: And what were your arrangements? Were you all in there as a crew or were you all in there as gunners?
JML: Different. Different. Yeah. The crew, the crews were in the mess together. Not there, not in Bomber Command where I was, no. It was just a mixture.
BW: And did you socialise together as a crew?
JML: Oh, just so so because as I say we were, this was a Canadian squadron so they more or less, they more or less kept together and the RAF lads like myself and Mickey Neville and that. So, we did. We did socialise I suppose. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Because we were always at the at the sergeant’s mess was the sergeant’s mess and everybody mixed in there. Sergeants. Officers went to their own mess. But our crew of course at the time were all either a sergeant or flight sergeant apart from Jim Cameron, the navigator. He was a flying officer. Canadian. So he was the odd one out.
BW: How did you get on as a crew?
JML: Very good. Yeah. Really good. Yeah. Definitely.
BW: How did you all meet? Were you all put in to a large room together to sort yourselves out or, or not?
JML: No, you just, it was actually, probably two. Two to a room at the time. Aye. And at the time, at that time, apart from Jim Cameron, the navigator who was a flying officer all the rest of us were either sergeants or flight sergeants. And of course we were all more or less all together all the time.
BW: Did you get the opportunity to go off base and socialise? To go in to the nearest town?
JML: Oh yeah. Definitely.
BW: Have a few beers.
JML: Yeah aye. I mean, we were quite, quite the [pause] the Canadian lads probably kept together more than with the RAF lads. We more or less kept to ourselves. Mickey Neville and Davy Lambert etcetera. When I think about it now. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
BW: Why do you think that was? Was there, was it a cultural thing?
JML: No. It was just —
BW: Or just circumstance.
JML: Yeah. No, no reason why not. Yeah.
BW: So thinking now about your operations and what you were going to do describe for us how you would be briefed. What sort of things would lead up to the start of a mission and what would you do yourself when you got to the aircraft?
JML: Well, briefing used to take place probably very late afternoon. Depending, depending on the take-off time. And of course each, each section had their own briefing. Apart from when all the crew members were together at the main briefing. Then after the main briefing the sergeants, gunners etcetera went to the gunnery officer. The navigators went to their. So in actual fact the main briefing would take place with all the crew members together at one time. Then after you had been told etcetera where you were going the officer in charge said the gunners or the wireless operator and that would call more or less their own briefing and give you information about what they thought you should do when you got on board the plane. And that was what I can remember anyway. It’s hard to remember. It is.
BW: I know. So, thinking now, at this point you’ve been briefed on your operation and you’re presumably driven out to the aircraft at dispersal. What would you do as a crew from being dropped off? What sort of, did you have any good luck rituals or checks that you would do when you got into your position in the aircraft?
JML: No. No. Not really. When you got on board of course like there was seven of you. Three or four, four at the front approximately. You all take your positions etcetera. Mid-upper gunner of course is middle turret. The rear gunner, myself, in the rear. And then the skipper would call up to make sure you were all in your position and you’d checked everything and you were quite happy. That you were ready to go. He did that with all the crew.
BW: And how did it feel when the engines started and you were on your way sort of thing?
JML: Well —
BW: Taxiing out.
JML: That didn’t seem to bother. It was just like taking off again, you know. The only thing that was going to be a bit different when you crossed the Channel but other than that it was just straight forward. Yeah.
BW: And I believe you had an eventful first sortie. You’d been briefed to go. First operation. You’d been briefed to raid Stuttgart.
JML: Stuttgart. Yeah.
BW: And describe for me what had happened when you’d taken off.
JML: Oh, we’d had an uneventful trip. No trouble at all. Across the Channel, over France etcetera heading towards Germany. We had no bother at all. Occasional flashes of flak somewhere but other than that there was no bother at all until we got near the target area and then it started to brighten up a bit if that’s the right word. We didn’t see any night fighters. Plenty of flak. And then when we got to the target area the flak was very strong and there, unfortunately we were hit and the pilot had to turn off one of the engines because that was hit very badly. And so we’d three engines, so we [pause] he just dropped the bombs where we were which was somewhere near the target and turned around and headed for home. But by that time he’d decided to take drastic action and he cut off the engine altogether so we were flying on three engines and headed for the target. Well, away from the target to get back to England which was a good trip all the way actually. No problems at all apart from the plane seemed to be losing a bit of height etcetera. But other than that we had no trouble at all getting back to the coast. By that time we were, I think we might have been struggling regarding fuel because the pilot had asked the navigator to find out the nearest aerodrome as we were crossing the Channel which he did. And we headed, headed for that particular, that particular aerodrome. I cannot, I can’t think of the damned name of it now. But that’s where we headed for but, and we got there and got permission to land. And the pilot made an attempt to land but as he made the attempt to land another aircraft which I think was a Lancaster was underneath us so we opened up the engines and headed back out over the sea. And unfortunately, I don’t know what happened but a minute or so after we’d attempted to land the pilot was shouting, ‘We’re going down. We’re going down.’ And a few seconds later, I’m still in the rear turret, the plane hit the sea and it, I think it broke up mid-way along, mid-way along the thing but by that time I’d only just got out the turret and was thrown up. Thrown up the plane. I don’t know if I was semi- conscious or not but I found myself in the middle of the aircraft and presence of mind, I don’t know why I stood up. I was standing in the middle of the aircraft. Well, there was a handle and that handle released the dinghy. I probably didn’t realise it at the time. So I pulled the handle anyway and could see the actual dinghy come out the wing and inflate itself automatically. Of course that didn’t bother me because I mean having been used to water in civilian life I wasn’t bothered at all. So, I mean, I scrambled out. I scrambled out the plane somehow and managed to keep pulling on the dinghy to get the dinghy right out. And Davy Lambert, the other gunner had climbed on the wing of the plane and between us we got the dinghy going and Davy got in the dinghy. And then we, I was still sitting on the, on the wing and then I got in to the water itself and started to shout out names etcetera to find out where everybody was like. And eventually we all got in to the dinghy. I was last in because I was quite happy in the water. I wasn’t bothered. Water didn’t bother me. We got them all in to the dinghy and fortunately they, on the land they knew that the plane had gone into the sea somewhere and an air sea rescue launch picked us up within the hour. So it was very very quick. Quick. A very, very quick hour. But everybody was alright. Nobody, nobody was injured even though the, even though the plane was in a mess and as I say we were picked up within the hour so that was it. Our first trip. Brilliant.
BW: And this was November 26/27, 1943.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And presumably you’d come back at night.
JML: Pardon?
BW: You’re still night time.
JML: That happened —
BW: So this has all happened in the dark and the cold.
JML: 4 o’clock in the morning it was. Approximately.
BW: So, it’s pitch black.
JML: Oh yeah.
BW: And freezing cold water.
JML: It was bloody cold. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But as I said water didn’t bother me so I was alright, you know. I was more interested in what was happening to the rest of crew if they couldn’t swim. As it happened most of them could swim so [pause] And the plane hadn’t really broken up like I thought it might have done. So the wing was still there with it. With the, where the dinghy was. And we were all quite, well, I wouldn’t say quite happy in the dinghy but at least we were all in the dinghy and very quickly picked up by the air sea rescue lads. Pitch dark mind you. But we were making enough noise for them to find us. But it was no bother.
BW: And so I’m assuming that the rescue launch was using a searchlight to sweep the sea to look for you.
JML: Sea. Right.
BW: And it was only from signalling or shouting while you were in the dinghy that they could try and locate you.
JML: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because we’d no lights or anything. No. Nothing at all.
BW: Amazing.
JML: Yeah.
BW: So, what happened when you got on board and were taken back to base? Were, were you debriefed at all any further or —
JML: Well, we, as I said it was right down south. I can’t. I can’t remember any debriefing to tell you the truth. I can’t remember any bit of it because obviously we’d landed at this place down south when we should have been up in Yorkshire. So, we stopped there anyway. I think we stopped there. A little bit of a stop there that day and I think it was the next day [pause] that’s right. We were only there a day and then we were, made our way back to Leeming in Yorkshire. By train of course. Got the train in to, got the train into London and then we headed back home over to, to Leeming. Yeah. I think that was it anyway. Near enough.
BW: And did any of the senior officers wonder where you’d been?
JML: They knew. They must have got notified like that, over what, I can’t remember the registration. It doesn’t matter. There were [pause] no. I’m just trying to — anyway, they knew anyway that something had happened to us and that we were alright. And I can always remember that I had it and I can’t find it. I think it was, I think it was 6 Group, I think, if I remember rightly. The Canadians. 6 Group. And when the, when the Group paper came out the next day or a couple of days later I can see the headline now. It had it across it. The headline of the paper was well [pause] all the Canadian squadrons had a name. We were, we were the Bison Squadron. And on the headlines of the paper in red, “Bison boys launched on maiden trip.” That was the first trip we had done and in the paper that was the headline. And it gave a, what had actually happened to us, you know and what annoys me is I have an old typewriter upstairs and up to a few years ago I’d got the newspaper itself. I got the front page of it from wherever it was like. We all got one I suppose. I kept that for years. That’s what I was trying to find. And on the old typewriter upstairs I made a typed copy of it. Of what it said. I can’t find it. So that that was our only trip with Bomber Command.
BW: But you became a member of the Goldfish Club as a result.
JML: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Did you get a badge?
JML: It’s there. It’s the yellow one. The smallest.
BW: So this is like a what we now say is a credit card sized.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Piece of card that says on it Goldfish Club Membership Card 1942 with the emblem on and details you as, “Sergeant J McK Leith. James McKenzie Leith qualified as a member of the Goldfish Club by escaping death by the use of emergency equipment on 27th November 1943.” Fantastic. And the design of this card, it says is based on the unique waterproof card issued during World War Two.
JML: Yeah. I can’t remember who sponsored that. I can’t think of his name. One of the richest men in Britain.
BW: I can only think the Duke of Westminster but there’d be others of course.
JML: I can’t remember his name.
BW: The sig.
JML: We got though —
BW: The signature on it is Charles Robertson.
JML: Aye. He’s the one organised the thing, isn’t he?
BW: Robertson.
JML: You got a payment you know from it. This chap I’m talking about.
BW: Right.
JML: You got, you got seven days leave after you ditched and you got paid by whoever it was that started this Goldfish thing. What was he called? Bloody hell. Anyway, he was one of the, he was one of the richest men anyway and he, I think you got seven days leave and you got seven days pay which he paid. That’s if I remember right properly. I don’t know if you’ve heard that before or not.
BW: I haven’t but I’m sure you’re right.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And so you arrived back at Leeming and you’re all dried and back to normal.
JML: Oh yeah. Not, not long back to normal.
BW: And what happened? What happened next?
JML: Oh dear [pause]
BW: Did you continue any other operations or sorties with the Bison Squadron?
JML: They decided, when I say they decided, they got there the squadron commander, a wing commander at the top decided that the pilot Charlie Bois, he was called [pause] it was, that’s right we were still fit to fly the Halifax. He wasn’t very tall, wasn’t Charlie Bois. Fairly small. That’s the pilot I’m talking about. And anyway, they decided that he was still alright for flying. But about a month later we, we were we had some time off actually flying. And then we got [pause] It would be about a month before we were picked to go on another. Another bombing raid. I can’t remember the date. The details. But the [pause] got on the plane at the dispersal point and somehow or other as we left the dispersal point, by the way this is, we were still into November December and it’s gone dark of course at four or 5 o’clock like, you know. And somehow or other at Leeming there was two squadrons. We were the Bison Squadron and the other squadron was the Lion Squadron. I can’t remember the number of it but it was the Lion Squadron. And on this particular day we were going on this other flight which would have been our second flight. As we taxied at our dispersal point an aircraft from the Lion Squadron coming down the [pause] I can’t describe it.
[pause]
Now, this aircraft from the Lion Squadron coming around the perimeter track, and we coming, coming out of our own dispersal point and this aircraft from the, the Lion Squadron hit our aircraft as we left the dispersal point. Very [pause] really damaged the planes and mind you we all scrambled out and we were all right. And the lads from the Lion Squadron they were alright as well. But the two aircraft were a right mess. So that, that flight was cancelled completely. And after that I don’t exactly know what happened but that Charlie, as I said he wasn’t a very big bloke he was taken off flying bombers. I don’t know who decided it, but somebody decided he’d be better flying lighter aircraft so he was taken off the squadron and what happened to him after that I’ve got no idea. But the RAF lads that was myself, the mid-upper gunner, the wireless operator and, no that’s, that’s right. We three RAF lads were sent to another unit and I think it was Dishforth. Dishforth. Either Dishforth or Driffield, one or the other to await being crewed up with another pilot, navigator, bomb aimer. That’s it. Yeah. Now then, as I say it was either Dishforth or Driffield but it doesn’t matter. That was another Conversion Unit and we went there in, we were now in to December. I don’t know why but for some unknown reason we three, Mickey Neville, Davy Lambert and myself were at that unit for oh a long, long time. I think they’d forgotten about us. But eventually [pause] I’m just trying to imagine how we got crewed up again. I can see it all but [pause] Anyway, we got crewed up again but I just can’t remember. I can remember the pilot. Pilot Officer Proud. P R O U D. Another Canadian. And I think we must have still kept the three other Canadians as well. But thankfully time was flying past.
JML: You must have been in the unit well into the spring of ’44.
BW: This is what I’m trying to remember. I’m trying to remember exactly how it came about. As I say we got this, this bloke called Pilot Officer Proud. I’ll never forget his name. I was just trying to remember where. [pause] Anyway, to cut a long story short Pilot Officer Proud hadn’t flown on any operations at all. So we went to Linton on Ouse. Does that ring a bell?
BW: Yes. That’s in Yorkshire.
JML: Yeah. That’s right. We teamed up with Pilot Officer Proud. That’s it. More or less with the same, the same crew as previously apart from the pilot. But the crew stopped the same. Right. I’m trying to think of is it, did I say Dishforth?
BW: You said it was, it was either at Dishforth or Driffield. And I think there was a Conversion Unit at Dishforth. But you then moved from there once you’ve met your new pilot to Linton, Linton on Ouse. So it sounds like you’ve been assigned a new pilot and are ready to be transferred to a new squadron.
JML: I’m trying to think which one it was actually. 429 Squadron. 429 624148. What you find in there? 429.
BW: After December ’43 at Dishforth it was 426 Squadron for the remainder of the war. And then at Linton.
JML: Linton on Ouse.
BW: 426 must have moved from there. From Dishforth to Linton as well. So if you’ve gone from those two airfields it’s possible you’ve been with 426.
JML: I’ve got them here.
[recording paused]
BW: So you met and crewed up with Pilot Officer Proud again.
JML: Correct.
BW: And he was from 408 Squadron. That’s what you’re saying.
JML: No. That’s where we got him but he hadn’t flown on any operational trips when we crewed up with him. We’d only done one but he hadn’t done any at all. Right. Now, he went on an operation as a second pilot with 408 Squadron. Now, where they were going I don’t know but they never came back. It was lost with all the crew including Pilot Officer Proud. So we never flew any operations at all with Pilot Officer Proud unfortunately. I had a hectic time for a bit. Flying.
[pause]
JML: Now, why have I put that there?
BW: So, Pilot Officer Proud went up on an a operation as a —
JML: Second pilot.
BW: Second pilot and never came back.
JML: Yeah.
BW: You then returned to Dishforth. To the holding unit.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And your new pilot who you met was — ?
JML: Must be Lawrence.
BW: Lawrence.
JML: Toft. T O F T.
BW: And was he an officer?
JML: No. Not then he wasn’t. He was a flight sergeant.
BW: Flight sergeant. Ok. And so you’ve now got, you personally have moved onto your third crew.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Now. And what happened with Toft? You called him Tofty. Is that right?
JML: Lawrence.
BW: Lawrence.
JML: Or Lawrie. Yeah.
BW: Did you do much training with him?
JML: No. Because he had already done three trips I think with, back to the, what did they call the squadron earlier when we ditched in the sea. He came from that squadron.
BW: 429 Bison.
JML: 429. Yeah. And we went to Dishforth, wasn’t it?
BW: Yes.
JML: What, what, when was that? What?
BW: That would be spring 1944.
JML: What was that with?
BW: So you were there several months between the holding posts.
JML: I went with him.
BW: And it was a while because you thought they’d forgotten about you all. And you then would have been assigned your crew roughly Spring 1944.
JML: Yeah. As I say we got Tofty. That’s right. Then we went [pause] Yeah. We got Tofty.
BW: How would you describe him? What sort of a person was he?
JML: Very clever. I did try to think. Mickey Neville, Davy Lambert, myself. That’s the three of us. I’m just trying to fit in the other. He was actually Canadian that one.
[recording paused]
BW: So your crew now.
JML: Yeah.
BW: If I read these names out to you. Flight Sergeant A J Toft.
JML: That’s right.
BW: Flight Sergeant Johnston.
JML: Johnston. Yeah.
BW: Sergeant T S Jones.
JML: That’s him.
BW: Sergeant G H Messenger.
JML: George.
BW: That’s George Messenger.
JML: George Messenger.
BW: Sergeant Mickey Neville.
JML: Mickey Neville.
BW: M R Neville.
JML: David Lambert. Yeah.
BW: And sergeant D P —
JML: That’s the one I couldn’t remember. He’s Canadian the [pause] I’ve lost him again. Jones. Tommy Jones is it?
BW: Yeah.
JML: Tommy Jones.
BW: Yeah. Jones. T S Jones.
JML: Bomb aimer. Yeah. That’s the one, that’s what I’ve been trying to think about.
BW: And he was your bomb aimer.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And he was Canadian.
JML: Right. Yeah.
BW: And what sort of a guy was he?
JML: Very queer but can’t account for that. Not queer, queer.
BW: Quirky perhaps or unusual.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And so what was going to be your next mission with them?
JML: We went abroad.
BW: You were sent abroad to 624 Squadron. Is this right? To Libya.
JML: Hmmn?
BW: Did you go to Libya? You say you went abroad.
JML: That’s right.
BW: You were posted to 624 Squadron.
JML: Blida.
BW: Blida, Algeria.
JML: Yeah. B L I D A. Blida.
BW: And this is now special duties.
JML: That’s right. I just couldn’t think of that bloody bloke’s name. Jones. Tommy Jones. Anyhow.
BW: And how did you end up as a crew being posted there? Did you volunteer or were you picked?
JML: Just, were just sent. Yeah.
BW: And what was that base like? What was Algeria like?
JML: It was actually quite good. In fact, very good actually.
BW: Did you fly out there or did you —
JML: Oh yeah.
BW: Travel by ship.
JML: We took a brand new Halifax out to that place. Different to the one that we had but they changed the tail on it. Made it a square tail instead of that way and it was a new one. Brand new. We picked it up at a place called, Hurn is it? Hurn, near Bournemouth. Yeah. We took that with us.
BW: So was this a brand new Mark 5?
JML: Yeah. It would be. Yeah.
BW: Mark 5 Halifax.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And you flew it from Bourne.
JML: That’s it.
BW: To Blida.
JML: To Blida.
BW: Blida.
JML: Yeah. So we got on to special duties instead of Bomber Command.
BW: And what sort of things were you doing on special duties? Do you remember what sort of operations you were tasked with?
JML: Yeah. Either dropping agents or dropping supplies to the French in Southern France.
BW: Did you get to talk to any of the agents at all?
JML: Not allowed. No.
BW: What were your briefings like at this stage then? When you, when you joined this brand new squad, well for you it was a brand new squadron, what were your briefings like now as regards preparation for a mission? What were you told about it?
JML: Well, briefings briefly consist of whether you were dropping agents or dropping supplies and that was more or less, and of course whether you were going to Southern France or anywhere you were going. But at no time were you allowed to have a conversation with any passenger that you were taking because it was all top secret. And that was more or less the briefing. Yeah.
BW: Were you able to find out anything about the agents that you were tasked with dropping or the cargo that you would carry as supplies? Was any of that ever made known to you?
JML: No. No.
BW: So —
JML: Definitely not.
BW: So if the pilot ever knew he wasn’t even able to discuss it with you as crew. If the pilot knew he wasn’t able to discuss it with you as crew then.
JML: No. Definitely not.
BW: And what were these operations like in comparison to the couple that you had flown with Bomber Command? Was there a difference for you as a gunner? Were you, did you feel it was a better environment or less hostile for example or what?
JML: A lot less hostile because —
[pause]
BW: How was it being in the rear of this Halifax this time? Were there, were the missions quieter in that you didn’t fly over heavily defended targets? Is that right?
JML: Yeah, yeah, yeah the, the flights from Blida in North Africa mostly went to Southern France and of course you flew most of them over water of course and once you reached the coast you then had to find where the agents were and nine times out of ten they were in the, in the mountains. And the mountains were the biggest, the biggest drawback we had.
BW: And you were still flying at night on these missions.
JML: They were all night. Night. Yeah. All night missions. Yeah.
BW: And from 624 you moved on to 148 Squadron.
JML: [unclear] Yeah. 148.
BW: Which would be, which would be flying from Italy.
JML: Brindisi.
BW: And doing the same sort of work.
JML: Exactly the same, dropping supplies or agents, yeah.
BW: And from Italy you presumably saw out the rest of your service with 148 Squadron. At what stage were you sent back to the UK?
JML: I’m trying to think how long we stopped in there. We flew back to, to Cairo [pause] to await transport to the UK. And that was it.
BW: And was that 1945? Or would it be after do you think?
JML: No. No. I’m trying to think when we, 1944 we were flying, was that 1945? Would it be ’45 or was it late nineteen — ? Oh, it must have been ’45. ‘44 we flew out of from England, did the tour. Yeah.
BW: And how long did you stay in the RAF after the war?
JML: Not so long. I can’t think when I came out.
BW: Would it be 1946—
JML: ’46, I think.
BW: When you were repatriated and left at, in 1947. Discharged on 28th of September 1948.
JML: As long as that did I wait?
BW: You’ve come back to Wheaton or Kirkham.
JML: Kirkham.
BW: In 1946.
JML: That’s it, yeah.
BW: And that’s when you met a WAAF.
JML: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: What was her name?
JML: Hmmn?
BW: What was her name?
JML: Margaret Iddon. You want her surname.
BW: Your, your girlfriend at the time. In 1946. What was her name?
JML: Margaret. You want her, do you want her —
BW: What —
JML: You want her surname as well. That’s it. Margaret Iddon. I D D O N. Oh well, no, I’m getting confused. Sawford. Sorry. S A W F O R D I think. Sawford. That’s, that’s your mum’s name isn’t it, Margaret?
Other: Yeah. I knew you’d mentioned Iddon and I thought well I’m not in on this.
JML: It’s amazing how I get confused Margaret.
Other: Never mind.
BW: And what happened after? After you were demobbed?
JML: I went working for [pause] as a salesman for Jackson, the tailor.
BW: And how long were you there?
JML: A long time. ‘Til maybe about, probably 1965 or ’66. More or less to retirement, near enough.
BW: And what do you think of the commemorations taking place at the moment Bomber Command? It’s been a while since the veterans have been commemorated but now they’re being honoured, if you like for their service. What do you think?
JML: Well, yeah because we were having this place what’s it called again? I’ve forgotten the name.
BW: Lincoln or Hyde Park. The Memorial at Hyde Park.
JML: Well, I think that’s the [pause] that one at the Arboretum. Is it the Arboretum?
BW: Oh, yes the National.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Memorial Arboretum at Stafford.
JML: Yeah. I’ve been going there for the last ten years on and off. Obviously we’ve got, we’ve got a spot there.
BW: Are you glad the veterans of Bomber Command are being remembered?
JML: I suppose so. Yeah. Because I mean they [pause] I’m just trying to think if there’s a proper thing.
BW: There’s a Memorial in London.
JML: Yeah. Yeah. I got an invite to that but I didn’t go.
BW: And there’s now this Centre in Lincoln.
JML: Yeah. The only other one I know about is this one at the Arboretum which is where the Special Duties have their place.
BW: Alright. Well, that’s, that’s all the questions I have for you, Jim.
JML: Thank God for that.
BW: Thank you very much for your time.
JML: Yeah. Well, I’m sorry I can’t give you as much as I wanted to do, you know.
BW: That’s alright. Thank you very much.
JML: I’m trying to remember things, you know.
[recording paused]
BW: So, this is Brian Wright interviewing Flying Officer Jim McKenzie Leith on the afternoon of Thursday the 12th of January 2017 at his home at Fulwood, Preston in Lancashire. Now, Jim you’ve kindly told me that you were born the 21st of May in 1924 in Bathville near Glasgow and you were the middle brother of five. You had two brothers and two sisters. And that you left school at fourteen and you had been a member of the Air Training Corps prior to joining the RAF in 1940. And following your initial training as airman and then trade training as an air gunner you joined 429 Canadian Squadron in Yorkshire based at RAF Leeming. And you described for me your first sortie when you were returning from a raid on Stuttgart on the 27th of November 1943 and were forced to ditch in the, in the Channel. And you recovered from that. After a period of time on holding squadrons at Dishforth you were then sent to Bilda, sorry Blida.
JML: Blida.
BW: Blida, in Algeria in 1944. And you were first on 624 Squadron and this is a special duty squadron that I’d like to ask you about. You flew a brand new Halifax out. And how did it feel to join this new squadron? Were you aware of the sort of things you were going to do when you arrived in Algeria?
JML: No idea. No idea at all.
BW: And when do you recall your first operations with this squadron? What sort of things did you have to do?
[pause]
BW: You were dropping supplies and agents in to Southern France, weren’t you?
JML: Yeah. Definitely.
BW: You couldn’t talk to these guys who you were flying.
JML: No. Well, we mostly dropped supplies. Very seldom did we drop agents. Just occasionally. But the briefing etcetera was quite plain enough as you were flying, flying across water all the time ‘til you got to Southern France. And then you had to find out the position where the agents were but mostly they were in the, in the mountains and so the thing was to make sure that you got your position right because if you didn’t, depending on the weather would you be able to make your drop or not because most of Southern France there was mountains all around where the agents were in secrecy waiting on supplies coming etcetera.
BW: And do you recall what the pilot had to do or you as a crew had to do on the approach to the drop zone?
JML: It was very important actually approaching there because obviously there was different signals. We did signal which we would flash to the ground and if we were in the right position we got a flash back from the ground. But it had to be matched up with the letter or number or whatever it was you were expecting because obviously there was plenty of Germans around on the ground as well and they got the message that we were sending down which was the letter of the day. Which of course changed by the way at different places. And of course the Germans would try and find out and flash a letter back hoping that it was the same as the one we were expecting and we would drop the goods. But nine times out of ten of course the letter we got flashed back was the right letter. But occasionally there were times when you got a different letter. And of course you knew right away that it was the wrong area and you would definitely not drop any ammunition or anything else, or agents depending what you were dropping that particular day.
BW: And were there occasions when you didn’t get the right signal?
JML: Oh, definitely. You’d get the wrong, the wrong letter of the day, you just ignored it.
BW: And did you experience any ground fire let’s say from the Germans? Were they, did they attempt to shoot at you if they thought you were going to approach?
JML: Very very, very occasionally.
BW: And did you have to fire your guns back at them?
JML: Very seldom. Very, very seldom.
BW: And do you recall what sort of height you would be when this was taking place? Were you at low level? Or were you —
JML: The drop, the drop zones were very, very difficult because as I said nine times out of ten they were in the mountains and depending on the weather etcetera it was very difficult to judge the height of the mountains. And especially in the Pyrenees where most of the agents were in hiding. Very very difficult.
BW: And on the times when you had to drop agents by parachute were you able to speak with them at all?
JML: No, nobody was allowed to talk to any of the agents in the area. In the plane or out the plane. It was taboo. Not allowed.
BW: And so you never knew the names of the people you were —
JML: Definitely not.
BW: You had on board.
JML: No.
BW: I understand some of the agents were occasionally dropped in handcuffs because they had potentially been in prison. One veteran from 624 told me of an incident where that happened. Did that ever take place with you at all? No.
JML: Definitely not. No.
BW: And what were the facilities like at Blida?
JML: The what?
BW: What were the facilities like at Blida?
JML: Oh, quite, quite good. Quite good. Some of them had tents. But we and our crew were very fortunate. We’d quite a good billet. A nice wooden billet.
[pause]
BW: How long were you with 624 Squadron? Do you recall?
JML: I would say three months. Three months. Maybe four.
BW: And you and your crew had been posted to the squadron from your previous unit in England. So none of you had volunteered for special duties.
JML: No. No.
BW: You were just posted as a part of a routine squadron.
JML: Definitely.
BW: Were you given any extra money? Were you paid any extra for these?
JML: No.
BW: Operations. No.
JML: No.
BW: And were you trained or given any briefings on resistance to interrogation if you were forced to land or were captured in France?
JML: No.
BW: After your service with 624 you moved on to another special duties squadron, 148.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Where were they based?
JML: Brindisi.
BW: In Italy.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And you were, where were you flying missions to in in Europe from this base?
JML: All the [unclear] countries, Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece. All around All around the Balkans.
BW: And the same question I suppose. Were you ever able to learn anything of what these operations involved in terms of supplies? The type of supplies you were dropping or agents.
JML: Not really. No. The only time we were advised on ammunition etcetera was special operations to Poland, and Warsaw where the uprising was taking place and they needed, they needed ammunition of any description.
BW: Can you tell me what you understood of the operation that was briefed to you about this? What were you told about flying to Poland on this particular occasion? This would be August 1944.
JML: Yeah. Well, the uprising was taking place but, but they were fighting a losing battle because of the number of Germans that were actually occupying Warsaw at the time. And the [pause] they were very short, the Polish Resistance regarding food and ammunition etcetera. So it was very, very difficult.
BW: And do you recall how many flights you had to make in support of the Poles in Warsaw?
JML: I think we made four trips in all to Poland itself especially during the month of August forty — it would be ’44, would it?
BW: That’s right.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And was it noticeably heavier in the aircraft because of the load you were carrying or —
JML: No. No. Definitely not.
BW: How would they carry out this sort of drop? Were the supplies positioned in the bomb bay?
JML: Yeah. Normal. Yeah. Carried them instead of bombs. And in the interior. The interior of the plane as well. Yeah. It was very, not much room at all in the plane because it was always packed with either kit bags or [pause] well, and it depended how much we could take apart from what was in the bomb bay.
BW: And your pilot was a Lawrence Toft.
JML: Ahum.
BW: What do you recall of him?
JML: Lawrence was a very, very quiet fella. Very quiet. But what he did say it made you think that he knew what he was doing and he had great faith in the rest of his crew because his crew had great faith in him.
BW: And did you feel on these missions that it was any more dangerous than what you would have done flying over Germany?
JML: The trips to Poland, especially to Warsaw were very difficult because we were flying in to a city and flying in very low to make sure that what we were carrying dropped in the right spot because if they weren’t dropped in the right spot the Germans could get to them before the Polish partisans. Very difficult.
BW: And over the city you would be getting signals from the rooftops instead of —
JML: Yeah.
BW: Of the country.
JML: And we were flying very, very, very low. About three hundred feet above the city. And most of the partisans at that particular time in Warsaw were more or less short of ammunition, short of food, more or less short of everything.
BW: And I believe there were enemy troops positioned on the roofs of the city.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Firing at you as you approached. Is that correct?
JML: Oh definitely.
BW: What do you recall of your sight of the city when you were flying over it? What kind of things could you see?
JML: There’s lots of parts as well. The city itself in parts was just a mass of flames. Some parts of it wasn’t but most of it, and there was a lot of activity. You could see the gun flashes and I think most of them were from the Germans fighting the partisans on the ground. There wasn’t much activity in the air. Quite a bit sometimes but mostly it was on the ground.
BW: And was your target Napoleon Square?
JML: That was it, the centre of Poland.
BW: And so the three or four trips that you made were they over a week or over a couple of days or —
JML: A week. Yeah. A week to ten days, definitely. Some, some were right into the heart of Poland. The city itself. A couple of them were on the way in. Where the partisans were doing their best.
BW: Did you see any other supply aircraft at the time?
JML: No.
BW: Were you flying —
JML: No.
BW: With other aircraft from your same squadron?
JML: There were other aircraft supposed to be there like we were there but I never saw any other planes.
BW: And were you ever, was the aircraft you were in ever hit by ground fire at all? Do you recall any of that?
JML: Oh yes. Hit by the flak. But only very light. Yeah.
BW: Did any of it come near you?
JML: No.
BW: And were any of your fellow crewmen hit at all or injured?
JML: No. There was no hits, no injuries fortunately. Yeah.
BW: So you came back from these operations pretty well unscathed.
JML: More or less. Yeah.
BW: And there were no issues with the aircraft when you landed. Nothing had been disrupted.
JML: Oh yeah.
BW: With the undercarriage for example.
JML: Oh yeah. Yeah. There was marks and that on the plane that had been hit by anti-aircraft fire etcetera but nothing, nothing serious.
BW: Could you feel it when the aircraft was hit?
JML: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: And what was that like?
JML: That was only light. Very [pause] how can I can’t describe it? It was very very light anti-aircraft fire.
BW: Presumably like machine guns or rifle fire and things like that. And were you debriefed in the sense were you given information about how successful the drops had been at all?
JML: Oh yes. Yeah. Definitely.
BW: And what sort of things were you told?
JML: As regards the drops etcetera the actual drops that were done were very successful. There was quite, quite a number of aircraft took part in these special drops. I think in one night, I think it was sometime in August, the squadron did lose over a, over the two nights I think they lost four aircraft. Which were either shot down on their way in or shot down on their way back but they lost four.
BW: Did you know any of these crews?
JML: No.
BW: Were you able to befriend or did you get to know any of the other crews while you were stationed at Brindisi?
JML: Not really. We more or less stuck to ourselves, you know. When you’ve got seven of a crew, you know we were all quite friendly.
BW: And were there any other squadrons based with you at Brindisi at the time?
JML: Not, not on Brindisi. There was a [pause] there was a Polish squadron there as well but there wasn’t there wasn’t many of them. Just a few. I can’t remember the number of it but they were based at Brindisi the same as we were.
BW: Were they flying Halifaxes like you?
JML: Yeah.
BW: It must have been quite important for them to be flying supplies into their own, into their own country.
JML: Oh, very much so. Yeah.
BW: After the uprising had finished were you continuing to fly with 148 or did you stop at that point?
JML: No. No. We started, carried on. Back to dropping supplies into Northern Italy where the partisans were and also still supplying Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania which were still occupied by the, by the Germans.
BW: Did you ever land in these places to offload supplies or not?
JML: No. We had, had two or four small aircraft which were stationed at Brindisi and they would. They would fly in to take a couple of secret agents in and land on a bit of land where they could get out and then the small aircraft would take off again and come back to Brindisi.
BW: Were they Lysanders?
JML: Yeah.
BW: The small ones.
JML: That’s the ones.
BW: Did you ever speak with any of the pilots there?
JML: No.
BW: Or crew.
JML: No. No. It was very hush hush.
BW: And once you’d flown these missions and I think it went up until the end of ’44 when the squadron ceased what happened then?
JML: I think just before the end of the, around about Christmas time etcetera we, we were told that we had now done x number of hours which was a tour of operations completed and we as a crew we were being stood down. And we were being sent down to Cairo for a rest period.
BW: How long were you there? In Cairo? Do you know?
JML: Oh, I’ve no idea. Probably a couple of months or so, I think.
BW: What are your memories of your time with the squadron in 1944 and in Cairo when you were off duty?
JML: Yeah. There was four of the crew were still together and myself, Davy Lambert, Mickey Neville and Larry Toft. We, we four were together in Cairo. What as I say happened to the other, the other three I don’t really know.
BW: Because your other three were Canadians, weren’t they? You had Flight Sergeant Toft who was your pilot.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Flight Sergeant Johnstone.
JML: Yeah. He was a Scotsman. Yeah.
BW: Sergeant Jones. Tommy Jones —
JML: Yeah.
BW: Was Canadian. Sergeant George Messenger.
JML: He was a, yeah engineer.
BW: And as you say Sergeant Mickey Neville and —
JML: Davy Lambert.
BW: Davy Lambert.
JML: Jock Johnson, the Scotsman he’s, he stopped with the squadron. Why I don’t know but Jock stopped there. And I’m trying to think what [pause] oh, and George Messenger. He stopped with the squadron. That’s the two isn’t it? They would have stopped with the squadron but they wouldn’t be allowed to fly for a certain amount of time because they’d to have what they called a rest. A rest before they started on their second tour. But other than that I lost. I lost. What Jock Johnston or what George Messenger did I’ve no idea. We other four were kept at Cairo for quite some time. And then Lawrence, the pilot was told that he was going to start flying Dakotas. So we didn’t really know whether he was very happy about it but that’s, that left three of us. And we three were posted home. We had to stop in Cairo ‘til we got information to pick up a ship and prepare to, prepare to sail home.
BW: And would that be 1945 when you —
JML: ’44. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. That would be January/February. That’s it, yeah. Definitely.
BW: And do you recall where you were sent to? Where you arrived back in the UK?
JML: I think we landed at Liverpool. Definitely.
BW: And from there I understand you were posted to Kirkham camp near Blackpool.
JML: That’s right. Eventually. Yeah.
BW: And what happened while you were there?
JML: Just, that was, that was the, while we were there the war finished completely. And it became a demob centre.
BW: And you stayed in Lancashire because you met a young woman.
JML: Stayed there awaiting to get demobbed. Yeah.
BW: But you then met a young woman.
JML: Yeah. Aye. Margaret. Yeah.
BW: And so your relationship with her continued and you were married.
JML: Yeah.
BW: But only after a very short time. How long?
JML: I don’t know. Probably six months or something like that. Time I was there we got married. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: And you didn’t fancy staying with the RAF.
JML: No.
BW: And what, when you left did you go on to do then?
JML: I worked for the — what did that come under?
BW: Were you a salesman?
JML: Yeah. I was a salesman but I’m trying to think what I did. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, I became a salesman. I worked for the Burton Group. That’s the best way to put it down. As a salesman.
BW: And did you ever go back to Scotland? Did you ever consider resettling to Scotland?
JML: No. No.
BW: And so you’ve lived and worked in the Blackpool and Preston area for the rest of you time after the war.
JML: Yeah. Until retiring. Until retiring. Yeah. Definitely.
BW: And do you still attend the reunions for your squadron? Do you meet up with your friends?
JML: Aye, we have done until the last twelve months or so but I’m afraid that we’re only got down to two or three. That’s all. They’re the ones that used to go to [pause] what’s it called? The aerodrome.
BW: Elvington? Elvington?
JML: No.
BW: Was it an airfield near here?
JML: No. I’m talking about —
BW: Or the Arboretum.
JML: Not the Arboretum. No. Bloody hell, it’s wild, deary, deary dear. Down near, down near Wolverhampton that’s still going. What’s that big aerodrome?
BW: Cosford. Cosford?
JML: No.
BW: Near Wolverhampton. No.
JML: No. It’s still going there. The aerodrome’s still going. They all land there now. Everything lands there. That’s silly that I can’t remember that. Deary dear.
[recording paused]
JML: Did we say Brize Norton before?
BW: Yeah. At Brize Norton.
JML: Their number is 4624 so they adopted us.
BW: I see.
JML: And the [pause] and they used to go there every twelve months for a reunion.
BW: Until they decided it was —
JML: Well, it got —
BW: Elevated to an operational base and higher security status so it prevented you going.
JML: Stopped us going. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Right.
JML: And your latest award was the Legion d’Honneur. Is that correct? You received the medal from France.
BW: Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh aye. Yeah. That’s on there somewhere.
JML: When did you receive that. Was it last year?
BW: I got it through the post but you could have it presented so when we ended the trip to [pause] oh bloody hell.
Other: The Arboretum.
JML: What’s it called? The bloody place where we got it.
Other: The Arboretum.
BW: Where?
Other: The Arboretum.
JML: The Arboretum. Aye. Yeah.
BW: So you had a little presentation while you were there.
JML: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Good.
JML: There was only two of us. You could have it presented or you could have it sent. But Joe, you know, this [unclear] it was his idea that while we were going to the Arboretum that we would have it done then but you didn’t need to do that. You’d just said you’d have it like and you’d get it. The only one I’ve spoken to that got his medal was Stanley. He lives right down south. He was a dispatcher as well you know and he had his presented by the local [pause]
BW: And was he on your squadron as well?
JML: Oh aye.
BW: But you never met him while you were serving in Italy or Algeria.
JML: No. I didn’t know him. No.
BW: Ok. That’s all the questions I have for you Jim. So, thank you very much for your time.
JML: It’s alright.
BW: For your recollections.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Very much appreciated.
JML: We had a good trip to France didn’t we?
Other: Yes. We did. Yeah.
JML: Bob and I and Margaret.
Other: Yeah. Yeah.
JML: Somebody wrote, it must have been some paper. I don’t know which one it was. Wanted to meet somebody from the RAF and that that had done a drop in this place in France. Somebody from, was an ex, I think it was an ex-RAF man himself. Buck. A Frenchman of course. So, Stanley, the one I was talking about, the wing commander’s wife of what do they call it, squadron.
Other: [unclear]
JML: At Blida, somehow or other got in touch with us. The person who had put this advert on to me. Anyway, she and her husband and the one I just mentioned, Stanley were trying to find out who actually made the, made the drop. Anyway, we couldn’t find out because as we said it was top secret unless you knew the special names and that etcetera. But anyway they decided to go so Bob and I and Margaret plus Sally Ann and her husband and Stanley went to France to this village.
Other: Sigoyer, it was called.
JML: Sigoyer, that’s right love, you know. It was unbelievable. You’d thought we’d won the war, won the war on our own wouldn’t you. The way they looked after us.
Other: Yeah. They did very good.
JML: It was brilliant. That was three years ago now since we been there.
Other: Maybe more. Four now.
JML: Pardon?
Other: Maybe four.
JML: Maybe four. Yeah.
Other: They took us they took you to one of the canisters that had been dropped.
JML: Oh, aye. Definitely. Yeah.
Other: To the Resistance.
JML: Yeah. It was, it was a good trip was that. Yeah.
Other: The mayor of Gap and all the fire, firemen and all the services from the, from the town and the village. All came out and sang and they had a commemorative service.
JML: Took us in a truck. Another truck.
Other: [unclear]
JML: Another truck or what they called it, didn’t they? Up the mountain.
Other: Yeah.
JML: To where the actual drop was done.
Other: Yeah.
JML: Where the men used to hide. Yeah. It was very interesting.
BW: I bet you’d have rather been in the aircraft though than on the ground with the Resistance though, wouldn’t you?
JML: Oh. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. The, the girl that received the message, this, talking 1943 probably ‘43 maybe ’44. The BBC used to send messages out in code, and this woman who was the owner of the hotel, wasn’t she love? The daughter it was. My age now. But when she was, I think she was either fourteen, fifteen she picked the message up on the BBC that there was going to be a drop. It’s all in code you see. A certain a night, you know. So she was there, this lady. Told us all about it, didn’t she? Can’t remember what the code was. It doesn’t matter.
Other: I think it was something like the leg has fallen off the chair.
JML: Oh, that was it. Aye. It was code anyway.
Other: Something like that.
JML: Yeah. And it was ready for picking up or something like that. That was the code for that area.
Other: It’s a bit like something off, “Allo. Allo.”
JML: Yeah.
BW: Do you recall the lady’s name?
JML: Oh, no. No. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: So that’s, that would be a very unique experience to have met somebody who you dropped supplies to.
JML: Oh aye. I mean they took us in this four wheeled drive thing up the mountain as far as you could go. We had to walk the rest of the way and showed us exactly where the drop was made. And we were high up of course but in the valley below the mountain there were some caves and that’s where all the stuff was hidden away from the Germans. It was very interesting. Really interesting. Yeah.
BW: And they managed to survive in conditions like that?
JML: Yeah.
BW: Under occupation.
JML: Yeah. You’d have thought we won the war on our own the way they treated us. They were fantastic. Bob and Margaret still keep in touch with the school teacher. Get a card from her every now and again. Yeah. Oh, they really made a right good do of it.
BW: Brilliant.
JML: But the [pause] when we went to the France as a group, the special duties, they made a big song and dance about it. It was good. It was quite a [pause] there must have been about a dozen. A dozen or more went on the thing, but Brize Norton, the aerodrome, they supplied a guard of honour. Quite a, quite a guard of honour. And that was, that was well, the village itself were alright. They gave us all a medal of some description. I don’t know what it was. From the village. And we got the — what do you call it?
Other: Freedom of the town.
JML: Freedom of the town as well, you know. Gave us a medal for the freedom of the town. I’d like, I’d like to have gone back there as well but I’m getting too old for that sort of thing. Travelling. Old age catches up. Yeah.
BW: Right. As, I say that’s, that’s all the questions I have for you, Jim. So thank you very much again for your time.
JML: I’m sorry I couldn’t find —
BW: That’s alright.
JML: More of the stuff I thought I’d kept for you to see.
BW: That’s alright. Thank you.
[recording paused]
JML: And we just got on, we got on the river. And we just flew low following the river. We knew the river went into Warsaw after we’d made our way across [pause] what are the bloody mountains called? On the way in to Warsaw. After that it was very very, well, all hilly and that but somebody told us, one of the Warsaw blokes said, ‘Just get as low as you can on the river itself,’ which is the Vistula, ‘And that will take you right into the heart of Warsaw.’ So, well Laurie the pilot, as soon as we had crossed the mountains just put the nose down and got as low as he could and followed the river right into the heart of Warsaw. Yeah.
BW: So this was how you found the target?
JML: Yeah.
BW: I think, are they the Tatra Mountains because one of them, are they the Tatra Mountains in Poland. I think. But anyway, you come over the mountains, drop the nose, drop the aircraft down to presumably —
JML: River height.
BW: Fifty or a hundred or less.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And then after a certain distance because of course you’re following the river a little bit you see the outskirts of the town and you count the first of a series of bridges up the river.
JML: That was us. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Do you recall how many bridges? Was it three? Four?
JML: I think it was the third bridge but I’m not very sure you know. Yeah.
BW: Find the third bridge and turn left.
JML: And then that was the heart. That was the heart of the city. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: So, you, as the pilot was flying in obviously straight and level over the river he’s going to have to climb to make the turn over the, over the bridge. Otherwise he’s going to dip the wing into the river, isn’t he? So —
JML: Yeah. Well, what Lawrence did he, he knew what he had to do his job so what he did instead of dropping the parcels etcetera, etcetera, etcetera he didn’t. He carried on a bit further up the river because he knew where his target was. And when he turned around to drop the stuff in he knew then, what he told us about, he was on his way home. If he dropped the things on his way in it would have meant he would have to turn and then turn around and head for home. But Lawrence didn’t. He carried on, came back to the target area, flew over the target area, dropped what he had to do and he was on his way home then and I could, that’s what I said, I’m in, I’m in the rear turret as we were leaving and it was just a mass of flames. The city itself. I could just see it, you know. Yeah. But that’s what he did and that was, that was why we got away with it, you know because a lot of them got, when they got in got shot down unfortunately over the target area.
BW: So this is because the Germans or even the let’s say pro-German forces and possibly even the Russians knew which route the supply aircraft would come in.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And so Lawrie was avoiding that.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Flying further up the river.
JML: Just went straight on. Yeah.
BW: Made the turn over the city.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Instead of over the river.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And came straight over the target, made the drop and was straight out.
JML: On his way out.
BW: As opposed to having to turn over the target.
JML: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: That’s a smart move.
JML: It was a smart move. Definitely. Yeah. But there was a lot of politics involved in that part. The story goes that, well it’s in writing that Stalin wouldn’t allow the RAF planes to land in Russia. So whether that’s right or not I don’t know but that’s the story. That’s the story anyway and that’s why they lost so many bloody aircraft. Instead of being able to just go in, drop the bombs, turn into Russia and drop. Go on Margaret.
BW: And that was the profile you flew each time on those drops was instead of following the expected route you fly further up the river and make the turn later.
JML: That’s what Lawrence did, anyway. Yeah [pause] She’s off again. Aye.
BW: And even though it was at night you were able to see vividly the flames and flashes over the city.
JML: Terrible. Yeah. Yeah. Terrible. Well, we were flying that low, you know. I mean in Bomber Command you’re twenty thousand feet in the air. Fifteen thousand feet in the air. We were just above the drop. I think it was three hundred feet. I think it was. Either three hundred or four hundred feet and then we dropped the, dropped the stuff. Yeah.
BW: Right. 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 James McKenzie Leith
Creator
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Brian Wright
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
2017-01-12
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.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALeithJM170112
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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02:11:41 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
James McKenzie Leith was a swimming instructor before he joined the RAF. He trained as a gunner and was posted to 429 Squadron at RAF Leeming. On their first operation their aeroplane was damaged and they attempted an emergency landing but this was interrupted and they ditched in the sea. James deployed the dinghy and directed the crew to safety. He became a member of the Goldfish Club. His second pilot went on his second dickie trip and was killed in action. They got another new pilot and were deployed to 624 Squadron on Special Duties and then on 148 Squadron also on Special Duties dropping supplies and agents into occupied areas. When dropping supplies during the Warsaw Uprising James had a very close view of the burning city.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Algeria
Egypt
France
Great Britain
Italy
Poland
North Africa
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Algeria--Blida
Egypt--Cairo
England--Yorkshire
Italy--Brindisi
Poland--Warsaw
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1942
1943-11-27
1944
1945-08
1944-09
1945
148 Squadron
429 Squadron
624 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
ditching
Goldfish Club
Halifax
RAF Dishforth
RAF Leeming
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Stormy Down
Resistance
training
Warsaw airlift (4 August - 28 September 1944)
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/302/11158/PLambAM1509.2.jpg
31ffd0ebb2c172a89ffe42acd1b2e422
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/302/11158/ALambA170912.1.mp3
4eceb1fe534b4e8d1104247955ad9646
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
Lamb, Alexander
Alexander McPherson Lamb
Alexander M Lamb
Alexander Lamb
A M Lamb
A Lamb
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. An oral history interview with Alexander McPherson Lamb (b. 1925, 1827673 Royal Air Force), his decorations, album and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 15 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Alexander Lamb and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-25
2017-08-16
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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Lamb
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AL: Start when you want of course.
JS: Yeah.
[pause]
AL: That’s quite incredible. The modern. I’m not, I was never dragged into the twenty first century unfortunately.
JS: Ok. Right. So, if I can just start. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jim Sheach. The interviewee is Alistair Lamb. The interview is taking place at Alistair’s home [buzz] on the 12th of September 2017. Alistair, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. Can you tell me a little about your life before the war?
AL: Well, I was born in the house I live in just now. I went to the local school. I left the school at fourteen as we all did in those days. I became a boy messenger in the War Department. The war of course was on and it was a case of just delivering correspondence around the various army units or army offices in the area. I was always interested in aircraft. My father died in ’41. My mother and I were still here at that time. As I say I was born in this house. Then I got a clerical position in the Civil Service. In the War Department. And then I decided I would have to do something. I didn’t want the army although my father was a regular army man. I went and volunteered for air crew. At least I went for an aircrew interview anyway and I was accepted which with all the usual rigmarole in Edinburgh up at, where was it now? I forget now. In Edinburgh where you had your RAF medical and all the rest of it and, ‘We’ll send for you.’ And shortly after that I was sent for and that’s where I joined the RAF. That would be when, I’m not, I’m not sure of the date, sort of thing. I think it would be sometime 1944 I think it would be I joined up. I can ascertain the details. And from then on it was a case of progression. I just went down there. I volunteered for aircrew. As you know you had to be a volunteer to be aircrew anyway. I didn’t think I was clever enough to be a pilot so I volunteered to be an air gunner. And that’s what I started off and finished up as an air gunner.
JS: Why did you, what, what took you to, to volunteering to be aircrew rather than something else?
AL: Well, I was mad keen on aeroplanes. Always had been. I used to build model aircraft as a young lad. And I didn’t want the army for some strange reason. I wanted to fly. So that’s why I volunteered for aircrew.
JS: So which, which squadron were you in?
AL: 15. It was a peacetime squadron. It had been a pre-war peacetime squadron. When I first started off I went to London to Aircrew Reception Centre at St John’s Cricket Ground. St John’s Wood. We stayed in St John’s Cricket Ground. Never been fussed in my life but some of the lads were so elated to be able to get into Lord’s. We were there about a fortnight to three weeks. We went from there to RAF Bridgnorth to do initial RAF training. Bridgnorth. Did our basic ground training at RAF station at Bridgnorth. If you passed the various tests then what you had you were then selected. You were then said, ‘Right. You’ll be aircrew and as an air gunner.’ Came home on leave and went back to RAF Stormy Down in Wales where I did my initial gunnery training. Stormy Down in Wales. I think I was four weeks, five. Three weeks. I can’t remember. You’ll see in my logbook. We left there and went to, we got our wings there. Our half wing there and our tapes. I came home on leave and I was posted then to 14 OTU Market Harborough for flying Wellingtons and to crew up. I don’t know if, do you know about the crewing position do you? There was no compunction of who you flew with. A very strange thing. The first time, when you went to what was called an Operational Training Unit you were all mixtures maxtures and you were given a fortnight to get together and at the end of the fortnight you did some ground training. Basic ground training. You were air crew by this time. You did some basic ground training and at the end of a fortnight you were sent in to a huge hangar. You were asked to crew up. You’d met most of the people that you crewed up with. Of course, all the usual rigmarole try and get a warrant officer pilot because he’s got a lot of flying hours and this sort of thing, you know. All these stories they were going about. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. The first chap I met at OTU was a chap from Edinburgh. Jock Bathgate, who was a gunner. So we crewed up straight away Jock and I. He was more, he went about with the wireless op. And that was the three of us went together. I didn’t do much in those days with them. They crewed up then and we went into a huge hangar at the end and the chief flying instructor stood up and said, ‘Are you all crewed up?’ We were all crewed up. ‘Right. That’s how you’ll start your training.’ We, and we were unfortunate in as much as that we had two navigators, one after the other who failed and didn’t pass out. They didn’t, they’d actually became navigators but that was as far as they went. They failed their OTU. They just couldn’t cope. I don’t remember all the story. And we kept piling hours up in Wellingtons and thought we’ll end up in the Far East if this goes on [laughs] And we then eventually had a skipper who was a warrant officer as I said and he was posted away so we were left without a pilot. So we were left without. And at that time this chap arrived. A sergeant from the French Air Force, Jack Darlow who had been, that’s another story but it doesn’t matter. He had been in the French Air Force and the usual way the wheels work what’s this chap with an English name doing in the French Air Force? He was re-mustered and we got him as a pilot and that’s how we more or less settled down after that. We lost two navigators while Jack was there. Just couldn’t cope. And then we crewed up and flew as a crew and flew in Wellingtons at OTU, 14 OTU Market Harborough. We passed out from there and then various leaves and what not we then went to [pause] where was it? 16, I can’t. 15? Heavy Conversion Unit anyway. And we were one of the few crews that were on Stirlings at the Conversion Unit. We went on to Stirlings in the Conversion Unit. We’d had, I think twenty one hours or something. I can’t remember. You need to ascertain from my logbook, on Stirlings which I liked very much actually. We went from there on to Lancs. I can’t remember the, you’ll get it in my logbook there. Then we crewed up and went on Lancs and that’s where we did our training on Lancs. We finished off there. We were at Wigsley. We had one or two scares at Wigsley. We were, intruders were coming across by that time. We were never affected much. They strafed the ‘drome once or twice at night. We then went from there. We were posted to 15 Squadron at Mildenhall in Suffolk. I think we went there, in March ’45 I think we’d be by that time. March ’45. And that’s where I finished up from Mildenhall in Suffolk and I stayed at Mildenhall and stayed with 15 Squadron. After a while we moved to Wyton and I still stayed with them. And I finished up, in ’47 it would be. Still had been at 15 Squadron all the time. The crews all broke up of course as you understand. The war finished and crews were getting broken up and sent over and things changed in the Air Force quite a bit then.
JS: So did you have a choice to stay on longer if crews were getting broken up and demobbed or —
AL: Some people were. I could if I’d wanted. I was an air gunnery instructor by this time. I could have stayed on. But I had a job in the Civil Service to come back to. My mother was herself at home and I thought well in four years time there’ll not be any air gunners and unless I could stay on flying I wasn’t going to stay in the air force. And I decided then when my demob group came to come out. A big drawback. A big drawback, you know. A big difference.
JS: Yeah. How did you get on with your crew?
AL: Very much indeed. They were a great crew. Very. I kept up with most of them for years after the war. The navi, I was the best man at the navigator’s wedding. I used to go to Edinburgh to visit the mid-upper. My skipper’s been across here with his family. We’re Just away this year to see most of his family. I’ve been out to Australia to meet him. The bomb aimer I never kept up with very much. Although we were in the same crew and that. The wireless operator, we kept very much with him. The rest of the crew more or less we went about together. Just, you either, you lose, you do lose contact. You did you know. I didn’t care much for them the wireless operator so I didn’t. He, he was brought into the crew by the other gunner actually, you know, ‘We’ll fly with you,’ sort of style. If there’s a lot of that doesn’t interest you just edit it out or take it out.
JS: No. Fine. Is there, is there a memorable operation you could talk about?
AL: Oh. I’m no hero. I think 15 Squadron did the last, Bomber Command did the last thousand bomber raid. We didn’t know at the time but there was, I’ve got it in my book, nine hundred aircraft I think was involved. That was the last thousand bomber raid, I think of the war. Most memorable would be supply dropping to the Dutch. We did three trips supply dropping to the Dutch. That’s one of the pictures up there. I think that’s about all really. The usual sort of run of the mill operational sorties. Nothing I could remember that was anything different from anything else, you know.
JS: So, so what happened on the, the Dutch supply one?
AL: Well, I don’t know if the history is known very well but evidently the Germans became very nasty and said, right, we’re going to do this and they cut off all the food supplies. The Dutch were actually starving. This would be in April. April. The end of April ’45. And the RAF said, ‘Well, we’ll supply you.’ The Americans did I think. They called it Chowhound or something. We called it Operation Manna. Food from heaven. And we did three trips dropping food supplies to the Dutch and the Germans were told that we were coming anyway and be it on their head if anything happened. We were never fired upon. I don’t know. Some crews said they were fired upon but we were certainly never fired upon. We were down to fifty feet most of the time dropping the supplies. I can tell you from my logbook. I think we did three. We did Valkyrie. I can’t remember the names. There were three pre stations we went to drop food supplies to the Dutch. After that we brought liberated prisoners of war back. Flew them home too. And then the war ended and 15, being a peacetime squadron we weren’t broken up. We stayed as a squadron. The crews all changed of course. If I’m boring you to tears stop me please. Then we said, oh we did the drop trials after the war. We got 617 aircraft with the twenty two thousand pounders. We did drop the trials with them. And then we had 617 aircraft up until I was demobbed. That’s no front turret, no top turret and the bomb bays all cut away. You’ll see pictures in my book over there. Then the crews broke up. Demob came along. You all had a demob group as you know. They asked people to stay on. I think I stayed on a little longer because I was gunnery leader by that time although I wasn’t commissioned. I was a warrant officer on the squadron. And then we flew with anybody more or less after that. A lot of pay, officers wanted to stay back on and they came back in again and the crews all mixed up and it was a different, a different attitude toward life at all altogether you know. You never knew. You didn’t really fly. I flew with Squadron Leader Baker double DSO double DFC. He had been a CO of, I forget the [unclear] of a squadron down south and he stayed on. Tubby Baker. I got on well with Tubby. He was a great guy. With different navigators. With different people in the crew. We’d only one gunner of course. We only had one tail one. We only had the tail turret at that time. And that was more or less just we did a lot of local flying. A lot of flying after the war. Did a lot of local flying. We did drop trials. We did all the drop trials on the U-boat pens. Shipping strikes after the war to find out what damage the bombs and things were doing. So it was all just a matter of just we were flying mostly every day.
JS: So, that was, that was live dropping you were doing on —
AL: Yeah.
JS: On old U-boat pens.
AL: That’s correct. We were dropping dummy four thousand pounders and I can’t remember, I can’t remember, I don’t know I think we dropped — I can’t remember, not twenty two thousand, but they were filled with sand to see what damage they would do. I can try to remember. They did, we did all the drop trials off ships. There was a ship moored in Portsmouth area and we bombed the ship with five hundred pounders and thousand pounders filled with sand. The idea being that they didn’t know at that particular time if an aircraft flying at fifteen thousand feet dropping a hundred pound, or a thousand pound bomb going into a ship what damage it would do. So we dropped these bombs until we actually hit the ship and then we went then, the Navy went aboard and put the equivalent amount of charge where that bomb had landed. Someone should have put where it landed and exploded it from there so they could tell an aircraft flying at fifteen thousand feet dropping a thousand pound bomb on a ship would do X amount of damage. I mean they knew this but this was all actual practice for them, you know, thing for them. So we did quite a bit of that. Dropping, [pause] U-boat pens we were dropping the ten thousand pounders and twelve thousand pounders on the U-boat pens but they weren’t filled. They were filled with sand. They, to see what penetration they would do. And that’s about, really all I can remember of that.
JS: So instead of dropping real bombs you actually dropped something the equivalent weight.
AL: That’s right.
JS: And then you put the charge where they ended up.
AL: Yeah. In the ship.
JS: So it was in effect the same thing.
AL: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
JS: But rather than —
AL: Basically, I can’t remember the full details. As you can imagine it was a long time ago. I think that was basically the idea. We never actually got, we never got the result of what happened. You know what I mean? You’re taxing my memory now.
JS: No. No. You’re doing, no you’re doing really good. You’re doing really good. Don’t worry about that.
AL: I don’t want to line shoot or anything. It’s very difficult because you can’t line shoot people that are in the forces. They know right away what you’re on about. No. No. No. No.
JS: So —
AL: I was fortunate I did a lot of that. As I said to you I was very fortunate to be able to do all that.
JS: Yeah. Yeah. So having flown Wellingtons, Stirlings.
AL: Stirlings.
JS: And Lancasters.
AL: And Lincolns.
JS: And Lincolns.
AL: For our crimes [laughs] they were a heap of junk.
JS: What were the, what were the plusses and minuses between them all?
AL: Oh, I think without a doubt the Lanc was the best aeroplane. There’s no doubt about that. But I liked a Stirling. I used to claim extra flying time because [laughs] [unclear] kids because we were airborne before everybody else. The only thing that brought it home to ourself is, it’s an aside, I don’t know if it’s worthwhile recording this but anyway. You’re up, by the time I started flying on ops there were so many aircraft that you more or less had your own aeroplane. So I mean you flew in the one aeroplane, your own aeroplane most of the time. Other people used it but you always, nearly always flew your own aircraft. And ours was Z-Zebra. You were always told there would be ops on. Not where you were going. You were told you were flying tomorrow. That was it. You was told that. And when we went out to detail I said to skipper, ‘Why are we not in our own aeroplane?’ I said, ‘I’ve been out here with the nav, with the wireless op, with the other gunner cleaning the Perspex.’ We used to, we used to clean our own Perspex. You did it where you went. You know. Anyway, we got to know the ground crew very well. I said, ‘Why are we not in our own aircraft? We should be in Zebra.’ Which was our aircraft. ‘Oh, that’s alright. Don’t worry. I’ll, I’ll tell the ground. I’ll tell them. I will.’ When we went out it was a new crew was flying in Willie. And we said, ‘No. No. We’ll go,’ so when the WAAF dropped us, we were, we were in buses to the aircraft. He said, ‘We’ll just walk across the road,’ he said, ‘And you go to Willie.’ So we went in our own aeroplane. And in those days you flew in tight formations when you got airborne. So the take-offs were fairly tight together so you could keep the flying times the same and you all formated up. You couldn’t taxi Mildenhall on the grass with a bomb load because it was boggy ground. You had to stay on the peri track. So we were in our own aircraft — Z -Zebra, and we took off more or less three together down the runway. And as we took down the runway you used to put the turret on the beam. The story was so it was in case the guns would fire. That was the story. Anyway, put the turret on the beam and as we got airborne it was all very quick and there was not much talking down and we were so busy up front you didn’t talk very much unless [unclear]. I saw Willie feather an engine. And as we climbed away of course we lost track of what was happening we found away, but there was Mosquitoes, I think, I may be wrong. I can’t remember. I think they was, they were dropping four thousand pounder markers. I can’t remember. I maybe thought, maybe I’ve got confused. Anyway, as we pulled away there was this ginormous explosion and as we got airborne, as we were forming up there was an aircraft, and Willie was missing from our three. Thought no more about it. Just that was something had happened. That must be due to the fact, it doesn’t matter anyway. And what we discovered when we came back of course we were logged to fly in Willie. The ground crew were, ‘Christ, Willie’s been shot down. Willie had blown up on take-off. I don’t know the whole story. There was rumours and rumours and rumours. But as far as I can remember they lost an engine on take-off on Willie. Now, with three engines and a full bomb load and fuel you could get airborne. You could get airborne. There’s no doubt about that if you had enough power to get airborne. But I think somebody said they feathered another engine. I don’t know. I can’t honestly remember the details at the time but they went in, in near Barton Wood I think they went in. But there was a village quite near. They blew up. The aircraft blew up and they were all killed. That’s the only sort of thing that brings it home to you. You remember it could have happened to you. It might not have happened to us, I don’t know. But at that, that, that’s what, that’s the only sort of real thing I really you know. Didn’t talk much about it at the time.
JS: Yeah.
AL: I must admit. It’s not really great but you were just asking me so I’m telling you. It’s not worth recording things like that, you know.
JS: I’ve heard stories about difficulties with the Perspex and the turrets and being able to see through it and whatever and stories about the people took the Perspex out of the turrets as well.
AL: We had moved the turret. We had the Perspex taken out of the tail turret. We had the Perspex taken out of the tail turret. At the back. At the front. The whole panel. That all came out. It wasn’t much difference to the coldness anyway. We still had the side Perspex in. Somewhere else you see that a dot on the Perspex could be an aeroplane. You didn’t know so you had to try and keep the thing down you know. That’s why you’d get the, the Perspex cleaning kit. You were usually were out cleaning. It definitely, it varied. That wasn’t part of your duties but if you weren’t flying you went out and did that, you know. If you weren’t flying you see you went back to the crew’s centre and just wait to see what was happening next. It’s difficult to really try and remember clearly. You know.
JS: No, that’s, no. That’s fine.
AL: It’s a long long time ago you’ve got to say.
JS: That’s fine. You mentioned that you, that you got on well with the ground crew.
AL: Aye. Aye.
JS: So was that the same ground, you said if it was your crew and it was your aeroplane.
AL: Aye.
JS: Was that in effect the same ground crew that you saw.
AL: Yeah. Well, of course there might be two people or three people share an aircraft. I don’t remember that. But I know we knew the ground crew quite well. Aye. Aye. Aye. With some, most of, most of the ground crew were flight sergeants and sergeants were peacetime regulars. Not them all but a lot of them were. We, our flight sergeant was a, had been a peacetime regular anyway, you know. And I don’t know what he was but that’s what he was. And we knew the ground crew quite well. Chatted away to them. We knew them. They were very good.
[pause]
JS: So when it came up to, you said you stayed on after hostilities ended.
AL: Aye.
JS: So do you want to tell me a wee bit about what brought you to leaving the RAF then and just what you, what you did after the war?
AL: Well, I left the RAF because I had a job to come home to in the Civil Service. Although I wasn’t established by that time. And also the fact that my mother was herself at home. There seemed to be, there was talk about decanting at that time. I think they were trying to, people had a big house, asked you to go in to a smaller. I can’t remember. This was a sort of thing in the back of my mind. Is that still being recorded? No. No. This was still in the back of my mind. Anyway, I decided to come out. A big drop in wages. A big drop completely. I was a warrant officer by that time. I was on, what was I on? Twelve and six a day, I think. All the different wages you see. Pilots, navigators and bomb aimers as warrant officers they would be on twenty one bob a day. Gunners were poorly paid. We were on, I would be on twelve. I was on twelve and six a day at that time. Anyway, came out and went back to Civil Service. The War Department. And you were told more or less you’ll have to sit the Civil Service exam if you want to stay in the Civil Service. And I wasn’t very bright at school. I mean I was an average person. I wasn’t an academic and I had to sit the Civil Service exam at Stirling Castle [laughs] A whole crowd of us went there. And a lot of [unclear] out. It was the time of all the trouble out in India too. You know about that was ’46 ’47 when India were all breaking up. One of the questions was, “Write all you know about India.” The Indian conflict. And I said to this guy, coming to the car I said, ‘How did you get on?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘All I know about India was Bengal matches and Bengal tigers.’ Well, you see, I mean [laughs] that was all. Anyway, believe it or not I passed the Civil Service exam. And at that time it was a general exam. You weren’t sitting for any particular thing. And I was posted to Social Security. What was it called in those days? Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance I think it was called and being, and being in that as a, when I came out of the Air Force as a non-established civil servant. I was, it was the War Department. When I went in I joined in the War Department. When I went in, ‘You’d better transfer over because the War Department is shutting down.’ I went into what they called the Department of Pensions and National Insurance. And I was there as a junior, as a clerk by at that time and when I passed the Civil Service exam I went back in to that but they were posting people all over and in those days they weren’t very kind to you. You’re posted to so and so. If you don’t want to go you’ll just have to pack it in. So I was posted to Elgin. My mother was at home herself and I thought well this is not much good at all. How can I manage to keep a house going? One thing. Anyway, to cut a long story short I went to Elgin and that was my first established post in the Civil Service was Elgin. And, and then I was able to get a compassionate posting or a transfer posting nearer to home. And the nearest I could get was Alloa and I went to Alloa. And I was in Alloa for ten years. And then a promotion. I was fortunate enough to get Stirling. I came back to Stirling and sat, went on interview boards of course by that time and I was lucky enough to get to stay in Stirling and promotion came along in Stirling. One chap I knew he went to [pause ] I forget where he went to. Grangemouth. I can’t remember. And I was lucky enough to have his post as an EO in Stirling. And I stayed in Stirling until, until I came out which was quite fortunate.
JS: That’s good. That’s good. You, when you, after the war how, how had you felt as a Bomber Command veteran you were treated? What was the feeling towards Bomber Command when you came out at the end of the war?
AL: I think it was alright. I think they were quite pleased to know you’d been an air gunner and all the rest of it. And of course there was the usual sorry about air gunners lasted two days at the time. That was a great rumour, you know. I think everyone was quite ok, I think. Aye. I don’t, I don’t think there was no, no. Everybody was sort of talking at that time about being in the forces and I’d been in the forces. You met everybody — Army, Navy, Air Force you know and you mingled with your work colleagues, two or three work colleagues what had been in the forces with me as well you see. So no. I think you settled in not too bad. It took a while to settle in, you see. You got a little money. I couldn’t afford a car, or a bike or anything. A push bike was about as much as you could afford. You know. It was good to be home of course. That was the point. My mother, being a widow of course you know. And a very — this shouldn’t be recording us. No. I hope not [laughs]
JS: Yeah. We’re still going.
AL: Oh, well.
JS: Shall I stop?
AL: Stop it. I’ll tell you some other things.
JS: That’s fine. Just, just hang on a second.
AL: To fill you in for your own background information.
JS: Let me just stop this.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Alexander Lamb. Two
Creator
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James Sheach
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-09-12
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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
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ALambA170912, PLambAM1509
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Pending review
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00:28:58 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
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Alexander Lamb left school in Edinburgh and became a messenger for the War Department. He then took a clerical post with the Department before reaching the age to volunteer for the RAF. He trained as an air gunner and was posted to RAF Mildenhall before moving with the squadron to RAF Wyton. Their aircraft was Z-Zebra and one day he heard that they were to fly in W-Willie. He protested and wanted to fly in their usual aircraft. They did fly in Z-Zebra and on that operation W-Willie crashed on take-off.
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Julie Williams
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Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Suffolk
14 OTU
15 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
crash
crewing up
ground crew
Lancaster
Lincoln
military ethos
military service conditions
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Wigsley
RAF Wyton
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/903/11143/PJonesMH1602.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/903/11143/AJonesMH160422.1.mp3
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Jones, Mervyn
Mervyn Henry Jones
M H Jones
Description
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An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Mervyn Jones (1600670, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 106 and 218 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-04-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Jones, MH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Mervyn Jones. The interview is taking place at Mr Jones’ home in Farnham in Surrey on Friday the 22nd of April 2016. Ok. Mr Jones if we could start off with you saying a bit about your early life.
MJ: I was born in Abercynon. A small mining village at the junction of the Aberdare and Merthyr valleys. My father was a miner. Like most miners in those days there was very little money available and we were quite poor but we lived and enjoyed ourselves. My father wasn’t very keen on seeing his children being brought up in a mining village. First of all he went to Burnham on Sea or Highbridge to work on the farm there but decided that farming was not going to be very much better than mining from his children’s point of view. So he was given a lift whilst he was aiming to go to Poplar where he was told there was a lot of work. He got as far as Uxbridge and when he asked for directions to Poplar he was, he was then asked, ‘What are you going up there for?’ He said, ‘Work.’ And the individual he was talking to said, ‘Well, don’t go there. Go to Slough.’ So, he said, ‘Never heard of the place. Where is it?’ So, they told him and he and the friend he was with they went to Slough and spent the, spent the night on a, sleeping on a bale of straw in the cattle market only to be woken up at about 5 o’clock in the morning by all the cattle coming in. That was in about August. Dad got work and he managed to get a house to rent. And the rest of the family that’s my mother, my brother and two sisters travelled up in December 1935 and we lived, lived in Slough and around for quite a number of years after that. In 1939 I became employed by a firm of solicitors in Slough as the office boy. Duties were not too onerous but I was given various books to study with a view to making a career in the law.
[recording pause]
MJ: One little backdrop. In 1937 having read various newspapers about football teams I decided that I would go to the Arsenal ground and see a football match. I told my parents I was staying on this particular Saturday with a school friend when in point of fact I travelled up to Paddington and then on to Highbury. Saw a wonderful football match and I’ve been an Arsenal supporter ever since. That was in 1937 [pause] Come 1941 I volunteered, or went to join the air force realizing that I was in fact twelve months too young. So I told them my birth was 24th of January 1924 instead of 1925. And fortunately for me no, nobody really queried it. And I was duly signed in and in April 1942 I was told to report to Padgate. The [pause] my father had signed all the forms for me to join. He believed that I wouldn’t pass the medical but whether they were rather lax or not I don’t know but —
DM: Why did he think that?
MJ: Well, all the, all the Jones’ family suffer with ear trouble and although in those days it wasn’t too bad I still had trouble from time to time. I think it stemmed from when I, when I was a very small child every time I was teething I got ear infections. And it’s effectively the same thing throughout the whole of my life. If I get a cold I get an ear infection. Sometimes in both which is rather embarrassing. The — I reported to Padgate where I was kitted out and so on and then we went on to Blackpool. The radio school there. And having completed that course went on to Yatesbury where I was very pleased to pass out as top of the course which surprised me and surprised the family as well. We went from there to Peterborough and a little satellite drome called Sibson. We were supposed to be there to do repairs, or repairs to the radios in the Harvards that were used for training but for the whole time that we were there we didn’t see a radio. Didn’t see anything at all. All we did was guard duty and run of the mill stuff. But we went back to Yatesbury and finished off the course where again I managed to be top of the course. From Yatesbury we went to Stormy Down in South Wales for a gunnery course where lo and behold I came top of that course as well. I won’t tell you the whole secret of it but a lot, a lot of people were pulling my leg about the fact that the warrant officer in charge of both radio school and then the gunnery school was a personal friend of the family [laughs] So, I rather suspect that my successes were partly, must be partly down to him. I didn’t think I was that brilliant. I thought I wasn’t a bad wireless operator. We went from there to various sites. Cark and Cartmel for flying in Ansons. And then on to Market Harborough where we were flying in Wellingtons. Mark 1 with Pegasus engines. Totally underpowered clapped out old things that from time to time ploughed into the ground and killed all the crew. Whether we were lucky or not I don’t know. I think I must have been because we had no problems at all. We, we crewed up there with a pilot, Ginger Durrant. A navigator called Jones who unfortunately got us lost on a couple of occasions and got shifted out of the [pause] shifted out of our crew. And myself. We then, we finished training there and were sent to Swinderby to convert on to Stirlings which I was never enamoured with. But having done the conversion course we were then sent to Syerston to convert on to Lancs. Which we duly did. And then got posted to Scampton for about three weeks. And from Scampton we went to Metheringham. We went there at the end of February 1944. We got there and two days later it snowed and it stayed snowy. No flying for about two weeks. Then we did the usual familiarisation before we were ready to go on ops. It wasn’t until the 20th of March that we, we did our first trip which was to Frankfurt. And we had bombed and we were flying straight and level to take photographs and we were suddenly coned in searchlights which was quite an alarming experience. One minute it’s pitch black. The next minute you’re absolutely flooded with light. Anyway, the skipper put the aircraft in a very steep dive and threw it all over the sky and after a while and it’s difficult to judge how long it took, it might only have been a few minutes. It might have been a few seconds. But anyway we were suddenly in the dark again. And the thing that fascinated us was there was no anti-aircraft fire. There had been all the time that we were travelling but whilst we were in the searchlights there was nothing. And we came to the conclusion that searchlights were holding us so that night fighters could come up and attack. But anyway they didn’t and we got away with it. We got back on course. Came home with no problems at all. The second op was a major disaster. We were briefed to go to Berlin and it was the last of the raids of the [pause] I think they called it the war against Berlin but whatever it was it was the last of the main force flights to that city. Well, we took off and we got part way, about half way across the North Sea and the skipper doing the usual checking with everybody. Making sure they were ok. Called up the [pause] mid-upper gunner and got no reply. So the usual thing, if anybody wants anything done they call the wireless operator. So they called me, ‘Go and see what’s wrong with Wally.’ So, I went down there and shone a torch in to see what had happened. Wally was well away. He was flaked out and his oxygen tube was flapping in the breeze. How long he’d been like that we had no idea. Presumably from take-off. But anyway we dropped down to about eight thousand feet and kept going. And the engineer and I tried to get him out of the turret. At first we lifted him up with his bottom, unhooked the seat and with that we couldn’t hold him, the weight of him, he slipped down and was totally wedged. Feet in the front. His head over the guns. And his bottom sticking out of the turret. And it took us an hour to get him out. We strapped him in the rest bed, plugged him in to oxygen and the intercom. And by then we were well over the Baltic so we climbed up to operational height and turned to go due, almost due south to Berlin. This was the raid where the Air Ministry was forecasting the winds of sixty miles an hour. And our navigator said, ‘It’s more than that. It’s more like ninety.’ And in fact that’s what it was. So when we turned to go to Berlin we shot down from the Baltic to Berlin in no time at all. Realising that we were going at a fair, fair old lick he decided that when we, when we got to the target if it was marked we would, we would drop our bombs on the first run so we didn’t have to go around into wind which would reduce the ground speed considerably and making us a sitting duck for night fighters. Anyway, we went through Berlin and we dropped the bombs, got back on course to go home. No problems at all other than Wally. Anyway, we got, we got fairly close to England and got a message we were diverted to Wing in North Bucks so changed course and then the engineer, his nickname was Podge, he said we’d got trouble with the hydraulics. So, when we got over England we, I was given the task of pumping down the undercarriage to make sure we could land in reasonable fashion. I did that and Podge indicated to all of us that we, we would be able to land on wheels but we would have only a limited amount of flap and possibly no brakes at all. So anyway we, we got permission to land at Wing. We came in and landed and we landed on the almost on the perimeter track to try to make sure we had enough runway to be able to stop. But we didn’t. We just went off the end of the runway and pranged the thing. And when we got out we were told by the ground crew that, at Wing, the aircraft was a write off. Which turned out to be not quite true. It was very badly damaged but it was eventually brought back to Metheringham and they took about two and a half, three months to repair it. So we were taken back the following day by another crew, interviewed and so on and that’s the last we heard of it. But the one thing that we had discussed on the way back we would not say anything at all in debriefing or any, anywhere or anytime afterwards about what happened to Wally. Because if we did he would undoubtably be grounded and we didn’t fancy going through the rigmarole of having another replacement as we’d had a replacement navigator with Jones having been thrown out. We had a rather large individual given to us as our new navigator. A fellow called Jim Pittaway who was quite a bulky fellow and naturally he was called Slim. I use these nicknames because when we were flying we used those nicknames. We never called each other pilot or skipper or wireless operator or gunner or whatever. It was always nicknames. The, the bomb aimer was Buck. His name was Buchanan. The pilot was Ginger. The engineer was Podge. The navigator was Slim. I was Taff. The mid-upper gunner was Wally. And lo and behold the rear gunner was Keith [laughs] because nobody could think of a suitable nickname for him. Anyway, we, we had two little dodge it flights for the first experience. The remarkable thing was that apart from a few flak holes in the rest of our ops we had no problems at all. It was uncanny really that we did another thirty three ops and we had no difficulties of any description. It was quite remarkable. When I say that there were two occasions when we had to abort for an engine trouble but you know, that that happens to everybody. The — can we, for a moment?
[recording paused]
MJ: We did thirty five ops because quite, quite a few of them were at one stage described as a third of an op. Mainly the occasions when we went to France instead of Germany. After, after our fourth trip, the fourth one in fact was that infamous Nuremberg raid, after our fourth trip we were given Able as our aircraft. And we did twenty eight out of our thirty five in that aircraft which is, was a squadron record for that particular aircraft which completed a hundred and eleven ops [pause] The painting up here was given to me last year as the sole surviving member of our crew in recognition of our twenty eight ops in that one aircraft. The nearest to us — I think there were two or perhaps three that did eleven but that was the gap. Eleven to twenty eight. It was quite a record.
DM: Did you keep in touch with the crew after the war?
MJ: I did with the pilot. With Ginger but not the others. I initially made contact with them but it just faded away. So I thought oh well perhaps they’ve got their own lives to live. They didn’t, perhaps they don’t want to live in the past. But it was only Ginger that I kept in touch with and it was fortunate that he was in touch with the rest of the crew and passed on information about them from time to time.
DM: When you were on ops what were the off, what was the off duty periods like? Did you all associate together as a crew or — ?
MJ: Yeah.
DM: Were you all NCOs or —
MJ: Until, until we got to the squadron we were all NCOs. And then Ginger was commissioned. But the rest of stayed as sergeants, flight sergeants and ultimately warrant officers. A lot of our raids as I said were over France. And we operated twice on D-Day. First time was about 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. And then we went back again 11, 12, 1 o’clock for a second op. And then after that it was communications and occasionally German reinforcements. You know, tank squadrons. That sort of thing. They also did a lot of communications. Railway junction sand bridges and so on. There were also a couple of doodlebug depots. One in particular that we went to twice in forty eight hours was a place called Saint Leu-d’Esserent which was a storage place for these doodlebugs. We operated that particular night with 617. We went in at, the base that we had was 617 at Woodhall Spa, 83 and 97 Pathfinder Squadrons at Coningsby and 106 at Metheringham. That was base. We flew several times with 617 but that Saint Leu-d’Esserent was a bit of a shocker really. The storage was actually built into the side of a mountain and we were briefed to bomb the approach roads and railways. 617 in the first raid had other duties. I don’t know exactly what. But certainly on the second one they had these earthquake bombs and dropped these on top of the, not on the, right at the top but up the mountain and blew the whole thing to pieces. It was, I gather never repaired after that. The trouble was from our point of view that on the first raid there were two aircraft lost. On the second raid there were five. Which was the second time that the squadron lost five aircraft. The other occasion was [pause] I can’t remember the name of the place we went to but it was the night that 106 Squadron got its first or perhaps I might say the second Victoria Cross. I say second because Gibson was the officer commanding when 106 was at Syerston. And from there of course he went on to the Dambusters and that’s when he got the VC. We finished our ops in July.
DM: ’44.
MJ: ’44. The last raid was a bit of a nightmare from the weather point of view. We flew from Lincoln down to the middle of France to Givors. And for most of the journey we were in a thunder storm and lightning flashing everywhere and so we had to switch all the electronics off. We didn’t want them blowing up and starting a fire. We were about a quarter of an hour short of Givors when the clouds stopped. Beautiful evening. We duly bombed, turned around, came back and flew all the way back in the same thunderstorm. Very uncomfortable journey. Well, I then finished. Well, we all finished our tour. Ginger, because he’d done the second dickie trip had done thirty six. The rest of us with the exception of Slim, the navigator who missed one op because he had tonsillitis, he did thirty four. The rest of us did thirty five. I was then posted back to Market Harborough instructing. Something which frankly I hated. You get in the aircraft with a trainee wireless operator and he was told to operate. If he had any trouble come to me. Well, I must have been lucky or very unlucky depending on which way you look at it. I was never asked to do anything. So all I did was sit on my parachute on the floor opposite the wireless operator and toured around the country in these clapped out old Wellingtons. Didn’t like it at all. And I made several attempts to persuade the CO to send me back to a squadron but he wouldn’t have it. Anyway, at the end of, end of six months I was posted. Sent to 218 Squadron in Chedburgh in 3 Group which, the squadron had only fairly recently converted on to Lancasters. That prior to that they were still flying in Stirlings. Anyway, we, I did three more ops and the war ended. So I was a little frustrated because I thought there was a good chance of being able to complete a second tour. Anyway, that was that. The end of thirty — thirty eight ops. We then had the Manna ops. Flying and dropping food in Holland. I did four of those. Then I did seven Exodus trips bringing back British mainly prisoners of war. Flying them from Juvisy to Hurn, outside Bournemouth. And then back to Chedburgh. And then I did one ferrying a Lancaster to Abu Sueir which is near Port Said in Egypt. The idea was the aircraft were then being sent out to the Far East. We only did one. It was, it was a glorified holiday. We were stationed then [pause] I had a pilot called Lofting, a navigator called Andrews and an engineer who was called Conant. He proudly announced that his father who lived at Cottesmore where there was a ‘drome anyway, his, his father was the MP for Rutland. But he, he — no I won’t go on that. We’d, we were stationed at [pause] I’ve forgotten the name of the aerodrome now. Near Newquay anyway. Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. We were stationed at Dunkeswell near Honiton and we flew from there to St Mawgan which is near Newquay. From St Mawgan we were briefed to fly to Abu Sueir. Stopping first at Tripoli. Unfortunately on the very short journey from Dunkeswell to St Mawgan the port inner packed up and the radio failed. So there we were at this VIP station where all anybody flying across the Atlantic especially the big wigs landed there and were treated with food that was by our standards out of this world. And we were given the same food, the same treatment as the VIPs. I could have stayed there for the rest of the war actually. It was rather nice. Anyway, we, they brought in a new engine. Fitted that. And repaired the wireless. Or so they thought. We took off heading for Tripoli. Got half way across the Med and the engines started playing up again and the wireless packed up. So we decided the nearest ‘drome was an American one at Tunis so we logged in there. Contacted Tripoli. Told them what had happened. And we, we spent about a week in Tunis doing all the things that we couldn’t do back home. Again living with American breakfast and Tunisian food for lunch and dinner. Went to the cinema a couple of times. On the first occasion Conant lit up a cigarette and you could see the smoke going up as the beam of the film was on the screen. Then all of a sudden we were [laughs] I think there must have been about four people, these ushers or usherettes or whatever they were shining torches at us and old Conant put his cigarette out rather smartly [laughs]. Smoking was banned in cinemas out there. Anyway, we eventually got as far as Tripoli just in time for Christmas. We had a very hilarious time there. And then we flew on to Abu Sueir. Left the aircraft and travelled into Cairo by train. A very slow journey but quite comfortable. And they must have thought we were thirsty people because every five minutes they were coming around with kettles full of tea. Very weak tea. Tons of milk in it. What sort of milk I wouldn’t know but I suspect it was goat. Anyway, we went, we went to Cairo and spent New Year’s there and flew back in a Dakota on New Year’s Day. From Cairo to Luqa in Malta. No. To El Adem in the desert, Luqa on Malta, Nice and then home. And we took off at 4 o’clock in the afternoon of the 1st and arrived at Hurn about mid-day on the 2nd. A boring journey. There was nothing to do. There were no magazines to read. It was just a case of shut your eyes and let things go by. Anyway, we got back and we were told we were to take another aircraft out there. And we did familiarisation on, but two lots of circuits and bumps and that was the last of my flying in the air force. And I got sent to various stations after that. No flying. Ended up in the demob office getting everybody ready to go home except me [laughs] which was a bit frustrating at times. But anyway in August of 1946 [pause] That’s right. August ’46 I was demobbed. Sent down to Wembley, kitted out with a suit and a hat and shoes and what have you and went home. And I was officially given leave as everybody was. I made contact with a firm that I used to work for and yes they would take me back as a junior clerk at the princely sum of three guineas a week which was a bit of a come down considering that I was getting about seven pounds a week in the air force. All my friends who had been in the army or the navy they were all demobbed at the same time and they all, I think all except one worked in Mars on the Slough Trading Estate. And they, they were earning far far more than I was. That didn’t worry me. I was looking to the future and I kept on studying. Unfortunately, I was told after a while that I should pack it up. I had two illnesses that were causing or had caused a lot of problems. One of them I had what the doctor described as the finest dose of shingles that he’d seen in all his career. So I decided that’s it. You’re not going to qualify as a solicitor. You’ll be for the rest of your days, as I was at that moment a solicitor’s managing clerk. Now described as a legal executive. And I held that job until I retired in 1989. I came back as I say in ’46 and in ’47 I met a young lady that in 1948 I married and she’s sitting over there. We will be celebrating our sixty eighth wedding anniversary on the 17th of July this year. We had one daughter. You might have seen when you came in. One grandson sitting there. And I’ve one great grandson who is coming up to two.
DM: When you, when you look back on your days in the air force what’s the sort of abiding memory? You know. Is it one of pleasure or fear or what?
[pause]
MJ: I enjoyed my time in the air force except for that period when I was instructing. Or supposed to be instructing. From the point of view of entertainment, pleasure and so on particularly when we were at Metheringham it was a case of into Lincoln, have a couple of beers, go to the cinema. Things like that. I always made, I made a promise to my father that I would, I would keep him informed as to how I was getting on with various ops. And rather a primitive idea every time we did, I did an op, I wrote and said I’d been in to Lincoln to see a film. And I named the film thinking that, you know if the censors people opened it and read the letter that they might think it was genuine. It wasn’t. Anyway, I [pause] I did this the whole time and he kept the letters. And it wasn’t until oh many many years afterwards [pause] the 1980s I think it was my brother was doing some decorating, came across the letters, decided he didn’t want them and threw them out. And I was a bit annoyed actually because some of them were quite interesting letters from the point of view of what we were doing but without disclosing any trade secrets. Anyway, it was something that happened and you know I was annoyed with him at first but oh well that’s it. We, we, as a crew we kept to ourselves very very much. I can’t remember where it was. I think it was at Swinderby. A couple of crews were assembled and they were given a talk by a flight lieutenant who had done two tours. It was a general talk about life on, on the squadron. One of the things that he said that stuck in the minds of all of us was, ‘Don’t become too friendly with other crews because if you do and they get shot down you will feel a lot of embarrassment, a lot of sympathy. It could upset you quite considerably that these friends of yours had just disappeared.’ So we talked about it afterwards and decided well we’d keep ourselves to ourselves. I mean we didn’t snub anybody but when we went anywhere it was not as a whole crew. It was sort of, ‘I’m going in to Lincoln tonight, Wally. Interested?’ ‘Yeah. Ok.’ And off we’d go. And the same with the others. They would do that. It didn’t happen quite the same way when I was at 218 Squadron. That was quite different. I enjoyed it there but there wasn’t the friendship with the crew. Partly I think because they had been shot down. The pilot was killed. The wireless op, his parachute was damaged so he jumped out holding on to the navigator. But as soon as the parachute opened [pause] the navigator and the parachute went up and I’m afraid the wireless op went down and he got killed. And I was there replacing him. The pilot we had, also a replacement, back on his second tour. And the navigator. He didn’t want to fly anymore. But he was just given a ground job and that was that.
DM: Did you have any superstitions? Any routines? Anything you had to do before you flew? Or —
MJ: No. The only thing that we did we had a doll which was given to Keith by his girlfriend. And it was then handed to me so that I could on every trip strap it up to the pole that was by the side of my radio. Tied it up the top. And it did thirty five ops and then when we parted I gave the doll back to to Keith so he could return it to his girlfriend. I met a WAAF as everybody did at some stage or other. Chatting with her she produced a little green sort of leatherette dog. Only a tiny little thing, ‘Take it on ops with you.’ So we took it on ops for the second one which I described to you. To Berlin. And that’s the only op the dog did [laughs] We, I I don’t think, oh I can’t speak very well for the others but I don’t think I was ever scared. When we, when we were coned in searchlights I was worried then. I remember not panicking but thinking, ‘God, we must get out of this otherwise we’ll get the chop.’ You know. And there was nothing any of us could do except rely on Ginger which we always said he was a very good pilot and by God the way he threw that Lanc about that night was unbelievable. I thought he was going to loop the loop at one stage. He was a very very good pilot.
DM: You mentioned the ear problem. Did that ever give you problems when you were flying? You obviously didn’t miss any ops because of it but —
MJ: What I had trouble with in flying was sinus. I wasn’t going to report sick. No way. If I couldn’t hear I couldn’t hear. That was it. You know. But seriously I didn’t like the idea of reporting sick. Missing ops and then becoming a spare bod. Flying with any Dick, Tom and Harry that was short of a wireless op. I didn’t fancy that at all. We had two little incidents where we more or less did the wrong thing. Buchanan went into the kitchen at the mess one night and leaned back, put his hand down on the red hot stove and on his left hand, which was fortunate he had an enormous blister on the palm of his hand. He just took a, stuck a bandage around it, wore a glove and kept on flying. And on one op, having ground tested everything we got out of the aircraft and waited for the signal to rev up and go. And I was getting out of the, getting out of the Lanc after doing what was necessary, caught my foot on the stepladder that we used to come out of the — get in and out of the Lanc. I just fell flat on my face from the top step down and I ripped my hand, the right hand. It was badly swollen but I wasn’t going to go sick. No way. But other than that and Slim having a couple of days in hospital when he had tonsillitis or flu or something apart from that nobody had any problems at all. Going back to [pause] the second trip to Berlin, in all the time that we were together after that nobody ever mentioned Wally’s oxygen. There’s no record of it anywhere. We just didn’t. Didn’t want to change despite his silly mistake of not connecting it up properly. You know. You get to know people and you trust them. And we did trust Wally. Even after that incident. He, he was quite a good gunner. But they never had to fly like Keith. Never had to fire his guns in anger. In all the trips that we did we never fired guns.
DM: Did you have any thoughts after the war about the way Bomber Command were viewed in the aftermath? You know. This sort of almost disconnect with with what had happened.
MJ: No. I thought about it and I thought we were doing the right thing. The Germans had bombed every capital in Europe. Quite indiscriminate bombing. They came over to this country and bombed London and Coventry and Portsmouth and so on. Quite indiscriminate. They started it and we finished it and it, that was it. Now people say they very much regret the fact that they dropped these bombs and killed civilians. But I haven’t heard any German saying he’s sorry for having killed people in London. I look at it on the basis it was an all out war. If we didn’t win then we would be finished as a country. We would. Life, if you were allowed to live it would have been hell. It was something we just had to do and did it. I never regretted it at all. The one thing that does upset me is every time they talk about Bomber Command they talk about the last big raid. And it’s quite silly really because what happened was the same as happened in Hamburg when they bombed that. Nobody could forecast that there was going to be sudden strong winds fanning flames and so on. The same thing happened in — I don’t remember the name of the town [pause]. Right at the end of the war. [pause] I’m being told over there.
Other: [unclear]
MJ: Hmmn?
Other 2: I should know and I can’t remember.
Other: Dresden.
Other 2: Dresden.
MJ: Dresden. Yeah. I read a number of books in recent years about Dresden. Some were very anti the Bomber Command for having bombed it and more or less destroyed it. But there was one that I read, I can’t remember the name of the author but it gave a very very good account of why Dresden should have been bombed. At that stage even if there was no reason to have bombed it before Dresden was the railway junction at the southern part of the Eastern Front. And millions of German soldiers, armaments, tanks you name it all passed through Dresden to get to the southern Eastern Front. There were no very big factories in Dresden but there were hundreds of small factories. Some operating in garages and sheds and things like that. All producing items which were then transported to main depot and fitted as part of radar and so on and so forth. So from that point of view there was, as the book quite firmly came down to the fact that Dresden should have been bombed before. And it was, there was a request from the Russians to to bomb that town in order A — to stop the manufacture of armaments. Radar bits and so on. And B to stop the German army sending troops through that depot. I I [pause] I don’t think it was the wrong thing. In fact it was necessary in my opinion. That. I’ve never regretted dropping bombs on Germany for the simple reason it’s not just tit for tat because we dropped a damned sight more bombs on them then they did on us. And with a regime like the Nazis they just had to do that to get rid of them. You know. I had no regrets at all. I may be a bit exceptional in that. I don’t know. But it annoys me when people who have been on ops suddenly say that they’re terribly sorry for what they did. I don’t think they should say that. I don’t think they should even think it. It was something that just had to be done.
[recording paused]
MJ: A little earlier I was talking about not being too friendly with other crews. Other personnel. We generally kept to that. Not snubbing anybody or or so on but we didn’t become friendly. When I joined up I was sent to Oxford for medical examination and [pause] I was standing next to a young chap who told me he’d come from Portsmouth. And everywhere I went he went. And we started talking. When I was told to report to Padgate I was walking through the gates and who should be standing or walking next to me but this fellow. A chappie called Bill Sizer. And he told me that his, his father and his uncle were colour sergeants in the Marines and they didn’t take kindly to the fact that he’d joined the air force. Well, Bill and I did all our training together right up to and including Market Harborough at OTU. And then he and his crew were sent straight to Syerston to convert on to Lancasters whilst as I said before we went to Swinderby to convert on to Stirlings and then on to Lancs. So that he was a month or so in front of us. He was posted to Waddington first and then they moved to Fiskerton with 49 Squadron I think it was. Yes. 49. And in June of ’44 I was outside our billet writing a letter home and Ginger came along and said he’d got some bad news. That Dickinson and his crew, Dickinson was the pilot, Dickinson and his crew which included Bill Sizer had been shot down and were still missing. Or treated as missing and eventually they found out that in fact that they were all killed in the south of France. When he told me that initially my first thought was that lieutenant is going to be proved right because I was very upset. He was the only person that I really became friendly with in the whole time apart from the crew that I became friendly with during the whole time that I was in the air force. I think it shook everybody in our crew because strangely enough all, all the members trained together. The two pilots trained out in America. The two bomb aimers, both Canadians, they trained together in, in Canada. Engineers trained together. The wireless ops trained together. The two gunners trained together. And the only difference was the navigators. Jones had trained at the same time as Dickinson’s navigator but not Slim. But that upset me more than anything and I realised then that this flight lieutenant was absolutely right. We talked about it for, you know, one night in the billet. Ginger said something like, ‘Forget it. But don’t forget them.’ And left it at that. And we did. We didn’t mention it at all after that. You know, it was a sad situation but it happens to everybody.
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Interview with Mervyn Jones
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David Meanwell
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-04-22
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
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AJonesMH160422
PJonesMH1601
PJonesMH1602
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Pending review
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01:11:36 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Mervyn Jones is a miners son from Wales. His father wanted a different life to that of a miner for his son and the family moved away to Slough where was plenty of work. Mervyn had always had trouble with his ears and so his father assumed he wouldn’t pass his medical although he signed all the forms giving his permission for Mervyn to enlist. In fact Mervyn lied about his age to enlist and was indeed successful in his application. A WAAF gave him a little green leatherette dog to take on ops. On this particular op the mid-upper gunner passed out through lack of oxygen, the predicted winds were wrong and so they had to rearrange their flight plan and on return they lost hydraulic power. It was the last time the dog went on ops. The crew were advised about not getting too involved with other crews and the reason for this became obvious when one crew they were all friendly with were killed in action.
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
France
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Berlin
Temporal Coverage
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1944-02
106 Squadron
218 Squadron
617 Squadron
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing of the Creil/St Leu d’Esserent V-1 storage areas (4/5 July 1944)
Lancaster
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Metheringham
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Swinderby
RAF Yatesbury
searchlight
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/544/11121/AHookerFJ170826.2.mp3
34e7b8ab3c905449d0e448d8867cb8ed
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Title
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Hooker, Fred
Fred J Hooker
F J Hooker
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Hooker, FJ
Description
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31 items. Two oral history interviews with Sergeant Fred Hooker (b. 1924, 1850487 Royal Air Force) and his scrapbook containing photographs and documents. He flew operations as a mid-upper gunner with 102 Squadron and became a prisoner of war on 12 September 1944.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2016-05-25
2017-08-26
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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TO: Ok. Good morning, good afternoon or good evening, whatever the case may be. This interview is being recorded for the International Bomber Command Centre. The gentleman I’m speaking to is Mr Fred Hooker and my name is Thomas Ozel and we are recording this interview on the 26th of August 2017.
FH: Yeah.
TO: Can you tell me a bit about where you grew up and where you were born?
FH: Yes. That’s about four miles away from where we are now in a village called Hartley Wintney back in 1924. Did all my schooling in the same village and I joined the Service from the actual village which I [pause] getting stuck now. I joined the Air Training Corps when that was first formed in 1941 and that was the, really the start of my liking to, in wanting to join the RAF and join the bomber crews because we used to go to RAF Odiham for different lectures and that in the Air Training Corps. And while we were there we were often had flights in various aircraft having the written permission from the parents to fly and my first aircraft was a Tiger Moth that I flew in. And on another occasion I went up in a Blenheim aircraft sitting in a gun turret. Of course, the gun turret was made safe, or the guns were made safe and from there it got me bugged and I wanted to join the Air Force. Not only that around the same time one afternoon in the garden I was actually digging a shelter for the bombers and there was a whole load of aircraft coming down across the sky from the Reading area and it turned out to be the first attack, thousand aircraft raid on Cologne. They come over the village and I stood there along with other neighbours watching these aircraft. I could see the gun turrets moving, the guns moving, the chaps waving to us as they were flying over and that really gave me the bug to join the RAF and hopefully become a member of a bomber crew which eventually I did and joining up in the actual Air Force on the 29th of March 1943. And I had to report to Lords Cricket Ground for my, well I joined the Service and where I had all the inoculations etcetera. I think there was about a fortnight I was in London after which I was posted to a place called Bridgnorth in Shropshire as I was under training as a wireless operator/air gunner at the time and fortunately during the training I enjoyed Bridgnorth. All the square bashing, PTs, never so fit in my life as I was then. And as I say I was posted to Bridgnorth. Done that and then from there I went to RAF Yatesbury for wireless training in Wiltshire which I thoroughly enjoyed. With regards the Morse Code I’d done some in the Air Training Corps and I improved my reading and sending of the messages but unfortunately when it got around to technical details I’m afraid Freddie came unstuck ‘cause we used to have tests every so often to make sure that we could carry on in the course. But as I say I failed one test and I remustered to a straight air gunner. That was, I had to go to Sheerness for the remustering and there I met some other chaps that had been on a pilot’s course and a bomb aimer’s course and become very friendly with them. In actual fact the Les, Les Duncan from Sunderland, we palled up very well very quickly and in actual fact in the end he became our tail gunner on the crew that I was flying with. Which was quite exciting because we were inseparable in those days. We’d both done another course of physical training etcetera in Bridlington, Yorkshire along the sea front. There was no, no parade grounds or anything so it was all done along on the promenade which was a bit drafty at times as we were there in the winter months. But anyhow we, from there we were posted to Number 7 AGS in Stormy Down, South Wales. And of course, we didn’t know until we both arrived there that we was going to meet again because the various chaps went to various units of the gunnery. Different Gunnery Schools. But fortunate for me Harry and Les came to the same Gunnery School and we got on marvellous and although we weren’t actually in the same classrooms for our lectures etcetera we became good friends. And when it come around to we had to start using guns to fire which was quite exciting really thinking we was going to go straight into the aircraft and use Browning. 303 Browning guns. Instead of that we went on twelve bore shooting at clay pigeons as the start of our firing which, that led to flying in an Anson after that with camera guns which to me was quite exciting. I always fancied cameras but never really got around to studying photography to that extent. But we had taken the photographs of the, no the Faery Battle, sorry. The Faery Battle aircraft used to attack us and we used to, that was towing a drogue which we used to have to fire at. And from there from the films taken they could estimate whether we hit the target or not which was pretty good at times. I must say it myself I was, quite enjoyed that. And then we moved on to firing 303 guns which was mounted into, this was on the Avro Anson we were flying in those days which had a turret fitted not normally used on an Anson. Just for training purposes and we finally passed out at, well I say Stormy Down actually we’d been diverted or posted to a satellite of Stormy Down. A place called Rhoose which now I understand is Cardiff airport. Some difference. But from there we was transferred or posted I should say to Moreton in the Marsh, Gloucestershire. Of course, we went from home to Reading Station on the local bus and sitting on the station I met another chap. We had our greatcoats on because it was pretty fresh and talking to this gentleman there, he was a warrant officer, I discovered that he was going to Moreton in the Marsh as a pilot to crew up the same as I was. So we had a nice long chat on the platform and we sat together in the, going down in the train, got to know each other, about each other’s family etcetera and I eventually crewed up with him as his mid-upper gunner. Of course in Moreton in the Marsh we were trained on, no, crewed up on a Wellington bomber but once again we were put to a satellite station called Enstone which, which was quite enjoyable. And Les and Harry they both in the same group we all went to Enstone which was just what we wanted because Les and I had made up our minds that if possible we’d fly together. And while we were there we had do dinghy training and believe it or not that was in Blenheim Palace grounds. The grounds of Blenheim Palace. There was an Avro Anson parked in the middle of the lake which was great fun because some of us, though fortunately I could swim but some of the crew couldn’t swim at the time. But we had a row out in a little boat to the aircraft and sit in the positions as though we were doing a crash landing in the sea and had the instruction. And as we hit the water we heard a noise in the aircraft. That was the time we were sitting in the aircraft and of course that was the time we had to open the dinghy, get the dinghy out, open it up, blow it up and sit in the dinghy. That went on for a couple of days but after that we passed out as a full crew. We had Phil the bomb, sorry Phil the pilot came from the Salisbury area. Jock the navigator he was from Aberdeen, Taffy the bomb aimer from Wales and Les, my old mate he came from Sunderland and of course, myself from Hartley Wintney. And we got on quite well together as a crew and eventually we passed out having done various cross-country flights firing at different targets in selected areas in the North Sea and I suppose it would be the Irish Sea as well. But from there we went on to Halifax bombers in 6 Group which, transferred to 6 Group thinking we were going to remain in 4 Group but no. It was a Canadian unit we went to at Dishforth and there a flight engineer joined the crew which, he was a chap from Romford in Essex. Old Charlie. Charlie [Warderman.] He was about the oldest member of the crew in actual fact. He was an old London bus driver. From there we became good friends and made up the crew but unfortunately, we lost our wireless operator while we was at Dishforth. He got in to trouble with the police. Never heard proper details about that but anyway we were joined by a French Canadian chap from Montreal as a wireless operator and of course as we introduced ourselves all the way around to him and he told us about his Service life which apparently he’d been, already been on operations flying as a wireless operator air gunner on Marauders from Blackbushe. So I kept quiet and let him carry on talking about Blackbushe and that. I asked him about different pubs in Hartley Wintney and he discovered that I’d come from Hartley Wintney and we had a quite nice old chat from that. But we’d done all the similar things we’d done at the OTU when we were at Dishforth and we finally got transferred or posted should I say to 102 Squadron. But prior to that we were actually told we were going on leave for a fortnight and being, joining a squadron in South Africa [knocking noise in background] But that all fell by the wayside, what that noise was I don’t know but here we go. We eventually got to RAF Pocklington, Yorkshire, 102 Squadron and the sight that greeted us as we turned in to the entrance of the aerodrome was a Halifax bomber sitting in the field where it had failed to take off which rather, you know put funny feelings in our stomachs seeing a crashed aircraft, you know. But we got over that and we finally started our bombing and that was 18th of August 1944. And we’d done our first bombing raid on the 3rd of September and the target was Venlo Airfield in Holland which was all new to us. The actual being informed of what they expected of the crews and telling us, warning the gunners to keep a good eye open the whole time from the time when we took off ‘til we came back but we didn’t encounter any aircraft, or any enemy aircraft at the time and the bombing trip went well. We had a small amount of flak but we didn’t take a lot of notice of it. But unfortunately, when we came back, flying over the North Sea we were diverted and we had to land at a ‘drome in Cambridgeshire which I never really knew the name of strange as it may seem. But we were there, we had to stay there a week before the weather was changed and we could land back at Pocklington and while we were there I witnessed an American pilot shooting the ‘drome up because he had finished his tour of ops in a Lightning aircraft and he shot the place up twice and on the third trip he was flying over and he went under some cables and caught the fins of the aircraft and he shot up in the air, baled out and the aircraft crashed. But we did, as I say finally get back to Pocklington but prior to that while we were there the night we landed we were interrogated. After two unsuccessful attempts at landing and the third one the pilot took, took a chance and went in because low on petrol. Short of petrol. And we had a nice meal but I didn’t enjoy mine so much as the others because on medical instructions I had I was flying without dentures and we had a nice partridge and I couldn’t gnaw the bones like the other lads. It was quite a laugh really. Anyway, finally we got back to our own ‘drome and that was on the 11th of September. On the 12th, the morning of the 12th we were on orders for a briefing, I think it was about 10.30 in the morning and to go on another bombing raid. This was quite an extensive [pause] what’s the word? Briefing. That’s the word. Briefing on the target and the amount of aircraft that was going to be flying that day I think was about two hundred every so, every half hour on to the target. And it turned out to be the Ruhr. Gelsenkirchen. And of course, from the old memories of the crews that were on the squadron a big ‘Aaaargh,’ went up and we realised that they’d been there before and it wasn’t a very happy place to be. So of course, warned again by the gunnery officer after the briefing what he expected of all the gunners, you know to keep a sharp lookout. Watching out all the time, not just for the enemy aircraft that may attack but making sure there was nothing above us or that the other aircraft weren’t getting too close which we’d got used to doing. Anyhow, the, as we were going over the North Sea near the, getting near the border of Germany we, I could see smoke in the distance as we got closer and closer and realised it was the target area that we were approaching. And flying in formation we were the, one began to feel, you know wondered what was happening. I know I did. And still keeping an eye open watching what we had to look out for and the ack ack was firing away and the only way I can really describe it myself the firing of the German guns was in the modern day fireworks. You know the, with modern day fireworks they explode in the air all different colours. Varying coloured lights and that. Masses of them and imagine that was the shells bursting around us and believe me it was, well put it bluntly hell. And we, we carried on. We dropped our bombs and after there was the Pathfinders on the, guiding the bomb, the bomb aimers in and we saw two aircraft go down while we were on the bombing run and one, the Pathfinder we heard him say, ‘Take over number 2. Take over number 2. I’m going in. I’m going in.’ That’s the last we heard of that. But the, to see these other planes at the side of us going down it was a bit unnerving but you just got on with your job and it seemed to disappear from your mind you know because you’re thinking about yourself and guarding yourself. But anyhow we eventually got through the target and the navigator gave, flew on the new course to fly to come home which we did and we gradually got away from the flak and eventually landed back at Pocklington. [banging noises] It may be the workmen outside. I don’t know.
TO: [unclear]
FH: Anyhow, we got out the aircraft. The ground crew were waiting for us. Welcoming us back. Of course, we looked around the aircraft and it was just covered in holes and we thought we were rather lucky getting back. When Taffy got right under the nose of the aircraft, looked up there was shells gone up right through where he had been laying with his legs open. Straight up through the centre, between his legs and out the top and he just more or less fell to the ground with his hands closed and I think he said a prayer same as we all did thinking we were damned lucky to be back home. And the old aircraft had a load of holes in. Since then we wondered how we did manage to get back. But anyhow the following day oh we had a nice time. We had rum when we got in for debriefing and we all debriefed as a crew, then individually by the, like with our case Les and I, had the gunnery officer. We went to bed that night and the next morning looking on orders we was on orders again for another raid. Of course, we’d been trained for this so we, we knew what to expect, you know. That’s why we were sent to a squadron. To do these bombing raids. Anyhow, same procedure as normal and after the briefing of course you weren’t, you made no contact with anybody outside on the ‘drome. You kept to yourselves so that no, anybody around the place to get the information to send off to the enemy, you know. Everything was all secret which we got used to after a couple of trips or a couple of briefings. This time the target was Munster in Germany. Crossing across the North Sea was ok. Normal flying except that when the navigator asked the pilot to climb to nineteen thousand feet which was the bombing height that day we found he couldn’t get the height. Only eighteen five hundred feet high. A discussion took place between the crew and we decided that you know we could carry on without. Didn’t want to turn back so we carried on to the bomb site and as we approached we had a bit of flak. And on the bombing run Taffy was giving an order to Phil to, you know, ‘Steady. Steady. Left. Left. Right. Right.’ Anyway, all of a sudden I discovered I was sitting in fresh air. It made me smile a bit at the time but I thought how has this come about? And as I had come to my guns were trailing over the tail turret and the ammunition was being pulled out all along the fuselage. Thinking to myself well it’s no good sitting here. Can’t. No good without guns. I’ll go up front with the pilot which I did or attempted to do. Disconnected oxygen etcetera to go up the front and the aircraft was one mass of flames. So at the same time I saw somebody disappear through the hatch, front hatch so I picked up my parachute. It was burning and I guess through the lack of oxygen these things were happening but I just dropped the parachute back down thinking well that’s no use to me. And all this happened in a matter of seconds I guess but it seemed ages but I’m sure Charlie at the front, he was the flight engineer he come, seemed to be running back to me over the spar. He picked up the ‘chute. I remember him doing it. I can see him now as I’m talking putting his arm across the flames on the ‘chute, clipping it on and somehow he got me over the spar in to the front of the aircraft into the cockpit where the exit was and the last thing I saw before he pushed me out was my pilot Phil sitting there with the stick back into his stomach. Very white. I can remember that and I can see him now. And Charlie pushed me out and I came to proper then coming down in the fresh air and while I was coming down I could hear psst psst psst and I assumed it was bullets being fired from the ground by the troops that I could see as I was coming down, surrounding me. And a Spitfire circled around as well while I was coming down. Didn’t see any other ‘chutes and I just hoped and prayed that everybody was out but I did see the plane which I assumed was our plane making a perfect belly landing away in the distance just one mass of flames. Of course, that disappeared out of sight and this Spitfire was circling and he must have been within five hundred feet of the ground and he dipped his wings and then shot away up in the air enough to say, ‘I’m on the way home.’ And that’s when I really first felt lonely. Just for a split second and then I was on the ground. And of course, I could see as I was landing that there was civilians and troops running in to this field that I was about to land in which I discovered, well in my opinion was a field of sugar beet and of course landed a bit heavy not having a full ‘chute. Anyway, I disconnected it and I had no chance of escape. It was 6.30 in the evening. I stood doing the hands up and a couple of German soldiers were within what fifty yards of me by that time and they gave me a search all over, make sure I’d got no firearms etcetera. And from there we marched across a field which was as I say was a bit of rough walking because it was some kind of root crop. I said it was sugar beet but anyway I’m carrying my open parachute and the guard put his foot on some barbed wire at the end of the field and I had to crawl underneath this wire which was not the easiest of tasks being open parachute carrying. They put me in to a coach there where I was strip searched and the parachute and flying jacket suit were taken from me and thrown into the back of a coach. While that was going on Charlie arrived with his. He’d been picked up, and also Taffy and they went through the same treatment as I did. But shaking hand with Charlie as he got in and you know didn’t speak at all. Just shaking hands we got hit across the wrist with the butt of a rifle which was a little bit painful. Same as the kick I had as we got through the barbed wire. I stopped like an English gentleman as I say to allow them to get through because I didn’t know where I had to go and he, the jackboot went right in my rear which I felt for several days afterwards. So anyhow finally we got put into some Army barracks where we were [paused] we’d been walking along this canal bank and were being beaten up by the civilians with broom handles and forks and if it hadn’t been for the guards protecting us and tempting to fire at the civilians I don’t think I’d would be here now. But anyhow, we finally arrived in this Army barracks where we stood in a big hall. A kind of a dining hall place or assembly hall and after we were standing there I was on the right, Taffy in the middle and Charlie was on the left and we, all of a sudden a door opened directly in front of us. Taffy started falling so we instantly grabbed him to stop him falling on the ground and the chap in the doorway says, ‘It’s alright Taffy. The war’s over for you.’ And he disappeared. Of course, we couldn’t talk to each other and we didn’t find out until we got into the actual camp, Luft 7 in Poland what it was all about. And it turned out that in 1938 this chap was working with Taffy in South Wales and he’d left there to go to Cambridge to improve himself and I guess he went back to Germany. But from that there we were put into a cell for in Munster for three nights. Three of us in one cell. And from there we had to go to Dulag Luft, the Interrogation Centre which was a bit [pause] a bit much at times but anyway we were in separate cells there for the first time and that was quite a lonely spot then. But anyhow as soon as I, we’d been warned at briefing not to take any notice of any voices or anything we heard when we were in the cells and I hadn’t been in there five minutes before a Yankee voice come I could hear. He said, ‘Are you a limey?’ I didn’t answer. He said, ‘Where did you catch it?’ I kept quiet. Didn’t answer at all and apparently, he said he had a gangrenous foot but I just didn’t answer and I just sat on the old bench that was there. But eventually after about a week I was called for and was taken, marched out from the cell along the corridor down the flight of steps, outside in to the, well, we were passing a parade ground. Then I had to go down some old steps in the building and this had doors all the way along either side of the building and the doors was open. I was told to stand there or indicated to stand there where I stood for forty five minutes actually with a pistol in front of me. There was two officers, I assumed they were officers of the German force and one, one was asking questions. Where we come from, what my trade was and all the rest of it. Still just answered number, rank and name and he kept fiddling with his pistol. The safety catch went on and off and I got like that I remember saying to myself, ‘Why don’t you pull the trigger? Get me out of it.’ I said, ‘Nobody knows whether I’m alive or dead so why don’t you do it?’ Anyhow, after forty five minutes he says, ‘I can let you go back to your cell now, Sergeant Hooker.’ He said, ‘You’re too young to die yet.’ Went back and I sat, I remember sitting on that bench, wooden bench, collapsed out to be honest. And anyhow the following morning I was called again. I thought oh no. Not again. This time went the other way. Went into an office. ‘Sit down, sergeant.’ ‘No. I prefer to stand.’ ‘Oh, have a cigarette.’ ‘No. I don’t smoke.’ Although I could have done at the time you know. I did used to smoke a bit but we never, we were warned against it. Not to smoke, you know or to take a cigarette but I could have given anything to have one. But anyhow after a while he started asking questions again and then he went on the phone. I remember this clearly. Went on the phone and presently a chap came through the door with a book. Put it on the desk in front of the officer and there he started turning these pages over and every page he turned over he mentioned a name of the RAF stations that I’d been at. Right from the time I joined up in the Lords Cricket Ground back to where I was born. It was amazing. Whether it told on my face or not I don’t know but once again he said, ‘You see Sergeant Hooker,’ he says, ‘We know all about you so what’s the point in shooting you.’ Still didn’t say anything. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘By the way Wing Commander Wilson is on our list. He’ll be the next one. We’ll get him. We knew he was supposed to lead the attack today,’ he said. ‘When you attacked.’ He said, ‘But he was standing at the end of the runway when you took off wasn’t he? Saluting the aircraft.’ It shook me something shocking that did. Knowing that. And that is actually what happened. Wing Commander Wilson’s plane went u/s on the way around to take off. And he said, ‘So, there we are.’ He said, ‘You go back to your cell.’ He says, ‘And in a few days’ time you’ll be sent to the prison camp.’ And I went back to my cell and sat there on this old wooden bench which we used to sleep on as well and I couldn’t take it in. That he knew all about us because my own crew didn’t even know where I was born apart from the fact that they knew I lived in Hartley Wintney. But I was actually born in a little hamlet a few miles away from there and he actually knew this. Anyhow, a couple or three days after we were called out again and there was Charlie and the bomb aimer over there and the navigator and the Canadian W/Op. They were there as well so we hadn’t been in touch with them at all. And there were several other men, two chaps we started talking to or Charlie and I did. A flight engineer Sergeant [Mead] and a Sergeant [Beech] from Kent. Anyway, we became very good pals then once we got into the prison camp which was in a place called Bankau in Poland. Took several days I believe if I remember right getting there but once we was there we, we was put in to what we called dog kennels. These garden sheds. And there were seven in the one I arrived in. We were only there for a short while. I can’t remember exact dates but from there we were put into proper huts and there was, that was divided off into small rooms and there was eight of us in a room in four double bunks. We became very friendly altogether and for exercise like all the rest of the lads we used to walk around the perimeter track day after day just to keep a bit of fitness together. The food was a bit rough and in very short supply as it had been during the whole time I’d been in the Interrogation Centre. But there we are. We got through. We had a bit of German cheese and their soup which was, well we called it whispering grass. That’s what it looked like. Bits of grass boiled up. Sometimes there was skinned potatoes boiled up. But the bread I got used to in the end. Eating their dark bread which was horrible to start with. The one thing in passing towards the end of the time we were in Luft 7 we were issued with bread that had been baked in 1937 for the Spanish Civil War. It was on the wrappers of the bread. Like we get our bread nowadays in wrappers. It was just like that. It was some of the finest bread I’ve ever eaten. It really was. Of course, during that time in Luft 7, through the Red Cross I had a set of dentures made because I was flying without mine. And there again they didn’t cost me anything apart from we were allowed to give the dentist a tablet of soap for hygiene purposes which I did and they were a lovely set of teeth. I had them on for a number of years after. After the war. Anyhow, from there of course, the Christmas ’45, sorry ’44 we heard that we were about to be moved from one camp to another. And over the Christmas period there the Yankee aircraft we could hear up in the sky we actually could see them. They were flying quite regular. But on the 17th of January we were informed because we used to have a parade every twice a day for number count, make sure no one had escaped, etcetera. We were informed that we’d be leaving the camp later that day to a destination which the Germans couldn’t tell us. Anyhow, we stood out in the snow and cold with what personal items we had in a Red Cross case which we’d been given in [pause] not in the Interrogation Centre, a transit camp which we went to after we’d been interrogated and that had new clothing, underwear, pullovers, towels, shaving gear which was very acceptable because I hadn’t had a shave or wash for over two weeks. And but from there as I say we were on the parade ground for a number of hours on the 17th then sent back to our billets. On the 19th we were to call again 3 o’clock in the morning on parade. Everybody woke up. Snowing. Breathing very cold. We eventually moved off. I think it was about 8 o’clock if I remember right. Over twelve hundred of us. There were sixteen hundred of us in the camp. Anyhow, there was way over twelve hundred and we, the marching didn’t much. It got into a walk and we stopped a few hours afterwards and put up into a farm building for the night. Then we walked again the following morning for a short while. And then we stopped outside a brick yard, a disused brick yard and we spent the day there. Some were lucky enough to be under cover. Others were in the open. Resting. We were told we were staying there for the day or for the night I should say and early evening we were called out again. We were on the move. The word went around. There were about, so we hesitated whether we’d get out or whether we’d stay there hoping we could get away with staying there and perhaps make contact with the Russians as they were making their push. As we were about to move we saw a pile of pallets. The four of us. There was Charlie, myself and Frank and Tommy. So nobody spoke. We all seemed to go to these pallets and start moving them, a big pile of them and we laid behind. Thought now we’re safe. Nobody will see us here. And we just moved them back in position probably and we were spotted, it turned out by a dog seen the pallets move. A dog. A German guard was checking everybody was out. Anyhow, he controlled the dog. It didn’t attack anybody and we, he ordered us out and in that time he pushed us up near the front of the queue that was forming to make the night march as it turned out. Well, that night it was really snowing and being in front of the queue, or almost in the front we were in sight of the German guards and the chief officer of the camp and the interrogator, not the interrogator, interpreter I should say of the camp and we was walking through snow up to our waists. So we were literally sort of digging ourselves through. And this went on all night. We left there at 8 o’clock at night. The march started and during the night we were informed that if we didn’t get across the River Oder by 8 o’clock in the morning we’d be left to the mercy of the Russians because they were getting so close. For some unknown reason we got over the river, over the bridge which had big holes drilled in them ready for being exploded. You know, exploding. And during the night, I can’t quite remember if it was before that incident or after we found ourselves, the four of us sitting on our cases. We had these Red Cross cases which we had fixed on a piece of an old broken ladder we found in the brickyard and used it as a sled to pull these cases along, you know. We had our towels and a little bit of personal stuff, clothing left. Most of it we was wearing to keep us warm. But we suddenly discovered we were all four of us sitting on this case. Nobody else in sight. I can’t remember who spoke, or if anybody spoke first but we eventually got up and we linked arms as we had been before helping each other along trying to keep each other up. Standing up. And of course the snow was flat and icy where all the lads had gone before us but we eventually did catch up with the group, on the tail end of it but after we’d got over the river, when did I say when it was? About 8 o’clock in the morning. Tired out of course but a short while afterwards we heard the explosions of the bridge being blown up. And that night or that morning we waited outside a farmhouse for like about an hour while the farmer finished milking his cows. You could see them in the stalls. And they turned them out into the snowy field and all of a sudden there was a mad rush and everybody was rushing inside so they could lay down and have a rest. Well, the four of us we spotted the old [unclear] where they used to milk the cows. The stalls. The cow stalls. Just room for four of us to lay down. Well, there was, the cows had been in there all night and we had a good old job trying to clean them out using our boots to move the droppings. We got a bit of straw or hay and managed to lay down on it but it wasn’t very thick. It was very hard and cold but that’s how we spent our night or the rest of the day I should say. But again, we’d no food and this went on for a number of days. I can’t quite remember how many there was. The memory is going a bit. But we were sleeping in cow farms, cow stalls, open barns. Sometimes the barns had hay in. I know in one instance we were sleeping on some hay that was in a barn down the bottom. Others had climbed up on top of the rig. But in the morning we couldn’t find our shoes and where the hay had moved, people moving about at night going to loo etcetera but we did finally find them. But another instance we got to, we were about to move again from the farm and had a short march that day and got to another farmhouse. And this was in the evening time and I could see, or four of us could see shadows moving about in the distance in this farmyard and I went to investigate because we had a feeling. We could see the shadow of a house in the darkness. Over the line, I took a couple of mugs with me to get a drink of water for the four of us and when I got there I was ushered inside and told, you know, told not to speak. It was in broken English. It was some Polish people and there were two of the lads, Polish lads who were on march they’d come up and found out there were Polish people in the house and two of them were going to stop there and hide and they had the floorboards up and they were going to hide in to, underneath the floorboards when our lot moved off. And I was warned you know not to say anything other otherwise you know, you’d be finished. I eventually got back with this water and they wanted to know where I had been and all the rest of it but thankfully we were eventually told we were going on a, the end of the march was over and we were being transported by train.
TO: Sorry. Can I just ask what is that noise?
Other: That’s the fridge.
TO: Ok. I just wondered.
FH: Are you alright?
TO: I was just wondering what the noise was that was all.
FH: Hmmn?
TO: Just wondering what the noise was. That was all. Sorry. Carry on.
FH: Yeah. We, we were informed we were going to be travelling by train for a while but we had another small march. But once we got on the train or on the train there was trucks, goods trucks and there was sixty five of us in one truck which in normal circumstances would have been a bit crowded to say the least. But it wasn’t long before people wanted to relieve themselves. Of course, we couldn’t open the door. That was locked from the outside. There was a crack in the door and various chaps stood at the door trying to relieve themselves but in the end a corner was used to, they wanted to do number twos as they call it. And eventually no. It was, I don’t know how to describe it. The stench was terrific. Everybody was wanting to relieve themselves and using the corner and of course that meant chaps were getting closer and closer together because during the, a couple of days before we got on the train we’d been at a farmhouse and somebody found a tub of what they said was molasses. Of course, everyone being hungry and thirsty put their mugs in and had some of this molasses but it was what they called farm molasses and of course Canadians used to love molasses. Similar to treacle in our case, you know. But this turned out to be farm molasses which they used to use to make sileage for the cattle. Dysentery set in with nearly everyone on the train and believe me it was no, no holiday sitting in that train. We did finally stop and then we were allowed out of the trucks and some of us got out. I think most people got out but a lot of us couldn’t get back in on our own. It was on a slope and it wasn’t on the, it was out in the country so there was no platform and we went down the slope and done what we had to and got back up the slope to get in and the Germans were actually helping us into the trucks. The guards. And some of our own chaps who were a bit fitter helped each other up. Anyhow, we finally got to the destination which was Luckenwalde and there we had a short walk to the camp and crowds of people were, or a crowd of chaps were getting near the gate anxious to see who we were and what. What we were. And it turned out it was an Army camp that we were arriving at. Stalag 3A. And again, we had to stand outside, be photographed again for identity cards. We eventually got into this camp. Into huts. There were no bunks and just the open hut and I think it was just over two hundred to a hut. And we were fortunate. Fortunate to find a place near the side of the hut where we could lean against. There was no, you couldn’t really lay down there was so many. The crowd was so, you know intense and so close together. But anyway, that went on for a while and it was there that I discovered two lads. One from Aldershot, and one from Blackwater and the third one from Basingstoke. And the lad from Basingstoke unfortunately was taken to hospital one night and he passed away with a gangrene stomach. And the following morning or the morning after the padre come around asking if anybody knew him that was in the area where he was resting and sleeping, this chap. He’d been taken out of the room. But I imagine that he was in the same Air Training Corps as I was in Basingstoke so I was allowed to join the party for the funeral which part of the way I carried a imitation or homemade paper wreath with paper flowers on. And halfway along outside the camp, it was quite a walk we changed over bearers and I helped carry the lad to the cemetery which all were under oath not try to escape, you know on that particular occasion which we all agreed to, you know the padre and everything. Anyhow, finally on the 22nd of April [pause] Yes, the 23rd of April we woke up and then, no. That must have been about the 22nd we discovered that the German guards had gone and a senior, I think it was a Norwegian officer had been put in charge of the camp and he gave the instruction no one to leave as the Russians were very close. And on the 23rd these Russian tanks arrived and it was a sight I’ll never forget. They, these tanks went straight down the main road I suppose you’d call it of the camp, the barbed wire either side knocking it down. Everybody was cheering I remember and they turned around, the tanks did and come back up and with the tanks, on some of the tanks were Russian prisoners. They were you know a compound further down sitting on the tanks and some were walking and it was said that they were continuing with the troops to Berlin. They were in a sad state I must admit. And the next thing another follow up troops as they moved off further on the second wave of Russian troops come which had women in them, amongst them as well and we were treated just like prisoners as well by them. Short of food. Not allowed out. But some did venture out I agree. On one occasion, one day there we were, several of us walked down to the Russian compound where they’d killed a cow. We tried to get some of this meat to cook up but didn’t get much luck. They gave us a bit of a tripe which we couldn’t do anything with. It was horrible really. But anyhow, eventually word went around that American trucks were arriving. Everybody was quite pleased and excited looking for them. When they did arrive we rushed to them. I know I did to get on one of the trucks. They were going to take us back to the American lines which turned out to be about eighteen kilometres away. But waiting there in the trucks then some of the guards got very close and ordered everybody off the trucks. ‘You’re our prisoners. You’re going home. We’ll send you home through Odessa,’ they were saying. Anyhow, we got turned off the trucks, put back in the camp and the word went around they’d come again in the morning, the Americans because they didn’t want to make bad friends or cause trouble with the Russians. So they said they’d return again in the morning which they did and again I was one of the lucky ones to get on the trucks. This time I’d somehow or other, I don’t know how I’d lost, lost contact with Charlie and the two new mates, Frank and Tommy. But anyhow again we got turned off the trucks with the Russians firing at us. So the message went around anybody fit enough to walk eighteen kilometres the Yanks would wait there for twenty four hours waiting for us. I joined up with three other chaps who was in the, got off the same lorry. We went into the woods that was close by heading in the direction that we were informed that, we were being fired on then by the Russians as we were trying to escape I suppose you’d call it. But we weren’t the only ones. There was a load of others as well but we was dodging in between the trees. But eventually the firing stopped and we carried on and met up with four or five other. And in the end there was a group of ten of us that after some chatter amongst ourselves five of them decided to return to camp but we decided, you know we started and we’d finish. And that night, well during the day I don’t know how far we’d covered I’m sure but we were very tired and hungry we come across this little village and we could smell new bread being baked and of course that made us worse. Made us feel hungry and we sorted out some and spoke to some Russian guards and took a chance that we’d speak with them and they indicated, or we made them understand who we were after a while. Ex-prisoners of war, English and they cottoned on to who we were. They took us into a house and ordered us to sit down and they disappeared. Well, it was only a matter of ten minutes I guess and they came back with four or five jars of bottled meat and a big bucket of milk and indicated to us to eat and drink and then to lay down and sleep. So we really got tucked in to this bottled meat. It was good. And the milk. So we finally said well we’ll stop there and we slept through the night. And then the following morning we thought well we’d better say thank you to these Russians but we didn’t know where they were but we went outside and eventually we saw these chaps coming back to us pushing bicycles. We thought are they the same men or aren’t they and it turned out they were and they’d got bicycles for us to ride instead of having to walk because we were informed we were going to America. And there was four bicycles so we shared one. Gave one a lift so far and then changed over you know. Five of us on four bikes. Then eventually we got to [unclear] where the German, a load of German civilians and we were trying to get through to the bridge and couldn’t get through. But eventually we made contact with the Russians that were guarding the bridge which was the entrance for the Germans to get across into the Yankee zone but they weren’t allowing that. There was quite a few men their side. But eventually we got in contact with them and told them we wanted to get over and, ‘No. No. No.’ Then they indicated they realised who we were and I pointed to my bike, flat tyre, no good. So they took this bike away from me and more or less snatching it away from me give it to a German lady and snatched her bike away from her and told us, indicated for us to go across the bridge. Which we did and it was long, not long after we got over the bridge we turned. I remember turning left and going along this road. We heard grenades going off. We thought have we done right? They’re still fighting. Anyhow, suddenly three or four Yanks came out from the woods away in front of us, a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards in front of us. They looked and we put our hands up and we called out, ‘English. English.’ Anyhow, we gradually met up and from there they, we threw our bikes on the grass and they got transport for us and took us to their headquarters where we was given some food and drink, cigarettes. And then we moved on from there to a place called [Halle]. I think it is. Anyhow, there again we were given some more cigarettes, more food and it was there that there were some other lads, some Army lads who had been prisoners and had got that far and of course my feet was terrible with blisters. So one of these lads seen me hobbling. He asked what was wrong and I said, ‘Oh, blisters.’ He said, ‘I’m a medical man,’ he says, ‘From the Medical Corps.’ He says, ‘I’ll have a look at them.’ Anyhow, he looked and he disappeared somewhere. He’d been there several days apparently but he came back and I think he must have pricked one of the blisters and it was all running out you know. And then he put a padding on it which was a little bit uncomfortable to start with but after a while it made it easier for me to walk. So I thanked him and then we didn’t see him again. We got, I got moved on to Belgium to an Army, a British Army camp where we had a good shower and a wash, a shave, tidied up again. And from there they gave us some what they called [Banff[ money. It was money that was issued to the occupying forces during the war and we bought a couple of little gifts in the evening. The following day we were told, we had breakfast there of course amongst the troops and we were told that our names would be called out and we’d have to go to a certain point they indicated to us. An assembling area where we’d be flown back to England. Well, waited all the morning. Nothing happened. And we had lunch or I had lunch and I realised I was the only RAF chap there. So waited and waited and mid-afternoon I heard the name, ‘Sergeant Hooker, RAF.’ So I hurried to the assembly point and met up with a crew of a Dakota and they said, ‘Well, you’re on our flight,’ and there was a load of Army chaps there as well so we all got aboard and I discovered sitting in the aircraft a contingent of RAF chaps. Anyway, we took off. I was very pleased you know to be taken flying again and I just got settled in my seat you know and thinking that the White Cliffs are over there and I see a chap coming down from the cockpit, one of the crew members. And he’d been sent down by the pilot asking if I would like to go and fly home in the cockpit along with them which I grabbed the opportunity and I sat up there coming over the English Channel could gradually see the White Cliffs getting nearer and nearer. And the pilot was asking where I lived and said that he was landing at Dunsfold near Guildford. I said, ‘Oh well, that’s not too far from home.’ I said, ‘In fact, I’ve got relations in Guildford.’ Anyhow we got there and we landed and the first chap oh I sat back in the fuselage of course for landing and the first chap I met when the door opened being the first one off the aircraft was a Salvation Army officer who welcomed me home. Shook hands. Then the next chap in the line was a senior RAF officer who, you know shook hands. Again, welcoming me home. Then there was the Army chap. Anyway, we finally got into the hangar in Dunsfold. We had a short interrogation there. Wanted to know when I was shot down and about the crew and if they were all alive. Eventually we were transported that night into Guildford Railway Station and going on the platform thinking it was empty there was a load of women and of course there were a lot of other RAF chaps with me this time. You know they’d landed earlier and that. I forget how many there was but anyhow we were sent there or driven there by transport to go catch a train to Cosford, near Wolverhampton. So, I said, ‘Well, why can’t I go home?’ I said, ‘I’d be home in no time.’ ‘No. You’ve got to go to Cosford and get re-kitted and that. Well, these woman as we, the group walked on the platform a woman grabbed us and this particular woman had grabbed me or took hold of my arm and we walked away from the others. She said, ‘We’re all here to take information from you.’ She said, ‘So we can contact your parents or relatives to let them know that you’re home safe.’ I said, ‘Well, I had sent a telegram to them.’ ‘Yes, but we’ll, we’ll let them know exactly what’s happening and how you are.’ So I told them everything. I said, ‘Well, I’m not on the phone at home,’ I says. ‘My parents haven’t got a telephone.’ ‘Don’t worry. We’ll ring the local police station.’ Which she said they would do and get the police to go to the house and tell mum that we was on the way home, or on the way to Cosford like, you know. Which apparently happened it turned out. After I’d got home they told me all about it. But while we were there there was a big shout. One of the girls quite close to us yelled out loud and disappeared. And it went quiet, everybody went quiet, saw this girl running and she’d spotted her brother entering the platform and after a while everybody cheered and that kind of thing, you know but it was a very moving moment actually. Anyhow, he was allowed to go straight home. We went up to Cosford on the train. Got there in RAF Cosford and could have a wash and shower and all that kind of thing and laid out on the bed was the old RAF blue uniform. Hospital uniforms. Clean pyjamas. Nice white sheets in the bed and we enjoyed our nice night’s sleep. Then and during the day we, the following morning we had breakfast and had a proper interrogation of what had taken place from the time we’d left the ‘drome until we got back to where we were then and asking about the deaths of the different ones you know, the pilot and the tail gunner. Anyway, we finally got rekitted, smartened up and I travelled down to Reading by train with a lot of London boys and we were allowed to travel that night providing we could get home. Well, I looked at the timetables and things and thought well I can get to Reading and catch the last bus as I thought but anyway it was, unfortunately the last bus had gone when I got there. Very quiet of course. This was midnight and I eventually plucked up courage and rang a farmer that I knew in the village not knowing whether they had petrol for cars or anything like that. Anyway, the son answered the phone and I was a bit choked up and he couldn’t understand what I was saying for a while and he said, ‘Did you say Freddie?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And he, I can remember him saying, ‘Calm down, Fred. Calm down.’ He said, ‘Wait a minute.’ And then he said, ‘Are you alright?’ and I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘What are you doing? Where are you?’ And I explained I was just coming home from a POW camp and this was my first visit home and I was stuck in Reading. And he said, ‘Well, alright.’ He says, ‘You stay where you are,’ he says. I remember this as plain as life. ‘You stay where you are.’ He says, ‘I’ll have a word with dad. Wake him up.’ Anyhow, it turned out that they had petrol enough and David was allowed to, excuse me come in to Reading and pick me up which was quite a moving, a moving moment when he did arrive and we drove back across what we call Hazeley Heath and made me think of the times when I used to go on leave and walk from Reading to Hartley Wintney but this time it was, I felt I wasn’t fit enough and I’d a full pack and everything. But anyhow, as we turned in our local road and thinking it was all going to be in darkness I could see lights in our living room and in the kitchen and as David pulled up outside the house there was mother and father at the gate waiting for me. And I was at last home and met up with the family who was there. There is only one thing I regret because when I, while I was in the camp I cut the tops of my flying boots off so they were ordinary shoes and I used the silk to make a silk scarf but while doing, one of the flying boots, the leg part of them was covered in shrapnel. Bits of metal and I filled a matchbox full of these and had carried them all the way through and everything and they was in my hands while I was waiting at Reading Station. I found them in the matchbox but I never saw them again because when we’d been hit I mean I wasn’t injured in any way but my left toecap of this shoe, flying boot had a split from one side to the other and it didn’t even touch my sock. Just the shoe and I’d saved them. When I got new kit in Cosford I put them in my kitbag and brought them with me. But that I’m afraid was my life in the Service. Apart from the fact that I did stay on for a while and joined the Motor Transport Department. Did my training up at [Wittering] just outside Blackpool. And eventually I went back to France to a Repair and Salvage Unit travelling over France recovering broken down vehicles. That I say is my memories of service life but I often regret not staying in. There we are. That’s another tale. Thanks.
Thank you so much.
[recording paused]
FH: Right.
TO: So when you were growing up were you interested in aircraft?
FH: Not until I got involved with the Air Training Corps when that first came about in 1941. Yeah. That’s the only interest I had before. When I was a young lad at [pause] what age would I have been? I’d have been about eight years of age my sister worked as a housemaid in a private house and an aircraft, a private house and private aircraft used to land there. A chap by the name of Fielding and it was in the field next door actually to where Lord Alanbrooke finally arrived at and lived. A house called Ferney Close. And I always remember it was a red aircraft and my sister used to come home on her day off she used to tell us about this. Usually flying around the area then it would disappear for parts of sight and it would land in this field and they were allowed out to see it after it landed. Otherwise, no. It was the joining the Air Training Corps and seeing these aircraft we mentioned earlier coming over on the first, what turned out to be the first thousand aircraft raid on Cologne that got me really in to flying. Yeah.
TO: And when you, in the 1930s do you remember anyone being afraid of Hitler?
FH: Being afraid of Hitler?
TO: Yes.
FH: Let me think [pause] Not until, well ’38 I suppose, ’39 time. I can’t remember anything before that. Not really. No. No. I don’t think so. Can’t give much of an answer there.
TO: And do you remember the day the war started?
FH: Yes. I was standing in our living room in what is now Priory Lane, Phoenix Green and I was standing near, between the window and the living room door and father had ordered us to keep quiet. There was three or four of us children there at the time and he put the, had the wireless on and he says, ‘This means we will have to go without things for a while.’ I remember him saying that. But I can remember the Prime Minister saying, ‘We are now at war with Germany.’ Now, was he, what was his name?
TO: Chamberlain.
FH: Sorry?
TO: Chamberlain.
FH: Chamberlain. Because he lived quite local over at Heckfield, a few miles from home and his sisters lived in Odiham if I remember right but not that I ever knew him or met him you know. But I hear his voice now in my head saying, ‘We are now at war with Germany.’ Yeah.
TO: And what do you think of his policy of appeasing Hitler?
FH: Come again?
TO: What do you think of Chamberlain making the agreement with Hitler in 1938?
FH: I don’t know. I’ve never really thought on that really. But thinking back I don’t think it should have taken place. No. But I can’t really give much of an answer to that one.
TO: And do you — sorry, were you going to say something?
FH: No.
TO: Do you remember the preparations people were making for war?
FH: Oh yes. Digging. Digging big holes in the garden. Filling it with corrugated iron walls on the inside of the big hole with steps leading down to it. That’s what I was doing myself in our own garden on the day the thousand pound, [laughs] thousand pound [laughs] the thousand plane bomber raid was to take place. Some people had done it much earlier of course. And then there was you could purchase the Anderson shelters and there was another one.
TO: Morrison.
FH: Morrison. That’s right. Yeah. I know while I was on leave once I went down to my sister in Folkestone and we had to get in this, this shelter that was in her living room in the corner under the table. The table was over the top of it. And because there was a bombing raid on I’ve never been so scared in my life sitting in there because if a bomb had come down I think you would have just been buried, you know. I could never quite work out the reason for such places like that. I can understand the huge, larger underground shelters that they had but for the individual having one in the house I couldn’t quite see that but there we go. That was about it I think.
TO: Were there any air raids where you lived?
FH: Yes. There was one. Now, this would have been when? They weren’t that, it wasn’t an actual raid on the village or area but a bomb was dropped and landed in a field right on the outskirts of the village which I actually saw leave the Dornier aircraft while I was working as a gardening boy. This would have been in what? 1942, I guess. I was working at Winchfield House owned by a Colonel Cherington and this lone aircraft kept flying over in daylight one afternoon and we saw the actual bomb doors open and see the bomb leave the aircraft and it landed in a field close to what we called Mount Pleasant in Hartley Wintney. And no one was injured or anything but we did, I did view the crater later in the evening and there was a few windows, I believe broken but no casualties and that’s about the only one I can remember local. Although when I was at home at the time I don’t know but I understand there was a few found or that had been dropped along the, near the railway line at a place we called Elvetham. A couple or three miles from here but I don’t know any details on that one.
TO: And once you’d joined the Air Force what kind of rations did you have?
FH: Rations? While in the Service do you mean?
TO: Yes. In the Service in general.
FH: Well, I think we used to have a sweet ration. I don’t think cigarettes were rationed. I can’t remember that. But food of course. I mean, we had them supplied to us. You know, from the mess. Although in Civvy Street there was the usual rationing going on but once I was in the Service that didn’t affect us except that when we went on leave we were given a ration card with little coupons on that the shopkeeper used to have to tear off. Was it two ounces of tea a week? An ounce of cheese or a couple of ounces of butter. I forget the exact amount. A very small amount but of course that helped, assisted mother with feeding me when I was on leave. That kind of thing. Yeah. That’s about it I think. Yeah.
TO: And when you were volunteered for the Air Force what was the process for becoming air crew?
FH: Well, first of all I applied I don’t know whether it was to Oxford or where it was but I had to go, travel to Oxford. I had the reply after writing and I had to travel to Oxford for an interview and an assessment test. And that was, I’d done my first one in 1941 but unfortunately I failed that and very disappointed. I came home again but in 1942 [pause] yeah late ‘42 I reapplied and got through it ok. I was quite chuffed. Most of the local people I spoke to said, ‘You haven’t got a chance on earth. You’ve got to have a proper education. College or university education.’ I said, ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘But I’m going to have a damned good try.’ Which I did and I studied hard in the Air Training Corps. We had various lectures from people from the RAF Odiham and we used to visit, excuse me, visit RAF Odiham for lectures as a group in the ATC. And that is where I gained a lot of information that was needed with regards discipline. We were shown all a number of different forms which we learned numbers of because the Service life was all numbers on forms and as I say that’s where I really got the liking to and wanting to join the Air Force. Yeah.
TO: And what medical tests did you have to do?
FH: Well, we had the general medicals and well they checked you for everything in those days, you know, wanting to know the illnesses one had had but, and a load of injections of course. Things I’d never had before apart from having been vaccinated as a kiddie but they just took it in your stride you know. They asked questions and you answered them as best they could regarding your medical health which in those days I was quite fit, you know. Just have the normal measles and mumps when I was a kiddie. That’s all. Nothing serious. Yeah.
TO: And did you hear about events in the war like America becoming involved?
FH: Yeah. We heard this on the radio, you know. All the time he was at home dad always had the 6 o’clock and 9 o’clock news on the radio and nobody dare speak in those days while the news was on. If you did you got a clip around the ear because he was interested in what was going on, you know. He himself had only been in the Army a short while during the previous war, the First World War. He was just a short chappie. He was refused on height for a long time but he was for a few, a couple of years I think it was in what they called the [unclear] depot near Southampton but the guards knew it was quiet 6 o’clock and 9 o’clock at night and he mentioned about the Yanks being late coming in to the war I remember. ‘Just like they were last time,’ he said. But otherwise, no. And of course, we heard early on of the so many aircraft didn’t return from a raid. That kind of thing on the news and it didn’t cross my mind when I got interested in planes that it might happen to me. Just one of those things. Yeah.
TO: And what did you do for entertainment in the RAF?
FH: Oh, that would be telling wouldn’t it? The [pause] well I don’t know. Just carried on normally. We used to go out for a drink sometimes or spend the evenings in the NAAFI along with friends and I’ve known when we’ve gone out for a stroll around the camp you know in the local villages. But otherwise, we spent a lot of time doing the old, [unclear] we called it in those days. Cleaning the brass and the webbing and actually we didn’t get a lot of spare time. Not in our case. No. We were always studying in the evenings. Checking what we’d been through during the daytime you know. Sometimes you’d get assistance from a mate. Another time he wouldn’t speak to you. But normally the friendship in the Services was terrific. Something I did miss when I finally left. Yeah. The comradeship. Yeah.
TO: How would you describe morale in the Air Force?
FH: Good. Very good. Yes. I think so. From my experience it was very good and there’s no other word for it. The comradeship and the morale was good. You missed that kind of thing when you come into Civvy Street.
TO: Were there ever any problems with teasing or bullying?
FH: With bullying?
TO: In the Air Force.
FH: Never come across it myself. No. I must admit it was if one was in trouble or say in trouble perhaps couldn’t afford to, had spent the money and couldn’t afford to have a cup of tea or a pint of beer in the NAAFI one of your mates would always buy you one you know. It was the same when we was on the Conversion Unit. It was a Canadian unit as I mentioned earlier. We used to join them in the gambling sessions sometimes. I think they called it Sevens. Throwing the old dice. Well, many a time I’ve been broke from about an hour, an hour and a half after being paid same as Les and we always found somebody to give you a drink or a cup of coffee and loan you a quid if you wanted one. You’d always be paid back. The comradeship was terrific. Yeah.
TO: Did you ever visit the cinemas together?
FH: I think we used to go to a cinema occasionally. Yeah. I can’t say what. We used to have one on a camp, on the camp where you could go but what the films were now I don’t know. No.
TO: And what did you think of Churchill?
FH: It’s a job for me to describe that. At times he was, I mean he got us through the war from that angle but I don’t know. I daren’t say what I really think I don’t think. Not towards the end. I mean he didn’t have much, didn’t have much to say about Bomber Command boys after the order to really as far as I’m concerned came from him in the first place for these bombing raids etcetera. Red Arrows going over.
TO: Oh yeah. There we go. There we are.
FH: Sorry about that.
TO: No. No.
FH: A perfect time to do a fly past.
TO: They’re doing a fly past for Odiham Aerodrome.
Other: No. That was Thursday.
TO: Oh, was that Thursday.
FH: Oh, there they go. There there go.
TO: Yes. [pause] marvellous.
FH: Couldn’t ask for any better interruption.
TO: There they go again.
FH: There they go.
Other: [unclear]
FH: Wonderful.
TO: Wonderful.
FH: That reminds me seeing those go by the window now the last day or supposed to have been the last hour the Vulcan flying. That comes just a few feet, well a few hundred feet I suppose it was above our road and come straight down the road. It was a beautiful sight. But anyhow that’s beside the point.
TO: Ok. So would it be ok if we put [unclear] for us so they don’t crease. Sorry. Just that is creased. And what did you think of Arthur Harris?
FH: Bomber. Yes. Well, he carried out instructions didn’t he from the higher ups and like the rest of us in the Service he was carrying out orders as far as I’m concerned. And that’s, that’s it. He was a good leader as far as I’m concerned. Yeah. But otherwise, never met him of course. No. I can’t say much more.
TO: And what was your opinion of Halifaxes?
FH: To me they were the finest aircraft ever made. I enjoyed every trip I took in them and to compare it with the Lancaster well it’s a job to because I only went into a Lancaster aircraft once and that was only about eighteen months ago when I visited the flight station at Coningsby. We were allowed, I was allowed to climb in there and go over the Halifax, the Lancaster and I still think the Halifax was a nicer aircraft. Yeah. It’s one of those things. They’d both done a good job. One may have carried a heavier bomber load, bomb loads but in the war effort I think they were both the same. Yeah.
TO: Were you aboard a Mark 3 Halifax?
FH: Yeah. We operated on the Mark 3 from the squadron. Yeah. It’s [pause], I’m not sure what Mark it was. Whether it was a Mark 3 at Conversion Unit or not I wouldn’t be too sure on that one. The old memory fades sometimes.
TO: And what were conditions like in the mid-upper turret?
FH: Very cramped as far as that goes but then you didn’t want to move about. You were sitting there and your turret moved with you and you looked, gazed and looked all around. Up, down all around. It was, it was a lovely flying position I think for seeing things as well, you know. Yeah. Beautiful. Boulton Paul turret. Yes. Many days ago now but I did manage to get into a Halifax. It would have been last year I think it was. We went up to RAF Elvington in Yorkshire and I was allowed to climb aboard there which I had to have a little assistance getting in but it was, well it brought back a load of memories to me. Good and bad. And I was only disappointed that Elizabeth couldn’t, wasn’t allowed into the aircraft there although she didn’t climb aboard the Lancaster as did our friends. But my friend, Chris, from Worksop, he helped me in and out of the aircraft same as he did with the Dakota but the Halifax it’s a shame they didn’t save one so it could have joined the what was the Memorial Flight. Why they never come back I don’t know. Except they are rebuilding one in Canada which I sometimes get little whippets of news from but I haven’t had one lately. No. Lovely aircraft.
TO: And did you ever know of any cases of people who refused to go on bombing raids?
FH: No. I heard that some people did and then they were classed as LMF in initials. Lack of moral fibre. And I think it was disgusting for those chaps to be labelled with such a thing because believe me I’d only done three trips and as I mentioned earlier the one in the Ruhr it was hell let loose. So, I can’t, I don’t wonder of some chaps not having the nerve to go again but being labelled LMF I think was wrong. Yeah. But I knew, never knew of anyone.
TO: When you were aboard the Halifax how did it compare to being aboard the Wellington?
FH: Well, quite a different experience in a way because with the [pause] when I was flying in the Wellington on training when we were crewing up mainly my position was looking out of the astrodome unless it was my turn to do the firing exercise. Then Les and I would change over and I’d sit in the tail turret to do the, carry out the firing exercise. But the experience of looking around and searching the sky which I practised in the astrodome was about the same except it was a much smaller area to look around. The Wellington I think could take a lot more punishment than the Halifax I think in as much that, how it was constructed. The framework being criss-crossed or whatever the wording is because I was flying in the Wellington once I was in the astrodome and actually saw the wings literally flap up and down which any other aircraft I think they’d have snapped off at the time. There was a, we had a Polish screened pilot instructing our pilot on the Wellington and he told him to dive down over base. We was over Reading at the time and he said, ‘When I say dive I mean dive.’ But Phil just did a gentle dive and he just took over the dual aircraft control and whoof. I was just in the astrodome dumbfounded. Mouth wide open. But we didn’t see him afterwards after the pilot reported him while we was debriefed. Yeah. Because that is one thing the pilot if possible excepting emergencies of course has to warn to the crew, or has to warn the crew on if he’s going in to a steep dive. Yeah. That’s about it I think.
TO: What was the process for moving the turret about?
FH: What was?
TO: The process for rotating the turret?
FH: The purpose.
TO: The process.
FH: Process. Oh, you’ve nearly got me beat now. Nearly forget it’s so long ago since I’d done it. It was a, we had a handle there, you know and port to starboard. Dip or raise on the handle. I’m trying to I remember if it was just a single. I can’t remember now. It was a single handle I think. You’d go port to starboard. The normal position for take-off and that kind of thing would be facing tailward. The turret would be, you know. Yeah.
TO: And what was the process for take-off?
FH: Well, everybody would be checking before we took off and check all particular instruments you know. The positions. We’d ensure the guns were loaded and the safety catch was on and that it worked of course but you always would be in a safe position on take-off. And at times I believe we used to, I used to have to sit in the fuselage for take-off. I can’t quite remember whether that was the actual rule. I’ve got a feeling it was during the training and once we was airborne you’d climb aboard and when you was on ops of course as soon as you got airborne you put your safety catch off and start the business of rotating. Searching the sky.
TO: And when you were on a raid could you see anything beneath you?
FH: Oh yes. For instance, our first raid was the airfield, an airfield in Holland and actually saw the bombs dropping. You know, landing on the airfield, yes. But when we were at Gelsenkirchen of course it was so, the area was full of smoke from the fires and the exploding of the bombs. We were actually bombing, in our case a red target which the Pathfinders indicated to the bomb aimer to bomb on and so we didn’t really see the bombs hanging there except that some times you’d be next to, pardon me, next to a puff of smoke. But it was so dense you just, your bombs exploding joining all the rest of the chaos that was going on. Yeah, then we were going to the Munster raid. Well, I don’t know because we were hit. I say we were hit. I don’t know even to this day whether we were hit from a bomb above us, whether it was ack ack or what the reason was but we were hit, you know. And whether the bombs had been gone I don’t know. So it was all, all very blank that side of things was. How long as I said before I was knocked out I don’t know. I shouldn’t think not long. Being in fresh air. I don’t know. Yeah. That’s about it I think.
TO: Could you actually hear the explosions of the flak?
FH: I can’t recall that one. No. No. I saw plenty of it. Yeah. Yes, it’s so one got hit and he started diving in flames but no I can’t recall whether I heard them or not. Saw the puffs of smoke all around us. Oh. Yeah. Glad to get out of that anyway. But hearing them I don’t know. I can’t, can’t say.
TO: Could you ever see fires beneath you? Could you ever see fires on the ground?
FH: On the ground? [pause] No. Well, when we were going into the Ruhr the second trip I mean there was a mass of smoke. The whole area was. So we didn’t actually see the flames there. I don’t [pause] On the first one I don’t remember seeing fires at the airfield no. We saw the explosions but no we didn’t actually see a fire start. No. Definitely not and probably did because we were carrying incendiary bombs. Yeah.
TO: And what about searchlights?
FH: No. We did all daylight raids ours was so they didn’t —
TO: Ok.
FH: They didn’t play havoc with us but I believe they did with some chaps. Yeah.
TO: And did you ever see enemy fighters?
FH: Didn’t see one enemy fighter. Not on, not while we were on bomber trips. No. No. The first one I saw was in Farnham funnily enough before I joined the Air Force. One that had been shot down or something and was on show in Farnham but otherwise, no.
TO: And did you hear about the bombing of Hamburg in 1943?
FH: Well, yes, we heard of the different raids taking place but I couldn’t, couldn’t relate any actual details. No. No. It’s you used to listen to the news you know about so many of our aircraft missing. The target was Hamburg or wherever it was we’d hear on the news you know. But you didn’t feel as though you was taking a risk. You didn’t think of that happening to you and being shot down until it happened.
TO: When you saw the planes for the Cologne raid were you aware, did you learn later it was the first thousand bomb raid?
FH: Yeah. Yeah. We learned later on it was. Yeah. Yeah. But it was a sight which stays with me. Where I was in our back garden with a spade in my hand digging and the neighbours was in their gardens and all of sudden this noise approached from what we called the Reading area over to us and they seemed to be turned right about our heads and heading towards Southampton. And plane after plane after plane. I can’t tell you how long it took for them to all go by but there were the boys with their waving their guns and looking because they weren’t very high. I couldn’t tell you the exact height but they could certainly know and they would see people on the ground and waving and they were waving. Moving the guns up and down to the people below. It was a wonderful sight but I can’t remember how many returned the following day. I don’t know. But it was a wonderful, wonderful sight. Yeah. There we go.
TO: When you were in the POW camps did you ever hear about the raid on Dresden?
FH: We had, someone had a wireless in the camp and we used to get snippets of news sent around to us by a group of chaps who was, nobody, well we didn’t, nobody in our hut knew where the wireless came from except I was told once a chap had a crystal set made into a set of false teeth. How true that was I do not know. But we used to get the little newsflashes most days. And someone would stand just casually at the door of the hut when the man came. A different one each day bringing around the news, you know that he’d heard on the wireless because the guard used to walk around the camp as well so if anybody was about nothing was spoken of, you know. Just casual everyday conversations like, you know. And on several occasions heard little bits of news while we was on the march. So whoever he was, whatever he was he did deserve something in recognition of what he’d done and kept the morale up of, of the lads in the camp. Yeah.
TO: And what was your opinion of the Browning guns you were using?
FH: Of course, I didn’t fire them in anger but they were, the four were synchronised together to fire together. Of course they were so synchronised if I was facing tailwards or frontwards over the wings the bullets wouldn’t hit them. They were so synchronised that you missed the tail turret or the tailplane, you know. Good thing. But no I think they were good. In fact, I think towards the end of the war they went to a .5 millimetre but ours were 303s. Four of them. Yeah.
TO: And what’s your best memory from your time in the RAF?
FH: My best memory? Now, that makes me think doesn’t it? Best memory. I suppose was when I flew back in to Dunsfold. Yeah. And the worst memory was there at the same time when they told me I had to go to Cosford instead of going straight home. So, it all turned out right, ok. Yeah.
TO: Do you think there is anything Bomber Command could have done to reduce its losses?
FH: Well, I don’t know. I mean to send a thousand I know it only, I think it only happened about twice, a thousand planes raid but I mean averages. Men had to be shot down or failed to return for some reason but I mean, I think it was in our case I think there was about two hundred planes on the target every half hour, you know. Which I would have thought was sufficient because the more there are there the more chance you’ve got, or the more the Germans had I think of hitting us and of course another thing with regards ourselves we were informed that if an aircraft, which in our case we were lower than we should have been when we were dropping our bombs the gunners on the ground picked out single aircraft out and put a box barrage up so, all around us so whichever way you turned up, down, sideways you were bound to get something. And it’s possible that’s what happened with us.
TO: Were you ever, when you were a prisoner were you ever worried that the, that the Germans might start killing captured airmen?
FH: Killing?
TO: Captured airmen.
FH: Well, we did hear of a case actually in our camp. I can’t say that I witnessed it but I have got a photograph of where it had taken place in my collection of photographs that was actually when the chap found this camera in the offices after the Germans left and the offices were ransacked for different ones to see what they could find as souvenirs. This one chap from London found a camera and he notified us that the, one of the films had been taken and he was going to include it on there whatever it was and it turned out to be where these two chaps were being shot. Yeah. Attempting to break out.
TO: Had you been taught the procedure for baling out during training?
FH: As far as I’m concerned the only training I had was in the Air Training Corps. We was over at Odiham and we was in a hangar one day. We’d been, been to a classroom and we’d been taught about parachuting. How they were folded and all the rest of it. And we were taken to one of the hangars and in one corner of the hangar there was one a platform right up in the ceiling and there was a rope hanging down and a ladder going up the side of the wall and we used to, they instructed us to, the corporal there, we climbed up the ladder. They’d feed a harness on us and explained that we’d be dropping at the same rate as though we were coming down in an actual parachute. It was geared towards a certain speed and we were told we’d got to hit the ground, to be in a ball and to roll over on our shoulder as we hit the ground. They had a mattress down for us to land on, you know. Not the concrete. And we’d done the rolls in PT and that kind of thing but the actual training from an aircraft? No. I can’t remember anything taking place. No. Except being told not to pull the ripcord while you were still in the aircraft which happened sometimes.
TO: What do you think was the most important battle of the war?
FH: I’ve no idea. I wouldn’t like to comment on that. No. They say the Battle of Britain some people but I don’t know. Without the help of the other Services no one Service could have won the war on its own. It was a joint effort as far as I’m concerned.
TO: When you began operations and were in 102 Squadron did people ever talk about comrades they’d lost?
FH: About?
TO: About friends they’d lost on raids.
FH: No. The simple reason we weren’t on the squadron long enough. We arrived there on the 18th of August ’44 and as we moved into our billets there were several airmen picking up the uniforms and belongings of another crew that had failed to return the previous night. And we thought that was quite a good omen. Or a bad one. Yeah. We just settled into the billet and we were there from the 18th to the 3rd of September which isn’t long really. And then as I said before on the 3rd of September we had to land away from base and when we come back we was on ops the next day to Gelsenkirchen and the next day on the fatal op so we didn’t really know anybody else on the squadron. Which is a shame really because we, we spoke to our own gunnery officer, I forget his name now but no, we didn’t know anything about other chaps.
TO: And did you remember hearing about the Dambuster raid?
FH: Yes. Vaguely. We heard about it but I can’t tell you quite where or when it was off hand. No. No, I can’t give you a date or where it was I heard it.
TO: What did you think?
FH: I’m bad on dates.
TO: Ok.
FH: Remembering dates.
TO: Do you remember what you thought when you heard it though?
FH: Oh, we thought it was quite a unique invention really because it was something entirely new as far as we was concerned and it had done its job. And we were rather surprised it was never used again but there you go. Yeah. You see various parts of it are supposed to have been part of a bouncing bomb in different places I’ve visited since the war but that’s about all.
TO: And what was everyday life like in Luft 7?
FH: In the camp? Well, it was just the same old routine. Up in the morning. Make a hot drink whenever possible. We used to make these home made what we called blowers with a bit of metal, with a tin with water in and turn and make the fan underneath the flames of odd bits of wood or cardboard. Then we used to go for, oh in the, pardon me the usual parade which was messed about with sometimes. They used to be counting the prisoners every day or twice a day and we’d line up on the parade ground and often somebody would decide to play up and move about in the parade while they were being counted and then they’d have the wrong number. Spent hours sometimes on the parade ground waiting for the Germans to say, ‘Alright go back to your billets.’ Which we used to do to play cards. Sometimes there was somebody would give a lecture or a talk on what their job was pre-war. And there would be the vicar, he was an Army chap funnily enough gave a, always took a church service on a Sunday. And one that he was second in command to [pause] the pilot officer, an Australian chap, of the camp, he was a Methodist minister and he used to give a Sunday service on a Sunday which I used to go to very often. And strange as it may seem I met up with his navigator back in 2015 at my first reunion and I met again where are we now? Last year. ’16. No. This year, sorry in Gloucestershire. I met with him again down there. Not that I knew him then but we got to know each other through the man that organised the reunions. Yeah.
TO: And can you remember what your room was like?
FH: What? In the prison camp you mean?
TO: Yeah.
FH: Yeah, it was a normal size. Well, like the English military huts divided in small rooms. It had one, what type of stove they called it? The round stove with the chimney going out through the roof which was never used because you couldn’t get the fuel for it. But there were four double bunks so each room after we left the garden sheds or dog kennels as we called them was eight. Eight to a room. Yeah. And we, you know sort of palled up in there and become good friends but unfortunately the only one I kept, could make contact with after the war was Charlie but he passed away in ’68. But the rooms were quite nice from that angle. Had a small table in and a bench seat to sit on. Yeah. Yeah.
TO: And what did you do to pass the time?
FH: Play cards. Chat about home life. Different places we, you know different ones come from. That kind of thing. We used to do quite a bit of walking around the perimeter track when the weather was suitable to keep exercising. Try to keep fit. Yeah.
TO: And what rations did the Germans give you?
FH: Very very little but I don’t think I can actually quote the one you, sometimes we’d get a slice of bread or a bowl of so-called soup which as I mentioned earlier I believe sometimes consisted of what looked like grass boiled up. Sometimes it would be potato skins where they’d been scraped and boiled up. Occasionally we’d get a jacket potato or a whole potato. I wouldn’t say a jacket potato. Oh, sometimes you’d get cheese or so-called cheese. It was about the size of a fishcake and you’d bite into it. It was like chewing gum and you could pull it out. Right out. It was horrible stuff. I don’t think everyone ate those. No. That was terrible stuff that was. But no, the rationing, the food could have been a lot lot better. No. that was one thing we did suffer.
TO: And did you ever get letters from Britain?
FH: I didn’t receive one. I sent several. The first one was at the transit camp after we’d been there and had a wash and which was a good one we were given a Red Cross letter and a Red Cross Card and it’s a period that said you would send one to your parents or wife whichever the case may be. And the other one you would send to the Irvin Parachute Company and notify them that you’d saved your life with one of their ‘chutes which I’d done. I sent one to mother and father of course but I never had a reply whatsoever. No. We sent several others but after the war they were a number of them were returned that mother and the girlfriend had sent. They were returned to me at home but not when we were a prisoner of war.
TO: Could you tell me that story again please of the, your friend on the train who managed to get hold of the Luger?
FH: Oh yeah. We’d travelling from Munster to the interrogation centre with the two guards. There were only the three of us. We hadn’t met up with the other two of our crew that survived but Taffy, the bomb aimer Charlie, myself was on the move. Charlie sat by the side of the, one of the guards. I sat next to him. Taf was on the other side of the carriage along with another guard and we’d been travelling for quite a while and they seemed to doze off. Of course, we didn’t speak because having been warned to be wary of such things you know in case something was said they picked up on. I saw Charlie who was looking sideways at the side of his, I saw Charlie, saw his hands down near the guard and the next time he had his luger in his hand and he opened it up. Just shook his head. And there was no bullets in it. I was shaking. I don’t mind admitting it. I was absolutely shaking because I was only a young kiddie I was. Charlie was about eleven years older. And eventually he put it back in the holster. Just carried on. The train journey went on. Of course, we couldn’t say anything to each other about it. And unfortunately, Charlie never mentioned a word about it afterwards. What his intentions were if there had been bullets in there whether [pause] I don’t know. But later on on that journey we were stopped at a station and we were on the one line and on the line to the left of us a train pulled in and there was all the German personnel covered in blood and bandages all over on one of their hospital trains. So one of the guards pulled the blind down in our carriage and the door was locked and they indicated to us that if they didn’t, if they hadn’t rolled the blinds down they would attack us and they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I realised, I did at the time well they had no bullets in their guns. But anyhow in the end there was quite a noise on the platform and in the end it seemed to quieten down with the civilians and we were let out and we had to run across the platform into a, well a kind of a waiting room and we were shoved into this room. The door slammed shut on us the three of us and I don’t know how long we were in there but quite a while and then the train, we heard the train start up and we were then, the door was opened. They looked around the door backwards and forwards and one guard had gone out and opened the carriage door and we were rushed in there. The door was shut shut and off the train went but there were a few people still on the platform but of course the train was on the move. They couldn’t do anything about it. We were safe for a bit longer. Yeah. Funny experience it was.
TO: Did you, well you already knew Normandy had happened by the time you were captured but did you think the war would soon be over when you were captured?
FH: Yeah. I think we, if we speak the truth we had a feeling you know we were getting to the end of it. Yeah, because the bombing was what’s the word? Quite, well the trips were quite regular and in numbers. Quite a high number of bombers coming out every day and the casualties you’d hear on the wireless we didn’t think we’d be there too long but we had no idea really. Wondering at the same time whether it was going to be years or months you know. Yeah.
TO: Did the mood of the guards change as the war turned against Germany?
FH: Hmmn?
TO: As the war, as it became, as the war went on did the mood of the guards change in how they treated you?
FH: To a certain extent yes because the very first night we were put in the cells at Munster and we were there for three, three days and on the day before we were sent to the Interrogation Centre one of the guards came in with our coffee so called and he stood chatting. He spoke English. He said we, ‘We should not be fighting each other. We should be fighting the Russians together.’ And we didn’t make much comment because I mean we still didn’t know whether it was a put up job you know being weary for our own sakes. But no, in the actual camp there was an Irish, well we called him Paddy, he was a German guard but when we was on the march he actually had civilian clothes underneath his Army uniform so that if they dispersed because he could get rid of his uniform and become a civilian or a prisoner of war, you know. Or, you know join our ranks. But what happened to him in the end I don’t know but, yeah because he was alongside us for quite a while but of course in different speeds, you know walking, ambling along you know. They were as bad as us. The guards, because they had to keep going you know and they didn’t really want to. No. [pause] Yeah. That’s about it.
TO: How did the guards behave in Luft 7?
FH: Well, they was reasonable really. I mean they were doing a job that they were paid for the same as we had been. But no, the higher ups they were a bit more severe you know. The old sergeant, and I forget his name but they were very firm. They wouldn’t stand any nonsense you know. But the ones who was patrolling the camp, ok you didn’t tell them anything and, but they were quite friendly in a sense. Inclined to speak to you or, in their broken English, you know. But they were doing a job they had to do. Yeah.
TO: And did you ever get Red Cross parcels?
FH: Yeah. We had a few. More Americans than English which I think once we had one each. They weren’t very regular the whole time I was a prisoner of war. Often one partial where they would be shared between perhaps four or six chaps and then at one stage it was one box per room which was eight men. And it would consist of what do you call it? Chocolate. Very hard thick chocolate. Some butter or margarine stuff. Tinned milk. A bit of tinned meat. What else was in them? Oh, prunes and sultanas. That type of thing boxed up. And cigarettes. There was always about two hundred cigarettes in each parcel which to some people you know was food to them you know. In fact, I used to have the odd occasional cigarette but it was while I was a POW that I started smoking in earnest if you’d like to put it that way because there was always plenty of cigarettes. Some chaps used to trade their food for cigarettes but I didn’t get to that. I often bought food, bartered food you know for cigarettes you know but unfortunately, I didn’t give up smoking when I came home. I carried on until 1995. But yes the food parcel was good. It was good food. The English parcels were slightly different but unfortunately, we didn’t get many of them. Either of them. And didn’t get any at all after we left Luft 7. No.
TO: And what were the weather conditions like during the Long March?
FH: Weather. Way below twenty degrees. And as I mentioned a number of night marches you could call them and the snow and blizzards we apparently marched around so they tell us Breslau, Breslau a couple of times around the autobahn and it was just a complete blizzard the whole time. They had no idea where they were taking us to. The Germans hadn’t. And well now when I see a little bit of snow I shiver. I really hate the stuff. I’ve seen enough of it in my life. Yeah. But of course, we was walking in our boots. These fine shoes we had on. Yeah. We used to have a, we took them off at night but in the morning they were still frozen. Just walked in frozen shoes and that. But I went to the Medical Centre on one occasion with my toes and they said it’s a touch of frost bite but whether it was I don’t know but I’m still to this day suffering with my toes at night. They seem to get warm and sometimes go numb my two big toes. But there we are. We’re still here. Still telling the tale.
TO: Did anyone get, did anyone get hyperthermia?
FH: Well, I can’t honestly say about that, no. No. I can’t really answer that one.
TO: And were there any prisoners who were unable to go on when they got ill?
FH: Oh yeah. During the march, well those that were sick when the march started they were left behind or taken to a Medical Centre. But on the march they had a horse and waggon where they, anybody took queer was put into this horse and waggon you know and carried on on the march but what happened to them in the end I don’t know because there were so many that didn’t arrive in the camp at the end. Luckenwalde. Either gave themselves up or jumped in the river as we crossed over. Through the holes. Things like that. It happened I’m afraid. Yeah.
TO: Were you ever worried that Allied bombers would attack you?
FH: Well, we were concerned put it that way but I don’t think we ever encountered any.
TO: And did you ever wish that the Germans had left you in Luft 7 for the Russians to take?
FH: Well, we did actually. Our little group. Because it really took it out of us on the march. We lost a lot of weight. And of course, the only snag was the Russians, our RAF uniforms were very similar to some of the Germans uniforms in colour and the fear was that they would shoot on sight. Ask questions after, you know. So that was one of the reasons that there was nothing on the march but I think perhaps we might have been better off if we had stayed where we were. But on the other hand those that were like myself I said earlier we’d been after the Germans moved out and the Yanks arrived with their vehicles and they stopped the Yanks taking us out. They said they were evacuating us via Odessa. And the things I heard afterwards a lot of those chaps did go that way and were never heard of since. But how true we don’t know but it was a long way around or would have been, you know. Yeah.
TO: What else can you say about the morning that you were liberated?
FH: Well, I mean it was all hand waving and trying to contact, get in touch with the Russians because they were on the move with the tanks, you know and there were troops following by foot you know. But word was going around stay where you were you know because the Russians weren’t going to stop with their tanks. They was on the move you know. But yeah, it was joyous I suppose for a while. But when we realised that they was basically holding us as prisoners it changed. The mood changed completely because we was a number of days with them when the food was worse than what it was with the Germans, you know. So that was one of the reasons why we had, the others with me to leave the camp and get near the Yanks if we could you know. To get food and help because we, when I come home I was just under seven stone and in fact I was putting weight on so much I went to the doctor and queried, you know. But they sort of explained that it would be a thing to do but not to overdo the eating but it all worked out in the end you know.
TO: And how did you feel when you heard that Germany had surrendered?
FH: Well, we were quite pleased naturally and of course that’s when we thought we were on our way home but that was on the, was it the 8th of May wasn’t it? Yeah. I’d just had my twenty first birthday on the 3rd of May and that is when some of the chaps well we were actually, no I beg your pardon we were actually on the trying to contact the Yanks because they’d arrived at our camp on the 23rd and the war was still on when we, when we heard [pause] Sorry when we were on the march, on the move to get in touch with the Yanks is when we heard that the war was over. Yeah. And because when we heard these hand grenades going off in the lake after we got over the bridge, the River Elbe we thought there was some in-fighting going on you know. But it turned out that these Yanks were passing time away because they were bored and they was killing, blowing up all the fish in the lake. Yeah.
TO: And when did you get your first proper meal after leaving the POW camp?
FH: Well, we had food from the Yanks but I suppose if I remember right the first real meal was at the Army camp in Brussels right before I was flown back home. I was there basically a couple of days. Yeah. We had plenty of cigarettes given to us on the route but you know we weren’t really interested in those in a way we had so many of them. Yeah. I know we sat down to the meal in the Army barracks. Yeah. Amazing.
TO: This is just going back slightly but can you tell me how you actually felt during the bombing raids?
FH: What?
TO: Just —
FH: Us bombing them do you mean?
TO: No. When you, when you were above in the turrets.
FH: Yeah.
TO: You were on the raid.
FH: Yeah.
TO: What were your general feelings?
FH: Well, I must admit I didn’t think about getting shot down. It’s a, it was a strange feeling. You knew that chaps were being shot down. The planes not returning. Every day you heard it on the news you know but when you was actually doing it at least I didn’t think of being shot down. Not until I was sitting in the turret without any guns. Well, the first day I mean it was nearly a normal run. There was a few ack acks but over the Ruhr that was a different kettle of fish altogether. That was, well hell let loose is my opinion. As I said the only way, the best way I can describe it is today’s fireworks when they’re all in full swing and a load of them going off in the sky all different colours and that. Imagine that those were shells exploding and an aeroplane flying in between them and that’s as near as I can get for that. They weren’t coloured of course. They were just puffs of smoke you could see you know exploding all around you. Yeah.
TO: And how did you feel about the bombing campaign itself?
FH: Well, I suppose we thought it had to go ahead to win the war, you know. I mean I joined up to fly and that meant you’d be on bombing raids, you know. But you didn’t think, or I didn’t think personally that I was bombing people. I was bombing targets. I mean until we were walking along this canal in Munster after we’d been shot down and we had these two guards with us and on our left was a row of houses all burning. It would be about a hundred yards from where we were on the canal bank and they were running towards us when they realised there was English people being walking along this towpath. I mean that is when I realised or I realised I don’t know about the others that we may have killed people. When we saw the row of houses being burned and you know and they were running after us with pitch forks and broom handles which some of them got through and hit us across the back which well we’ll say no more. And we were pleased to get off that canal that night. Off that tow path. Yeah. That’s it.
TO: And how do you feel about the way Bomber Command was treated after the war?
FH: Terrible. They weren’t recognised at all for the work they’d done in my opinion and it took, took the authorities a long time to realise that, this is why I didn’t speak much about Churchill and I think we’ll leave it at that because he was the one who was leading the war. He was the one that followed instructions who made and gave instructions to the powers that be to do this and do that but he didn’t speak of us after the war when so many people was talking about Dresden. But what about Coventry and places like ours. Southampton and London. Yeah. There we go. But as far as I was concerned we were bombing military targets you know and it never entered our heads that we were killing people. No.
TO: Why do you think Bomber Command was treated that way?
FH: I’ve no idea except that [pause] I suppose they spoke about [unclear] so much that well they gathered it was wrong to do it. I think so but I don’t know. I think Bomber Command was treated very badly or the personnel were. That so many thousands gave their lives for and then not being recognised for what they’d done. Terrible. So that’s only one individual’s opinion. Yeah.
TO: And how do you feel about the Memorial in Green Park and Lincoln?
FH: I like that. I think it’s something well worth supporting and I admire the people that thought of it and that were running the whole scheme. And I hope and pray that I can get back there again and just place a poppy against my good friend Les and Phil’s name on the monument one day. Whether that would be possible I don’t know but what we saw of it on that opening day it’s a terrific place. Well worth the money being spent. Yeah.
TO: How did you feel when you heard about the Holocaust?
FH: Well, how can I word it? The shock to think anybody could literally do it. I mean ok soldiers were being killed in battle and that kind of thing on both sides but their whole lot of them just being put in a chamber. Oh. It don’t bear thinking about. And on our march we passed very close not knowing it at the time to Auschwitz. Of course, we knew nothing of it until after the war. You know, it made us, well made me think, well, you know we’re so close to where it happened you know. But there we go.
TO: How do you feel about Germany today?
FH: Germany?
TO: Today. How do you feel?
FH: Well, I think Mrs Merkel or whatever her name is is a funny woman but on the whole the Germans and I mean we’re doing the right thing to get together and that. When we first moved over here in this area from Hartley Wintney to Church Crookham in the bungalow just a few doors away from here our neighbour was a German POW over here and we used to have chats about it. We got on well together and I mean that is the only thing that’s going to stop another war I think. I mean we’re so intermixed now I think they were after the last war as far as the First World War but they’ve intermixed other countries have. More now over the last decade or so that I mean it nearly goes against the war. If it didn’t, well it would be a different kind of war and your air gunners wouldn’t be needed for one thing. But no I think it’s a good thing that we are getting together. Yeah. No, I mean we carried out our instructions. The Germans carried out their instructions. The troops. Airmen. So there we are.
TO: Did you, I probably should have asked this one before but did you feel any animosity towards Germany during the war?
FH: Well, I don’t know. I mean, we realised that the authorities had declared war against each other and that we had to do our [unclear] memories of England to bring an end to it in some form or other. And that’s, I chose to join the Air Force. Yeah. But I really think so many of us were so young we didn’t realise what we were letting ourselves in for, you know. But no regrets. No. We helped to bring peace to the world again. Although it makes you wonder whether if it was ever worth it with all the loss of life. There we go.
TO: And what do you think of films that have been made about the war?
FH: I’ve watched one or two but you cannot in my opinion [pause] now, what’s the word?
TO: Recapture.
FH: Yeah, the actual fighting and bombing I mean. You can’t recall in actual words. Now some have been sort of highlighting the humour and that put in them but no. I don’t. I don’t think, well they can’t capture the actual meaning of the battle. No.
TO: And what have you done since the war then?
FH: Not a lot. No. I’ve had numerous jobs but mainly shop work and selling which I enjoyed which I was doing before the war. I had one spell of lorry driving which I’d done for a major [unclear] in Hartney Wintney. And from there I travelled all over Scotland, Wales and England of course delivering shrubs. We worked for a wholesale. It was a Dutch firm actually operating out of Bagshot, just outside of Bagshot. He used to grow all types of shrubs and trees and we used to transform to various nurseries. Yeah. Quite interesting. He got me about a third of the country. But I was a member of Toc H which was formed after the First World War. And what else? Oh, when I retired yeah, sorry about that.
TO: That’s alright.
FH: When I retired and moved over here I joined the, I worked voluntary for a Day Centre for eleven years. Yeah. But otherwise just normal. I didn’t really have a trade. That’s why it is I’m not rich but I’m happy and I always have been and will remain so I hope. We moved into this flat what almost eighteen months ago now. Yeah. A brand new flat and we’re happy and cosy. Contented. Yeah.
TO: Have you ever been back to Germany at all?
FH: Unfortunately, no. I would love even to this day to be able to go back to Germany and visit the graves of my two friends. Yeah. But as I say not being a millionaire it’s always been against me but never mind. I always think of them. And although I do attend the local Memorial Service in the village where I was born and joined the Air Force throng on the 11th of November but if I can’t get there through bad weather I don’t have to go there to remember them. It’s the same with my brother that I lost. They’re in there all the time. Yeah. Never mind. Who knows what will happen in the future? Nobody does. No.
TO: Anything else you want to add at all about your experiences at all? Any stories that you didn’t mention before?
FH: No. Where are we? No. I don’t think so. I think it’s really been well covered. I will probably dream away tonight although I didn’t last time.
Other: No, it’s —
FH: But often when I’ve been to [unclear] not exactly nightmares but I kick my feet about and but I think I got over that one. We’ll let you know in the morning. No.
TO: Just one last question now to finish off there. What’s your thoughts on Britain’s involvement in events in the Middle East?
FH: What? The present day like you mean? Yeah. Well, personally I mean we do poke our noses in things quite a bit but on the other hand I feel that perhaps we missed out when the trouble in Syria started. We should have gone there and sorted them out there and then and prevented a lot of this that’s going on today. That’s my opinion for what it’s worth. But no, it’s [pause] I don’t know, the world’s got to get together somehow but how it’s going to happen I don’t know. If ever it will. There has always been wars. There’s always a weaker member. We learned that at school didn’t we? But I’m quite pleased that a lot of the schools I believe in England now are talking about the Second World War and what went on and that kind of thing. I mean for instance my granddaughter she’s a schoolteacher at Lee on Solent. No.
Other: Bexhill. Bexhill.
FH: Bexhill in Sussex and she’s got one of my books. Oh, she’s got this one. I think she’s got the one I showed you earlier, the first one. And on Armistice Days she brings that out and puts it on her desk. She talks to the class about it and tells them what her grandfather had done and she’s done that now for, well ever since 2009/10. But now she’s just given birth to her first child, my great grandchild. The photo is behind you. And so whether she’ll be back there in time for this year I don’t know. But she has done her part as a teacher to inform. And a number of the local schools have had photographs of my war years but that’s about all I think. Yeah. Thanks.
TO: Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.
FH: Thank you. Thank you for coming so far to speak to me and hopefully it’s not been a waste of time.
TO: It’s been an amazing way to spend my time. Thank you.
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Interview with Fred Hooker. Two
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Tom Ozel
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2017-08-26
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Sound
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AHookerFJ170826
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Pending review
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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03:02:20 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Fred Hooker was a mid-upper gunner on 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington, where he flew three operations before being shot down. Born in Hartley Wintney in 1924, Fred’s first experience of the RAF was visiting RAF Odiham as a member of the Air Training Corps where he flew in a Tiger Moth and Blenheim. Enlisting in March 1943, Fred‘s initial training was at Lord’s Cricket Ground. Gunnery training was undertaken at RAF Stormy Down where he was introduced to clay pigeon shooting before being flown in Anson aircraft and firing at drones with a camera gun and eventually using ammunition. After qualification, he crewed up at RAF Moreton-in-Marsh before converting to Halifaxes at RAF Dishforth. In August 1944, his crew was posted to 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington where Fred recalls witnessing a Halifax fail to take off as they arrived. Upon return from their first operation, they were diverted due to bad weather and remained at the diversion airfield for several days so Fred was relieved when they returned as he'd left his dentures at Pocklington. During their third operation, the aircraft failed to reach the briefed height but the crew decided to continue and were hit by either enemy anti-aircraft fire or a bomb dropped from above. Fred was in his position in the rear turret when he suddenly found himself sitting in open air as his turret had been blown away. When he reached for his parachute it was on fire and the rest of the plane was just a mass of flame. He saw the engineer rush to him and put out the flames on the parachute before guiding him to the escape hatch and pushing him out. As he descended a Spitfire was circling and the pilot dipped the wings before departing. Fred describes being captured immediately after abandoning the aircraft and the interrogation that followed. He was transferred to Stalag Luft 7, and the Red Cross supplied him with another set of dentures. Fred provides a graphic account of the conditions during the long march and the overcrowding in Stalag 3A. Upon waking up on the 23rd of April 1945, they discovered the German guards had disappeared. Russian troops arrived later and continued to treat them like prisoners but Fred's group managed to escape and join the nearby Americans. After being transported to Belgium, he was flown home and landed near Guilford. Despite being frustratingly close to home, Fred was taken to RAF Cosford for debriefing. After the war, Fred retrained and spent time travelling across France salvaging abandoned vehicles.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Gloucestershire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Luckenwalde
Poland--Tychowo
Wales--Bridgend
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943-03-29
1944-08-18
102 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bale out
Halifax
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
prisoner of war
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Dishforth
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Pocklington
RAF Stormy Down
recruitment
shot down
Spitfire
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/848/10844/AHabberfieldM180111.2.mp3
fa5e71c1067db31d3b958cdcb17ee814
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
Habberfield, Margaret
M Habberfield
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history with Margaret Habberfield (b. 1923) and a group photograph. She served as a Women's Auxiliary Air Force telephonist at RAF Upwood and RAF Stormy Down.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Margaret Habberfield and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-11
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Habberfield, M
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MH: I'll try and tell you.
AM: Right. So today is Thursday they 11th of January I had to think about that. Thursday the 11th of January. It’s 2018 and this is Annie Moody for International Bomber Command and today I'm with Margaret Habberfield in Melton Mowbray where Margaret lives and Margaret is going to tell me all about Bomber Command in the war. But before we start on that Margaret you were born in 1923 so tell me a little bit about your childhood. Where you were born and what your parents did.
MH: I didn't know my parents. I don't want to go into that part of it.
AM: Alright. No problem.
MH: It’s not nice.
AM: Ok.
MH: I don’t have, my parents died years and years ago.
AM: Ok. As a child though where did you live?
MH: I don’t want to say. Tell you that.
AM: Oh ok.
MH: Its rather personal. I haven’t mentioned that to anybody.
AM: Not, absolutely not a problem then. Where shall we start then? Shall we start with you going in the RAF?
MH: Yes. I went in when I was sixteen.
AM: Ok.
MH: I put my age up to eighteen but I was only sixteen.
AM: You told fibs.
MH: At the time.
AM: Right. So how did that come about? Why did you want to join the RAF?
MH: This is where I don’t want to be.
AM: Tell me about joining. So how did you —
MH: I joined up when I was sixteen.
AM: Right.
MH: And I said I was eighteen but I wasn’t but I just wanted to get away and get —
AM: Right. So that’s, that’s what —
MH: Yes.
AM: What made you join.
MH: Yes.
AM: So where did you join? Where did you start off?
MH: I think it was at Gloucester. The first training. Or, no, Harrogate.
AM: So if you were sixteen that would be 1939. So was it just before the war had started?
MH: Yeah. I was from 1941. 1941 to 1945.
AM: Right. Ok.
MH: I was in.
AM: Right. So, so what was it like then actually joining up?
MH: I thoroughly enjoyed every day.
AM: Yeah.
MH: I really did.
AM: What was the initial bit like? What, you know you’d be in digs with other girls and training.
MH: Oh, I was in a billet. It was massive, big billets until I got a rank. Then I had my own room.
AM: Right.
MH: You see. But I thoroughly enjoyed my life in the RAF.
AM: So, when you, tell me about the early days in the RAF. What was the training like?
MH: Well, it was, you had to go training every day in the first instance to get to know what the training was all about. What to do, what not to do and how to get on with it. And in your billet how to make your bed and this sort of thing which was inspected every day, every week. Things like that.
AM: How many —
MH: I got on with everybody.
AM: Yeah. How many of you were there?
MH: In the, in the one billet?
AM: Yeah.
MH: There was about forty. Twenty. Forty.
AM: So quite big.
MH: Yes, it was. Very very big.
AM: Yeah. What was it like living with all girls?
MH: Well, they were all different weren’t they? Everybody was different but I got on with every one of them. Great. We had the ablutions at the other end of the billet.
AM: So what was that like?
MH: It was fine.
AM: The ablutions.
MH: Well, you know.
AM: Describe them to me.
MH: We were all very young and you had to take your turn to get to a shower or a bath whichever you wanted and get yourself sorted, cleaned and so on and so forth. And then the next one took her turn and that’s how it went on. Then we went then to the mess to have breakfast and your meals of course which was rather nice. Meals were lovely. No faults at all there.
AM: Right.
MH: They were nice. Everything was fine. And you had PT. That sort of thing. Which was in a hangar with all the other WAAFs. That was great because you had a good laugh over that.
AM: Who was, what were the instructors like? Were they men or women?
MH: Oh, very nice. No. They were, they were, they were ranked obviously.
AM: Yes.
MH: Sergeants most of them but PT probably. But they were fine. They were really fine. No problems. I had no problems with any of them.
AM: So, you really enjoyed it.
MH: I did. I think it’s a lovely life for them to join, for girls to join up now.
AM: Yeah. So how long was the training for? How long did that last for?
MH: About six weeks training and for me that was—
AM: And that was your general training.
MH: General.
AM: So —
MH: Ordinary training.
AM: Yeah.
MH: Yes.
AM: Marching and all the rest of it.
MH: Yes. Oh yes. You had that every day.
AM: And where were you? Did you say, Harrogate did you say?
MH: Harrogate and Gloucester. I think that was the first. It’s going back such a long time I can’t remember it all.
AM: So then once you’d done your six weeks training.
MH: Then you were posted to a station.
AM: Ok.
MH: A permanent. Which was RAF Upwood.
AM: Upwood.
MH: And I was there for a long long time.
AM: Right. So how did they decide where they were going to post you and what you were going to do?
MH: Well, it was up to you what you, what —
AM: Right.
MH: What trade you wanted to do. You were given an option as to which trade you wanted to do, what you wanted to be in and I wanted to be in signals and I stayed in signals.
AM: Right.
MH: Telephone. Telephonist.
AM: So what, why did you want to be in signals?
MH: I thought it was interesting. I found it, I didn’t want to go in the cookhouse or places like that.
AM: No.
MH: I wanted to get on and be different and I did.
AM: And you did.
MH: I did.
AM: So what was that? The training for that like then? No. Tell me about getting to RAF Upwood first of all then.
MH: We went straight to Upwood.
AM: So —
MH: And there I stayed. Back in to the billet with the rest of the WAAFs.
AM: Ok.
MH: Made friends with other WAAFs.
AM: What, what were the gradings? So, for the men it was LAC2 and then LAC1 and then corporal.
MH: Corporal. Sergeant.
AM: So what were the gradings for the for the girls?
MH: Well, they were the same.
AM: Were they?
MH: Exactly the same.
AM: So at this point what would you have been then when you —
MH: Well, an ordinary AC.
AM: Right.
MH: I was just an ordinary AC at the beginning because the others —
AM: So that was ordinary AC.
MH: That’s when we all joined up together and that’s when you were an AC. So Aircraft Woman.
AM: Aircraft Woman. Right.
MH: ACW.
AM: So as an Aircraft Woman now you’re off to RAF Upwood then. So whereabouts was that? [pause] I can look it up. It doesn’t matter.
MH: Isn’t it in Towcester?
AM: I don’t know. Gary will know.
MH: I think it is. Yeah. I think so. But it was a lovely camp. Everything was fine. No problems at all.
AM: So what, what was there? What was at RAF Upwood? Was it, was that a base? Were you all WAAFs or were you mixed? Was it a —
MH: Oh, no. Mixed.
AM: So it was a proper —
MH: Oh yes. Mixed.
AM: Ok.
MH: Aircraft.
AM: So, it was a bomber base.
MH: Yes.
AM: Right. And what year are we now in the war?
MH: ’41. ’42.
AM: About.
MH: I started at ’41 and I came out at ’45.
AM: Right. Ok. So in, so in 1941 you’ve done your basic training, you’re there in Upwood and you’re going to go in signals. So, what was that like? What was the training like and —
MH: Oh yes. We had to go through training obviously to get trained to use a switchboard. A massive switchboard. Not like they are today. Just plugging in.
AM: The ones that you see.
MH: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: Where there’s plugs all over the place.
MH: And I worked my way up. In the end I was in charge of eight WAAFs.
AM: Right.
MH: And I got on with everybody.
AM: When you started how long did the training last? Can you remember?
MH: About three, oh a month at least.
AM: A month.
MH: A month to five weeks.
AM: And that was —
MH: Training.
AM: So that was you’ve learned the switchboard.
MH: We learned the switchboard. Then you were posted to this switchboard and there you stayed.
AM: Right. And that was the switchboard for the whole camp.
MH: That was the whole camp.
AM: Right.
MH: Outside calls. Incoming calls.
AM: So at first you were one of many girls on the —
MH: Oh yes. Yes.
AM: How many of you would there have been in the —
MH: Well, in my section it was, there was eight of us.
AM: Right. Because how big was the camp then?
MH: Oh, it was a big camp.
AM: How many —
MH: Upwood. Very big.
AM: So how, how many switchboards? One.
MH: Three in the one that I was in. There was three.
AM: Right. So three switchboards.
MH: Yeah.
AM: In and out.
MH: They had to be manned day and night.
AM: Right. So it was twenty four hours.
MH: Twenty four hours.
AM: Were you doing shift work or —
MH: Yes.
AM: Yeah. What was that like then? Working shifts.
MH: It was fine.
AM: Yeah.
MH: No problem.
AM: You enjoyed it.
MH: Yeah. Back to our beds and get up in the mornings and get on to your job.
AM: How long were the shifts? How many hours were the shifts?
MH: Eight hours.
AM: Eight. So eight. Eight hour shifts. And what did you do the rest of the time? What was the, what was the social life like?
MH: There was plenty to do. No. There was plenty to do, you know. Dances in the sergeant’s camp rooms. PT. Walking. Going into town. Things like that.
AM: Yeah.
MH: You know.
AM: And did you, did you meet and mix with the chaps?
MH: Yes. Yes. Yes.
AM: Yeah. So were the dances on the base?
MH: On the base. Oh yes.
AM: Right.
MH: Always on the base.
AM: Yeah.
MH: They were very nice too. We thoroughly enjoyed those.
AM: Did you get dressed up or were you all still in uniform?
MH: No. Still stayed in uniform.
AM: You were all in uniform. Right. And then you said you got made up. You worked your way up.
MH: I did. I worked my way up.
AM: So what were the different, what different grades did you work your way through? You started, you were Aircraft Woman.
MH: Yeah.
AM: Ordinary.
MH: Then corporal.
AM: Then a corporal.
MH: Then sergeant.
AM: Then a sergeant. So you ended up in charge of the girls on the switchboard.
MH: I did. Yes.
AM: Right. Did you enjoy, what was that like? Managing a load of girls.
MH: Great. They were fine.
AM: Yeah.
MH: I had no problems with any of them.
AM: And what about the chaps? Did they —
MH: They were, yeah, they were fine. I mean they’ve got them on here on the band.
AM: I’m going to ask you about the band in a minute.
MH: They were, they were, everybody was fine. The officers were fine. No problems at all. My signals officer he was next door to the telephone exchange. He was next door. Any problems I had to go to him to sort things out.
AM: Yeah. With regards to the, the chaps obviously flying off did you see, I don’t quite know how to ask the question. What involvement, if any did you have with the bombers going off on operations?
MH: Well, lots of phone calls obviously. And we’d see them going off. We got to know them. We were allowed to go and see but so far obviously. We weren’t allowed to go to near the aircraft. But they were there. We heard them going and coming back.
AM: Right.
MH: That sort of thing.
AM: Yeah.
MH: Get to speak to them. Get friendly with them. Meet them if we wanted to. Get to the NAAFI. Always in the NAAFI. Plenty to see and do in the NAAFI. That was fine.
AM: I bet there are a lot of stories isn’t there?
MH: Yeah.
AM: About fraternisation.
MH: Well, there was that. There was that.
AM: Yeah.
MH: You got friendly obviously.
AM: When you say lots of phone calls is this, what type of phone calls were they?
MH: All to do with the RAF.
AM: Right. But with regards so would family be phoning in.
MH: No family.
AM: No.
MH: No. No. No. No. No.
AM: No. So it was all operational stuff.
MH: ‘Put me through to sergeant — ’so and so or, ‘Put me through to —'
AM: Right.
MH: Officer so and so. That sort of thing.
AM: So, tell me, I’m looking at a picture on your wall of the band. Tell me again about the band.
MH: Well, we had that was once a week we had that band.
AM: Ok.
MH: That was at Stormy Down. That’s in, near Bridgend, in South Wales.
AM: Right. So you moved.
MH: Moved from —
AM: You moved bases.
MH: That’s the base I moved from to there.
AM: Right. Ok.
MH: And that’s where we got a band up. It was just sort of automatically got up. Who wanted to join joined. And I joined.
AM: So what did you do in the band?
MH: The bugle I had.
AM: Right. Could you already play it or did you —
MH: Sorry?
AM: Could you already play a bugle?
MH: No.
AM: Right.
MH: I was taught to play it.
AM: Who taught you to play it then?
MH: A sergeant on the camp. There he is down there. He taught us.
AM: And what did, where did you play? Just on the base?
MH: On the base.
AM: Yeah.
MH: Yes. On the base. Or if they had any dos on the camp we would play.
AM: Right.
MH: Perhaps you’d march through the camp playing. But mostly in a, in a hangar. Once a week we had that and it was really, really there’s officers there. WAAF officers and RAF officers. It was really really lovely.
AM: I’m looking at the photo.
MH: Yes.
AM: It’s a complete mix isn’t it?
MH: Yes.
AM: Which one are you?
MH: You try and find me. At the back.
AM: Oh Margaret.
[pause]
MH: I’ll give you an idea.
AM: Right. Let me have a look.
MH: At the back.
AM: Oh, that’s quite hard.
MH: The fourth one in.
AM: Do you know what, that one?
MH: Yeah.
AM: I was just going to say.
MH: Yeah.
AM: I’m looking at the shape of your face.
MH: Yes. That’s me. Of course, we’re standing obviously on a bench to get the right photograph.
AM: Yeah. Well yeah. Either that or you’re very tall. So in the band there’s quite, there’s a lot of you.
MH: There was a lot of us. They were lovely. We had a grand time.
AM: There’s twenty odd of you.
MH: Great time.
AM: Yeah. Who’s the dog? Who did the dog belong to?
MH: The corporal down at the bottom. He looked, he looked after her. Yeah. She was a beautiful dog.
AM: How come you had to changes bases? Was that —
MH: Well, they just posted you.
AM: Yeah. So how long were you on the second. What was the second base that you were on? You said.
MH: Stormy Down.
AM: Stormy Down. That’s right. And that was another bomber.
MH: Oh yes. Yeah.
AM: Another bomber base.
MH: We used to hear them going off and we used to worry about them coming back and, you know that was natural wasn’t it?
AM: Yeah.
MH: We got to know some of the navigators or pilots or whatever wondering had they all come back safe and sound. That sort of thing.
AM: What was it like when they didn’t?
MH: Well, it was not nice when you knew that they weren’t coming back or they didn’t coming back. It wasn’t. You know. You naturally worry don’t you if you know them that we’re talking about.
AM: Yeah. So any stories to tell me about fun things that you got up to?
MH: No. I got to know one or two of them and got friendly with them. Went out with them but that was it. You know, you had to be very very careful.
AM: Yes. As girls.
MH: It was taught to us, pumped in to us what to do, what not to do. What was so and so like. What was that meant to be. What’s that sort of thing. What you do. What you don’t do. Take care. Be careful.
AM: Yeah.
MH: Which we did.
AM: Be a good girl.
MH: Oh yes. Yeah.
AM: Well, yeah. I can’t imagine what it would be like on a huge base like that with, because there would be far less of you then there were of the boys.
MH: Oh yes.
AM: So I would imagine you were all in great demand for dances.
MH: Yeah.
AM: And things like that.
MH: Yes. Well, we had a nice time at the dances and used to go out with them and meet them and [pause] but that was it.
AM: Yeah. It does sound, I mean you sound as if you just enjoyed the whole experience.
MH: I did. Yes. I did. I liked it very much. I liked every minute of it.
AM: And you were in there for the whole of the war.
MH: I did.
AM: So you came out as a sergeant. You ended up as a sergeant.
MH: I did. Yes.
AM: Yeah. Which is quite high up for a WAAF isn’t it? That’s good. And when did you come out Margaret, of the —?
MH: Well, at —
AM: At the end of the war.
MH: Yes.
AM: So what did you do then?
MH: My demob number came up so I just came out.
AM: Right. So what, what —
MH: But I stayed in Wales.
AM: Right.
MH: And I met my husband.
AM: Where did you meet him?
MH: In Neath.
AM: Right.
MH: This, that side of Swansea.
AM: Yes. I can, I can visualise where that is. And he was in the Navy I think you said.
MH: He was Navy.
AM: Where did you meet him? At a dance?
MH: The pub.
AM: In a pub.
MH: Yeah.
AM: So what —
MH: He used to come back and forth. We used to meet up and that was the end of that. Got married and had her.
AM: And had your daughter. The, in the between bit from being demobbed and meeting your husband and getting married did you, what work did you do?
MH: I started nursing.
AM: Oh, you did. You were a nurse.
MH: I went into nursing.
AM: Right.
MH: That was what I took up.
AM: And did you do the full training?
MH: I did.
AM: And become a nurse. Because that’s, how long was the training for that? That’s about three years?
MH: It was very very hard. Very hard. But I enjoyed that too. I got on with everybody.
AM: Yeah.
MH: I liked it.
AM: So how long did you work as a nurse for?
MH: Oh gosh. Up until I had Stephanie.
AM: Right —
MH: And then —
AM: And that —
MH: I had to see to her then.
AM: And you lived in Wales. Did your husband stay in the Navy?
MH: No. He came out as well. So we got married, set up house. We had a house.
AM: Right. And what did he do?
MH: He was in the South Wales Electricity Board. He ended —
AM: Oh right.
MH: He ended up a manager.
AM: Right. So you lived up happily ever after.
MH: We did.
AM: But you obviously think back fondly.
MH: Oh, I do.
AM: To your time as a WAAF.
MH: Yes, I do. I do.
AM: Yeah. And here you are in an RAF home.
MH: Here I am. My husband died of cancer and my daughter kept on saying, ‘You can’t stay in the bungalow,’ Which was my own bungalow, ‘On your own.’ Because they were over, she was over here. She wanted me to get nearer so that she could —
AM: And you were still in Wales at this time.
MH: I was in Wales at the time. To keep an eye on me.
AM: Right.
MH: So I came over here. In Oakham then, of course.
AM: Right.
MH: Went straight to where they are. And I stayed in Oakham and they wanted to make sure that I was taken care of, looked after and here I am.
AM: And here you are.
MH: And I applied here.
AM: I’m looking at a picture of your daughter and son in law. Both in the RAF.
MH: They are both.
AM: So what rank is your daughter in the RAF?
MH: She’s also a sergeant.
AM: She’s a sergeant.
MH: Yes.
AM: As well.
MH: She’s in, she’s in air traffic control.
AM: Is she? Right.
MH: And he’s a chief technician.
AM: And you said that they’re both based at Wittering.
MH: Yes. But they travel every day from Oakham to Wittering.
AM: Yeah. Well, it sounds like you’ve had a really interesting life.
MH: I did. Yes. I did. I’ve had some nice WAAF friends. I used to go to their homes on leave or we’d go up to London. Have a weekend up in London on leave. That sort of thing.
AM: Yeah. So that, so this was in the middle of the war. So, what did you do in London?
MH: Well, we used to go to a show or walk around. Go to the shops. Have a look around and that sort of thing.
AM: Just for the day or the —
MH: For the day.
AM: Oh, you went just for the day.
MH: Or a forty eight hour pass we had.
AM: So, stay in digs or —?
MH: Oh yes. We had to stay in digs.
AM: Yeah.
MH: B&B mostly.
AM: Right.
MH: We couldn’t afford these expensive hotels.
AM: It sounds brilliant. There’s a war going on all around you but you are enjoying every minute of it.
MH: Yes.
AM: Why would you not? I’ll switch off.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Margaret Habberfield
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-11
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHabberfieldM180111
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:20:49 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Margaret Habberfield was born in 1923. At sixteen she joined the Royal Air Force after giving her age as eighteen. She began her six-week general training at Harrogate and was billeted with around 20 other girls. Margaret was then posted to RAF Upwood and RAF Stormy Down. She was a telephonist in signals and worked eight-hour shifts. Margaret was in charge of eight Women’s Auxiliary Air Force members; became corporal and eventually sergeant. Her social life included darts, physical training and attending dances in the town. She learned to play the bugle and joined a band when transferred to RAF Stormy Down in South Wales. After the war Margaret stayed in Wales and became a nurse.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Harrogate
Wales--Bridgend
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
entertainment
ground personnel
military living conditions
physical training
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Upwood
training
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/818/10801/AFearnsH170724.1.mp3
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Fearns, Harry
H Fearns
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. An oral history interview with Sergeant Harry Fearns (b. 1925, 1591683 Royal Air Force), seven photographs, his service badges and identity card. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 100 and 97 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Harry Fearns and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-07-24
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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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Fearns, H
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Sergeant Harry Fearns at 2.15 on Monday 24th of July 2017 at his home near Bury, Greater Manchester. Also with us is his daughter, Gillian Bailey. Harry, if I can start off with some straightforward questions for you, please. Can you tell me your date of birth, where you, and where you were born?
HF: Date of birth was 24 1 25.
BW: 24th of January 1925.
HF: Correct.
BW: And how many were there in your family? Did you have any brothers and sisters?
HF: Yes. There were six of us.
BW: How many brothers and sisters did you have in —?
HF: Well, I’ll start at, I was the eldest. There was Harry, Gordon, Joyce, Margaret. Was that my six? That sounds about right.
BW: That’s four.
HF: Four.
BW: There were two more.
HF: Oh.
GB: John. Brother, John.
HF: Oh yes, John.
GB: And Kathleen.
HF: And Kathleen.
BW: And what was, what was family life like? Where were you growing up at this time? Were you in Bury or were you, were you born elsewhere in the country?
HF: No. I was born in South Yorkshire.
BW: Ok. Whereabouts in South Yorkshire.
HF: In a little house [unclear] Barnsley.
BW: Barnsley. Ok.
HF: West Middleton, near Rotherham. But we always talked about Barnsley being the leading place not, not Rotherham.
BW: So, you were close to Barnsley.
HF: Yes.
BW: And where did you go to school?
HF: Wath on Dearne Grammar School.
BW: How do you —
HF: Wath upon, U P O N
BW: Wath upon —
HF: Wath. Separate word, upon. Upon.
BW: Wath upen?
HF: Dearne.
GB: Wath upon Dearne. So, it’s W A T H —
HF: D E A R.
GB: Upon-D E A R N E.
BW: Right. I haven’t heard of that. That’s [pause] Wath upon Dearne.
HF: Nice little place.
BW: Was it a bit of a village?
HF: It was a mining village really.
BW: And what did your dad do? Was he a miner?
HF: A miner.
BW: What about your mum?
HF: Too busy with the family to have any work.
BW: So, your dad was the worker and your mum looked after the rest of you.
HF: That’s it.
BW: And what was, what was your school like?
HF: Well, for the year, typical Wath, typical Grammar School.
BW: So, you went to a Grammar School then.
HF: Yes.
BW: And what age did you leave? You would be fourteen? Or was it after that?
HF: Sixteen. I left and I went to work for the Prudential Insurance Company. At the same time I applied to be in the RAF and of course that was about [pause] 1944. So, obviously that was during the war years.
BW: And what prompted you to join the RAF?
HF: I really wanted. I don’t know how I’d describe it.
GB: But you told me you’d always wanted to fly.
HF: Well, yes. That could be summed up.
BW: And did you want to be a pilot or a navigator or did you want to be say a gunner or or other crew member?
HF: Well, like those in reduced order.
BW: Ok.
HF: Pilot first. Navigator second. Engineer. Then a navigator err air gunner.
BW: And when you went for the interviews did you tell them that you wanted to be a pilot? What happened?
HF: Oh yeah.
BW: What happened so that you, you ended up as flight engineer?
HF: I think what one can say is that they’d got enough at that time. They hadn’t lost enough, putting it crudely. So, it depended what was available when we were called for to be signed on.
BW: So, you were working for Prudential Insurance at this time. Were you? What sort of position were you in the, in the company?
HF: Just a rent collector. Well, not so much rent. A collector of premiums.
BW: And the war had been going on a few years at this point can you recall at that time did it feel like it was coming to an end or that it was going to continue longer than it did?
HF: We thought it was coming to an end. Thought we were helping. All the flying and the fighting. Not that I did any fighting but [laughs]
BW: Did you join up with any friends?
HF: Not exactly friends but certainly some of my old, my pals went around about the same time.
BW: And you’d had an ambition to fly. What [pause] I’m trying to understand whether you and your friends perhaps wanted to get some action before you joined up or whether it was more that you’d heard a lot of the RAF and what it was doing.
HF: I think it’s the latter. You know, we just wanted to fly. We didn’t particularly want to shoot any guns or —
BW: And where, where did you start your training? Do you remember?
HF: St Johns Wood, London.
BW: And what was it like? Was it what you expected it to be?
HF: I thought it was great. We used to march from [pause] I’ve just forgotten the the place where we were sleeping. Something Court. And we used to have PT and exercises early in the morning. Then we did some studies. You might do an hour navigation, an hour generally but have to early on [pause] what was I about to say? [pause] Yeah. We moved on some of our exercises. We went in to Lord’s Cricket Ground. Marching up and down at Lords and doing sort of [pause] after about two months of that they farmed us out and in my particular case was to an aircrew training establishment at Newquay, Cornwall. Have you come across it?
BW: That’s quite a way away.
HF: It was.
BW: From London. It’s a good —
HF: Yeah.
BW: Hundred miles.
HF: But they needed, afterwards you realised they were, that near the end of the war they wanted to get rid of at least accommodation belonging to private people, I suppose. And as soon as they could get rid of the larger establishments then they got rid of places like Newquay. For example, the one after that we went to was Stormy Down in Glamorgan. Porthcawl. That’s the place it was near.
BW: Porthcawl.
HF: Yeah.
BW: It’s a lot easier to get from Newquay to Porthcawl then it is from Newquay to London.
HF: Yeah. Yeah. I read that.
BW: And so you were going through your basic training at this stage.
HF: Yes. This time.
BW: Whereabouts did you do your engineering training? Was that at Stormy Down?
HF: No. St Athan School of Technical Training. Massive place.
BW: Do you recall how long you were there?
HF: No. I would have thought it was about an hour err an hour, a year because they kept stopping as they found out, presumably found out that there were staff they didn’t need they moved them on. On to the next stage and the facilities would be left for some chaps behind. They would spend most of their time playing football.
BW: And so you were training at St Athan. It says, is it Number 4 School of Technical Training? Or trade training.
HF: Something like that. Is it on there.
BW: Yeah. It’s there.
HF: Oh, it’s there [laughs]
BW: And according to your logbook you got sixty five point two percent.
HF: Yeah.
BW: And you trained on Lancaster 1s and Mark 3s.
HF: Yes.
BW: Were they 1s or was that a type of aircraft that you selected to train on or were you —
HF: Oh no.
BW: Directed on to —
HF: You will go.
BW: And how did you feel about that? Being put on Lancasters.
HF: Perhaps relieved that we were not a gunner. An air gunner. It was interesting at the time.
BW: And it looks from your time of joining up to the time of finishing the course at St Athan that the war had actually ended during that time.
HF: That’s about right. Yes.
BW: What can you recall of that? That time? Were there, did you still feel like there was a role for you now that the war had ended or did you feel a bit surplus perhaps?
HF: No. I think we, it’s better to be moved to the southeast and fighting the Japs there. And the aircraft you saw were different to the two colour system. They were, and they had an idea was to give them some protection from other aircraft. Other aircraft attacking you. So, in fact the aircraft that you showed was the Lancaster 1 FE, Far East.
BW: And so it, was it a particular type or version of the Mark 1 that was dedicated for Far East service? Is that why it was called a Lancaster 1FE?
HF: Not really it was just, it was planes they took into the hangars and made adaptations. I couldn’t remember exactly which they gave us. Except obviously, the F, the FE bit.
BW: So, you left St Athan and I think you went to an OCU. An Operational Conversion Unit. And that was 230 OCU at Lindholme.
HF: Ah, yes. Yeah.
BW: And it, it shows from your logbook you starting there in 1947. What do you recall of Lindholme at that time?
HF: Typical Bomber Command plane. [pause] And we kept on doing the same job and by then for a time passed to Lindholme which was virtually mixed in next door to Finningley. And Lindholme, my main recollection of Lindholme was in nineteen, February I think it is, ’47 and the big freeze. We spent loads of time with shovels getting the ice and snow off the runways.
BW: So [laughs] so you joined up to fly and there you were on the runway.
HF: That’s it.
BW: With your spade.
HF: Yeah.
BW: Shovelling snow. At these OCUs it was common for the different trades to get together and form a crew. Can you recall how that happened for you? How you met your other crew mates?
HF: I can remember it. I remember it plain as anything. That we all went in a hangar and they called out, you know, ‘Joe. Joe Smith.’ These, they’d be the skippers, pilots would be called in and they’d say, ‘Right. Pick your navigator. Pick your engineer.’ And eventually build the crew.
BW: So, it sounds fairly similar to what they were doing actually in the war years. Putting them in a hangar and telling them to sort themselves out.
HF: Yeah.
BW: So, you wouldn’t necessarily, did you meet your pilot first or did you meet other crew mates first and then decide which pilot you wanted? Or did the pilot kind of choose you? Or —
HF: I can’t remember whether I was selected or what was left sort of thing.
BW: And what can you recall of your crew mates?
HF: I can’t explain really. Didn’t see a lot of one another except when we were flying.
BW: Were you not billeted together as a crew?
HF: Subject to rank, yes.
BW: So were you all NCOs or was one of —
HF: Well, no. One —
BW: One or two officers.
HF: What did you call him? Leicester? Register. Mike Register. I remember him. He definitely, he got in to the officer’s mess. And we, in other words the sergeants and flight sergeants we’d go in the NCOs mess.
BW: Do you remember how many of you were? Were NCOs? Was there only one officer? Was, was he the pilot? Presumably he was the pilot.
HF: He was. Mike Register.
BW: Yeah.
HF: And the navigator. Scott somebody. I can’t remember his name. He might be in here somewhere.
BW: And did you keep, when you were billeted were you billeted as NCOs or were you in some cases they were by trade. So the gunners would be kept together and so on but that doesn’t seem to have happened with you.
HF: No. It didn’t.
BW: So, you were all mixed trades but still in the NCOs—
HF: Yes.
BW: In the NCOs mess. From your logbook when you were on the OCU do you remember any sorties at that particular time? Any incidents during your, sort of training together?
[pause]
HF: No. I can’t.
BW: Ok. You moved from there I think, to 100 Squadron.
HF: Was that at Hemswell, as well?
BW: And they were as I think you say at Hemswell. But you converted when you joined the squadron. You converted to Lincolns.
HF: Yeah. Well —
BW: Instead of the Lancasters.
HF: Yes.
BW: Can you recall what —
HF: The passage of time. The Lincoln was a bit bigger.
BW: How would you compare it to a Lancaster? Did you have a favourite between the two?
HF: Oh yes. The old Lanc couldn’t be beaten in that respect.
BW: And how did the Lincoln differ from an engineer’s point of view?
HF: It seemed altogether quite efficient. Difficult to explain what it might be for the rest, all the crew and the different engines and things like that. But we had fewer, fewer mistakes. We didn’t have any crashes which was a surprise really.
BW: But having flown Lincolns you preferred the Lancasters still.
HF: Definitely.
BW: Did you notice any particular difference between the Mark 1 and the Mark 3 at all?
HF: 3.
BW: Was there anything notable?
[pause]
HF: No. All I think it was was a larger engine.
BW: And when it came to you actually preparing to carry out a sortie what would you as a flight engineer be doing? Can you recall what kind of things? What kind of steps you would be taking to prepare yourself and then carry out the sortie?
[pause]
HF: You’d check that the, the aircraft site you’d got, that they’d allocated to you, you’d be like, you’d like it so that that to be one as it were you had flown before but nevertheless you used to go out to the [pause] I’ve forgotten the name of the place where the planes were dumped.
BW: Dispersal.
HF: Dispersal. Thank you [laughs] You’d go out to your dispersal and as it were meet your aircraft. See this chief of the engineers. Yeah. And sort yourself with any, any problems there might be. And equally, the engineer would keep an eye on me as a flight engineer often looking down on them because they thought that the flyers were having an easy time.
BW: So even though you were perhaps taking more of a risk as air crew because you would be awarded flying pay in your, in your salary the engineers on the ground still looked down at you because you were not seen perhaps as proper engineers.
HF: Certainly, the chief engineers felt that.
BW: Had any of them flown do you know? Had any of the chief engineers been aircrew at all and then taken a ground job?
HF: No.
BW: So, they didn’t really know what risks you were taking then.
HF: Well, the stories one hears.
BW: You mentioned just before that when you were allocated an aircraft you always hoped to get one that you had flown before and it seems from from that and from your logbook you didn’t have a regular aircraft that you were allocated. Was there a favourite one or a particular one that you felt more comfortable with or was better for you and why would that be?
HF: Well, in a way they would all be the same because for example, you were coming up in the size of the Lincoln 1FE then what are the chances all of you would be on the higher plane? So, they were not all the same.
BW: At 100 Squadron there had been four or five Lancasters on the squadrons books that had flown over a hundred missions in the war. Were they still there at the time do you recall or had they been retired by that point?
HF: I don’t know. I can’t remember that.
BW: Were there any aircraft still there that had maybe war markings on them? Say the number of bomb sorties that they’d, you know sort of, bomb symbols to indicate the number of missions.
HF: They had. They had. I remember one or two like that but I can’t remember which they are.
BW: Did you try and avoid those at all?
HF: No [laughs] Well, the fighting was over then so we relaxed in some ways.
BW: So, you’ve been driven out to dispersal and you’ve had a look around the aircraft and a hand over’s taken place. Can you remember what you would then be doing as flight engineer once you get in the aircraft and you’re walking up or clambering over the main spar to get up to the flight engineer’s position? What kind of things would be on your list to do?
HF: Well, you get to know the aircraft which you know you probably hadn’t seen all that much in spite of the training.
GB: But did you have little checks that you had to do like checking dials or levers?
HF: Oh yes. That, by it’s —
GB: What would you have to do?
HF: Well, first of all you’d walk around the aircraft from the outside and check all the places that you can get at. When you’d done that you go inside the aircraft and check the things that were the responsibility of the engineer. For example, you wouldn’t interfere with the navigator and he wouldn’t interfere with your job. Should be. And once they were satisfied that the aircraft was serviceable then off you’d go on some exercise.
GB: Did you have to write anything down though? As a flight engineer did you have to check certain things and say yes that’s safe. Yes, that’s, did you have anything like that?
HF: Yeah. We did to some extent.
GB: And so what —
HF: I can’t remember them though [pause]
GB: Yeah.
BW: The flight engineer’s position in a Lancaster you’re almost off the, just off the right shoulder of the, of the pilot.
HF: Yeah.
BW: Was that any different in the Lincoln?
HF: No. No.
BW: So, you were in the same position whichever aircraft you flew and —
HF: Yes, I’d been certainly.
BW: And can you recall what you would be doing? Would you have to help the pilot during take-off or anything like that?
HF: Yes.
BW: What would you do?
HF: You’d be, bear in mind this is an aircraft, quite a largish one to us then and we’d got to get it flying. So you’re checking with the pilot on all his checks as well. Calling back to one another until you got ready for flying. In the meantime, we taxied out to the edge of the airport and off you go. Then the navigator would to some extent take over to put down where you were going to go to and see some of these on here.
BW: And there’s a mix in your logbook of day sorties and night sorties as well. And even on your first one I think air to sea firing on the first —
HF: Yes.
BW: Sortie there. So presumably you were out over the North Sea.
HF: Yes. Yes.
BW: And what were your night time sorties like?
HF: Boring [pause] We just had to do our exercise which probably lasted five hours or something like that. These long exercises were in many ways more interesting than the short ones.
BW: And you’d still be carrying out fighter affiliation or bombing exercises even though the war had finished.
HF: Yes.
BW: Did they brief you as to what your sort of longer term role was? Bearing in mind that Germany had been defeated and by this stage, 1947 the war with Japan had long been over as well. Did they, although you are still carrying out, let’s say typical training sorties that were appropriate to wartime did they give, did you get a sense of what your purpose was in the immediate post-war years? What your role was?
HF: I’ve no recollection of that. We were doing odd jobs back at Hemswell and Scampton hoping one day we’d go somewhere interesting. But what happened is that a high percentage of the blokes who had done their time, their Service and went back to Civvy Street and we probably wouldn’t see them again.
BW: Were you able to meet or interact with any of the veterans? And I say veterans, from those who had been on missions over Germany while you were on the squadron. You were fairly new. Were you able to meet any of those who’d been on the squadron and were being demobbed after wartime service?
HF: I thought we would have but I can’t remember any.
BW: When you look back at some of the missions or the sorties that you were tasked what can you recall of them? Are there any memorable ones that, that you can recall from there?
HF: I don’t think there were any real interesting memorable ones at all. You probably saw some of the air sea, air to sea firing [laughs] and dropping bombs in the Wash and things like that.
BW: Can you recall what the targets were in the Wash? Were they perhaps disused ships or were they —
HF: I think they were disused ships. Certainly made to look like ships. There’s an interesting one. Four hours familiarisation flying and three engine flying. Three engines, had obviously had some trouble in one of them and had come out of order so we were flying back on three which was no problem on a big plane.
BW: Did that happen often for you? Did you practice it?
HF: Yes. Oh, yes.
BW: And as an engineer can you recall any particular steps you had to take or difficulties involved in flying with only one engine on, available on one wing and two on the other because you’ve got double to power on.
HF: Yeah.
BW: What kind of problems would that cause you?
HF: Well, the main thing was trying to keep the power up on the other three to balance on the one that was out of order. And seeing as there was no bombs, no problems. We were, almost enjoyed it.
BW: And of course you weren’t, you had the advantage of not being shot at.
HF: True [laughs]
BW: There’s one note in here about Naval exercise. Presumably you’d coordinate with the Navy at some point.
HF: Yeah. I imagine so. I can’t remember it.
BW: And another one there where you’ve got noted power plant in the bomb bay.
HF: Ah, now there was a base near, in Egypt and they were reliable on us in Britain for their maintenance more and wanted a Lancaster to fly out in its bomb bays and then come back of course with the defective engine. And that was for some reason they sent me as engineer there. But planting the bomb bay, you know obviously then brought the bomb bay back, brought the bomb back with us. Have to confirm that.
BW: And there’s a few cross-country flights.
HF: Yes. [laughs]
BW: Pamphlet dropping. And air sea rescue.
HF: Over Lancashire and places like that.
GB: What was the pamphlet dropping, dad? What were you doing?
HF: This was just after the war to keep people cheered up.
BW: All your exercises, or all your sorties are going around the UK. There aren’t any recorded for going overseas except one which we see here going to —
HF: [unclear] just in to.
BW: Saint Quentin.
HF: Germany. Yeah.
BW: Saarbrücken.
HF: Saarbrücken. Yeah. [ Benebruck. Benebruck?]
BW: Osnabruck.
HF: Osnabruck, is it? Yes. So, it is.
BW: That looks like your first time over, over Germany.
HF: Yeah. It probably is.
BW: Can you recall anything about that particular one?
HF: I can’t. No.
[pause]
BW: This one sounds an interesting one. In fact, there’s two. This is late November 1947 and one daylight sortie is formation and fighter affiliation and the other is low level cross country. So which was that? Formation and fighter affil.
HF: Fighter affiliation. Yeah.
BW: Oh that. Yeah.
HF: And then a day or two after low level cross country.
BW: What did it feel like? Flying at low level.
HF: Great. Super it was.
BW: Were there any height restrictions at that particular time?
HF: Yes, I’m sure there were. I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything special about it.
BW: I think they might have been a lot more relaxed then they were. Than they are now.
HF: Yes. A combination of both. Of being relaxed and being bored.
BW: Was a Lincoln alright to handle at low level?
HF: Yes. Oh yes [pause] How’s that for a long flight? Scampton. Ten. Ten minutes [laughs]
[pause]
BW: So, by this stage late 1947 your time on 100 Squadron appears to be coming to an end and I believe you joined 97 Squadron after that. Can you remember?
HF: Yes, I was there for a month or two. I don’t remember a lot about it. Of course, if we were in the right places it was quite famous.
BW: It had been a Pathfinder Squadron.
HF: That’s right. Yeah.
BW: At one time.
HF: Yeah.
BW: But there’s no record of any flights that you took with that, with that squadron.
HF: Not at all.
BW: No.
HF: Perhaps at that yeah. That time they wouldn’t have heard of us [unclear]
BW: Can you recall what your CO was like at 100 Squadron? Did you see much of him?
HF: No. I didn’t. Just made sure he had his salute if he passed you.
BW: What was the social life like in the RAF at this time?
HF: In our case we used to drive in to Lincoln for our social life. Any other direction if you look at your map you’ll find there’s nothing that way, nothing that way.
BW: Lincoln is the nearest big city, isn’t it? [pause] Did it feel any different for you having lived through the war years and the rationing and the blackouts and things was there a palpable difference when you were in the RAF and going into Lincoln let’s say for social events?
HF: No. I can’t say that there was.
BW: There’s a photograph here of you in uniform and it looks like you’re on, you’re on the seafront.
HF: It probably is Skegness or somewhere like that. Or Cleethorpes.
BW: Did you get much time off at all from from duties?
HF: Oh, yes.
BW: And did you socialise as a crew or did you have any particular other friends that you, you met up with in there for instance?
HF: Well, I would socialise. Yes. Not necessarily in the same crew, in fact. You know.
BW: And did you get to know any of the other crews?
HF: Yes. Must have done. Flying with them. But I can’t remember much about it.
BW: There’s another picture here.
HF: That’s a Lincoln, isn’t it?
BW: That’s a Lancaster.
HF: Is it?
BW: And it looks, there must be at least three of you in formation because you’re in one aircraft and there’s two others in the, in the picture. That must be when you’re at 100 Squadron.
GB: Can you remember taking that picture or did somebody else take it and give it to you, dad?
HF: I think the latter but I can’t remember. So —
BW: There’s another picture here which shows the other members of the crew and I’m guessing that that is the navigator who’s the officer. There.
HF: Oh, most certainly, yes. Yes.
BW: Second left.
HF: Yeah.
BW: And that’s by the rear turret of what must be a Lincoln.
HF: [unclear]
BW: Can you recall any of the people in the, in the photograph at all?
HF: Yeah. Sparky there. Willy, the wireless operator there. You mentioned the navigator.
BW: Think that’s him. Yeah. Isn’t it?
HF: In the middle.
BW: Second left.
HF: Flat cap.
BW: Yeah.
HF: Then me. Then the rear gunner. I must have missed somebody out because there’s another navigator there.
[pause]
BW: But none of their names come back to you.
HF: Every now and again. And there’s our navigator down in the, or our bomb aimer down on the floor.
BW: What happened to when you left 97 Squadron? Were you then demobbed? Was this the beginning of National Service? Were you then demobbed after that or did you continue in the RAF for a little while longer?
HF: No. I [pause] yes, I got demobbed or I took demob and that was either from [pause] what’s the place near Doncaster?
BW: Finningley. Finningley?
HF: No, the —
BW: Hemswell.
HF: Hemswell. Yeah. I can see it now. Going over Hemswell and then we signed up all our papers and what have you at Scampton. No. That was at Hemswell. And from Hemswell I was taken to Blackpool and released.
BW: Presumably that was Squires Gate. That’s where they had the big —
HF: Yes. That’s right.
BW: Big Reception Centre. And what happened from there? Did you have a job to go back to or did you just go home to South Yorkshire?
HF: Well, in the latter there was no job as such. I was accepted by the people I worked with at the time, the Prudential and started working there.
BW: And how long did you work —
HF: In Civvy Street.
BW: How long did you work for the Prudential for?
HF: Not long. One year. Two year.
BW: And what, what did you go on to do after that?
HF: Rent collecting.
BW: But not with the Prudential. With another company.
HF: No. Well, Prudential didn’t have many accommodation now for —
GB: So, it was the local council, was it that you —?
HF: It was the local council. Yeah.
GB: Council housing.
BW: And when, when did you get married?
[pause]
HF: About [pause] was it in nineteen —
GB: I remember it was in July. I don’t know which year though. I can’t remember. I wouldn’t. I don’t know.
HF: Well, well, well. I would have laid my money on her remembering that.
BW: Did you stay in South Yorkshire?
HF: Yes. For a couple of years. Then went to Harlow in Essex.
BW: What prompted you to move down there?
HF: Plenty of opportunity. They were building what, eight big towns. In the south mainly. So, I thought it would be best of new opportunities down there. And so I worked there. At some stage I moved up to Harlow in Essex and up to the east. To Doncaster, wasn’t it?
GB: No. After Harlow dad you moved up to Nuneaton because I was born in Harlow, wasn’t I? And we left Harlow in 1972 when you got that job as a housing manager.
HF: Yes.
GB: At Nuneaton Council.
HF: Oh, [unclear]
GB: The date sticks in my mind because that’s when I did my O levels and I remember —
HF: Yes.
GB: Us just moving up just after that.
HF: Oh aye.
BW: And then from there you obviously moved up to Manchester, or Greater Manchester.
HF: Well, that's by accident if anything.
GB: Yeah. It’s only a couple of years ago when dad —
HF: Yeah.
GB: Couldn’t live on his own anymore in Nuneaton.
BW: Yeah. Did you manage to keep in touch with any of your crew mates after, after leaving the RAF or did you just all go your separate ways?
HF: We all went our separate ways. I don’t remember any of them because we all got demobbed as it were in any number. You know, in our number but in my experience.
BW: You were demobbed individually.
HF: Yes.
GB: You know John Whitlock, in Harlow. He was in the RAF. Did you know him when you were in the RAF?
HF: No.
GB: So, you just met him in Harlow and he just happened to be in the RAF.
HF: Yes.
GB: Right.
BW: And the, how did you hear about the Memorial for Bomber Command?
HF: I was in RAFA, so you got all the bumph and publicity for some of the activities. And I remember going to Coningsby. To the, that’s not Bomber Command, is it? That’s —
BW: It was. It was a bomber base.
HF: Yeah. But since then.
GB: Are you thinking of the reunions of Project Propeller that you’ve been to occasionally?
HF: No. But that does come in to it though, love. Yeah. Did you know of that?
GB: Project Propeller is when local pilots take you to your reunions isn’t it?
HF: Yes. That’s sums it up.
BW: Have you managed to get to the Memorial site at Lincoln? At Canwick Hill.
HF: No.
BW: Or not.
HF: Is that where the new site is?
BW: That’s yeah. That’s where the new site is.
HF: Is that in Scampton?
BW: It’s not far from Scampton. It’s probably five or six miles. Something like that.
HF: Yeah. Towards Lincoln.
BW: Yes.
HF: Yeah.
BW: Yeah. Scampton’s just north of Lincoln isn’t it. So, as you, as you come south you actually go —
HF: What did you actually call it?
BW: Scampton. So, as you go towards the city and then go up the valley at the other side and that is Canwick Hill and that’s where the Memoria is.
HF: Oh right.
[pause]
BW: Well, I think I’ve gone through all the questions that I, that I had for you.
HF: Ok.
BW: So it just leaves me to say thank you very much for your time, Harry and thank you for doing the interview.
HF: Pleasure.
BW: Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Harry Fearns
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brian Wright
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AFearnsH170724, PFearnsH1701
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:59:54 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Fearns was born and lived in Barnsley South Yorkshire. He left school at 16 and joined the Prudential Insurance Company as a door to door premiums collector before joining the Royal Air Force in 1944 as a flight engineer. Following initial training at St John’s Wood London and Newquay, Harry completed his training at RAF Stormy Down and RAF St Athan. During training he worked on Lancaster Mk1 and Mk3 aircraft being modified to operate in the Far East, although the war ended before Harry joined an operational squadron. Harry was posted to No 230 Operational Conversion Unit at RAF Lindholme in 1947 where his main recollection was clearing the runways of snow and ice during the very severe winter of 1946/7. From there he was posted to 100 Squadron at RAF Hemswell where he converted to Lincolns although he recalled a preference for the Lancaster. During 1947 the squadron carried out a number of night and daytime exercises, live firing and bombing range practices. After a short period with 97 Squadron, Harry was demobbed late in 1947 and returned to The Prudential Insurance Company before commencing a career in local housing.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jim Sheach
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Wales--Bridgend
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
England--Yorkshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Cornwall (County)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1946
1947
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
100 Squadron
97 Squadron
aircrew
flight engineer
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Lincoln
RAF Hemswell
RAF Lindholme
RAF St Athan
RAF Stormy Down
Tiger force
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/719/10114/ABorthwickS180306.2.mp3
2ff5ec8d7ba556eaacdc93f61495839b
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
Borthwick, Sidney
S Borthwick
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Sidney Borthwick (b. 1925). He flew operations as an air gunner with 101 Squadon.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Borthwick, S
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: Ok. So, there we are. So, this is Andrew Sadler interviewing Sidney Borthwick at his home in Staines on Tuesday the 5th of March 2018. Sidney, can you, you were telling me about how you signed up in to the Air Force. Can you tell me about that?
[pause]
SB: It’s a bit indistinct now but there were recruitment areas in every town weren’t they? Staines. No. Where was it?
Other: West Hartlepool?
SB: But I’ve always had something wrong with my left arm. A tumour on the bone shaft of my left arm or something. The kind of thing that when you were in the playground at school. They’d just maybe let you out of lessons and you were all mad and you were chasing each other and they used to grab me and it was right where this tumour was on my, on my left arm. And it was like something on the bone that when they did things like that it wobbled about. I’ve still got it [laughs] It’ll only be, it’s long forgotten now you know but I was in the playground. I had to be very careful in the rough and tumble of [pause] what was that famous thing we used to play? Tig or something like that.
Other: Tag.
SB: Tag, and —
Other: And did this affect you for going in to the —
SB: Well, they used to grab my left, my arm you see and under there somewhere there was like a nodule or something. A tumour on the bone shaft of my left arm.
Other: But did that affect you joining the Air Force?
SB: Well, yeah. Oh, yeah. You had to keep your mouth closed about that, you know. So I think I probably went somewhere in this area to volunteer and they thought [pause] So I thought, well I’ll go to another place. There was another place. I forget the name of it now. I’ll go up there. I went in. Wanted to volunteer, you know. Here I am. ‘Yeah. Yeah. Fine. You’re in.’ [laughs] So a lesson in life that sometimes you’ve got to [unclear] [laughs] Yeah. So, yeah.
AS: And how old were you then? Was this before the war or after it had started?
SB: Doesn’t say anything in here, does it?
Other: You’ve always said that you lied about you age.
SB: I haven’t seen this in ages.
Other: You always said, dad that you lied about your age. If you had to be eighteen you were only seventeen but you put your age forward to the point that I always remember mum always said she never really knew what you were at a birthday because you kept it up.
[pause]
SB: Sergeant Brooking. I wonder how he is nowadays.
[pause]
AS: Can you tell me anything about the training that you did? How did you come to become a gunner?
SB: How come?
AS: How did you come to become a gunner?
SB: Well —
[door chimes interrupt recording]
SB: If you volunteered. A lot of people said, you know. ‘I want to be up there.’ You see. But I wasn’t like that. I knew I had limitations so I thought well there’s plenty of appendages on there, you know. You can be a bomb aimer, a mid-upper gunner and all the rest of it. So I didn’t cast my line and I always lived with the thought that one day they were going to walk up to me and say, ‘Are you Sid Borthwick?’ And I’d say, ‘Yes.’ And he’d say, ‘Yeah. Well, we know all about you. Bugger off.’[laughs] So, yeah I think I went [pause] [unclear] place. What’s it called? I forget now.
[pause]
SB: So, I learned pretty quickly when to keep my mouth shut and things like that. You, you lived in fear when your turn would come. They had a thing that spun around. I forget what it was but it was part, part of your volunteering. You passed these things and I thought I don’t think I’ll ever get through that but yeah. Be like mum. Or be like dad, keep mum. So, the less you say that can [pause] they could put up against you afterwards the better.
AS: Can you tell me about the training you had?
SB: Training?
AS: Yes.
SB: Well, yes. It’s all written down in the book.
[pause]
SB: Units at which served. ACRC. Aircrew Recruitment. St Johns Wood. In brackets I’ve put Lord’s. So, is there a big err St Johns Wood? What is the name of that?
AS: The Cricket Ground. Lord’s Cricket Ground.
SB: 4th of January 1944. And then I went to Bridlington, Bridgnorth. Stormy Down. And then Ludford Magna. Christ almighty. Catterick. Christ, I was up in Blackpool. I remember that. I had a good time up there.
AS: Can you tell me where you were posted?
[pause]
SB: I was at ACRC. At obviously, Air Crew Recruitment, St Johns Wood and I’ve got here Lord’s. 4th of January ’44. So there must have been a place up there where you went. [unclear] Upper Heyford. Scampton. Bottesford. Ludford Magna. Catterick. Kirkham. Blackpool. West Kirby. Demob. Off.
AS: Can you remember how you came to be a gunner?
SB: Capabilities. You know in your own mind. You know what you could take on without [pause] Although I always remember at school I was always in the back row. Of course, it gives you good pretensions that, you know. I don’t know what your school was like. Your headmaster sat down there and in the front row you had all the dummies as we used to call them, you know. People as thick as two planks. They were, you can imagine him standing there thinking how am I going to drum anything in to this lot? And I knew from that, the seating in the classroom how I was doing, you know. If you got yourself in the back row away from, the master used to sit in the front with the big cane didn’t he to see if you were awake. And I knew from that what I was capable of or what I thought I was capable of. So I might have diminished myself in certain respects but it gave me a line that I wanted to be above possibly. And without any, what did you call it educationally? You got secondary education, was it? The first. Secondary.
[pause]
SB: Yeah. I wasn’t going to set the world on fire.
AS: Can you tell me anything about the training you did to become a gunner?
[pause]
SB: It’s not very clear to me actually.
AS: Can you remember where you were? Where you were stationed? You said, you said something. You read from your logbook you were in Scampton. Can you tell us something about that?
[pause]
SB: Yes. This this is the book they give you when you join. You join up. Certificates of qualification etcetera. [pause] And then it goes all the way with you through. Red ink for night flying. Blue ink for daytime. Stormy Down. Yeah. Old Anson. I remember that.
AS: Could you tell us about that?
[pause]
SB: I couldn’t get on quick enough. It was, it was like taking a lad from the streets and I’m talking now a long time ago.
[telephone ringing]
[pause]
AS: Did you go on many missions? Can you tell us about some of those?
[pause]
SB: What? In the real war you mean?
[pause]
SB: Do you remember Concorde?
AS: Yes.
SB: Concorde BOAE. Passenger proving flight. Two hours up the Bay of Biscay. That was Concorde. A brand new aeroplane. [pause] ACRC. That was the old Bridlington. Then to Bridgnorth. Then to Stormy Down. Upper Heyford. Scampton. Bottesford. Ludford Magna. Catterick. Kirkham. Blackpool. Training. I was shoved off to India when they’d finished with me.
AS: Can you tell me about that?
[pause]
AS: What did you do after the war? Did you manage to settle back in to civilian life?
SB: Yeah.
AS: Was it difficult or easy?
SB: I’ve got in here Blackpool. Retraining [pause] as an equipment assistant. So it sounds like my flying days are over. Remustering training because when, when the war ended they wanted, well the lads who had been up where ever fighting the war. Serving. They all wanted to come back to England. Be in Blighty again. So lots of people like me, probably midway let him go on. So, the next thing I know I’m up in Ceylon. I’m posted overseas. Mind you it was wonderful. You’d never see [laughs] Never see them in your lifetime. Sitting here kind of thing. It’s the place to be. You see the ladies picking [pause] oh what the hell do they call them? Actually, you know the things are actually growing up there. You go from the, one day dropping bloody bombs all over the place. A couple of weeks later you’re in a foreign country. Why? Well, those lads had been up there so they’re due to come home and we need to replace them, don’t we? Yes. Off you go then. Next. [unclear] you’re sitting ladies in the, where was it? Ceylon? [pause] And they’re picking, yeah what the hell was it? What is tea like? The plant. A shrub isn’t it? [pause] Mind you, for a single bloke it was a good life.
AS: What were you doing in Ceylon? Why did you go to Ceylon?
SB: Because the government sent me there, I suppose. I didn’t volunteer for it. I just, as I say it was the time of life like that. The next thing I know I’m sitting on a bloody great liner with my feet over the edge. ‘What rank are you?’ ‘Flight sergeant.’ ‘Right. Well, you see all these squaddies sitting on this liner with you? Right. Tell them to get their feet back in. Inboard. They must not sit on the edge with their feet dangling over.’ [laughs] I thought, well I’ll tell you it was the way of it was a weird old thing, yeah. A couple of days later you land somewhere and the ladies are picking tea and things like that.
AS: Can you tell me anything about the Lancaster because you were on Lancasters, weren’t you?
SB: I was on Lancasters. Yes. A rear gunner on a Lancaster.
[pause]
Other: Can I do you another coffee?
AS: No. I’m fine thank you very much.
Other: Yeah? Can I switch this off, dad? It’s quite warm. Can I take your tea?
AS: Can you tell me anything about your squadron reunions that you, can you tell me anything about your squadron reunions?
[pause]
SB: I don’t think there are squadron reunions.
[pause]
AS: Can you remember being at Scampton, because I think you were at Scampton, weren’t you? In Lincolnshire.
SB: What?
AS: Scampton. Were you in Scampton?
[pause]
SB: It’s funny when you look at these things. Things you, because the Dutch refused to cooperate with the Germans. They were starved.
AS: And you went and dropped some food for them, didn’t you?
SB: Yeah.
AS: Can you tell me about that?
SB: Well, as I remember it we just went on to the runway, opened the bomb doors, right and rammed in as much stuff as you could. Not giving a lot of thought to what it is and we just kept doing that and then said to the skipper, ‘Pile on a bit more. Not a lot but a little bit more.’ And these because the bomb doors came down like that kept closing them down. Closing them down. Closing them down. Closing and they kept ramming stuff in to give to these people who were starving because the Germans, the Germans wouldn’t give them any food, would they? Because, because the Dutch refused to cooperate with the Germans they were starved themselves. Yeah.
[pause]
SB: I often wonder because we never kept, I mean if you flew all this time with all these people when you were demobbed that was it. Well, really —
[pause]
AS: Good.
[pause]
AS: You’ve got a good number of videos about the war, I think.
SB: “Imperial War Museum. The Official Collection. Royal Air Force at War.” Mind you, you’ve got to have plenty to, I used to have these. Yeah. There’s the lads bombing up. The front turret of a Lancaster. Crew positions of a Lancaster. [pause] I’m not quite sure if that’s my position there. Rear turret in a Lancaster. Yeah. [pause] “The story of the Lancaster bomber.”
AS: Ok.
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 Sidney Borthwick
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Andrew Sadler
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABorthwickS180306
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:40:45 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Sri Lanka
England--London
England--Blackpool
England--Lancashire
England--Cheshire
Netherlands
Description
An account of the resource
Sidney enlisted on 4th January 1944 at the Air Crew Reception Centre, Lord’s cricket ground. He was accepted despite a tumour on his left arm. Sidney was a rear gunner on Lancasters. After trained at Blackpool, he served at RAF Bottesford, RAF Bridgnorth, RAF Bridlington, RAF Catterick, RAF Kirkham, RAF Ludford Magna, RAF Scampton, RAF Stormy Down and RAF West Kirby. He recalls operation Manna. When the war ended, Sidney had an overseas posting to Ceylon.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1946
1944-01-04
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
101 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Bottesford
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Catterick
RAF Kirkham
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF Scampton
RAF Stormy Down
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/573/8842/AGardR160601.2.mp3
fcd7778bea89ec158665387315505ae0
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
Gard, Ronald
Ronald Leslie Gard
R L Gard
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Gard, R
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Ronald Gard (-2022, 1852481 Royal Air Force), his log book, correspondence reporting him missing and membership of the caterpillar club. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 463 Squadron and was shot down on an operation to Leipzig.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Ronald Gard and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Ron Gard. The interview is taking place at Mr Gard’s home in Liphook, Hampshire on the 1st of June 2016. Ok, well if we start off perhaps you could tell me a little bit about your childhood and growing up and how you came to join the RAF.
RG: Well, I was, I was born in Petersfield and in 1940 I joined the Air Training Corps in Petersfield and when I was seventeen I thought, well I’ll take my chance and go down to Portsmouth to see if I could join the RAF and they sent me home because I was too young but eventually they did send for me and I went to Portsmouth. I passed the medicals down there and then as I was going for air crew they said I would have to spend two days at Oxford through for the air crew at a station base. So I went there and I passed all the exams and the medical and they said that I would be suitable to be an air gunner so when I was eighteen and a half I was sent for and I reported to Lords Cricket Ground which was the reception place there and after a couple of weeks I went to Bridlington which was the place they sent you to for teaching you the Morse code and all that sort of thing and then I posted then to 7 AGS which was the gunnery school at Stormy Down in South Wales where I passed out as a sergeant air gunner. From there I went to Silverstone where I crewed up with four Australians and myself and another RAF gunner. Unfortunately, on one of the trips one night the Wellington I was in crash landed and the pilot was blamed for the crash and he was sent back to Australia and then we waited a couple of weeks and we were told to report to the flight office and there was a flying officer, RAF type, pilot who came down to sort of interview us to see if we were suitable to go with him. Actually we finished up we were very lucky because he was a pilot, a pre-war pilot. So anyway he was the flying officer then and he was our, from then on he was our pilot. From there we went to Syerston which was, no, we went to Winthorpe sorry which was on Stirlings to change over from Wellingtons to four engine bombers and we trained on Stirlings and then we went from there to Syerston where we had a few hours on a Lancaster and from there on the next move was to Waddington where we were very lucky to get to Waddington because it was a peacetime ‘drome and still going now and we, there we joined 463 squadron. We had three Australians in our squadron, in our crew. The navigator, the bomb aimer and the wireless operator, they were Australians and the rest of us were English. RAF. And there we’d done our operations. Unfortunately my skipper was deputy flight commander so we, we didn’t, we had, our tour was stretched out a bit because he wasn’t allowed to fly when he was doing flight commanding. Anyway, on our seventeenth trip we were going to Rositz which was the night after the Dresden raid and Rositz was just up the road from Dresden. We got over Leipzig and we got caught in searchlights and we got shot down by flak. I baled out of the rear turret. Then I landed in a field there and I walked all night on my own. There was nobody else about and the next morning I travelled, walked out of some woods where I’d slept during the night to see where I was and I walked straight into the arms of two farmers and one of them had a shotgun. The one with the shotgun knocked me to the ground and I think he was going to, thought he was going to shoot me but the other chap with him pushed the gun out of the way and then they took him, took me to the farmhouse to, and then there were some German, well soldiers I presume they were, they came along and they handcuffed me and took me to this barracks and I stayed there overnight and the next morning an officer, it’s funny really ‘cause an officer and his girlfriend came along, picked me up and took me to Leipzig station and we got in a carriage there and we went to wherever we went to and they took me along to this other camp there and that’s where I met my navigator and my mid upper gunner. From there we got on a train to Frankfurt on Main which was the interrogation place. I spent seven days in there in solitary confinement and then we, then they took us by train again. We were in box wagons and while we were going to Nuremberg we got shot up by American fighters [laughs]. So anyway we, when we got to Nuremberg were put in this compound there and of course I was with my navigator and mid upper gunner there and there was a crowd more and a couple of weeks went by and who should come in to the next compound was my pilot and the wireless operator. They’d escaped for about a fortnight but I think they, in the end they had to give themselves up because they had no food or nothing. Anyway, we were in Nuremberg for about six weeks or more and then we were on a forced march from there down to a place called Moosburg which was down near Munich which was, it took sixteen days to get there by just walking all the time and then we was in, when we were in Moosburg we were there for a couple of weeks and we were liberated by the Americans. The, which was under General Patton. Of course there was all manners of people there. There was Russians and all the, it was just a holding camp you know. Anyway, you’ve got to give the Americans their due they, they, after about a week we got into little sections of about twelve and we were taken then by transport to another aerodrome, small aerodrome. From there we sat there for about a week until our turn because Dakotas was coming in picking up people and taking them, I was taken then to Rheims in France. We got to, once we got to Rheims we were put in to, Lancasters were there and we got in and sat in the fuselages of Lancasters, this Lancaster and we were flown to Thorney Island on the Sussex coast and that was on my 20th birthday. From there we, we were given refreshments and that and then we were put on a, taken into Chichester and put on a train and taken to Cosford where we had all medicals and kitted out and whatever have you and from there we was allowed to send a telegram home to say where we were. That was the first indication that my parents had that I was alive. They didn’t, they knew nothing until then and after about a few days we passed the medicals and got kitted out we were sent home and I was home then for about two months.
DM: What, what made you join the RAF as opposed to going in to the army or the navy?
RG: Well because -
DM: I mean obviously you were in the air cadets but why, why -
RG: Because I was in the Air Training Corps.
DM: Yeah.
RG: I thought that was the next move on you see.
DM: Why did you join the Air Training Corps? Was it - ?
RG: Well, it was, it was the thing that all my friends were joining. They’d just started up in Petersfield and so I decided I would join the Air Training Corps and there was a crowd of us you know.
DM: Yeah. And did you have brothers and sisters?
RG: Yes. Well I got, I had brothers then.
DM: Older? Younger?
RG: No. I was the eldest in my family.
DM: So did your brothers join up then during the war?
RG: Well I had one brother, my twin brother joined the RAF. He was a transport driver. My twin brother that was and then I had three other brothers that got called up for National Service. Two went into the RAF and they were twins as well. And another one went in the army. I don’t know why he went in the army but he did but anyway that was it. There was five of us. I suppose it was called up after but the other three were after the war, you know.
DM: So what did the twins, the other twins do in the RAF after the war?
RG: One was a dog handler and one was just an ordinary AC I think. You know, just general duties.
DM: They didn’t stay on after -
RG: No. No.
DM: The National Service.
RG: No. And anyway, after I, afterwards I was called, I had to go up to Catterick, I think it was, to be assessed. What air crew was there you know and I was trained as, in stores and then I went from stores, I got posted down to Barnham in Suffolk and I was on a bomb dump place there. I was in the office there on stores and then just after that I was promoted to warrant officer and unfortunately they decided that all air crew with rank of warrant officers and flight sergeant would be reduced to the rank of sergeant so I was reduced then to the rank of sergeant and from there I was posted to RAF delegation in Brussels so I went out to Brussels for about three or four months and then I swapped postings with somebody. I went to Farnborough and when I was Farnborough I was there for about four months and then I got demobbed and I come out there and I joined the civil service and I worked for the Ministry of Defence, the army, for forty two years and then I retired at sixty three and I got the Imperial Service Medal for that.
DM: Go back to when you joined the RAF and you were training to be a gunner. How did the crewing up process work for you? How did you all come together?
RG: Well that was when we got to Silverstone. We got to Silverstone and of course when we, when I arrived at Silverstone there was all these bods there and of course there was lots of chaps in dark blue uniforms and I thought, who the heck are they, you know and of course I found out they were Australians and then we all, on the second day we all got in to this big hangar there and then the pilots went around and picked people out to crew up with you see. And this Australian flight sergeant came up to me. He said, ‘How would you like to be one of my gunners?’ So I said, ‘Yeah. Suits me.’ And that was it and of course when I, when we sort of got together there was a pilot and a navigator and a bomb aimer and we didn’t have a, we didn’t a flight engineer then. We didn’t pick the flight engineer up until a lot lot later you know so there was only six of us really in the crew to start with.
DM: Did you, I assume, did you not pick the flight engineer up until after you changed pilots?
RG: Yes, that’s right.
DM: Yeah.
RG: Yes.
DM: When you’d gone on from the Wellingtons.
RG: Yes. Yes, we went on, I think it was, I think it was when we got onto Stirlings I think. We didn’t, he didn’t come, we didn’t pick the flight engineer up until then.
DM: So the exception of the pilot when you were on Stirlings and afterwards he was obviously an officer.
RG: Yeah.
DM: Were you sergeants, the rest of you?
RG: Yes. I was sergeant. Till I got on the squadron I was a sergeant and then you automatically got promoted after twelve months but I was lucky ‘cause I got promoted after nine months. But so I was flight sergeant then and then a year on from there I got promoted to warrant officer but as I say I think they did the dirty on us a bit because why they did it I don’t know because we still got the same pay as a warrant officer but, but they, it was, I mean I couldn’t believe it because I was a warrant officer, it looked ridiculous because I was a warrant officer and then all of a sudden I was a sergeant. Back down to sergeant again.
DM: Strange. When you were on the squadron, you did seventeen operations I think I’m right in saying.
RG: I was shot down on my seventeenth yeah.
DM: Yeah but as you say it took longer because your pilot was a flight commander so -
RG: Yeah. That’s right. He was a deputy flight commander so -
DM: Yeah. What were your feelings sort of when you went on operations? Were you sort of nervous or frightened or -
RG: Well I wouldn’t say I was frightened you know because you had so much going on you know that you didn’t intend to be, I was never frightened. I don’t think I was ever frightened but because you were always sort of busy you know. Busy doing nothing as you might say you know because you were always searching around you know looking for, and then course when you, when you got over the target you was always thinking let’s get out of here quick you know sort of business you know.
DM: Did you get to fire your guns in anger?
RG: No. Never once. No. No I never fired, no I never fired my guns at all. I suppose when you come to think of it it’s the people, the lucky ones that got away. You know you get all these people who, who I mean I was only just, well I might interrupt and say I’ve just read a book on Group Captain Cheshire. He did a hundred operations. Well he must have been a very lucky man to do that number of operations.
DM: Particularly some of the operations he did.
RG: Well that’s right.
DM: Yes.
RG: Because I mean a lot of the chaps of course obviously they finished their tour, you know and as you went on you sort of felt a bit more safer you know, you know and when you I say I was on my seventeenth and that was it.
DM: Did you have any dicey moments before that?
RG: Yes. We got hit a couple of times by flak but as far as fighters was concerned we didn’t see, I didn’t get involved in any of them but no we were hit once or twice you know at different targets and we got over. Not enough to fetch us down but this one really caught us you know. It hit two of the engines out for a start you know and of course I was very lucky because the rear gunner had what they called a dead man’s handle so you could wind the turret around but otherwise I was very lucky because at that time they were issuing rear gunners with pilots type chutes so I was sitting on the chute but before that they were, they were stacked outside the turret. Well if mine had been outside the turret I wouldn’t be alive today because the flames was right up to my turret so I had to wind the turret around, open the doors and go out the back. That’s the only way I could get out but my bomb aimer and flight engineer were both killed and they’re buried in Berlin.
DM: Do you know if they baled out or were they still –?
RG: Well from what I gathered afterwards I think they were caught up with the machine. I think they probably baled out too quick and their parachutes got caught. One, I think one of them must have had a terrible death because his parachute was caught up in the plane and when the plane was, I think our wireless operator, he was, he contacted with the Germans that live around that way somewhere along the line because he wrote a book about it and he said that one of them was attached to the plane. His parachute was still intermingled with the, with the propellers.
DM: And you, did you, were you still in contact with the pilot when you baled out? Were you given the order to bail out or did you just decide it was the time to go.
RG: Well I couldn’t hear anything. I mean they said the pilot said bail out, you know but of course the intercom was all gone and being as I was at the back I saw the mid upper gunner come down and he went out the side door and I just rotated the turret with the dead man’s handle, opened the doors and went out the back that way. That was the only way I could get out.
DM: Do you remember much about the journey down?
RG: No. Not at all. No. No.
DM: They say most people don’t remember pulling the rip cord. I don’t know if -
RG: No. No. You don’t.
DM: I don’t know why.
RG: No you just go out I mean it’s the thing that I felt that I was always saying what happens if I have to bail out anytime, you know and you think oh you sort of dreaded that but when the time comes it’s a case of survival isn’t it?
DM: The lesser of two evils I suppose.
RG: Yeah that’ right
DM: If the plane’s on fire.
RG: Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
RG: And I suppose at night you see when it’s dark you can’t see anything.
DM: No.
RG: And all of a sudden you’re down, you know.
DM: Did you have a reasonably good landing? You didn’t injure yourself.
RG: Yeah. I didn’t get hurt or anything. No.
DM: And you still had both your boots.
RG: Yeah [laughs] Yes. Yes. Yes, I kept them for a long time. It’s funny really because the boots that we had you know and the soles were, were the rubber soles and they were stamped inside Petersfield, Hants and that’s where I came from and there was a factory in Petersfield who made all these rubber soles and things like that and the bottom of my boot was stamped inside Petersfield, Hants. Down the bottom.
DM: So you were shot down. The two farmers -
RG: Yeah.
DM: Captured you basically -
RG: Yeah. They did. Yeah.
DM: The army came and got you and took you off. Eventually you went to the interrogation centre.
RG: Yeah.
DM: What happened at the interrogation centre?
RG: Well again you got interrogated by these Germans. I was quite surprised and I think that anybody who was a prisoner would probably tell you exactly the same that when they got to this place at Frankfurt on Main I was, we were in little cells on our own and one day, about the second day I was there they took me into this office with this German officer was there to interrogate me and on this, 463 RAAF Waddington. ‘I expect you know group captain…’ so and so, ‘Don’t you?’ And, ‘He’s got a nickname hasn’t he?’ And this was it. ‘I’m sorry about the two of your crew that was killed.’ I mean he knew more about the squadron than I did after being on the squadron for about five months you know. They had it all there you know. I mean the Geneva Convention says you just tell them your number, rank and name, that’s all you know and that was it. He was telling me more than I knew you know, there was so much on the squadron and group captain so and so was in charge at Waddington. And he just, I was, you know I stood there I could see all this 463 squadron, Waddington. He opened it up, telling me all about all these, commanding officer and all that you know.
DM: Did you ever feel threatened?
RG: No. No. Never felt threatened at all. No. No. I don’t know whether it was because well the war was almost coming to an end. I can never understand really why, why they moved all these people out of these, out of the camps like they did, you know. I mean they just told us we were going and that was it. Why they did it I just don’t know because they could just all left us there and let the incoming troops take us over you know but they, they as I say we was, I mean they did this all over Germany apparently. I mean this place at Moosburg was full of different people you know. There was Americans and there was Russians and there was English people there and goodness knows what. All nationalities so they all, and of course it happened all up the north as well you know all these chaps was in different camps.
DM: When you were moving about sort of like from the farm to the police station and so on and then eventually to the prison camp did you ever encounter any civilians and was there any hostility?
RG: No. Well, we, we, well I say no because when we first got taken to the place where I met my navigator and the mid upper gunner there was another three other chaps there. I think one was Canadian, two were RAF and the six of us then and we had three guards. Three old chaps there. And we got on this train and we got to a place called Erfurt which was halfway between Leipzig and there and of course the RAF had just bombed the place as we, and of course we had to get out the train. The funny part about it was we got out the train we was holding the rifles and helping these chaps out you see. Course they were our safeguard really. We went to the station and they got us up into a corner and of course all these civilians were there and they thought we’d just, we’d just been captured and bombed and after bombing the place and of course they tried to attack us but the guards were there and kept them away and they marched us out of there and we went and stopped at the school about two miles up the road for the night to get us away from the people there. But as I say we were, we were, then we got on the train to go from Frankfurt to Nuremberg we were strafed by the Americans and we were in these box wagons and fortunately, I mean we were sort of, the thickness of the wood was alright because you could hear the bullets rattling across the roof of course they shot up the train. The engine as well. That didn’t do us a lot of good.
DM: What was the camp like at Nuremberg when you got there because being towards the end of the war, was it -
RG: Yeah
DM: Was it -
RG: It was pretty quiet you know. There was no animosity at all amongst us then. I mean we had nothing to do really. Just sit about all day long, you know.
DM: What was the food situation?
RG: Pretty sparse. If we hadn’t had the Red Cross parcels which we did have you know I think we would have been in pretty bad straights then because we got Red Cross parcels through from, and they came through and I think we had one loaf of bread during the day which was divided between seven of us and then we had Red Cross parcels which was probably one between two or three you know. Very difficult sometimes to share it out but otherwise it was pretty sparse you know.
DM: Now when you were marched from the camp how many days were you on the road?
RG: Sixteen days.
DM: And this was winter.
RG: Well, no well it was -
DM: April.
RG: April time yeah. Yeah.
DM: So not too bad weatherwise.
RG: No it wasn’t too bad. No. But I mean we just slept where we could, you see, I mean. If you got into a barn you were lucky you know. Sleep the night, then off again the next morning off you went again. Course it was stretched out for a hell of a long, I mean I lost, lost the, my navigator and that, and my bomb aimer, sorry my mid-upper gunner. We, they sort of went, you know, and you just fell in anywhere you could and just sort of walked along you know. We were glad when we got to Moosburg but then that was, we were in old tents and that there until we got liberated by the Americans. Of course then the Americans went mad because General Patton came in [laughs]. He was like a tin god to them but I mean I must say that with the Americans they got themselves organised because they had their bakeries and all that came along and baking bread and all that sort of thing and when we, when we came out of the camp there there was American lorries as far as you could see. The whole field was full of American lorries and we got, as we say we were in groups and so we was put in these individual lorries and taken off. Some went one way and some went another and then we had the Dakotas come along to take us to Rheims as I said before.
DM: So, on the march was it hard?
RG: Well it was in comparison, it was comparison that we never had much food you know. We sort of struggled along and they did give us a bit to eat you know like a soup kitchen or something like that there or a slice of bread but as I say it was, it was pretty hard going.
DM: I suppose it was probably –
RG: Course being, I was comparatively young so I didn’t, you know like -
DM: More resilient. Yes.
RG: I could keep going you know.
DM: Yeah. So you came back. As you said you came back to Britain. And what did you, when you were attached in Brussels what was that? What did you have to do there?
RG: Well to tell you truth I don’t really know what I was doing there [laughs] I mean it was funny really because I was, I was there at Barnham there and they said, I was there and they said there’s a signal come through and I was, I was a warrant officer at the time. I was doing and I went to the signals, and they said this airman must go on immediate leave. Posting to follow. So I went across to the officers’ mess. There was only about three officers there and I saw the OC and I said, ‘There’s an urgent signal.’ ‘Who’s it for?’ I said, ‘Me.’ He said, ‘Oh don’t worry about that,’ he said, ‘I’ll get that cancelled,’ but anyway he couldn’t so they sent me on leave for a month and when I came back my posting was cancelled so I’d been home for a month and then the posting was cancelled and eventually when I got made, brought down to sergeant the posting came up again and I was at the RAF, it was a posh name the RAF Delegation Brussels but actually it was RAF chaps there handing over to the Belgian Air Force and just getting them started up again you know but I was just there doing stores and that there. As a matter of fact the last job, the job I did have there was with an old warrant officer and he was fitting out some married quarters for the officers there. All the stuff that was going in so I was giving him a hand with that and then he came up to me in the mess one night and said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You live near Farnborough don’t you?’ So I said, ‘What Farnborough the [RAE?],’ so he said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘There was a chap posted there and he doesn’t want to go.’ Well I said, ‘Well give it to me then and I’ll take it.’ So I came, they got me a posting there fitted up so I went down, they sent transport for me, took me down to the Gare du Nord in Brussels. I got on this train and what I didn’t realise, it was, it was an officer’s train and the chap came along, he said, ‘Breakfast is served, sir’ you know and there was me with three stripes sat there and there were all these officers there so I, and I got down I got down to, where did get to? Calais, on the train and of course I was all on my own so I just got off with my kit and that and I said to one of the policemen there and I said, ‘How do I get to Dover?’ He said, ‘Well there’s a boat there.’ So I walked on to the boat and that was it and it was, I’ll always remember it was a Friday. I thought well I’m not going to Farnborough today. I’ll wait till the weekend. I’ll go Monday morning so I caught the train, I came down to Petersfield where I lived and stayed the weekend there and on the Monday morning I caught the train back up to Guildford, I think it was and then I went from there to Farnborough and reported in there and the chap said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You should have been here on Friday.’ So I said to him, ‘Have you ever tried getting across from Calais to Dover on a Friday?’ I said, ‘I didn’t get there till last night and come straight here.’ Of course he didn’t know any different so that was it. But again I just stayed there until I got demobbed and that was in the July I think. That was about, well it was the winter of ’47 which was a terrible winter then and that you know but that’s when I got demobbed.
DM: You didn’t think of staying in?
RG: Well I say again with aircrew you sort of had two trades. I mean as an air gunner I was finished flying so then they gave you, sent on a course for stores and I was AC, or something, stores so if I’d have stopped in I would have had to lose my aircrew rank and start again.
DM: So you ended up in the Ministry of Defence.
RG: Yeah. I worked for the Ministry of Defence in Liphook here because there was a big army depot here.
DM: Right.
RG: And that’s where I went to work. In there.
DM: But as a civilian obviously.
RG: Yeah. Oh yeah.
DM: So, when did you marry?
RG: 1948.
DM: Children?
RG: No. We got no children. No. No. But I, my wife worked for the, for the Ministry of Defence as well and so when my wife she took early retirement. So at fifty eight and I was sixty two, sixty three so I thought I’d take early retirement as well so I took it just afterwards. So I’ve been retired since I was sixty three.
DM: When you were at Waddington what was the social, sort of life like? You, as obviously, as a crew I imagine you were associated with each other.
RG: Yeah.
DM: Did the pilot associate with you as well off duty?
RG: Oh yes. Oh yes, most well I don’t say most nights but if we weren’t on flying he had a car and we used to go down the local pub. Everybody mixed in you know. I mean even sometimes you’d go down the pub and there was your ground crew was there as well you know. There was always drinks on us sort of business you know. But you know, the, everybody, always spoke well of their ground crew you know ‘cause after all you relied on them. I mean I was reading an article there once where the chap was writing in the paper and said, ‘Oh it was always them and us.’ Well it was never them and us you know.
DM: Were the ground crew a mixture of British and Australian or were they all British?
RG: No they were a mixture, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There were Australian engineers and that there. Fitters. Whatever have you.
DM: What did you think of the Australians?
RG: I got on all right with them, you know. As a matter of fact in 1982 my wife and I went to Australia for six weeks and stayed there with my wireless operator and he died just last year. But they invited us over there ‘cause they, it was funny really ‘cause I was here one Saturday afternoon, we’d been out in in the garden there, just sitting there and having a snack, you know and the front door bell went and I went the front door, the front door and this chap was stood there and I thought well I know his face but I just couldn’t place who he was and he said, ‘Hello Ron. I’ve come twelve thousand miles to see you.’ I said, ‘Oh Dudley Hanniford.’ He said, ‘Yes.’ That was my wireless operator and him and his wife they had come over for a big reunion. It was about, I suppose it was about fifty Australians or more came over to Waddington and stayed up there for a week in Lincoln and of course I knew nothing about it then but afterwards I think that was in, well it was the thirtieth anniversary or something in 1975 so they decided they would all get together and fly over to Waddington and they stayed all around the area and the next time would have been about 1990 I think it was. 1995. And I was then a member of the Association which I didn’t know anything about and my wife and I we went up to Lincoln and stayed there for a week at Waddington doing all manner of things around you know in the station and we went out around. We had, we had an invitation to the Lord Mayor’s do up in Lincoln. He invited all these people there to Lincoln, to a party up there and we had a couple of invitations to the officer’s mess. They weren’t very happy about the Australians coming over [laughs] I think they were a bit of a gung-ho lot you know. I mean I remember once I had because at the end of every month you had to take your log book in to the squadron leader, the OC, to sign it to verify it, sign it, you know. And I went there one day and the squadron leader was sitting at his desk you know, and I went in and saluted, you know and he said, ‘God don’t frighten me to death,’ he said. He said, he said because they never, they never used to salute anybody then. I mean they might do it once in a day but they never, didn’t salute every time you met an officer there ‘cause they were all crewed in together, you know but they was a good crowd.
DM: And you’re still a member of the Association.
RG: Yes. I’m still member of the Association. Yeah. But I haven’t been up to Waddington for the last couple of years you know but I get a newsletter every, about twice a year from the Association. What goes on.
DM: And are you the sole surviving member of your crew now?
RG: I must be yeah.
DM: Yeah.
RG: Yes, because my pilot and rear gunner and mid upper gunner I know have passed away and last year, two of the crew were killed so that only left five of us and the wireless operator which I used to share a room with in Waddington in the sergeants mess and he passed away last year. His son in law rung me up and told me about it you know but we spent six weeks out there with them.
DM: How do you feel about the way Bomber Command was, I won’t say treated but perhaps perceived and dealt with after the war? Do you have any feelings about that?
RG: Terrible.
DM: Yeah.
RG: I mean –
DM: Did you think that at the time?
RG: Yes because they sort of, I mean today you read about all these chaps coming out the army and the services and they think the world owes them a living but nobody thought that about us. You know, I mean as I say I was a warrant officer one day and then I was reduced to the rank of sergeant. Of course when I come home people thought, ‘I wonder what he’s done,’ you know. And it was so stupid because they still paid us, I still got paid as a warrant officer. The funny part about it was I had a, I had a warrant officer’s uniform and an overcoat and when I was posted to Brussels I was walking around there with a warrant officer’s overcoat with three stripes on and I was in Brussels one Saturday afternoon and one of the military, the RAF police came up to me and said, ‘Excuse me sergeant,’ he said, ‘But do you realise you are walking around with a warrant officer’s overcoat on?’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s right.’ So he said, ‘Why is that?’ So I told him. Thought no more about it. ‘Ok’, he said, ‘Can I have your number, rank and name.’ ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Where are you stationed?’ I said, ‘I’m at the RAF delegation.’ ‘Alright. Fair enough.’ Well fortunately it had come out on orders that although you were reduced down to sergeant you could still wear the overcoat but you had to put three stripes on it. So fair enough. So this, this friend of mine, he was in charge of the orderly room so I said to him, ‘Can you dig out that DCI that come out about wearing the overcoat,’ you see. He said, ‘Why?’ So I told him. He said, ‘Alright. I’ll look it up Monday morning.’ So anyway, funnily enough first thing on Monday morning I was sent for by the commanding officer out there and he said, ‘I believe you were pulled up sergeant,’ he said, ‘Well Saturday afternoon in Brussels for wearing a warrant officer’s overcoat.’ I said, ‘Yes. That’s right sir.’ I said, ‘I’m quite entitled to it,’ I said because they didn’t say we could hand that in and get a new overcoat so he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Can you prove that?’ So we sent for the sergeant in the orderly room and of course he didn’t know that I’d already spoken to him and he came out with this, showed it to him. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Oh you’re entitled to wear it then.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ So he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Get rid of that bloody overcoat,’ he said, ‘And go and draw a new one from the stores.’ So I went and I said, ‘Have you got a spare overcoat?’ He had an overcoat that fit me so I had two overcoats then. Of course when I come home I had two overcoats. I still kept the other one but, and I think as for this Bomber Command clasp they’ve given us I think it’s a disgrace. You’ve seen it have you? You know I, when they said they were give the Bomber Command a medal and then I received this little bit of tin with Bomber Command on it I thought, useless.
DM: Yeah, obviously now there’s the memorial and there’s the new Bomber Command Centre but I think a lot of people think it’s too late in a way. It’s better that, you know it’s good that it’s happening now but it should have happened thirty years ago.
RG: Oh yeah.
DM: Or even longer.
RG: Yeah. Even now you see it’s, it’s all done by charity really. You know. Donations to keep it going and that and to build it in the first place. I mean they had these people who had plenty of money and built it. I mean, it’s a wonderful memorial. It’s a lovely place but again it’s just too late.
DM: Another veteran said to me, I don’t know if you think this is true that there is only one thing wrong with the memorial. When you look at it they’re too old.
RG: They’re too old.
DM: The people in the statues are too old.
RG: Yes.
DM: They look like thirty five.
RG: Yeah.
DM: Forty year olds.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: You know and you were all very young men.
RG: Well the average age was about twenty two. Something like that. I mean as I said you had chaps flying Lancasters who couldn’t even drive a car, you know. I mean most of them, I mean, as I said the wing commander, our Wing Commander Forbes. I think he was only twenty six and he was a wing commander and he got, he got killed on his second, last trip of his second tour.
DM: Do you remember how old your pilot was? How old was he?
RG: My pilot was thirty two.
DM: Right.
RG: My mid-upper gunner -
DM: An old man then really.
RG: He was yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DM: And the mid upper gunner you were going to say.
RG: He was thirty two as well. Yeah. I was the youngest one in the crew but I mean most of these Australians they were say twenty, twenty two something like that because they’d come over like and done all their training and that so they were getting on, I’m not saying getting on a bit but the average age was only about twenty two, twenty three something like that. If you took it right through you know.
[machine paused]
DM: Catch up sort of thing.
RG: Up, up till 1943 before D-Day rather up to D-Day the aircrew blokes got the Aircrew Europe star you see. After D-Day we got the France and Germany which everybody got. You know, all the troops. Anybody who’d spent twenty four hours in France got the France and Germany medal and that’s all they gave us. So, but what they should have done really in my opinion they should have extended the Aircrew Europe right through the war. If they’d have given us the Aircrew Europe, after all, we went, I know, I know we were probably going over France, bits of France which had already taken you know and we were not likely to get shot down there but I mean we went to, I mean I went to, some trips took ten hours.
DM: And you did get shot down.
RG: Yeah. Got shot down.
DM: At the end of the day.
RG: You see.
DM: Yeah.
RG: I mean Leipzig is a fair old way across there you know and that but I mean they should have extended the Aircrew Europe and given it to everybody who was on operations but they didn’t. They gave, all they got was a France and Germany. I didn’t even get the defence medal. I mean a lot of these air crew blokes got the defence medal. I don’t know why but they did but I didn’t qualify for it but I mean, I think with the Aircrew Europe they should have ext, the Bomber Command Association should have put their foot down and said, ‘Well look, we want that extended.’ I mean when they brought the ’39/ ’45 medal out that was only ’39/ ’43 to start with and they extended that to 1945 so why couldn’t they have done that with the Aircrew Europe instead of giving us a little bit of tin with the Bomber Command. When I went to Coningsby to the, when the Canadian came over we had we had a chance there for the, if you wanted it for the commanding officer at Coningsby to present you with your clasp and a lot of the chaps did it. They just came up and said, they gave a bit of a spiel what they did and goodness knows what and the commanding officer handed, I suppose what they had to do was to send their clasp in their box up to there and then you didn’t probably get the same one back anyway but the commanding officer you know they gave a spiel out about what you did and then the commanding officer handed it over but I wouldn’t do that because I didn’t agree with the clasp and I think that Churchill let us down badly ‘cause he wouldn’t admit that he had anything to do with the Dresden raid and that was the top and bottom of it all I think.
DM: Dropped it like a hot potato didn’t he?
RG: I mean these people turn around and say oh what a terrible thing this was and what a terrible thing that was. As far as I was concerned we were just doing a job, you know. You didn’t think about all the people that were getting killed down below. Never thought about that at all. You were just thinking about yourself really but I mean when it came to, when you say, ‘Well yeah but what about Coventry? What about Plymouth? What about Southampton and what about London?’ All these people who say these things now I mean it’s like the president going to Hiroshima now and saying you know he didn’t say sorry, but he shouldn’t have to say sorry. What these people didn’t realise that unless you were there or were about at that time the fact was that we would have lost thousands of troops if we had tried to invade Japan. I mean they had the opportunity to give in but they didn’t. It was typical of the Japanese but they, I mean the way I look at it is this if they hadn’t dropped the atom bomb over there we should have lost thousands of people trying to invade there. And they say oh you killed thousands of people and all this sort of business. Well that’s wartime I’m afraid isn’t it?
DM: It is.
RG: Last year, about this time a chap rang me up ‘cause I had a bit of write up in the local paper because it was my ninetieth birthday and that you know and somebody got to hear about it and this chap rang me up and he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You were in Bomber Command.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘How would you like to go up to Cosford for the day for a reunion?’ You see. I said, ‘Cosford.’ I said, ‘Well how do I get to Cosford then?’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about how you’re going to get there.’ He said, ‘Just say if you can go or not.’ I said, ‘Oh yes, I’ll go.’ ‘Well I’ll give you, let you know what happens.’ So about a few days went by and he rang up and he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We’ve laid on some transport to take you to Blackbushe Aerodrome and from there there will be a plane to fly you up to Cosford.’ So I went up in a Cessna. So anyway there was quite a crowd of us there and the funny part about it was well there’s only about four people sit in a Cessna. There was only the pilot and three others. So I went with three other chaps and the pilot came out and said, ‘We’re ready to go now,’ So there was quite a crowd there and all these Cessnas out there. They were all privately owned. So we go around there and we get in the plane and he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Can’t start at the moment.’ He said, ‘We’ve got a job to start it. It won’t start.’ So anyway, it was quite funny because there’s the pilot, and another chap came out, apparently he’s the chief instructor at Blackbushe whatever he was there. He said, ‘I can’t understand it,’ he said, ‘Because I’ve been flying this plane all the week,’ he said, ‘and nothing, it’s been going alright.’ He said, ‘Perhaps the battery’s flat.’ You couldn’t, you’d never believe this. They couldn’t find the bloody battery. They didn’t know where the battery was. So me and these other two blokes were sitting there. I thought ‘cause it was quite a struggle to get up into a blooming Cessna so he said, ‘Oh well.’ So they took the bonnet off the front. No it ain’t under there. I thought oh a good job this isn’t wartime. So they put the bonnet back on. They found out it was in the back. ‘Oh we’ll have, we’ll have to charge it up. So will you get out again and go and sit back in the old canteen there,’ he said, ‘And we’ll give you a call.’ And so of course all these other planes were taking off to Cosford and we were just sitting there. So eventually the pilot came through after about an hour and he said, ‘Oh we can go now.’ I said, ‘Alright,’ so everybody climbs back and gets back in to the Cessna again. Chap comes along with a battery, looked like a twelve bolt car battery. I thought they’d already put it in the plane, you know. Oh no he come along with it. Anyway, he got the plane started up and off we took and flew to Cosford. I think we were about the last ones to arrive there you know ‘cause all packed out there. So anyway and of course then when it was time to come home the pilot said, ‘I think we’d better..’ and of course when we got to Cosford you had to wait until there was a van to take you out to the planes, you see. They wouldn’t let you walk out but they were only just up the road, they wouldn’t let you walk, they took you so were one of the last ones to take off. I think it was about two Cessnas left. Anyway so that was their day at Cosford. And this other bloke said, ‘We’ll see in 2016 but I think this year they said there’s something about it was at Scampton but I’ve heard nothing this year. Perhaps it’s too far down for me to go up there.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ronald Gard
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-01
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGardR160601
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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00:52:13 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Ronald Gard flew operations as a rear gunner with 463 Squadron and was shot down on an operation to Leipzig.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
France
Great Britain
Belgium--Brussels
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Bridgend
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1943
1944
1945
463 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bombing
crash
crewing up
Dulag Luft
Lancaster
memorial
prisoner of war
RAF Bridlington
RAF Silverstone
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Winthorpe
Red Cross
shot down
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/572/8840/AFroudJ160509.1.mp3
652f8a9f36625bbc3294d28ca088a96e
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
Froud, James
J Froud
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Froud, J
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with James Froud (1922 - 2019, 1801660 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 44 and 83 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-09
2016-05-16
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DP: This interview is being conducted for the Bomber Command centre, the interviewer is Dave Pilsworth, the interviewee is James Froud
[Other] Froud
DP: Froud, the interview is taking place at Mr Froud’s home, in, Runnymead Green, Bury St Edmunds on the ninth November, two thousand and fourteen, time [pause] is eleven twenty-five
[inaudible]
JF: I was in Kent, erm, I was, about twenty, I suppose, nineteen or twenty. I hadn’t been called up because I was in a reserved occupation, anyway, I went to, the erm, the RAF was very busy with, German invaders, fighters and bombers, and er, I thought I would go in and become a pilot, [background noise] a spitfire pilot of course, [background noise] and er, [pause] that was all very well, anyway I went [pause] to, London, for an interview, and I can’t remember quite where it was, but it’s a well-known centre, for the RAF, I had an interview, had a medical and then was put on the reserve list, and, I was reserved for a year, one thing that annoys me about it is, is that I, was issued with a little silver badge, which goes in your lapel, and, I very quickly lost that [laughs] which was unfortunate, so everybody thought I was skiving, anyway, not everybody, perhaps. I finished up going into the service, and I was called up to, Lords cricket ground for [unclear] and then we were put in some, billets which were fairly new flats, opposite Regents Park, [pause] one thing I had to have done when I was in very quickly, because I wasn’t very well, but I had to have a tooth out, having that out, must have upset me because I was then very quickly put into, a, sick bay which, was a house within, Regents Park, whether that house is still there I don’t know, and that of course, I missed the squadron that I was with, anyway, I was put in another squadron eventually, erm, [pause]
[inaudible]
DP: Interview paused
JF: Torquay, and er, eventually, failed the navigation exams, so I then went to Paignton, and repeated them, and failed them again, so I was then sent to Eastchurch, and er, remustered to [unclear] course, from there to Bridlington, Bridgenorth, and finally Stormy Down, which was a, flying airfield just perched on the coast, in the south of Wales, erm, from there, I think we met up, a number of members of air crew, bombers, bomb aimers, gunners, wireless ops, navigators and pilots and gunners, I said gunners, and we just made a crew up, you weren’t allocated a crew, you just sorted yourselves out, we then [unclear] we went to Market Harborough, were we flew in, [unclear] what did we fly in, Wellingtons [emphasis] [laughs] and from there, [background noise] we apparently went to Husbands Bosworth, which again was one of the operational, er, no, what where they called, the place, yes, it’s O.T.U, operational training unit, and from there, we went to Swinderby, and flew in Stirlings, which we didn’t like a lot, well I didn’t [laughs], and the next move was Syerston, for, changeover to, Lancasters, I stayed there about two months roughly, this was in May, nineteen forty four, from Syerston, can’t remember the antics we got up to there, but I do remember going to Nottingham, to a dance, just before we started flying, and er, came back, it must have been early afternoon, since it’s May, June, area, and er, we were on top of a bus, saw a Lancaster circle round and then it suddenly, nosed dived straight into the deck, not funny, what a first experience, we must have been absolutely stupid, because we didn’t take any notice, we carried on, and [pause] were then, er, finished some training there, which was mainly for pilots and I did a little bit, er, we went to Warboys, ah, no we didn’t, sorry, we went to Dunholme Lodge, from Syerston, and we were there apparently two months, er, let’s have a quick look through the book, switch it off for a minute
DP: Interview paused
JF: And this, [pause] in forty-four, so I was twenty-two wasn’t I, we finished on Stirlings, on the fifth of the fifth forty-four, and my next reference is, for Lancasters, and that must have been at [pause] Syerston, and that was on the, tenth of the fifth forty-four, my, record keeping may not be all that good actually
DP: Interview paused
JF: Circuit and landing, erm, Mitchell, was our pilots name, and the instructor was Flight Lieutenant Singer, and then, having done dual circuits and landings, we did solo, circuit and landings, and we did that at twelve thirty five so, ten fifteen we were doing the first circuit and landings, at twelve thirty five, we were doing solos, that’s the part of pilot, of course to fly, and I just sat there in the turret and looked out for enemy aircraft, over England, not a lot, I mean, so, most of [background noise] there was circuits and landings, circuits and landings, circuits and landings, all pilot practise, oh, there’s something I did, but erm, fighter affiliation, gyro, corkscrew, that was for my benefit [unclear] half an hour, no sorry, fifty minutes, that’s not half an hour, fifty minutes, and then [pause] [background noise] it’s obviously moved, [background noise] to Dunholme Lodge, [pause] it doesn’t tell you were it is [background noise]
DP: Interview paused
JF: And there’s a town in France, Aunay-sur-Odon, I remember the Wing Co saying ‘down the bloody drain’, you don’t have to put that in, [laughs] the next one was [unclear] [background noise] and the third one wasn’t so funny, they were two fairly easy ones, the third one was Wessling, Germany, where we were hit by flak, we got seventy holes in the aircraft, erm, [pause] we’d got back, we’d lost an engine, this is from memory, and er, the skip, control, the skipper did three over shoots, on the good three engines, it’s not quite so easy to fly an aircraft, is it, and erm, control called up and said ‘you are number twenty on the circuit, you’ve got the circuit to yourselves, take your time ’ more or less, erm, [pause] we actually lost twelve aircraft, from the airfield, [coughs], now, I’ve forgotten the number of the other squadron, both squadrons had lost six, now that’s a heck of a lot of people to be missing, but, we didn’t really know any of those people, we’d only been on this squadron, a short while, we’d done three trips and, we were billeted in Nissan huts, although we’d got a mess, to go to, we didn’t really know any, or very few of the other crews, we’d got another crew in the hut with us, two crews to a hut, they had survived that episode, and er, we can’t continue flying with 44 Squadron, which incidentally, was a Rhodesian Squadron, er, flying Lancs one and er, and Lancs threes, so, [background noise] we continued [pause] I don’t know whether I read [background noise] [unclear]
AP: Interview paused
JF: I can now, France and Germany, we went through Wessling so once we went through, I ducked down, so they didn’t spot me [laughs] they didn’t know we’d dropped the bombs on them [background noise] [unclear] forty-four, Creil, where ever that is, France apparently, oh, then we had a little go at Stuttgart, eh, the second one to Stuttgart, DNCO, that was duty not carried out, starboard outer US, return to base, oh this wasn’t nice, by the look of that, erm, where did we go then, Gavourres, France, Lyon, Lyon, is that correct, which is right the other end of France, erm, and I’ve got port engine, badly damaged, petrol tank holed, and, as far as I remember, that was a Lancaster below us, had, made a hole in the aircraft, erm, I remember, it actually hit, the tramways, that my ammunition went up, you know they went a bunch of mates to the rear turret, filled up from the bottom and stopped those working, it upset the navigator, the wireless op, the way through, that, fortunately nobody was hit [emphasis], er, but er, I’ve got, port engine badly damaged, petrol tank holed, Gavourres, Lyon, [unclear] [background noise] [unclear] where’s that, I don’t know, Gavourres, Lyon, now, we then, the powers that be had obviously wired up what, the bomb aimer, who acted as a second instrument operator, erm, I can’t think of the name of the set, [unclear] there was H2S and there was another one, and they, were good at operating them, so, they sent us to Warboys, there’s an NTU, I can’t recall what a NTU meant, it’s a training unit, and we just did er, five hours, thirty five with them, and that was a swap over to Pathfinder Force, erm, now my first operation, first two operations with them, were to Danzig and Stuttgart with Warrant Officer Price, so, I was obviously a spare gunner, I remember the chap whose place I took, mind you, he was killed later on or lost, [background noise] but, that’s life, here we go
AP: Interview paused
JF: [unclear], like that, like that, like that, then came up like that, so, so, you changed, er, if a fighter was coming in from here, you went like that, he missed you, and all the object of that corkscrew was, so that he couldn’t get a bead on you, he couldn’t, another set they operated was a LORAN, L-O-R-I-N [spelled out] and it’s still being used that type of radar now, in today’s aircraft, LORAN.
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 James Froud. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dave Pilsworth
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-09
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AFroudJ160509
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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00:20:37 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Huntingdonshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
Wales--Bridgend
England--Yorkshire
Germany
France
France--Aunay-sur-Odon
Description
An account of the resource
James Froud wanted to be a pilot. He was interviewed in London and called up to Lord’s Cricket Ground. Having twice failed navigation examinations, he was re-mustered and sent to RAF Eastchurch for a gunnery course. From there, he went to RAF Bridlington, RAF Bridgnorth and RAF Stormy Down, where he crewed up. Jimmy went on to RAF Market Harborough where he flew in Wellingtons and RAF Husbands Bosworth, which was an Operational Training Unit. He flew in Stirlings at RAF Swinderby and Lancasters at RAF Syerston before joining 44 Squadron at RAF Dunholme Lodge.
Jimmy refers to some of his operations in France and Germany.
He was sent to RAF Warboys, a Navigation Training Unit, and swapped over to the Pathfinder Force. Jimmy refers to the corkscrew manoeuvre and LORAN navigation system.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
44 Squadron
air gunner
bombing
crewing up
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Swinderby
RAF Warboys
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/567/8835/AFarrC160524.2.mp3
0341f54adc352871ee6ef3383c67e071
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
Farr, Colin
C Farr
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Farr, C
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Colin Farr (Royal Air Force).
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-24
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: OK so, okay, I think, I think we’re ready to go now, I think we’re recording. This is ‒, so let’s start. This is Andrew Sandler interviewing Colin Farr at his home in Ilford ‒
CF: In Essex.
AS: On the ‒, is it 24th of May 2016?
CF: Yes.
AS: Can we start off Colin, by asking you how you got involved in the RAF in the first place?
CF: Well, I was working as a youngster in a wholesale warehouse, and as soon as I knew the war was coming, I didn’t tell my parents anything about it, I just went straight, because I had my leg in a plaster down my knee to my ankle because I’d fallen down the stairs in the warehouse I was working in ‒, right opposite ‒, oh dear, St Pauls ‒
AS: So, you were working in the city of London?
CF: Oh yes, I started as a youngster.
AS: Yes, you were saying you had your leg in plaster.
CF: And so, I went into the first place I could see in Ilford and I said, ‘I’ve come to volunteer’, and I won’t use his language, but he swore at me and said, ‘We won’t want bloody strangers, we don’t want any invalids’, because I had my leg in plaster. He didn’t know that I was having er ‒, therapy for my leg and I forget what it was called, but there was a lady in Wellesley Road in Ilford and she used to put a pipe round my leg and then a wet towel, and she did a lot of work on my leg to get me into the Air Force. Anyway, funnily enough you bring that in, to start with, I was called up to go to East Ham to sign in somewhere in East Ham, it was a school, when I got there half, [laugh] half the class that I was with at school was there, yes there were about eighteen of us, and I’ll come back on this which will be interesting because then I had to wait for a medical, and though I’d had my cast off my left leg was still suspect.
AS: I have a few things
CF: That’s not my log book.
AS: I know it’s not your log book but ‒
CF: Where did you find that?
AS: It might jog a few memories for you.
CF: Thank you very much. Do you want me to go on?
AS: Yes, please do.
CF: I forget where I was now.
AS: You were just signing on and you found that half your class were there.
CF: Yes, and anyway, eventually I was called to the colours and was pleased to get in and start square bashing at ‒, oh dear, right on the coast somewhere. Yarmouth? Somewhere like that? It could have been Yarmouth. Anyway, I managed to get through into that and then there was quite a long wait to get through to where I was doing my training, marching, rifle drill, bayonet fixing, and jab it into a sack and I got through all that, and then I eventually started at Brighton post office, where the teachers were, who worked there, and they were teaching Morse. That’s where I started going from four words a minute up to twenty-six words a minute, send and receive, and it’s a strange thing that because all through the war, not through it but coming to the war, I wanted to get on to my next stage, ‘cause I knew I’d got to do the wireless, which was taking a wireless to bits and pieces, which we did in one of the museums. They had bits of the radio and transmitters there and you had to put the thing right, ‘cause some clever devil purposely had taken something out of it or dislodged it or put it in back to front, and we had to know to ‒, we knew that was wrong and we’d put it right and made it, the mechanism, work properly, and that was very, very interesting. And then of course, I moved on from there, ‘cause that took place in ‒, somewhere in London and it was very close to a big place, all round, had flats all round it, and we were billeted in flats there, where all the music comes from in London, Kensington, can’t think of the name of the place. Anyway, from there I advanced and I went on to further courses on Morse, and then I went into somewhere else and when I went in, they said, ‘What speed can you do?’ so I said, ‘Why don’t you test me?’ And I was taking it down roughly at about twenty-four words a minute in Morse, I was doing it, you know, just like that and they said, ‘You’re doing very well, keep going, keep going’, and from that, I advanced from that, and by then I had done my gunnery, not gunnery, rifle drill, marching and that and that and all the basics. So now I’d got to start really working on the trade that I wanted to get into, wireless air gunner. Well that then took me to Brighton where I was taught all about the radio itself, and the extras that went with it and it was a very interesting course indeed and I got through that, and then, ‘cause I was able to do so many words a minute, send and receive, I was already going to an air gunnery school. Oh no, I had a posting to Ireland, and they put me on a post in Ireland with four servers up on a box with a roof, where they had all the layout of the land below them. They had twenty of these posts up there and we were on one of them, and what was happening, the Germans ‒, ‘course we were getting the weather reports that we get, because it comes from the east and goes west, so we had it before they had it. Pretty good, wasn’t it? Whether somebody out there was blowing it for us their way I don’t know, but that was how it worked and while I was on there, I heard Morse come through, because I took everything down, and from another post, and I took it down, German submarine in gulf, what do you call them when they’re coming in? Gulf? Not gulf ‒, entrance through into the ‒, to get ‒, thinking it was [unclear] German, sorry, thinking it was southern Ireland and they made a mistake. They came in and got caught because the boys on there ‒. I was on nineteen post. I think it was eighteen post spotted it because it came in round the corner on surface, thinking it was coming through, thought it was in Southern Ireland to fuel up, and what they did, they sent in and the headquarters, there was the Air force there, and it was a Hudson aircraft went up and he flew over the chap and he did this, waved his wings to say, ‘ You’re going to retreat or I’m gonna bomb you or shoot you up’, and they gave in and that was tied up at the place that I could tell you about, also in Ireland, because I was posted there for a year. Didn’t like it very much but it was an education.
AS: How long were you in training?
CF: Oh dear, I started Morse training, from that I passed my wireless, then I was eventually, we went down to er ‒, these places, these places get me, it was in Wales, Bridgend, I think it was Bridgend, and there I started my gunnery course and that was very interesting news, air to air, and air to ground, and ground to ground, so it was quite interesting ‘cause they had a big area with things on tracks would be moving, and there were going round, coming round posts, and bushes would suddenly appear, you know, and of course, you open fire and start shooting. They were on electric rails. Very interesting. Well, we got through that and I’m afraid we had too much to drink because as we [unclear], we had to get on a certain train to come out of Ireland and we threw all our rucksacks on the line, and we had all the booze, we had a good drink [laugh]. Anyway, eventually we came back and we got on the train and that was the end of that. So, then I thought, well now I could start flying, thank God, and I was posted to a place called Yatesbury and there, you see the little cross on the wall, with a poppy? See the aircraft just to the left there? That’s a Procter, a single engine aircraft, well there we had to go up in that and tune the radio into a frequency they gave you and start sending Morse, which we did from a book, you got in this and the pilot he said, the sergeant said to me, ‘The pilot is Dutch’, but he said, ‘He will explain with his hands’, [unclear] and that means let the ariel out and all he said was, ‘Lose ariel, pay fifty pounds for it’, ‘cause it went out so long and they was all lead balls on the steel and they went right the way out behind. Well suddenly he dug me in the back and said ‒, so I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Wind up’. We wound the thing up. I couldn’t hear anything. And what had happened, we’d run out of petrol. This Procter, the very first aircraft, with the cross in the middle and that’s the first time I ever went up in an aircraft. Well, this fella let it float and float and float and we finished up in a field of vegetables growing, carved a lot of them up. Anyway, we got out and he went across, I waited ‘cause I got my equipment, and he went over the fence or something into an aerodrome which was quite near because we didn’t want to go floating in case it crashed, so we’d be safer going in a vegetable field, which I think it was right. Anyway, it was quite fun really because eventually he had a jeep come out to pick me up and take me back to Yatesbury. Well, I went off at twenty to twelve and as I got out of the jeep, I looked at my watch, I said to the sergeant, ‘Cor Sergeant that was good timing. It’s twenty to one, I’m going to dinner’. He said, ‘You’re not getting that one’, and he sent me up straightaway, so I had another hours flying. Anyway, I got through that and then ‒, I won’t go into the trouble I had, well I had no trouble, but the thing is that they wanted me ‘cause I could do Morse and I was useful, and I turned out to be quite a useful person, I would be pleased to say because the navigator suddenly says to me over the intercom, ‘Get us a bearing’, and I said, ‘OK’, but all I did was, I didn’t have a clue where we were, but I just looked at the south coast thinking, well, I know south’s that way, I’d find a place and I’d look in my book and I get their frequency, and I’d tune my radio up on that frequency and when I catch it, it goes ‘burr’, like that, so I clip my clip down on the key that I send Morse out on, so it’s a continual ‘burr’, and then I have to tune my transmitter in to that frequency until I get a ‘burr’ on the ‒, from the, transmitter and the transmitter picks that key up as well, its burring so I know I’ve got the right one, take my finger off that and then I just go ‘burr’, I ask for a bearing and they give me one and I give it to the navigator. Well, I could do that in three minutes and that’s getting a bearing from England. Yeah, I was, I was very quick on that. I enjoyed doing it, it was nice, and then of course we had all sorts of funny things happen when we were flying. One of the things that has always stuck in my mind, our navigator said to me, because he sat, no, I sat here and he was sitting that way. This was the port side. I sat here, and my receiver was here, and my transmitter was up here, and I sat there and this was the mid upper gunner’s legs and we were all sitting, I could touch the ‒, he was standing there, the chap in charge of the petrol, the flight engineer, and then we had the pilot, he was beyond the navigator, the bomb aimer was down there on his stomach and the rear gunner. That was how we are and I was sitting. Anyway, we went on one of these trips, coming home from Germany and quite amusing, our navigator said, ’Well, we’re on the way home now’. So, he stood up and he said, ‘You know what? All these years, no, all this time’, he said, ‘I’ve never looked out of the dome at the top’. He was a tall man like yourself and he got up there and suddenly he says, ‘Good God’, he said, ’Do you know there’s a fleet of American bombers coming’, He said, ’There’s eleven of them across and they’re doing this’. Well, that meant they were lost, so my navigator said to Sid, ‘They want to follow’, so Sid just waved our wings, that was the pilot, yes, he was the pilot, a very nice man. There’s my pilot. Anyway, do you know how many aircraft there were out? Eleven lots of three. And as we went out that way to go across the channel, these turned onto our tail so we led them right from out of Germany, into France and across over the water. When we got to England, we thought, ‘Well, they’ll know where they are now’, so we carried on, we were in Yorkshire. Do you know, they followed us all the way to Yorkshire? We were still flying on three engines ‘cause my engine had been hit and it wasn’t working. It just stopped, so we were flying on three engines, we kept going. Anyway, this lot followed us all the way, not up to where they [unclear], ‘cause our navigator said, ‘Oh’, he said, ‘they’re all in the Cambridgeshire area, they’ll land there’. They didn’t, they followed us on and on and on and when we got to, almost to Leconfield, where I was in Yorkshire, our navigator said, ‘We’ve got thirty-three American bombers that have followed us all the way from Germany to get back home’. Anyway, so as we’d been on three engines and fuel was getting low, our cap wouldn’t allow us to land, He said, ‘No, you keep your height and stay. Let this lot in’. So, these thirty-three American bombers landed before we could go in. Fortunately, we were alright, but they were having to put them, park them, behind the houses, putting anything, string, not string, straw or grass or anything on them. They had to do it themselves, camouflage it so if the Jerries’ had come and seen that lot, they would’ve sent more over. So, we had the Americans. Anyway, they had a conference in the morning with our Group Captain. He said, ‘Why aren’t you taught ‒’, He said, ’I’m sorry’, he said, ’We’re not taught, we have to read the map’, so they read the map. They were given a map evidently and a book and they’re told on the day. They’re given a piece of paper and they’re told, ’You’re going to such and such a place’, and they mark it all the way where you got to make, to that town and this and that, and that’s how they did it. That’s how they were told. That’s how the cap found out from them. But that was one incident we had. Another one is ‒, oh I’ll tell you about that. Can you see the flag with the ‒? That’s our crew there, just below it, there’s a hole in the wall, well that hole happened to our aircraft. We were ‒, unfortunately, our rear gunner, very good gunner as well, he had to immediately leave, his wife was dying. So, this was one of our later flights, or trips, and when we started going, we got to get down to ‒, let me think, I get some of these things mixed up now. Oh [pause], where did I say I was going to now? Yes, it’s gone. It’s funny how things in your brain just slips like that but I shall be able to pick it up somewhere. How did I start it?
AS: You were talking about the picture over there.
CF: Oh yes, yes, yes, that picture, that picture yes, I’ve got it now. Our rear gunner went on holiday, not on holiday, leave ‘cause his wife was very ill, she was dying, and now, whoops, you got it? We had a spare wireless, rear gunner, spare and his name, believe it or not, was Churchill, no relation, but Churchill. Do you know he saved our lives? And so did a German, a German fighter saved our lives. What happened was, we was flying along and suddenly Churchill came up and it was the first time we’d heard his voice on the mic, he said, ’Bandits, pile of bandits ten o’clock, dive, dive, dive’, and of course [unclear], we just climbed down from our bombing height of nineteen thousand three hundred feet down to fifteen thousand three hundred feet just like that. Well, suddenly the rear gunner said, or Mister Churchill said, ’My God’, he said, ’As you went down, you nearly hit an aircraft which was underneath you, which was lined up with those machine guns like that on top’, which were really incendiaries. They explode, he was underneath just lining up on us, so that was the second bit of luck we had ‘cause we nearly knocked him out, ‘cause we just went down like that you see and we could have taken him with us. Our rear gunner said, ‘God, he just suddenly flashed up in the air’. It must have shaken him with this bomber came down on him. We didn’t touch him and that was that. So now we were at fifteen thousand feet, fifteen thousand three hundred feet instead of being at nineteen thousand three hundred so we had to carry on, ‘cause we decided that if we climb up to nineteen thousand three hundred, we wouldn’t have enough fuel to get home, so rather than give the Jerries a rest, we said we’d bomb at fifteen thousand while we’re flat. Anyway, we went in and did what we had to do and come home and that’s when we picked up with these Americans that were coming on the way home. We were three engines only and this lot followed us all the way up to Leconfield. Oh, it was incredible. But oh, we had quite a number of er ‒, well I went home on leave, it might have been a Wednesday or something like that, and my mother and father said, ’Tell me, were you bombing on Sunday?’ So, I said, ‘Why do you ask?’ This is in Ilford, [unclear] Ilford, and she said, ‘Our letter box was going like this, rattling, shaking off its hinges’. Do you know, we were out there about six o’clock in the morning, bombing, and when we came back to England they were still going out? They were bombing one of the big ports in France that the Germans had taken, they must have blown it to smithereens I should think and we were on that there.
AS: How did you come to be in the RAF? How did you choose the RAF?
CF: Oh, I didn’t have to choose. I wanted to go in the RAF.
AS: But why?
CF: Well, I wanted to fly, I wanted to fly and I’d also get my own back, my own back. When the bombs went down, I said to myself, ’That’s for you England. Nothing to do with me’. I felt evil about the way they were scattering things and doing things all over the place. I mean, I had still to go to work before I joined the Air Force and climbing over barrels this size and about that tall of water being drawn out of the Thames, and all around the big barrels were screw-ons where the firemen put their hose on, and they were on top, putting fires out still, which were set fire in London during the night and I was trying to get to work in the morning. Buses weren’t going backwards and forwards, the number nines, the elevens, you couldn’t get on either, they didn’t know which way they were going to be sent so we had to go back to Tottenham Court Road and around the back, doubles. Oh, it was terrible but I’m lucky, I got over it but where I was, unfortunately, I fell down on the back stairs getting out of St Pauls, the Porser Lease is the name of the company, right opposite the clock of St Pauls and I fell down the back stairs. In fact, I stumbled because they were all rushing to get out and I fell down on this leg and this is the consequence. I hit my knee on the concrete with a metal edge and my cast was ‒, that’s where the cast came in on my leg and when I went to get through my medical, it was a miracle. How luck was with me I don’t know, because there you had to catch it with your arm, put your foot on the chair, and stand up, one, two, three, do it a dozen times and my left leg wouldn’t have lifted me off the floor once so I would have failed. And at that very second, this man was called away so I slipped this off quick and slid it up this arm, and I said to this chap next to me, ‘cause [unclear] I done the left arm, so I slip this one off and slip it up here, and I said to the man this side, ’Excuse me, would you mind if they do me, because I want to keep up with my friends’, ‘Oh sure’, so I just tightened it up and I did it with my left leg, no my right leg, and I got away with it and that never troubled me during the war, never troubled me at all. In fact, I’d been very lucky, it isn’t really painful, it is painful sometimes but I’ve got so used to it. But anyway, coming back to that hole in the wall there, we were coming back from this trip and we were not out of Germany and suddenly, there’s a terrific bang and a whoosh, and I saw this thing come up here through the floor, and it went up out through the roof, and the navigator was standing this side of it so it missed him and that’s what it did. It left a hole in the aircraft about this size, huge thing, it was brass. I was looking, I actually saw the thing come up and go through there and I tell you what, it frightened the life out of me but it didn’t go off. The reason why, ‘cause they, the Germans, had already sussed out the height that we were bombing at. This was one of them that came up and of course, it wanted to go on up, so it went up. It turned us on our side which the pilot had to rectify to carry on flying home [laugh]. That was a bit of luck.
AS: It was.
CF: Oh, there was so many things that you have that go through your mind, and many of them I don’t remember but suddenly they do come back, you know, like meeting an old friend. I’ve no aircrew friends now at all, they’re all gone. How old do you think I am?
AS: No.
CF: Have a guess.
AS: Um, ninety-five.
CF: I’ll be ninety-six in three weeks’ time.
AS: Oh, good.
CF: Yeah, but I’m still tough.
AS: All the people I’ve interviewed have been between ninety-two and ninety-five.
CF: Am I the oldest one then?
AS: No, I don’t think you are.
CF: Have you got some a hundred?
AS: No, I interviewed somebody who was just a week off ninety-six a few months ago.
CF: Well. I’m ninety-six on the 29th of June.
AS: So where were you born Colin?
CF: 61 Alton Road, Ilford, Essex.
AS: And what was the date?
CF: When I was born?
AS: Yes.
CF: It must have been 1920.
AS: Was your father in the First World War?
CF: Yes, he was.
AS: And what did he do in the First War?
CF: He was a ‒, awful job. He was a stretcher-bearer with the RAC, they called them [unclear], the Royal Army Medical Corps and the Germans saved his life. He was picking up wounded, they could be Germans, they could be French, they could be English, they just find a body, put it on the stretcher, bring it in and go out again while the shells were coming down and God knows what. Must have been terrible. And suddenly, the warning went up from base and spread quickly, the Germans are now using gas. My father hadn’t got his gas mask with him at all but he saw a dead German laying in a bomb shell and he slipped down the side and he grabbed his mask and put it on, so a German helped him.
AS: Gosh!
CF: Incredible, isn’t it? ‘Cause really it was a German fighter to start with at the start of that story I told you, started saving us ‘cause if we had gone up and bombed at nineteen thousand three hundred feet, we could have been shot down. Of course, the shell that came through wasn’t fused to go off until nineteen thousand three hundred feet, that’s why it went [unclear] straight through the aircraft and turned us on our side. Where I was standing, on a frame which they used to change the engines, you know, when the unscrew them, all the fittings, and take an engine out and put a new one in, and that was the frame and we had to stand on the outside of it and that was taken from the inside of the aircraft.
AS: What aircraft were you flying in?
CF: Halifaxes, oh yes, I must tell you a funny story. This is real true honest; well, you’ll hardly know it. We were naturally flying Halifaxes before these more modern [unclear].
AS: Lancasters.
CF: Lancasters. We came to ‒, were you at Lincoln where there were seventy-seven thousand people? You know what they did there? We always said those, what did they fly? They were flying ‒, oh gosh, anyway, it doesn’t matter. They said there was going to be an air display and all the rest of it, and we sat there and waited and airplanes were flying backwards and forwards and then they said, ’We’ll be sending our ‒,’ oh I can’t think ‒, what’s the name of the other bomber? Derek, what’s the name of ‒
DF: Lancaster? And London, not Lincoln.
CF: Lancaster. We had a Manchester, a Lancaster, they said, ‘It won’t be long now before the Lancaster came over. It’s going to fly over and show you his steel’. It was all quiet for quite a while then suddenly they said, ‘We are very sorry, but the Lancaster is out of service, we can’t get it to fly’, [laughs] and what happened the same thing, and we laughed our heads off, the ‒, came over at [unclear] thousands, the Queen arranged for our memorial, the Lancaster came over and he flew this way and he dropped the poppies, thousands, millions of them, and they went three fields away and boy, you could hear them say, ‘Typical Lancasters’ [laughs], ‘Typical Lancasters, they don’t even know how to allow for the wind’, oh dear, that was funny [laughs]. Do you know there was seventy-seven thousand people in that park? They never thought they’d have as many. Do you know we had a continual run, continual, all the time, of lorries coming in and unloading chairs, you could see them in the distance. You was with us Derek, wasn’t you Derek? It was packed solid. It was lovely though, really enjoyable.
AS: So, it was just Halifaxes you were on?
CF: Oh yeah, no, I mean, I started on, the first aircraft I ever flew on was the one without the fuel, was the ‒, oh God, I forgotten the name of that now, and then we went on to the next one, which was the de Havilland and we ‒, I was well trained as a wireless op but I was still at the end of my training. Do you know the chappie that got on with wireless op, he had been drinking and he lay down on the floor and went to sleep, yeah, pilot says [unclear]. I says, ‘Yeah’, so he says, ‘Come up would you?’ and I went up there. I don’t know what happened to this one.
AS: How many sorties did you do altogether?
CF: Thirty-eight.
AS: Oh gosh.
CF: Oh, a lot of them did a lot more. I enjoyed it. We were well into Germany, well in, and I came out as well. You see that big stone that’s on the wall, almost to the door? My son took that for me. That’s the stone they put down, the Air Force, ‘cause that was our last vision of England. We used to fly out over that and we used to say, ’I wonder if we’ll see the old ‒.’ What is the place called Derek?
DF: Beachy Head.
CF: Ey?
DF: Beachy Head
CF: Yeah, ‘Wonder if we’ll see that place Beachy Head again’, and it had another name as well, I can’t think what it is, but we did.
AS: And what were you doing when the end of the war came?
CF: What was I doing at the end of the war? I think I must have been in Ireland because ‒I’m pretty sure I was in Ireland. No, I didn’t go to Ireland before I flew, it was afterwards, ‘cause it took us eighty-two hours to get to er ‒, somewhere in the middle of England to get to that place where we were in Ireland. When we got there, we went into a village. They got a lorry, picked us up with our kit, I forget how many of us there were. That’s where we looked for all these posters round the island for Germans coming to try to get the weather report. They used to fly around this way ‘cause you see, we had the reports early, came from the west, but the Germans couldn’t get it from the west, not until after we had it, so we always had a bit of a lead on them which was very fortunate.
AS: What did you do after the end of the war? How did you settle back into civilian life?
CF: Quite easy. I went back to Porser Lease at St Paul’s Church Yard and the man in the department for stockings and socks and things of that sort, he said, ‘I promise you you’ll be a traveller for me’. ‘Cause I wanted to be a commercial traveller, I didn’t want to sit there doing a load of work in the warehouse so ‒, well, first of all, when I came back to see this buyer, he’d been killed during the war so I lost that exit. So, I went into dress fabrics and I was measuring out roll by roll, rolls and rolls and rolls of it. Do you want a cup of tea Derek?
Other: Tea of coffee?
DF: Coffee please
Other: Sugar, milk?
DF: Milk, no sugar, thank you.
CF: Yes, I was saying ‒
AS: You went back to St Pauls.
CF: Yes, yes, and when I got there, this buyer had been killed so I thought, ‘I’d better get on the road, I must get on the road, I must get on the road and I’m going to get on the road’, and I told the director straight, I said, ‘I want to become a traveller’, I said, ‘I’ve been working here years now, before the war, and I’ve just come back and now I want to work for myself as an agent’, and he said, ‘Well, we’ll get one’, ‘cause he’d heard I was going to go in stockings and, anyway, a friend of mine, a friend, was working at the same shop or warehouse, he left and went to the west end and he heard about a job and he told me of it and I went and got the job just like that and I started selling, and boy, I was happy. It was lovely. I started and they said to me, ‘What area would you like?’ and I said, ‘I’d like Essex, Sussex, Kent or more in the middle, Middlesex but’, I said, ’I don’t want anything with a London number’, so he said, ‘Why not?’ I said, ‘Because London is too congested. You’ve got to queue up’. Travellers. I mean, I went from one of the firms I was working for before the war, I went in with a sample to see the buyer in one shop and there was about seven men in the queue, so I thought, ’I don’t want this’. So, I said, ’No, London’s out’. Anyway, I had a phone call on a Sunday evening, there used to be a most beautiful orchestra playing nice music, and when he finished about eleven o’clock. the phone rang and the voice came on the phone, he said, ‘Is that Mr Farr?’ I said, ’Yes’. He said, ‘This is Mr So and So’, he said, ‘I’ve just read your advert in the “Traveller’s News” that you’re looking for an agency and you worked in a wholesale warehouse before the war’. He said, ’I wonder whether you’d be interested’, so I said, ’Yes’. Shall I carry on where I leave off?
AS: Yes, please do.
CF: Where was I?
AS: You were looking for a job travelling.
AF: Yes, yes, and this chap, he rang up Sunday night and he said, ‘Forgive me for ringing. I’ve seen your advert’, he said, ‘I’m looking for a traveller’. He said, ‘How old are you?’ and I told him, and he said, ‘That’s just the age’. I said, ‘Well I was working for Porcer Lease before the, before the war, and I said as soon as I got out, I wanted to become a traveller’. My father said would I work with him and I said, ‘No’. My brother’s firm asked me to work with ‒, going in working the same warehouse. I said, ‘No, I’m going to do it my way’, and I jolly well did and do you know, I travelled the whole length from Margate to Penzance. I did the Jersey Islands and Guernsey and I came up from right down in the corner from as far as you could go, Ilfracombe, and I’d creep up until I got to Bath, Bristol and then I go further up until I get into the middle of England, and I was working on my own, just with a business card and samples and do you know, I made a bloody fortune? I did well, I did well, and you know, I was so proud, and do you know, and my brother said, ’How particularly good you did’, because he just worked for Breckells, you may have heard of Breckells? Breckells underwear, shirts?
AS: No, I haven’t
CF: Well, they’re still going but unfortunately, they took him, oh I’ve got my hat on, they took him unfortunately away from Breckells into the fire service, and then it was rather unfortunate because he wanted to go in the Forces, the Air force, but they said, ’No, you’ve been trained as a fireman, you’re in the fire service’.
AS: When the war finished, did you keep in contact with any of the members of your crew?
CF: Oh gosh yes. Unfortunately, because my membership ran out [unclear] and it wasn’t the contact that I really looked forward to. All of them funerals.
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Interview with Colin Farr
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Andrew Sadler
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2016-05-24
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Sound
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AFarrC160524
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
United States Army Air Force
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00:54:06 audio recording
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An account of the resource
Colin was born in Ilford in 1920 and at the outbreak of war was working in a London warehouse. Seeing the bomb damage around him he wanted to join the RAF and gain revenge, so he volunteered. Unfortunately he had a plaster cast on his leg, following an accident, so was rejected. He was later called up and found half of his school class at the reception centre.
Enlisting as a wireless operator/air gunner his Morse code speed was very fast and he was sent to Ireland to monitor German signals. He spotted a German U-boat entering a bay and an alerted Hudson aircraft captured it. After further wireless training he was sent to RAF Stormy Down for gunnery training. He then continued his flight training at RAF Yatesbury where his first flight in a Proctor ended in a crash landing as the Dutch pilot had run out of fuel. He was immediately sent back up so as to not lose his nerve. Colin describes in detail how to take radio bearings
He remembers one momentous operation when the replacement rear gunner ordered the pilot to take evasive action by diving, which was very fortuitous as they nearly collided with an enemy fighter, flying beneath them, which was lining up to attack them. After diving to a lower level, a shell passed through the fuselage without exploding, narrowly missing all the crew. With one engine stopped they struggled home and met a flight of United States Army Air Forces bombers who were lost and who followed the Halifax home to RAF Leconfield and landed there. The problem was attributed to the American system of pre-flight briefing.
Colin flew 38 operations and upon leaving the RAF took up a career in sales.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Bridgend
England--London
Germany
Ireland
Contributor
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Terry Holmes
Vivienne Tincombe
aircrew
bombing
Halifax
Hudson
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Proctor
RAF Leconfield
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Yatesbury
submarine
wireless operator
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/544/8785/AHookerFJ160525.2.mp3
03e38dd3495780227f67637e5adb86f4
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Title
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Hooker, Fred
Fred J Hooker
F J Hooker
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Hooker, FJ
Description
An account of the resource
31 items. Two oral history interviews with Sergeant Fred Hooker (b. 1924, 1850487 Royal Air Force) and his scrapbook containing photographs and documents. He flew operations as a mid-upper gunner with 102 Squadron and became a prisoner of war on 12 September 1944.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2016-05-25
2017-08-26
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Fred Hooker. The interview is taking place at Mr Hooker’s home in -
FH: Church Crookham.
DM: And the date today is the twenty -
FH: 25th
DM: Fifth of May 2016. Ok Fred. Well if you could perhaps start off by telling me a little bit about your childhood, growing up and your family.
FH: I was born in a little hamlet called Dipley under the control of Hartley Wintney Rural District Council in 1924 which makes me ninety two now and I’m one of nine children born to my parents Minnie and William Hooker. I’m the last one living now. The rest have all passed on. My elder brother was a prisoner in Japan when Hong, captured when Hong Kong fell in 1941. Unfortunately, he died on the same day as I was released from the German prisoner of war camp. I done all my schooling in Hartley Wintney walking about three and a half mile each day to school. I only had a secondary education and joined the Boy Scouts at the age of eleven and then in 1941 when the Air Training Corps was first formed we heard, a friend of mine and myself heard of a squadron being formed in Basingstoke which we made, we found out where the squadron was meeting and we visited each week to their meetings until the flight of the same squadron four four, 444 squadron was developed in Hartley Wintney.
FH: So, when, when were, when were you old enough to be called up? I mean did you get called up or did you volunteer first?
DM: Yeah. I was just coming to that one.
FH: Right.
DM: In 1941 I made an application to the air ministry to volunteer for air crew duties in which I went to Oxford for an assessment test which unfortunately I failed on the first attempt but the following December, 1942 I once again applied and was successful in passing out and was put on the waiting list to be called up to train as a wireless operator/air gunner. In March 1943 I received my calling up papers and I had to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London along with a load of other chaps the same day and there we were, had our usual injections, issued with our full RAF uniform which I was very proud to, to receive and from there I was in London about a fortnight and then posted to Shropshire. A place called Bridgnorth where I done my ITW training which consisted of a lot of square bashing as we called it and school classroom work. From there we were sent on leave and had instructions while on leave to report to Yatesbury in Wiltshire for the wireless training which was all new to me although I had done Morse, a certain amount of Morse sending and receiving while in the Air Training Corps. Unfortunately, when we got on to technical side of the wireless I’m afraid I come unstuck and I had to leave the course and then sent to Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey, re-mustered and became, was put on the list to train as a straight air gunner. Once again I had to go through the, an ITW which was at Bridlington and we done all our square bashing and PT exercises along the front on the promenade which was rather draughty being that it was in the January February time. Having passed out there we were sent on leave once again and on the 28th of December 1943 I left home and travelled overnight to [Carn?] in, sorry it wasn’t [Carn?]. It was Stormy Down in South Wales. Number 7 AGS. Air Gunner School. From there, very disappointingly we’d done nothing for three days until the 1st of January when we was all called on parade and was instructed that we would be training as straight gunners. I was in a section of chaps who was posted to the satellite station at Rhoose which is now Cardiff Airport. Greatly changed these days. There we was in, put in classes of about ten or twelve chaps. My instructor was a Sergeant Walmsley who I, we had a photograph taken of the group in our little classroom. When we finally passed out as air gunners which was somewhere about April the same year, 1944.
[Recording paused]
I passed out as a sergeant air gunner in April if I remember right and from there we were sent on leave not knowing what initial training wing we were going to which turned out to be Moreton in the Marsh, Gloucestershire where we met up, or where I met up with some old pals I had been training with right throughout the, my service life and while waiting on Reading Station to travel to Moreton in the Marsh I spoke with a warrant officer who was going to the same station and apparently he was a pilot who had been flying high service ranking officer’s about the country and wanted a change and fly something much larger. So when we were at Moreton in the Marsh we were instructed to mix amongst all the other lads that had arrived there at the same time. Navigators, bomb aimers, wireless operators, pilots and Phil, this chap from Devonshire, the warrant officer, we palled up together straight away and I introduced Leslie, a lad I’d been with since leaving Sheerness to go, to start my training as a straight air gunner and introduced him to Phillip who eventually introduced us to a bomb aimer by the name of Yon Davies from Wales and Jock Munroe from Aberdeen who was a navigator. We had a nice long chat together and decided that we would form a crew together but we was minus a wireless operator which on the following day we had to parade again and while we was in the assembly hall Phillip notified the officer in charge that we, he was short of a wireless operator who then introduced us to Dougie, a chap from Yorkshire who was looking for a crew and we all shook hands and we were then classed as a crew which was the only all British crew on the course at the time. The remainders had New Zealand, Australian and South African pilots. From there we done a lot of landing, circuits and bumps. That’s the word. Circuits and bumps. Giving the pilot a chance to get used to the twin engine aircraft which was a Wellington and we done quite a lot of cross country running while we was there to keep fit and of course cross country flying where we done our, the gunners done their firing, air to air firing over the Irish Sea. We, we then moved on, having passed out as a crew from the Moreton in the Marsh we were posted to a place called Dishforth in Yorkshire near the city of Ripon. There we converted to four engine Halifax bombers which was rather exciting in a way because there was the first time I had my own turret. During our training at Stormy Down Les and myself used to take it in turns firing from the tail turret as there was only the one turret on the Wellington air craft. The turret was a Boulton Paul manufactured and being in the mid-upper I could see all the way around which was a marvellous experience for the first few times seeing that I could look in all directions, scanning the skies for other aircraft that were sent up for training purposes to help us identify various aircraft which was, we’d done a lot of of course at Stormy Down but it increased as we got into Moreton in the Marsh where we crewed. From there we finally passed out but not before we lost our wireless operator. Unfortunately, Dougie got into trouble while visiting Harrogate one night and we, before we left we contacted or we was introduced to a Canadian wireless operator/air gunner and we all agreed that we’d welcome him in to the crew which we did but in the conversation that took place while we was being introduced he told us that he’d operated on Marauders from Blackbushe Airport and I looked, I said nothing and after a while he enquired where we’d all come from so when he got around to me asking where I lived I asked him if he knew much about the area that he’d been stationed at at Blackpool er Blackbushe Airport and he mentioned that he’d used to go to the village of Hartley Wintney and drink in the Lamb Hotel and the Swan Hotel which made me smile and from then on he realised that I knew something about Hartley Wintney.
[Recording paused]
Our new member. His name, we called him Pacqi, Pacqie Pacquette but he was known as Pacqi. I can’t pronounce his proper name but not to worry. He turned out a good pal of all of us and he was very good at his job. And at times we, during training we changed positions and done each other’s jobs just for a few short while, time. Sometimes you’d, I’d go in the bomb aimer’s position just to get used to using the sight just in case of an accident while we was on operations and at one stage I actually took the controls of the Halifax which was a dual aircraft at the time and of course the skipper was there in readiness in case of rather sharp dives or anything but we, as a crew we melled together and it was quite a, good companions. Les, the gunner that I trained with right throughout and myself were, became very good pals and one weekend when we had a weekend pass we travelled down to Hartley Wintney together and Les met my parents and the family that was home at the time and we had quite a nice weekend together there but finally of course we was posted, had a posting come through for South Africa after we passed out as a full crew on conversion unit which was a Canadian unit at Dishforth. We were in, actually in line at the headquarters to get our passes to go to South, leave in Africa and we heard the voice on the tannoy to say that Pilot Officer Groves’ crew and two others that were there. I can’t remember the pilot’s names, to report back to the flight office as leave had been cancelled. Very disappointingly we walked back to the flight office and we were informed that we, that our posting had been changed and we were going to 102 squadron at a place called Pocklington, twelve miles from York, that same day. We would be replacing three crews that had experience that were being posted to South Africa where we were originally going to be posted to. Well, no leave so off we went. We got everything packed ready to go and the three crews were instructed to be ready to leave the squadron at 2 o’clock, if I remember right, on that same afternoon which was the 18th of August 1944 and on our journey by coach to Pocklington we arrived along the road, I can’t tell you the actual number of the road but as we were about to turn into the ‘drome we saw a Halifax bomber that had crashed in the field right opposite the ‘drome and we learned later that it had failed to take off but they were lucky nothing exploded and the bombs were still in the aircraft as we landed on, arrived at the aerodrome which wasn’t a very good sight for us. We weren’t very pleased about it. But I did fail to say that when we got to the, when we first got to the squadron my pilot, Warrant Officer Groves was, got his commission, was then Pilot Officer Groves who, for the first time had to go to his quarters and the, us NCOs to our quarters and the first time we’d been parted from that angle but everything turned out right and we settled into out billets taking over the beds of a crew that had failed to return the previous day.
[Recording paused]
DM: Ok.
FH: On the, as I said we arrived at the squadron on the 18th of August. Unfortunately our stay wasn’t too long but we’d done a few flights from there. I think we started on the 16th of August, just local flights landing and taking off and we done, was called, or we noticed our name on standing orders on the 3rd of September to go on our first bombing operation which turned out to be an airfield in Holland named Venlo. Venlo Airfield. Of course everything was new to us with regards the information we gained from the camp commander, the bomber, bomb aimer officer, navigation officer, the gunnery officer giving us instructions where the different gun emplacements were on our route but fortunately for us they were few and far between and our flight was quite straightforward although there was just a few puffs of flak exploding as we got near to the airfield but the bombing went straight and good. The pilot, not the pilot, the bomb aimer I should say, took photographs of the bombs exploding and on our return journey our wireless operator called up to get permission to land and we were diverted to an aerodrome in the Midlands, just close to Cambridge if I remember right. The name I’m afraid I forgot there, the actual aerodrome but it turned out to be an American ‘drome and when we arrived there the weather was as bad as it was at Pocklington but after three attempts the pilot said, ‘Well I must go in this time,’ he says, ‘We’re very short of fuel,’ and the Americans switched on the ground lights to give us assistance but unfortunately the weather was so bad we only got glimpses of the flare path and as the pilot went in so we realised there was a hangar coming towards us. I was sitting in the top turret and I could see this hangar coming towards us but fortunately the engines were cut and the aircraft came to a standstill rather abruptly but lucky enough everybody was safe and wasn’t hurt in anyway but once we got out of the aircraft and taken to the debriefing room of the American forces that were stationed there we were swore at by the Americans for making such a bad landing but it turned out they hadn’t given us any warning of the ground wind and as Phil went in so he was blown off the runway on to the grass and the Americans weren’t very happy and neither were we actually. Anyhow, we had a debrief, a short debriefing and then shown to our billets and from there we were taken to the dining room. We were all starving hungry by this time. Unfortunately for myself I didn’t enjoy the meal so much as the others. It was a whole partridge and vegetables. Having been instructed not to fly with dentures by the medical officer at 102 squadron I’d taken my dentures out and which gummed me and of course where the other lads were gnawing the bones I had a job to gnaw them. I cut some of the meat off and was able to eat that but with regards gnawing the bones which I could see my pals really enjoying I was absent from that part. But our stay there was, lasted a week which we were rather surprised about but one of the reasons why we weren’t allowed to land at Pocklington there was a hill, I understand, about eight hundred feet high, where we had to fly in over to make our approach and it just wasn’t safe to do so and apparently the weather was bad for a whole week there. We finally got back and again we had a severe debriefing, wanting to know exactly everything that happened from the time we took off ‘til we landed. We mentioned at the time during the debriefing of witnessing an American aircraft while we was at the American unit being flown by an officer, a Lightning aircraft, a twin boom one and he was doing a shoot up of the ‘drome as he’d finished his tour of duties apparently and was going to be posted home the following day but unfortunately he went too low, hit some cables and shot up in the air, ejected his seat and out he come but the plane crashed and we understand that he would have been promoted to a major on his return and would have to pay for the aircraft. How true that was we don’t know but knowing the Americans we took it along with us like you know. Anyhow, the following day, the, that was the 10th of September we returned to Pocklington. On the 11th of September our names were again on the list to go on the bombing trip that was scheduled to take place the following evening. When we arrived at the briefing rooms we sat down waiting for the senior officers to arrive and of course with one movement everybody stood up as the CO come in and we were told of our target and shown it on the map which had been covered by a sheet until the officers arrived, turned about, turned out to be Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr and there was a load of, ‘Ahh’ because a number of the lads apparently had been there before and were very lucky to return. Anyhow, we each had our listen to the briefing and then we had our own section officer, like with Leslie and myself we had the chief gunnery officer of the squadron talking and warning us to be on lookout from the time we took off until we returned to the aerodrome as a lot of fighters used to return following the aircraft back to the stations especially if there was one crippled and as it goes in to land so they would attack and fly off again. Well the experience I had on that 11th of, on the 12th I should say, no, I beg your pardon, on the 11th of September was one I shall never never forget. We was miles away from the target and we could see this smoke in the, in the distance and as we got closer so the shells were bursting all around us and of course we was in formation going in to the target and it was just, the sky was full of black specks where the shells were exploding. The way I often explain it to people the sight was, visualising the modern day fireworks that’s, explodes with coloured lights and flares imagine that as being shells exploding all around you and that’s exactly how it was and while we was on the bombing run, the actual bombing run in the Pathfinders were telling, or giving instructions what to bomb. The red targets or the red flares and then a voice came over. ‘Number two take over. Number two take over. I’m going in. I’m going in.’ And everything went silent on the wireless and at the same time there’s planes at the side of us exploding, mass of flames. Oh it was horrible. We eventually got on course to come home which was a very pleasing one and the journey home was reasonable. We got rid of the flak and on our landing we taxied around to where our parking area was. The ground staff was there waiting for us and as we climbed out the aircraft they greeted us and we, as a crew, wandered around the aircraft and was amazed at the amount of holes we had in our fuselage. We, we wondered how lucky we’d been and as we got, looked up under the nose of the aircraft right where Taffy had been laying, his legs spread out, there was a hole in the bottom of the, where he’d been laying right up through the top and had gone right through between his two legs and out the top and he fell to the ground, Taffy did, and hands together and we all did the same and it was very quiet for a few minutes. We was all in prayer I assumed and we continued with looking around the aircraft with the ground staff and saying how lucky we’d been to return. And -
[Recording paused]
DM: Ok.
FH: We finally arrived at the tail of the aircraft and the transport was waiting for us to take us back for debriefing which, as a crew as we arrived we received our little tot of rum which went down really well. Apparently it’s a thing that happened each time a crew came back from a bombing raid, was given a tot of rum and debriefed which lasted quite a while and we explained to them as a, as a crew that we’d inspected our aircraft and it had quite a few holes and that in it and thought we were very lucky to arrive back on English soil. Anyhow, after that we had a nice evening meal and went to bed. I think we slept but it was a while before we went off if I remember right. Now, the next morning arrived and had our breakfast, had a look at the standing orders and there we were again down for the next bombing raid, which was our third. Two within two days and we all prayed, hoped and prayed that we wouldn’t be going back to the Ruhr which it turned out our target was a town called Munster in Germany and we were due to bomb the marshalling yards and if my memory is correct there was two hundred aircraft every half hour on the target, on numerous targets as well throughout Germany that day. Well our flight over Germany, the North Sea and Germany was quite usual with aircraft either side of us and we flew on and got close to the target when we got a few shells exploding quite close but, all these raids incidentally were done in daylight which I hadn’t mentioned before. So we could see what was happening in the skies to other aircraft but this particular day we didn’t see any damage to any aircraft. This was the 12th of September when all of a sudden I realised I was sitting in mid-air. There was no Perspex around me and I could just see my guns hanging over the tail turret and the ammunition across the, from the turret across to the tail of the aircraft. I guess I shook my head. I don’t know. And I realised that I was sitting in fresh air and had no guns to fire if I had to so I decided best to go up to, along with the pilot and sit with him which I got out of the aircraft seeing a big hole on the port side of the aircraft and the whole plane was full of flames and I saw one chap diving through the hole in the front so I picked up my ‘chute which was burning all across one corner of it. So by this time I guess I was losing oxygen and didn’t realise what I was doing and I can remember throwing it back on the floor, just standing there wondering what to do. With that, my saviour, Charlie the engineer, flight engineer saw me. He came running back, pulled me forward, picked up my ‘chute, I remember seeing his arm going across the ‘chute like this. He clipped it on and pushed me out but as I was going out I could see the pilot, white, his face was absolutely white and he was holding the stick back into his stomach trying to keep the plane on course I guess but that was the last I saw of him. As I went down in the parachute I don’t remember pulling the cord and I guess it was because the parachute was blown, blown to bits, or blown, the small auxiliary ‘chute was blown out and pulled out the main ‘chute which I think I went down rather quickly. I can’t honestly say how long it took me to come down but it didn’t appear to be in the air long but I do remember seeing a Spitfire circling around us who had been escorting, we had the Spitfire escort that day and that was the first I’d seen of them in actual fact but it must have come down within three hundred feet of the ground, flipped his wings and flew off again and I guess he was, he’d been circling to see how many parachutes had jumped out. I also witnessed this aircraft which I assume was ours make a belly landing in just one mass of flames. Make a belly, belly landing on the ground as though he was, he was just making a normal landing but it was just one mass of flames. With that I hit the ground and witnessed that there was a whole load of civilians and troops emerging on the area where I was about to land which turned out to be a field of sugar beet and away from buildings it was but there was a load of civilians but seeing a couple of soldiers I had no chance of escape I merely put up my hands and just stood there. With, with that they came and stripped off my parachute harness and was searched. Can you -
[Recording paused]
These Germans brushed their arms all over me. Made sure I didn’t have a pistol or anything with me and indicated that I had to pick up my parachute and being the size it was it was rather a armful to carry and I indicated to walk across the field and these two chaps was following me. Well we come to a barbed wire fence so one of the Germans put his foot on the barbed wire and held it down, indicated for me to crawl under and believe me that was quite a task with the silk parachute all rolled up and trying to get through which actually brought a smile to my face for just a moment. Being an English gentleman as I thought I stopped the other side to give them a chance to get through but that was the last time I stopped until I had to climb aboard a coach out on the road because one of the guards put his jackboot right where it hurts and believe me that did hurt and it lasted for several days. I just kept walking. Put into this coach which was parked alongside the side of the road and there I had a strip search, naked, everything, put on and then I was told to dress or indicated to put my clothes back on but of course my flying suit and all that kind of thing was pushed to the back of the coach somewhere. I didn’t see that again. It was only a few minutes before I saw Charlie, the one that had pushed me out the aircraft coming towards us and he was come in to the coach and we went, went -
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
Yeah Charlie went to get on the coach we went to shake hands with each other but that didn’t last and we didn’t really shake hands because my guard, one of my guards hit me across the wrist with his, with the butt of his rifle and Charlie just looked at me. He had scratches on his face which were bleeding a bit. Nothing too severe and he had the same treatment as I did. A strip search and we weren’t allowed to talk to each other. He sat in the middle of the bus and we was about to move off when Taffy turned up, the bomb aimer, with his two, couple of guards. We didn’t shake hands knowing that we’d get another hit across the wrist and he was searched and put in the back of the bus and we were then driven to some army quarters which we assumed was a local barracks. There we were put into a big dining hall or assembly hall and facing a door. Charlie was on the left hand side of Taffy, Taffy in the middle and I was on his right and we stood there for a number of minutes. We couldn’t talk because being warned that microphones or things might have ears, and they’d listen to what we were saying. All of a sudden the door opened and a big tall German officer stood in the doorway. Taffy started falling, falling forwards and we grabbed him, both of us so that he wouldn’t fall and the voice said, ‘It’s alright Taffy,’ and he raised his hand. He said, ‘It’s alright Taffy. The war for you is over.’ And nobody said anything and Taffy was by this time standing upright again and the chap disappeared and we never saw him again. We were eventually marched out from the building all along the canal bank or at least it was a towpath. I assumed it was the canal or a river and to our left the houses were all burning and people shouting and screaming. We were being hit with pitchforks and broom handles all across the backs and the two guards were trying to protect us from them which they did and we were very grateful actually to them for that and we finally got to these, some more barracks. We assumed they were barracks and -
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
FH: Yeah. We eventually arrived in some army barracks and were put in to a cell, the three of us together and there was only one bench along one wall which we sat on looking at each other and not saying anything, the fear of perhaps a microphone being placed and we just sat there. We eventually had a cup of very black coffee brought in to us and the following morning, oh we spent the night sitting on this bench trying to sleep but I don’t think we got much. Anyhow, the following morning we were brought in a slice of black bread which was horrible but later on we got used to eating it and it wasn’t bad but the first bite was ugh we didn’t like it at all.
DM: I have to just ask did you have your teeth with you? Did you have your -?
FH: No.
DM: You didn’t. No.
FH: No. No teeth and during that day or later in the day we had another cup of coffee brought in and one of the guards, the chap that came in spoke English and we had a conversation and he said, ‘We, we shouldn’t be fighting each other. We should be fighting the Russians together.’ Anyhow, we didn’t see any more of him and the following day, the following morning we were, we started our journey to Dulag Luft which is the main interrogation centre for air crew. It was quite a long train journey. I can’t remember the exact days it took us but it was, as we got on the way one guard that Taffy was sitting with went to sleep and the other one soon nodded off and Charlie was close to the guard, saying nothing to anybody just fiddled about and took the revolver or Luger out from the holster of the German’s strap he had around his waist, looked at the Luger and there was no bullets in it. A little relief but nothing, no words were spoken and we, I don’t know to this day what made Charlie do it or why. He, nothing was ever said about it afterwards. Anyhow, we arrived at Dulag Luft and that was the first time that we’d been separated and we were actually on our own. How close we were to each other in the cells I don’t know but it was a very strange feeling being alone in a foreign country not knowing anybody or be able to speak to anybody. After a while a Yankee voice was, I heard as though he was coming from the next building, next room and he said he had a gangrene foot and was calling the Germans all names but I didn’t answer because it could have been a stooge you know. We’d been warned so many times about these things that took place but anyhow finally after, I don’t know, I think I was in Dulag Luft about a fortnight but most of the time spent on my own in this cell being tortured as I put it because right next door was the loos and if one wanted to use them they had to drop an arm, pull a little cord and the arm would drop down outside and warn the guards that was up and down the passageway that they, they were needed. Now arriving in the loo the tap was dripping and I went to get a drink and wash my hands, sent away. You weren’t allowed to wash your hands after using the toilets or have a drink and believe me that was real torture that tap dripping day and night, day and night. It was horrible. Anyhow, eventually I was called out and taken outside of the building along what I call a, it was a pathway along the edge of a parade ground and then they took me down, down some stairs and in this room which was quite a large one underground and it had doors all the way along which I assumed was individual cells and I had to stand in the doorway of one of these that was open and in front of me there was a clock and two German officers come through, stood in front of me, one with a Luger and the other started asking questions and asking where, what happened on the squadron before I left and about the briefing and how many aircraft was taking off. All that kind of thing. I didn’t answer. Just my rank and name which annoyed them and they kept pressing this lever on the Luger, the chap did, which I assumed was the safety, safety lever and I was three quarters of an hour I was standing there thinking, ‘Well, why don’t you pull it?’ At the same time thinking in my own mind nobody knows whether you’re alive or dead. So what. And I remember that even now I can see, see myself in that room. But eventually they said, ‘You’re too young to die now Sergeant Hooker. Go back to your cell.’ And it was quite a relief actually to walk back in to a cell and be on my own. Funny thing to say and think no doubt but that’s what it was. Anyhow, the following morning the door opened and I was marched out again. This time to an office a few doors along. ‘Oh good morning Sergeant Hooker. Have a cigarette.’ ‘No thank you.’ ‘Take a seat.’ ‘No thank you. I’ll stand.’ ‘Please yourself.’ We had been warned that this kind of thing again took place and he started asking questions again eventually ringing a bell and another chap came in with a book and he started flicking through the pages of this book and in the end he’d flicked through the pages and named every place I’d been to from the squadron backwards to when I joined up. Even naming Dipley as the place I was born which I was absolutely flabbergasted with and I thought well none of my crew knew I was born in Dipley. They knew I’d lived in Hartley Wintney but didn’t actually know I was born in the hamlet of Dipley so I thought well they can’t have spoken and told the Germans. Anyhow, he said, ‘You see sergeant we know all about you so what’s the point in killing you? You’d better go back to your cell and we’ll send you with others to a main prison camp.’ Can you for a minute.
[Recording paused]
FH: Yeah. We was, I was sent back to my cell a little relieved. Still not knowing how long I was going to be in this cell on my own. Was brought in some food. Another slice of this dark bread and coffee. The following morning the door opened, ‘Come out. You’re moving.’ And as I walked down the passageway so I could see the rest of my crew and several other chaps.
DM: When you say the rest of your crew -
FH: Well when I, yeah -
DM: How many survived? How many?
FH: I say and the rest of my crew that survived the aircraft. Unfortunately my pilot and my very good friend Leslie, the tail gunner didn’t survive the aircraft when it crashed but it was a pleasure to see then the rest of the crew and these two strangers who seemed to be on their own. They palled up together and stood together and Charlie and myself spoke with them. One was a flight engineer and the other one was a sergeant and we was all put on a train to go to a camp called Bankau in Poland which at the time we didn’t realise was in Poland. We was told we was going to Luft 7 and, which took several days train journey with no food but Charlie and myself spoke with Frank Meade the engineer and the tail gunner Tommy Beech and we stayed pals right throughout our prison life actually and when we finally arrived at Bankau we were walked from the station to the camp and there was this barbed wire fence right the way around. We could see, it seemed to be for miles but inside all we could see at first was a load of garden sheds. Rows and rows of them. And after being photographed and I think we had a couple of photographs taken which was, turned out to be for identity cards we were informed afterwards and then waiting outside for I’d say about a half hour we were eventually allowed into these, amongst these huts which held about six or eight people and no, no windows in the huts if I remember right but we was, had to sleep on the floor in these huts or sheds as we called them, garden sheds but fortunately Charlie and myself managed to stay together and Frank and Tommy they were in the same shed which, we didn’t get much sleep at night because first one wanted to use the loo which was the old drop of the arm again. Sometimes the guards would take notice of it and sometimes they’d make you wait and anyhow eventually a number of weeks after we were put in to proper billets as we called them. They were huts similar to the English military huts with, divided in to rooms and each room catered for eight, eight chaps. We lost touch, Charlie and I lost touch with our bomb aimer, navigator and wireless operator in this time and, but Frank and Tommy stayed with us and we had two tiered bunks so Charlie and I was on one bunk and the rest of them, there was a New Zealand pilot, two Canadians. What was the other one? Two Canadians, a New Zealand pilot, I forget who the, what the other one was and the four of us but anyway we, we got on very very well together and after a day or so we decided to, that whatever rations we got from the Germans we’d put, would pool into one bowl ‘cause we each had a, been given a small bowl and a knife and fork, or fork and spoon I think it was so that we could eat our soup which was rather a mixture. Sometimes it would be what we called whispering grass. It looked like grass been boiled up. Another time it was cheese which tasted of fish and as you bit it it was like chewing gum as you pulled it out your mouth to break it along with a slice of their dark bread but anyway we decided share it and the Red Cross parcels which we had very few of but sometimes we had a whole parcel for oneself which was very rare. Normally one parcel between four and it was all pooled and shared out evenly and we made quite decent little meals from the tins of meat and mashed potato but had we had our own parcel we felt that we’d open a tin of meat, everybody would open a tin of meat and just eat that whereas if we shared it we’d have a slice or two of meat, a bit of potato or dried egg mixed up. We thought it would work out better, the rations. Which in our opinion it did and we was quite pleased and we, the eight of us got on very well together. The times, day time there was a mass of people marching or walking all the way around the perimeter track for exercise. It was quite a sight. Some in clothing that had been issued, I forgot to say that we went to a transit camp first before going on to the main camp where we were, had a good shower and a good meal and issue of a Red Cross case which contained clothes. Fresh new underwear, pullovers, socks etcetera cigarettes and we shared this food all together when we was in Bankau but the, pardon me. During the daytime we used to walk all the way around the perimeter track for exercise and perhaps meet up with strangers and have a chat and because we were free to speak there although there were guards patrolling around the inside of the camp but you kept your eye open you could talk freely and it was during this time that we discovered from Charlie, no, not Charlie, from Taffy our bomb aimer how he knew this chap that stood in the doorway and spoke and apparently in 1938 he was working with, in a factory in South Wales with Taffy and they got on well together apparently and not knowing that he was a German, in early part of ‘39 he left to take up a job in Cambridge which they thought nothing more about you know. One moved on in their life. He had no idea he was a German until he saw him standing in that doorway which you know absolutely shocked him and he couldn’t explain any more about it, you know. But that was one big shock to all three of us actually that day. Walking around as I say for entertainment and exercise was something we done each day besides perhaps playing a game of cards which we did manage to get hold of a packet of cards, playing cards, when we was in the room but failing that life was quite boring until in the early part of, well until the Christmas time, I suppose, 1944 being our first Christmas in the camp we all thought of Christmas at home, Christmas puddings etcetera so we decided to have our own Christmas pudding which what we done we saved the crusts off the bread each day for several days so we just ate the bread. We saved the stones from the prunes that was in the Red Cross parcels. We cracked them open and cut up the kernels, we cut up the dried fruit that was in the parcel as well and the prunes, a few prunes, mixed it with the dried milk powder and margarine. A little bit of cheese was put in to it and margarine and it was all mixed up together and we had a what we called a blower stove which was made up out of empty tins and another tin with a little bit of fuel in which, wood shavings or whatever we could find and we turned the handle and turned a fan, make a fan, blow the flames and we cooked this concoction up for quite a while and it turned out to be very solid so when it was emptied out the tin it was just a solid lump of mixture but the taste was beautiful. We each had a couple of slices, each of the eight of us and we had a cream which we made out of the klim, klim milk, dried milk, mixed it all up and it was delicious and we celebrated our first Christmas away from home as you might say, with this pudding. It was delicious. It really was.
[Recording paused]
FH: After that of course or during that time we could hear gunfire in the distance which we assumed was the Russians advancing on the German line because we, there was a radio in the camp unbeknown to Germans of course and we were kept up to date with what was going on with the war and a chap used to come around and everybody was on guard, you know, different schemes each day to, so the Germans didn’t know anything about it you know and little messages were read out to groups of people of what was happening in the war but eventually we were informed that we were being moved out from the camp so the Russians wouldn’t, wouldn’t kills us and the Germans would look after us, with a smile from everybody. But the first time we was ordered out on parade I think it was, I’m not sure if it was the 17th or 18th of January but we stood on the parade from 3 o’clock in the morning for several hours in the snow and blizzard just with the, we had two blankets which we had in the hut which were wrapped around us trying to keep us warm and we had our little Red Cross cases with a little bit of food in that we’d shared out when we knew we were on the move and the clothing we, we had on, you know. A couple of pullovers and a couple of pairs of socks and that kind of thing. But anyhow on the 19th of January we were called out again early in the morning and I think it was about 8 o’clock, I’m not too sure, we were started out on this forced march. The Germans not even knowing where they were taking us. Just told to march in a certain direction. Then of course the march didn’t last long. It was just an amble of walking both by the German guards and ourselves and we was put in to an old brickyard to have a rest later in the day and we managed to find somewhere to sleep, the four of us, that’s Charlie, myself, Frank and Tommy and we covered ourselves with the blankets to keep warm. 8 o’clock in the evening we were ordered to get up, go on a night march which wasn’t very pleasing and we sort of hung about in the brickyard and most of the chaps had gone by this time out on the road and something made one of us move some pallets that were stacked up. We don’t know why. Nobody said anything but we all crept in behind these pallets and pulled them back in position thinking we wouldn’t be found but unfortunately a sniffer dog with a guard just saw the pallets move, apparently. We learned this afterwards and so the guard pulled them out and out we had to go. Fortunately the dog was kept away from us and we were just ordered out whereas he could have shot us there and then but at that time the hundred and, what was there, twelve hundred chaps that had left the previous camp were out, all lined up and we were marched to the front of the queue or almost to the front of the queue where the leaders of the Germans and the leaders of the camp were all standing ready to move off which was, turned out to be a very terrible night for us. We marched and marched and the snow seemed to get deeper and deeper. Eventually we were actually up to our waist in snow trying to get through it and of course the marching had ceased by that time, we, it was just an amble and people was passing and others were trying to get in, you know in to the walkway that the leaders were making. Had a photograph been taken I would have loved to have had one of it but no and during the night we were informed through the, and seemed to go right through the whole column of men that if we didn’t get over the river Oder by 8 o’clock in the morning we’d be left to the mercy of the Russians and how this came about I don’t know but we, we got the message and by this time loads of people were in front of us and we, all of a sudden the four of us woke up sitting on our cases. Nobody else in sight. What happened I don’t know but we must have sat down for a rest and everybody else had passed by and of course by this time the snow was flat as a pancake where twelve hundred people had gone over it, you know and who came around first or who moved first I don’t know. I don’t think either of us did but we eventually I remember all four of us standing there. I can see them now or see us now there. Standing. Looking. And we just took over, we, while we was in the brickyard we’d broken up a ladder and made a little sledge several, which several other chaps had a part of and put our cases on and we was pulling it along which helped us as we all linked arms, the four of us walking along you might say like kids linking arms and we had this sledge pulling our four cases on. Anyway, eventually, how many hours after I don’t know but eventually we caught up with the tail end of the -
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 Fred Hooker. One
Creator
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David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-05-25
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHookerFJ160525
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
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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02:18:06 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
South Africa
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Oberursel
Poland
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944-09-11
1944-09-12
1945-01-19
Description
An account of the resource
The interview begins with some details of Fred’s life before being called up for service, including that his brother became a prisoner of the Japanese captured Hong Kong. Fred joined the Boy Scouts aged 11 years, and then the Air Training Corp when it was formed in 1941.
He volunteered as aircrew, in 1941 but failed the assessment test on his first attempt. He passed on his second try and went to Bridgenorth for his Initial Wing Training. After progressing through Yatesbury, Sheerness, and Bridlington he was posted to No. 7 Air Gunnery School and was successful at becoming an air gunner.
After ‘crewing up’, and further training which took them to various bases in the UK, they took part in operations to bomb Holland, were diverted to an American Airbase in extremely bad weather, bombed the Ruhr valley, and on 11 September 1944 they were hit by flak.
Fred goes on to describe having to bale out of his aircraft. He was picked up by the Germans and made to board a coach together with his flight engineer and bomb aimer. Fred was taken to a prisoner of war camp in Poland and describes life there together with the value of Red Cross food and clothing parcels. A hidden radio kept the prisoners current with the progress of the war.
The Germans moved the POWs out of the camp before the Russians could advance too close and they were marched through heavy snow and sometimes at night. Fred’s small group of friends tried to escape but were caught and made to continue the march.
Contributor
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Claire Campbell
102 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
animal
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
briefing
crewing up
debriefing
Dulag Luft
faith
Halifax
Initial Training Wing
perimeter track
prisoner of war
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Dishforth
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Pocklington
RAF Stormy Down
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/16/6136/AAtkinsonA150623.2.mp3
194d2829b0981bb39f112129e533bbe5
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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Atkinson, Arthur
Arthur Atkinson
A Atkinson
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Arthur Atkinson (1922 - 2020, 1042303 Royal Air Force) his log book, service material and two photographs. Arthur Atkinson trained as a wireless operator and spent eighteen months at RAF Ringway before being flying 34 operations with 61 Squadron from RAF Coningsby and RAF Skellingthorpe.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Arthur Atkinson and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-23
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Atkinson, A
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MC: Ok so If you tell us about when and where you were born, and then go on from there.
AA: Yeah, I was born in Lancaster in Lancashire in 1922, went to a normal school, elementary school then I won a scholarship to the local Grammar school but , we didn’t have a lot of money so I wasn’t able to take up the scholarship so I carried on schooling at the elementary as long as I could and then when I left school, the Headmaster, I was head boy in the school by the time I left, and the headmaster got me a job at the local accountant, which was fine but in those days five shillings didn’t go a long way. So, in no time at all I had to leave there and got a job with the local coop behind the counter which I hated, I hated it from the first day and I decided then and there as soon as I was old enough I would join the RAF. That was my ambition I’d had one flight in an Avro 504 the open cockpit type with a local chap that came and that set me off I volunteered for the Royal Air Force as wireless operator, I always wanted to be a wireless operator and got my number at pad Gate I was accepted I got my number but unfortunately, they sent me home for deferred service which didn’t suit me at all. I was home for about six months and at the end of six months I was so fed up I wrote a letter to the Air ministry, saying “have you forgotten me?” and a week later my papers came. Then I reported to Blackpool to the initial training wing and wireless school, did my wireless training over Woolworth’s in Blackpool and then down to Compton Bassett to finish off with and when I qualified as a wireless operator I was posted to Ringway airport Manchester which then was RAF Ringway doing ground wireless operating duties there for about eighteen months until I was put under draft to go overseas as a ground wireless operator. Well a friend of mine on the same draft said “this isn’t good enough”, we were both waiting for aircrew training by then, so I went on embarkation leave, he went to see the CO and said “look you know this isn’t playing the game” so the CO agreed with him, and when I came back from leave embarkation leave found I’d been taken off the draft, and in a short while I was posted down to Yatesbury on a refresher course then went through the usual mill of flying training at Yatesbury.
MC: What sort of aircraft were you flying in?
AA: Proctor’s, little Proctor’s, Dominie, to start with then little Proctor’s then I did an EFU at Boddington near to Ha’penny Green then gunnery course down at Stormy Down in Wales. Then I finally qualified at the Operational training unit at Market Harborough and was crewed up by self-selection, I saw a pilot walking along and I liked the look of him and asked him if he wanted a wireless operator and did, he had a Bomb aimer, asked me if I knew any gunners which I did, and eventually we crewed up. Went through the training and finally posted to Coningsby 61 squadron.
MC: Who was your skipper and crew then?
AA: Bob Acott, Basil. M. Acott but we called him Bob. The only thing was that we hadn’t had leave for ages and they said you can’t go on leave until you’ve done at least one operation with the squadron but unfortunately before we went on Ops we had to a couple of cross countries and unfortunately our navigator suffered from airsickness and every time we took off he was ill so this delayed us somewhat and we were not very happy about it anyway eventually they swapped him for another navigator Dickie Ward he was a good lad, and we were put on the list to go to Stuttgart our first op. This was a disaster completely from start to finish. We took off, we hadn’t been flying long and it was fairly obvious our DR compass wasn’t working properly, anyway we pressed on and it was our first trip it was a press on type anyway after hours and hours it seemed to me we didn’t find Stuttgart we found a glowing under a cloud, a red glow in some clouds and thought this must be it so we unloaded the bombs there which was, whether it was Stuttgart or not I don’t know any way we tried to, we left the bombing area tried to fly back to the UK still wondering all over the place with this DR compass which wasn’t working properly we hadn’t flown long before bomb aimer checked the bombays and found a thousand pound bomb had been hung up so we opened the doors and we let that go I don’t know who got it but we were over Germany so it didn’t really matter a lot, we carried on flying wandering all over Europe I should think and after ages and ages the rear gunner said he thought he saw the coastline underneath, well that’s great so approximate course to England we kept flying and flying and nothing happened and a bit later on he spoke up and said “I’m sorry skipper, I was wrong the first time I can clearly see the coast below now” so then the skipper said, “well that’s alright but I don’t think we’ve got enough fuel to get across the Channel now” so he said “I’ll tell you what…” he got on to all of the crew and he said “we've got to make a decision, you can either bail out, in which case you would be prisoners of war, or we can try cross, get across the channel and if necessary we will have to ditch, what do you want to do?” universal decision we'll try and get across the channel so off we went over ten tenths cloud we flew on and we flew on but nothing was happening then suddenly through a break in the clouds we saw a beacon flashing now I couldn’t establish where it was, and all this time I’d been trying to get my radio set to work to find out where we were unfortunately every time I wound out my trailing aerial it was shorting out and I couldn’t get any power on the transmitter and very little on the receiver. So anyway we got to this beacon and the skipper flew round and round it and said “we’ve got another decision to make” the first decision wasn’t a good one but anyway we had found this beacon and we flew round it and he said “the only thing is, if it’s a land marker you can bail out but if it’s a sea marker you’ll drown, on the other hand if I decide to ditch the aircraft thinking it’s a sea marker, and it’s a land marker there’s going to be one hell of a bang” so anyway flying around this beacon trying to make our minds up suddenly an airfield lit up beneath us and there it was full runways, perimeter the lot marvellous we’ll land there so we went round to land wheels down, wheels wouldn’t come down, bomb aimer tried the flaps, the flaps wouldn’t work so we overshot. We came round again and this time we blew the wheels down with a compressed air tank that was behind my head in the wireless compartment and they fortunately came down and locked and with the flight engineer pumping like mad on the flaps he managed to hit the ground and roll along Well I went to the back of the aircraft open the door and I saw a chap on a bicycle with a blue torch and I said “aye mate where’s this then?” and he said “Westonzoyland “, I thought what the hell we have landed in Holland it sounded Dutch to me “Westonzoyland!” I said, “where’s that?”, he said “Somerset”. So, there we were got some sort of transport went to the Flying control tower saw the chap that had put the lights on and he said, “the first time you went and you didn’t land, I put my hand out to switch off the lights off again but I thought I’d give them one more chance”. It’s a good job he did, so we thanked, we ran to and thanked the beacon crew because I had been firing red, red greens the pilot had been saying ‘hello darkie this is spot null tear calling darkie’. Flashing the nose light SOS doing all sorts while we circle this beacon, when we went to the flying control we saw a Warrant officer in charge of the signal flight who’d been to the mess for a couple of mugs of tea for him and the WAAF that was working on the radio set, as he came through the door with the two mugs of tea, there was the WAAF under the bench unconscious; the same thing had happened about a fortnight before and an aircraft had called up in distress and then they hadn’t been able to contact it, gone across the Bristol channel crashed into the Welsh mountains , now she thought she was listening to a ghost when she heard us so she passed out under the bench so she was a lot of help. But anyway, it all worked out very nicely, but we had to stay down there for three days while they flew ground crews down from Coningsby to fix the aircraft everything was wrong with it, took them three days to fix it then we went back to Coningsby and then we went on leave. Now in some ways Harry our navigator, this sick navigator saved our lives because while we were on leave they did the Nuremberg raid and the Berlin raid and lost 95 aircraft as you know, so that was very fortunate. After that we carried on and did another thirty three ops, I think it was and then we finally finished our tour of ops, I was posted down to 17 OTU Silverstone as an instructor and stayed there until I was de-mobbed in 1946.
MC: So, you did thirty four ops, more than normal?
AA: Yes, but that was because some bright spark decided that French targets it’s easier than German targets so you had to do three French targets to count as one operation. That’s why it’s got the thirty three, thirty four.
MC: So, you did a few daylight raids?
AA: Yeah, we did about three daylight raids I think but I didn’t believe this business about being easier, because one night my crew, were stood down and the wireless operator in S-sugar was sick so I was told to fly with them. Pilot officer Hallet In S-Sugar so we took off, well after the briefing I was quite pleased in a way that I’d been put with this crew, because it was ten minutes over France flying bomb sites but this was a doddle so off we went got to this flying bomb site just across the channel no flack just lots and lots of searchlights and fighters circling round the outside waiting for us and as we went into bomb they were attacking us three at a time, I have never corkscrewed so hard in my life as I did with Hallet. But anyway, before we had taken off on the ops I was talking to a couple of chaps and the crew wasn’t with me, I was talking to two wireless operators , well three actually Kemish, Donahue, Sutton there was four of us talking and when I came back from the ten minutes over France, Kemish and Donoghue were no longer there, I think there was twenty two aircraft lost on that ten minutes and two were from our squadron and both of them wireless operators, I was chatting to them before we took off, so that was that anyway apart from the normal flying after that there wasn’t a great lot to talk about . I remember one occasion when I was working on the set, suddenly there was a brilliant white flash and I wondered what the hell it was it was like daylight in the cockpit I jumped up on the step stuck my head out the astrodome just in time to see a wing sailing past with two engines on it, and the propellers going round. An aircraft had blown up just in front of us, and the skipper pulling back on the stick trying to miss it so we didn’t hit the damn thing, anyway apart from that I think the rest of their trips were fairly quiet .
MC: So, were most of these daytime raids were following the invasion?
AA: That’s right, yeah, I can show you if you like?
MC: So, this is your logbook?
AA: Yeah.
MC: Its very neat!
AA: Yeah, there’s not a lot in it, I think about eight German targets, and the rest were French but as I said they weren’t as easy as they said they were and eventually of course they rescinded that.
MC: So most of them were fairly uneventful, apart from the ones you told me about?
AA: That's right. Yeah.
MC: So, following the operations you did where did you go then …. what did you do then following when you finished your ops?
AA: Well as I said I went down to 17 OTU at Silverstone and was there until I was demobbed in 46.
MC: Yeah, so your first flight obviously was err….
AA: Traumatic!
MC: Traumatic to say the least even though you didn’t meet any enemy action, during your other operations did you come across any other…you must have come across flack?
AA: Well we saw the flack, it didn’t bother me much it was quite interesting in daylight black puffs it looked very harmless you know it didn’t look dangerous at all. That was my air force career yeah.
MC: So, what happened, so then you did, you did your 19 RFS?
AA: After the war I joined the RAF volunteer reserve because I still couldn’t get the RAF feeling that I liked, I loved being in the RAF to be honest so I joined the RAFVR and used to go down at weekends first to Liverpool, at Liverpool and then we were over at Oulton Park the other side of Birkenhead then finished up at Woodvale, Southport flying at weekends then back to work as a civilian on Monday morning, a fortnights camping every year and that was great until it finally packed up in about 1952 I think round about then. So, then I joined Blackpool Gliding club and got a glider pilots licence just to keep flying and then when that packed up the next flying I did was on the back of my son’s microlight. We bought a microlight aircraft between us, he got the pilot’s licence and I just sat in the back flying around Coningsby, again. When the squadron moved across from Coningsby back from Skellingthorpe we were detailed to fly the aircraft but lot of stuff came by road when we landed we were given a dispersal for the aircraft I left my flying boots at the back near the Elsan and when we had lunch and came back to the aircraft my boots had gone so somebody helped himself, I went to the stores to see if I could get a spare pair and he said “What! I can’t let you have any more flying boots what if you don’t come back from an op I will be one pair of boots short”, which I didn’t like the attitude there so I wouldn’t buy them, he said I could get them on the 664b and I could pay for them, so I thought I’m not damn well paying for them. Just as well id done because when I was demobbed I had to pay for them, six guineas I think.
MC: So, you were demobbed in when? When were you demobbed?
AA: In ‘46’ Whitsontide ?
MC: What did you do after the war then?
AA: I went back to my old job for just six months, oh I’ve got a procession of jobs now and then I went to for work for the Associate of British cinemas as an assistant cinema manager, well a trainee to start with I stuck that for a couple of years and then I left there and went, I was married by then with a son and digs were hard to find so when the area manager came to see me , well first of all I was at Barrow in Furness as assistant cinema manager then I was transferred back to my home town of Lancaster then he came in one day and said “we are transferring you to the Regal Rochdale” and I thought well no you’re not, finding digs was difficult, I packed the job in and went to work for the Shell Oil company down at the Heysham Refinery in the materials office and unfortunately after a while there was a clash of personalities between me and the materials superintendent so I left there, got a job managing a shop in Morecambe seaside town selling pottery, glass wear and fancy goods, and looking out the window I saw all these salesmen coming past in their cars and I thought that looks like a good life much more interesting than this. So, when a chap came in selling me paper, wrapping paper and paper bags and things, or trying to I mentioned to him, and he said, “well come and work for me”, so I did and I stuck that for a couple of years. But I soon found out that being a salesman on the road wasn’t as good as it looked it was hard, hard work you’d have a good week one week and you couldn’t go wrong, the week after you couldn’t sell a thing, no it wasn’t good at all. So, I scanned the local paper and saw a job advertised at the North-west electricity board in the offices so I applied and got the job; in fact, I got two jobs at the same time. One was a job at the what was it…. the aircraft factory Lostock near Bolton I’ve forgotten the name of the aircraft now, well anyway that was one job and I also got the North-west electricity job as well. One would have meant changing home again so I stopped in Lancaster and took the electricity board job and I worked there for eight years until I got bored. I worked first of all on the cash desk as a cashier and then debt collecting and doing all sorts of things. Then I moved into the offices because it looked more in my line in the records office but I then found that I only had three day’s work on a five-day week, so for two days I was scratching around with looking for something to do and I soon got bored with that. So I applied again to the civil service and to NAAFI I saw an advert for NAAFI so the civil service said I could be taken on as a temporary employee it would take some time to become permanent but the NAAFI sent me a railway warrant to come down and see them which I did and of course because I’d worked initially in the Coop as a grocer I knew a little bit about it and then I’d managed the shop in Morecambe as a shop manager they offered me a job as a NAAFI shop manager and I asked could I go to Germany and they said yes we can send you to Germany but your wife will have to stay behind because we can’t accommodate her, I said in that case it’s no good to me, so the chap who was interviewing me said, “well would you be interested in going further afield, in which case your wife could join you ?” I said, “well yes I would” my ears pricked up then and he mentioned North Africa so I thought yes that will do for me, so I signed on there and then went back home, gave my notice in to the electricity board and on the appointed date went down to London, London Airport first day with the NAAFI London Airport flying out to North Africa. So, they sent me fortunately to Casto Benito known as RAF Idris. There was a little family shop there on an RAF station which suited me down to the ground I became an honorary member of the Sergeants mess, and I was in my element there was Air Force all around me but I didn’t have to take any orders because I was civilian and that was fine I was there three year, I had a three year contract I came back to the UK in 1964 , sent me on leave and I stayed on leave and the weeks went by and the months went by and I was still on leave but my salary was being paid into the bank so I wasn’t too concerned . Anyway, suddenly one Friday about four months after I’d being home I got a telegram ‘come down and see us’. So, I went down to see them and apparently two of the officials had been going to lunch and one of them had said “by the way what are you doing with Atkinson?” he said, “well he’s abroad isn’t he?”, “no” he said, “he’s at home on leave.” So that sparked the telegram, when I got down they said would I like to go back to Tripoli again this time to take over the main shop in Tripoli centre which dealt with the Embassy, all the Army, RAF units, any ships coming into Tripoli harbour I dealt with them, so I took the job on and I found it was losing £30 a day was this shop I took over, I didn’t like this so I put measures in to put this right, and in no time at all we were making a profit and this was noted at NAAFI headquarters. So, then it was decided that we would pull out of Tripoli altogether close down, the troops were coming home there were to be no units left in North Africa. So I had to close the shop down and reduce all the stock, close it down came back to the UK went to the headquarters in Peel Court in London for an interview and they said we would like you to attend a board which I did, I didn’t know it at the time but it was a commissioning board for what they called ‘Officials of the Corporation’ because when you became an official you had to be commissioned in the Army as well , on the Army reserve so I thought any how that would do me so I was successfully interviewed particularly with my record of making this shop profitable and they sent me for eighteen months training up and down the country various places, I went down to Plymouth for the ships I went to Scotland for bomb exercise I was all over the place learning about NAAFI official duties and eventually I was qualified and was sent to Anglesey. So, I was on Anglesey for eighteen months and then I got a notification they wanted me to Germany to Bielefeld so I was posted across to Bielefeld for three years.
MC: So, did you have a rank then?
AA: Well the thing is I had a road accident on Anglesey, I stopped my car to post a letter walked across the road and came back and saw a heavy lorry coming towards me so I leaned into the back of my car out of its way and put my foot out and it ran over my foot. Anyway, so when the paper came through with my army commission as a Second Lieutenant in the RASC or logistics core as they call it now, I had to send them back, I said I’m sorry but in view of my injury traversing rough terrain is no good to me because I knew that they sent the district managers on exercise with the Army with the acting rank of Captain in Logistics core, I thought well I can’t wander around hopping about like this to see over NAAFI contingent so as I say I sent the paper back and said I’m sorry that’s it so I didn’t get my commission but I was an honorary Second Lieutenant and when I went to Germany I was given Officers quarters and attended officers Messes and that sort of thing but officially I was a civilian. I did three years in Bielefeld, came back to England posted to Lincolnshire cause my wife came from Boston so this was fine, I spent three years here and then was posted again to Germany to Osnabruck for another three years that was fine I enjoyed that, holidays on the continent down to Italy and all over the place and then came back here again and then in 1982 there was a restructuring programme and all district managers of aged sixty or approaching sixty were dispensed with, but it was a pretty good deal they said that…..I was called down to London most surprised to learn that my service was no longer be required after a certain date when I was sixty in September but that I would get a pension from NAAFI based on the assumption that I reached sixty five which was fair enough so I was retired early at sixty and that was it, and I’ve lived in Lincoln ever since .
MC: I’d just like to go back to your earlier days when you did Air Gunnery training at first didn’t you?
AA: Yes.
MC: Did you, you got your…. so, it was your first brevet?
AA: Yeah that was at Stormy Down.
MC: And you got the Air gunnery brevet.
AA: I did.
MC: And what rank did you get there?
AA: Sergeant.
MC: So, you were Sergeant yeah.
AA: Yeah
MC: So, when you did your Wireless operating training, your brevet changed did it?
AA: Err it was still…. I can’t remember when it changed to be sure, but I know it was changed to an S , Signals but air gunner initially.
MC; That’s brilliant Arthur thank you very much for that. This interview was conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre and the interviewer was Mike Connock and the interviewee was Mr Arthur Atkinson the interview took place at Mr Atkinson’s home in Lincoln on the 23rd June 2015.
AA: Syerston for afternoon tea in Hanson’s and then back to work on a Monday morning.
MC: And this was where?
AA: This was in the volunteer reserve from RAF Woodvale, flying Anson’s. It was great. When I was recalled for my aircraft retraining from RAF Ringway, Manchester I went down at ACRC; Aircrew recruiting centre in London for various things one of them of course was a medical and when we had the medical we found that I had a weak left eye so they said “we will have to get you a pair of special goggles with a lens in the left eye”, fair enough, but unfortunately when my Squad was posted on, the goggle hadn’t come back and I had to wait for them so I was kept back one week when I should have been with my original squad. Then my original squad went on and were posted to India on flying boats.
MC: Oh right.
AA: And because I was kept back a week on a different squad, I finished up on Bomber Command, but if I hadn’t finished up on Bomber Command and being posted to Coningsby I wouldn’t have met my wife. [laughs].
MC: Yes, that’s right.
AA: Because one of the first places I went too was the Gliderdrome in Boston dancing. and met her there, and once we’d met we were together for sixty-three years.
MC: Goodness me.
AA: She died in 2007.
MC: So where did you…you obviously went to Coningsby and from Coningsby you moved on to Skellingthorpe?
AA: Skellingthorpe yeah.
MC: That’s where you did the major part of your tour?
AA: I did all my tour at Skellingthorpe yeah.
MC: All your tour at Skellingthorpe yes!
AA: Yes, all the incidents of interest that I can remember on the ground were at Skellingthorpe, apart from losing my flying boots. We had a mid-upper gunner. He was a Canadian and he used to ride around on a bicycle and he finished up, he got bicycles for the whole crew and we all rode around on bicycles, where he got them from we don’t know but he painted his apple green and I was flying, I was riding down to flights one morning with him got to the MP post and the MP pulled him over and asked him where he got his bike from, apple green, he finished up being court martialled but he said he’d been in a pub in Lincoln, he missed the bus back to camp and somebody offered him a bike so he thought better than walking so he said “I bought the bike and cycled back then I found out next morning it was a service bike but I’d paid good money for it so I painted it apple green” and he stuck to it and got away with it. We all in best blues at the court martial ready to give evidence to say what a good bloke he was, including Bob Acott but they only called Bob and the navigator in and he got away with a severe reprimand but they took him off flying while he was under court martial in case he got killed, they could court martial him if he got killed [laughs] but he was a good lad.
MC: So, the skipper and who, who got the awards you say?
AA: Pilot Bob Acott got the DFC, and Trevor Ward, Ken wrote a book about he got the DFC.
MC: Oh yeah, yeah
AA: Oh dear, we told Ken about the episodes when we one a flew across country to Scotland and our flight engineer Bob, Bill Rudd said to Bob, we were at 20,000 feet on across country one of these two cross countries that were before we went on ops, and Bill Rudd said to Bob “Bob, if you get injured when we’re flying over Germany, you know you’re damaged in any way, who’s going to bring the aircraft back?”. Bob said, “well I haven’t given it a lot of thought really.” He said, ‘Well I think I should!’ He was like that Bill was, so Bob said, “all right fair enough, you can if you like.” He said, “in that case I should have a go at flying it, shouldn’t I?” So, Bob Acott policeman steady said, “you’ve got a good point there.” So, the two of them changed seats at 20,000 feet, then the aircraft stalled it just fell out the sky with the flight engineer in the pilot seat, you know the only left-hand control in a Lanc. Oh god, I clipped my chute on, whether this is what finished the navigator I don’t know, he clipped his chute on, I said “which way are we going out”. I said, “well we can’t go out the front because these two silly buggers are trying to change seats again” [laughs]. Of course, in the back of your mind there’s always that instruction ‘you do not leave the aircraft without the Pilots instruction’ but I thought he’s in no position to instruct anyway, every time they got it in a level keel pushing the stick forward, you know, it stalled again and it kept coming down and we were coming down like a falling leaf. Anyway, they finally changed seats then the flight engineer was running up and down the aircraft finding what had gone wrong, when we found out what had gone wrong it was the trimming tabs on the elevator he’d kicked them as they were changing seats again in, up so that…. Oh dear. And Bill Rudd the same flight engineer he had a chop WAAF, he waved to this WAAF every time he took off, then one time he was waving to her, and waving to her stretching his head round to wave to her and his intercom plug came out as we were tearing down the runway, to take off, so when Bob Acott said ‘full power’, nothing happened Bill wasn’t on intercom we had a full bomb load so I heard him say’ full power’ and eventually he took his, he had to leave belting…we just staggered off Doddington Road end. Bill Rudd, another time on importance we were diverted to Ford, or Tranmere as the sea approached the runway instead of putting full flap down, he took flap off and I could swear the props hit the sea, oh that was our flying. This chap was posted to our crew at Winthorpe and we very soon realised a little bit, not very good we said to Bob, we should get rid of him Bob, this chaps not, well somebody’s got to take it. But he’d been thrown out from the previous crew he’d being in, they’d wised him up and got rid of him. Bob Acott wouldn’t
MC: So, you were always having to compensate for him?
AA: He should have got a medal, the Iron Cross, First Class, he did his dam to kill us [laughs] but we even survived Bill Rudd, I hope that’s not on tape.
MC: It is, [laughs]
AA: Oh dear, a bit of a lad. I saw him later on in the war, I’d been down to Boston with the wife because she came from Boston and I was in Lancaster, I’d driven down in the car and on the way back we were diverted through Harrogate that’s where he lived and I thought he was so keen a medal, was Bill he wanted to climb in the wing and put the engine fire out with a fire extinguisher and stuff like that. Anyway, I suddenly saw a big board and it said, ‘W. Rudd Demolition Contractor’ and I thought this is too much of a coincidence, so I took the address and followed it round and there he was in the garden digging his garden with a …talking to a chap at the same time, I said “Hello Bill, how’s it going? “He, looked at me, he didn’t know, he hadn’t a clue who I was till I provided him what had happened, oh dear that was the only time I saw him. But Dougie May our bomb aimer, I suddenly decided Dougie and me got on very well so I suddenly decided I’d like to see him again if I could so I got the telephone directory out and looked through all the names in Birmingham, he lived in Birmingham and the first one I tried it was his wife answered I said “I’m looking for a chap called Douglas May that served in Bomber Command during the war”, she said “yes, my husband did”, I said “well just go and ask if he remembers Acott’s shower” so that’s exactly what she said, and he was back on the phone in two seconds, went down to see him and I had him and his wife staying here in this house when the memorial was opened we went and I’ve got a video of us marching, the first march we ever did when the memorial was opened, but unfortunately he’s died since.
MC: Did you get to see any of the other crew, the skipper and that did you meet up?
AA: No I didn’t unfortunately no, because we all went to different, I was posted to Silverstone, I know Bob Acott went down to Swinderby, Dougie went somewhere in London I don’t know where the hell he went and of course Trevor Bowyer left us after twenty ops because it was his second tour, and I don’t know what happened to the mid-upper, Al Bryant after his court martial because he didn’t fly with us again.
MC: Oh, didn’t he?
AA: No. presumably went back to Canada, but Dougie was the only one that I met.
MC: So where was the skipper from?
AA: The skipper was from London, he was on the Metropolitan Police. Anyway, I never offered you a cup of tea.
MC: Oh no, you are alright thank you. Thanks lovely thank you Arthur.
AA: So that’s all right then!
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 Arthur Atkinson
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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AAtkinsonA150623
Creator
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Mike Connock
Date
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2015-06-23
Format
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00:40:54 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
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Pending review
Contributor
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Carmel Dammes
Description
An account of the resource
Arthur Atkinson was born in Lancaster, and worked in the local Co-Op until he joined the Royal Air Force. He trained as a wireless operator and served at RAF Ringway before being posted to RAF Coningsby and later RAF Skellingthorpe with 61 Squadron. His first operation to Stuttgart was a disaster when the compass failed to work and they landed at RAF Westonzoyland. Over all he completed three daylight and 31 night time operations. He met his wife while in Lincolnshire. After he was de-mobbed he continued to travel with the Royal Air Force as a civilian managing Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes. He also continued his love of flying, joining various flying schools and eventually buying a microlight with his son and flying around Coningsby again. Arthur settled in Lincoln after retiring.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Wales
England--Lincolnshire
England--Somerset
Germany--Stuttgart
Wales--Bridgend
61 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
crewing up
Dominie
Navy, Army and Air Force Institute
Proctor
RAF Compton Bassett
RAF Coningsby
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Ringway
RAF Silverstone
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Weston Zoyland
RAF Yatesbury
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/122/3534/ATaitJT160610.2.mp3
9f0edd1b79ed6f88dccec2e22a8097de
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Tait, John
John Tait
J T Tait
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Warrant Officer John Thomas Tait (1923 - 2019, 175522 Royal Air Force), his service and release book and four photographs. John Tait flew 34 operations with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe as a wireless operator / air gunner.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Tait and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-10
Identifier
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Tait, JT
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by [name of the lender] and catalogued by [name of the cataloguer].
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MC: This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewee is John Tait and the interviewer is Mike Connock. The interview is taking place at the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archives at Riseholme College on Friday 10th June 2016. Also present at the interview are Alan Tait, Mrs Beryl Tait and Ken Tait. OK John, what I want you to do is just tell me a bit about um, when and where you were born for a start.
JT: Well I was born in America in Helena, Montana and my mother was English and my Dad was Scottish. Anyway my mum had had enough of travelling abroad so she wanted to come home. So when I was five she brought me to England and that was fine. Took a while to get used to people, people getting used to me actually. But anyway, when the war started we —
MC: Yeah, go on John, it’s just, what did your parents do? What was —
JT: My dad was, he was a retired cattle farmer and my mother was a retired school teacher.
MC: So how old were you when you came to —
JT: I was five.
MC: Five.
JT: Five, yes.
MC: So you started school in the UK?
JT: I started school in the UK, yeah.
MC: And that was? What year were you born?
JT: 1923.
MC: 1923, yes. So this would be ’28 when you came to us.
JT: It was, yes.
MC: And, so what about school days in those days, what was that like?
JT: Well school days, well I went to a local school, I didn’t start until I was six but it was very good, a local school, I enjoyed it and then when I was eleven I went up to, oh hell where did I go, oh God, isn’t it awful. Temple Road Central Boys School in Birkenhead. It was a secondary school and I went there and very good, I was accepted even though I was from the outer districts because they were nearly all lads from the city. But we got on ok, I did very well. In fact I played football for their team, but anyway I went to school there ‘til I was fourteen and then I took me O levels, except they weren’t O levels then but it were whatever. Anyway then I went to work in an office to train as a cost accountant, me dad knew someone who had an office and he would train — so I went to train as a cost accountant. Anyway, when the war broke out I was eighteen years of age and I didn’t like being in an office all day so I volunteered for the RAF.
MC: What made you choose the RAF?
JT: Well there were two pals of mine, lived in the same road as me and they were both wireless operator air gunners and neither of them came back, they both lost their life. One was Derek Jones and the other was Bob Christie, Bob Christie, yeah. They both lost their lives as it happened, but I was the only one of the three that came back. But anyway I volunteered for the RAF —
MC: So that was when you were eighteen?
JT: Eighteen yes.
MC: Oh right.
JT: I went to Padgate for six weeks, square bashing and then we went to Black — [pause] While I was there I volunteered for air crew and um, I went to Blackpool on a wireless operators air gunners course.
MC: Hmm.
JT: I forget how long it was but anyway I did a tour there and then I went to Stormy Down to do an air gunners course and then I qualified for that and I was posted to a place called Bruntingthorpe which, where they trained lads straight from school
MC: Was that an operational training unit?
JT: Pardon?
MC: Operational training unit?
JT: Operational training, yep. So I —
MC: Do you remember which one it was?
JT: Bruntingthorpe.
MC: Bruntingthorpe.
JT: Bruntingthorpe yep. RAF Bruntingthorpe yeah. Anyway, I did me tour there and the next thing was to go to a higher, err, higher course for wireless operators up north. So I went up there and while we were there they were sorting out the air gunners. Well I got picked to go down to Stormy Down to do a six week air gunners course, which I did and I enjoyed. Anyway, having finished that we then went to Market Harborough, I think. And the skipper was there . Dougie Milligan came round, he was picking his crew for the Anson.
MC: And that was where you crewed up, at Market Harborough?
JT: That’s were I got picked by Dougie Milligan to go with him, yeah. That’s right. We went, we did, we went from there to —
MC: Market Harborough, that would have been the OTU I suspect.
JT: Sorry?
MC: Was the Operational Training Unit at Market —
JT: That was, the OTU at Market Harborough, OTU, it was yeah. And we went from Market Harborough to um, —
MC: Can I just interrupt you there. Um, at Market Harborough was that just the five crew?
JT: We hadn’t got, yes it was. We hadn’t got a full crew then.
MC: Because that was on, oh, what aircraft was that?
JT: It was on Wellingtons.
MC: Wellingtons, yeah.
JT: Because we were on Wellingtons yeah. Anyway, we picked up a oh, um, bit of a gunner [?] I think there.
MC: And a flight engineer?
JT: And that’s what we did. We were on Wellingtons. We hadn’t got a flight engineer, [coughs).
MC: Where did you pick those up?
JT: Picked them up at Market Harborough, picked two up at Market Harborough.
MC: Oh you did pick them up at Market Harborough did you?
JT: We didn’t pick the [pause] flight engineer, we picked him up later because they hadn’t got flight engineers on Lancs. But anyway, as it happened when he joined us and we went to um, from there to, oh, somewhere in North Lincoln, I don’t know. Oh I know, we went to go on Stirlings, that’s right at Scampton. We went to Scampton.
BT: Oooh.
JT: That’s right. And the skipper converted on to Stirlings and we picked up a, oh, [pause]
MC: Flight engineer?
JT: Flight engineer.
MC: Yup.
JT: And his name was Jimmy James and he came from Liverpool, funnily enough but he was a good lad. He’d been, he came from South Africa actually. He’d been a mechanic out there for years, he was, and he wanted to join air crew to bring him back home to train so he joined us and they brought him back to train as a flight engineer which he was delighted and he was with us until the end of our tour.
MC: So was that at a Lancaster finishing school or a conversion unit?
JT: Oh yes, it was Stirlings, Lancs finishing school yeah.
MC: Yeah, oh yeah, it was a heavy conversion unit.
JT: It was a conversion school.
MC: Yeah, yep, hmm.
JT: They were horrible things, big [laughter]the Stirling but we flew quite a lot of trips, not operations but flights. And then we went from having completed our course on Stirlings, we then went to [pause] we went on the squadron, that’s right.
MC: Did you not, you must have gone and converted from Stirlings to Lancasters?
JT: We converted to Lancasters, we didn’t convert to Lancs until we got to the squadron.
MC: Oh didn’t you?
JT: No I don’t think so. I’m just trying to think —
MC: You went to the Lancaster Finishing School I think, was that, um did you not go to —
JT: It was Scampton [unclear] converted on to Lancasters at Scampton, that’s right, yes we did, yeah. And err, that was when our crew was formed, we’d got a full crew.
MC: Yep.
JT: [pause] I’m sorry if it’s a bit bitty.
MC: Oh no, no it’s not. It’s fine, it’s no problem and so you got, so um, I mean up until then you got posted to your squadron but all the crew was made up.
JT: That’s right. There was, Dougie Milligan picked us up from, originally from Bruntingthorpe, that was it. [pause]
MC: Just going back slightly, back to when you joined up, um, as a teenager what was life like growing up just before the war. I’m sorry to have —
JT: It was fine, well I used to, I enjoyed football, I played a lot of football but of course when the war started we were classed as aliens.
MC: Oh!
JT: Because I was an American citizen, and we used to have to report to the police station once a month and that’s why I said ‘blow this I’m going to join the RAF’ so I did. [laughter] Yeah.
MC: So having been to the err, operation training unit, conversion unit, you were then posted to err, —
JT: Skellingthorpe
OTHER: Skellingthorpe, 50 Squadron.
JT: Yeah, that’s right.
MC: Can you remember arriving at Skellingthorpe, much about the station?
JT: Aah, we thought it was a bit out in the wilderness but err, yeah, we did no it was great, when you‘ve got a crew around you, you were quite happy.
MC: Yeah by that time they’d got the concrete runways and things like that.
JT: Oh yes, that’s right.
MC: Hmm, yeah. So, can you remember much about your first operation, all your operations, your first one for instance?
JT: No.
MC: Did it not stick with you.
JT: Doesn’t ring a bell. As I say, I did thirty three all with Dougie Milligan and I did one as a spare bod with a skipper named Mike, oh Pete Stockwell.
MC: What was his name? Pete?
JT: Peter Stockwell. He was a flight sergeant, he’d gone with me from Skellingthorpe to there, to train and they didn’t just trust him on Wellingtons so they put him on the Stirling. He would fly, flying a fighter, that’s right flying Spitfires 'til he pranged one and they told him to get off the squadron and get back to the squadron so he asked me would I go back with him and I said ‘of course I would’. So we formed another crew up and that was it.
MC: I mean you did some hairy operations. Does anything stand out in particular?
JT: Um, no, err, [pause].
OTHER: You said that, you know —
JT: The Ruhr Valley was the worst.
MC: Rurh, yeah, yeah [unclear]
OTHER: Well some of the operations you did were, you know, you did Munich –
JT: Pardon?
OTHER: You did Munich didn’t you?
JT: That was the longest, the longest trip was Munich I think.
OTHER: Yeah, Munich.
OTHER: Did you do Berlin?
JT: No.
OTHER: Yes, at the time, ‘cos at the time you were joining it was the lead up, leading up to D-Day.
JT: That’s right.
MC: So you would, did you do some, you obviously did some invasion support operations?
JT: Well we did some in France, we did a few trips in France, that’s right, that’s right yeah.
MC: Yeah, so the actual raids themselves you don’t remember much about?
JT: The operations? No. Ah, well —
MC: How did you feel, I mean did you err, —
JT: Probably scared stiff to start with, but err, —
MC: Yeah.
JT: But you got used to
MC: That’s what I’m trying to get at, you know, how did you —
JT: That’s right the first trip I always remember the first trip. I can’t remember where it was but I couldn’t believe it and I looked out of my rear window and I could see the fires down below and I said to Jimmy Marlow, ‘Jim come and have a look’. ‘Not bloody likely’ he said, ‘I’m sitting here’ and he was sitting on the table drinking his tea. He wouldn’t have a look out of the window.
MC: And Jimmy Marlow was the?
JT: He was the, he was the navigator.
MC: The navigator, yes.
JT: He was a sergeant or a flight sergeant then. Yeah. He’d worked for the Air Ministry and he wanted to get a commission so they could give him a position to go back to, when he went back from the RAF. Which he got in the end.
MC: So I, I gather Doug Milligan was a good skipper then?
JT: Oh, Dougie, yes.
MC: He got you through thirty three operations.
JT: He was dead on, he really was, he was.
MC: And you all had a good crew, you all got on well.
JT: Very good. We were lucky with the crew.
MC: Yeah, what about —
JT: We lost our rear gunner for a while at the end because he got frostbite and he was invalided out of the RAF and we got another, just for a couple of trips, but err, yeah we got on great.
MC: Yeah, what about socialising in the area round Lincoln?
JT: Oh.
MC: Don’t give too much away.
JT: You know Lincoln was a wonderful place to socialise, people were so friendly, it was great, they really were.
MC: You used to go out most evenings?
JT: Most evenings we’d be down the pub, local pub. In fact there was one night we were all out on the booze and they decided to put an op on and they sent the RAF Police round Lincoln calling for all members of 50 Squadron to come back and we went back to the squadron but we, some of them were half canned. Dougie Milligan wouldn’t bother, well he wasn’t a great drinker. He liked a drink but he wasn’t a great drinker, but the rest of us were [laughter].
MC: [laughter] you made full use of the local hostelries.
JT: That’s right, there’s a lot of nice people in Lincoln.
MC: So what, which, where did you used to go? Can you remember?
JT: I can’t remember the name of the pub. There was a pub down the road from Skellingthorpe and there was a lady there, she invited us in one night. Her husband works, he was working away, working on a job or something and she had two or three daughters or nurses who visited and she invited us to join them for a party one night and um, the night they put the operation off we were in Lincoln, she was sat in the back kitchen with me feeding me coffee to sober me up before we went back [laughter]. She was great, a lovely lady and she was, oh what was her name? No, it’s gone. She was lovely, the people were lovely they really were.
MC: So you got around in Lincoln?
JT: Oh yeah, no complaints
MC: Yes. It’s err, you were a wireless operator?
JT: Wireless operator, yes.
MC: Can you, I mean [pause] so you was a WOP air gunner, so I mean I gather you had your 21st birthday while you was on the squadron?
JT: Oh yes.
MC: So um, how did you celebrate that?
JT: [laughter] down the pub [laughter].
MC: [laughter] So they looked after you did they on your 21st?
JT: Oh yeah, had a fabulous time.
MC: So what did you get up to on that then? Anything special?
JT: Nothing, well apart from going for a drink in the pub, that’s about it, that’s all we did anyway.
MC: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JT: We hadn’t got enough money to go buying it or wining and dining but we went for a pint, yeah.
MC: Can you remember much about your C — Commanding Officer? Whoever your CO was?
JT: I’ll tell you who he was, not the Commanding Officer. Marshall of the Royal Air Force, Sir Mike Beetham.
MC: Uhuh.
JT: He, I think he was a flight lieutenant on our squadron and he was a flight lieutenant a very, B Flight, no sorry, I was on B, he was on A Flight. Yeah, Mike Beetham was on A Flight. He was a great bloke, very approachable, very pleasant chap.
MC: Did you know any of his crew?
JT: Well I did at the time but I don’t now. But —
MC: Sir Michael Beetham, so as I say, Reg Payne was Michael Beetham’s wireless operator. So you may know him.
JT: Oh well that’s somebody I’d perhaps recognise.
MC: How’s your morse these days then?
JT: Sorry?
MC: How’s our morse these days, morse code?
JT: I haven’t done any, dit dah dah. I can do it though.
MC: I’m sure you can.
JT: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. So you, obviously you finished your tour, you say you did thirty three?
JT: I did thirty three and then I stayed on, we were all, the crew was then dispersed, they was —
MC: Yeah?
JT: And I stayed on and did one trip with Pete Stockwell.
MC: Yeah? [pause] Yeah, and then where did you go from there?
JT: We went from there to um, I think we went to Market Harborough with Pete Stockie.
MC: Back to Market Harborough.
JT: Yep. He was told to get himself a crew and get back on the squadron, he was a bit of a lad was Pete, [laughter] flight lieutenant [laughter] but we have got a [unclear]
MC: So he finished up as a flight lieutenant then did he?
JT: Pete did.
MC: Yeah?
JT: Yeah. Well, our navigator Barney, he was a navigator with Pete, he was a flight lieutenant too. But we were, the rest of us were senior NCOs, yep.
MC: So how long were you at Market Harborough then on the OTU?
JT: Probably, maybe a year, a couple of years.
MC: As long as that?
JT: Well what they did, they asked, 35 Squadron was formed to do formation flying, twelve Lancs in formation and we were on that, Pete Stocky was on that so we went with him, formation flying. We used to do all over the country and then we went to America to celebrate Army Air Corps Day. We did six weeks tour in the States formation flying.
MC: So that would have been in ’45 then?
JT: That would be yeah, maybe ’46 I don’t know.
MC: How long were you over there?
JT: A long time ago.
MC: You was over there a long time?
JT: Well six weeks. We did six weeks.
MC: You enjoyed that?
JT: We started off in New York, went right down to the south coast and round about. We were the first crew to fly over the White House. They allowed aircraft to fly over the White House and the Lancs flew over there. But, oh we had a six weeks tour [unclear]
MC: And that was with 35 Squadron?
JT: 35 Squadron. We were entertained, taken to Hollywood, we were entertained in Hollywood shown the people doing the rehearsals and acting. We had a wonderful time really. Couldn’t, couldn’t do any wrong. [laughter] We came back and I asked to do me time after that. I only had about a fortnight to do when we came back. I got demobbed and that was it. But we had a wonderful time.
MC: So when were you demobbed?
JT: Uh —
MC: Because you stayed in —
JT: Before, I signed up for six months. I didn’t actually do the full six months I don’t think. They let me out early. I forget now to be honest.
OTHER: Indeed, probably late ’45.
MC: Yeah. So having come out the Air Force, what did you after the Air Force then?
JT: I needed a job obviously. I didn’t want to go, I didn’t want to be a cost accountant, there was no way. And a pal of mine worked for McAlpines, he was in the office at Sir Alfred McAlpines so I got a job, he got me a job in the office Sir Alfred McAlpines and I started there off as a [pause] stationery assistant then I was posted, I got asked to go out on site, I became a timekeeper then I became office manager and then became an area office manager and then while I was doing that I was doing a lot of the work that surveyors were doing and the chief surveyor said to me ‘John,’ he said ‘why don’t you take up surveying?’ he said, ‘you know more than these buggers’. So I applied and I went to the college of building for about six years I think, five years and I studied to be a quantity surveyor and became a chartered surveyor and I finished up my time in Cheshire County, yes I worked for Chester City, Cheshire County.
MC: So when did you meet Beryl then?
JT: Oh, I met Beryl way back, that was when —
BT: [laughter] Ah, when was that? I was —
JT: Where was I working then?
BT: Seventeen or eighteen, whenever that was because I’m eighty five on Sunday.
JT: Aye, that’s not good. Where were you, you were working at McKagan Barnes (?) weren’t you?
BT: Sorry?
JT: You were working at McKagan Barnes (?)
BT: Yeah, and I was in the accountants office.
JT: She was training in the accountant’s office.
MC: So that, you met before the war?
JT: Sorry?
MC: You met before the war?
JT: Oh, no.
BT: Oh no, after that.
MC: After the war?
BT: I used to see him very often going back off leave in his RAF uniform and I used to think, oh he looks alright and you know, [laughter] not realising I’d end up marrying you [laughter]. But um, no we just met virtually at a dance at the local dance hall.
JT: That’s right.
MC: Yes.
BT: He came in, we spent that whole night dancing. I was going out with the drummer in the band and I said to — when John said ‘can I take you home?’ and I said ‘well, see the chap playing the drums, he is my boyfriend so you’d better come with me to tell him’. So he did and, told him and I got a phone call from the chap the next day and he said ‘I can’t believe you did that’. I said, ‘well I’m sorry’ I said, ‘I’ve now met somebody else so we’ll just have to call it a day’.
MC: You must have been a bit of a lad in those days.
BT: I thought, well I could have just —
JT: I was a bit of a lad.
BT: I could have just walked out but I thought no, I’ll do the right thing and tell him.
JT: Thank you.
BT: And the fact that he didn’t like it well, you know [laughter].
OTHER: [unclear]
MC: Going back to the operational times.
JT: Well once you, sitting there with a [unclear] the searchlight picked you up as you went in and the skipper had to do evasive action which was climb and roll and—
MC: Corkscrew.
JT: and climb and roll. That happened on many operations.
MC: Yeah.
JT: But it was something you used to —
MC: Any close mishaps with other aircraft then?
JT: Oh, aye. Many a time. [laughter]. And our foreign friends but err —
MC: So you, you had a few escapades with some fighters then?
JT: Yep.
MC: Yeah. And managed to get away unscathed?
JT: That’s right.
MC: Obviously a good skipper.
JT: Thanks to the skipper. Yep, that’s right. Oh yes every, there was always other things with somebody on one of the ops.
MC: Did you always get them back to base at the same, you know?
JT: Yeah we did, we always got back, we, the last time we were, aah, the skipper was advised to make a landing in the South of England and we agreed. We were going on leave the next day so we said ‘come on we’ll give it a go’, so we went back and we got back and when we got back one of the aircraft engines packed up as we landed but err, the skipper got a remand for it. No we were cheering. Yeah. There were all kinds of little incidents but they were well, sort of part of the daily routine, or night routine.
MC: For you, yes.
JT: It was.
MC: [laughter] So, yeah, I mean it’s, you talked about it, I mean you say there were lots of incidents. Can you remember other incidences? Did you ever get diverted coming back, apart from that one incident when you didn’t go back?
JT: I think that’s the only occasion, which we didn’t — What they did, they sent a fighter out from Tangmere, which we ignored [laughter] and went back anyway, but err, that’s the only time.
MC: You ignored the fighter. What was he there to do?
JT: Pardon?
MC: What was the fighter from Tangmere there to do?
JT: It was a, oh bloody hell, I don’t know.
MC: No, what, why did they send him out?
JT: To guide us into Tangmere.
MC: Aaahh.
JT: But we didn’t take any notice. We went back, yeah. What was it, I forget the aircraft now, I knew it —
MC: So you never got any problems with coming back in bad weather, to Skellingthorpe then?
JT: Oh we did have rough times. From time to time you came in you could hardly land because of the weather but we made it. We’d got a good skipper in Dougie Milligan, he really was. He was a, he wasn’t, he was just going for it as much as I should have been, but err, he was on the ball and a good skipper.
MC: Yeah. So the flight engineer, he was?
JT: Oh Jimmy James was a great lad, oh yeah.
MC: A name like Jimmy James? [laughter]
JT: Yes, well he had a garage in Liverpool and I tried to find out about him and I found out about a week after he died. I used to belong the Aircrew Association, I think it was. And I asked them to fish out for any documents and they said the only one we’ve got is Jimmy James and he died a week ago and he was our flight engineer. Our bomb aimer, the one I would like to get in touch with is Ronnie Pugh, ‘cos Ronnie Pugh came to our house. In fact there’s a picture of him at our house, he came to our house, he was a great lad was Ronnie. He was a professional pianist before the war, he played for Maurice Winnick and wherever we went, on the piano, we always had a gang round together. [laughter] No problems with drinking with him.
MC: So, he was the navigator you say?
JT: He was the bomb aimer.
MC: What about the navigator?
JT: Jimmy, was very —
MC: Jimmy, this was Jimmy James, no Jimmy James was the flight engineer.
JT: Marlow. He was one of two who were married. He was married, a lovely wife, a young lady. He’d just got married and she came with us a couple of times, not on train journeys, elsewhere, and Jimmy, he never came out a lot. He didn’t go on the binge like us so much but he was a great bloke, Jimmy. He, he was the one who worked for the Air Ministry before the war and he wanted to get a commission so it would stand him in good stead when he got demobbed. But he did get it just before we finished, he did get one. He was only a, Robbie Pugh already had one, he was a pilot officer when he joined us.
MC: And your mid upper? That was —
JT: Jock Bryman [?] he was a flight sergeant.
MC: Yeah.
JT: Big Scotsman, a canny lad. [laughter]
MC: You don’t know what he did before the war?
JT: No I haven’t got a clue.
MC: No, no. And in the tail, rear gunner?
JT: Johnny Austin, but I don’t know what he did before the war but he got frostbite and he was invalided out of the RAF, Johnny Austin was. We had a spare gunner for a couple of trips, I think.
MC: Did you, [unclear] did you know much about 50 Squadron when you were posted there? Had they told you much? Did you know of it?
JT: No, I didn’t know anything about it at all. Not the slightest, no. It was a good squadron, and I’ll tell you what, we had a good mob.
MC: Hm. [pause] Yeah, as I say, you talked about your birthday, and so your raid on your birthday was that railway junction.
JT: Yes, well I sort of [unclear]
MC: You couldn’t celebrate it in the air could you eh? Or did you?
JT: No, no, no we didn’t.
MC: [laughter] A successful operation though, um. So you probably, so I mean, it wasn’t um, it wasn’t 16th April you were on operations?
JT: We must have gone down the pub.
MC: So you must have been down the pub.
JT: We would do, yes.
MC: That’s a good excuse, but you didn’t need an excuse in those days.
JT: [laughter] Hardly.
MC: So I mean, if, if I guess you’re looking at your first tour was um, your first operation even was er, was marshalling yards at Tours.
JT: That’s right. I don’t rem — I remember going to the marshalling yards but I don’t know where it was. That’s when I got Jimmy Marlow to try again to get him to look out of the window but he wouldn’t look. He said ‘no fear’.
MC: And then you did the GVC, UVC marshalling yards, you did lots of the marshalling yards?
JT: That’s right. [noise of door closing]
MC: Even Paris, even, your third trip was to Paris.
JT: I don’t remember that.
MC: Marshalling again, marshalling yards.
OTHER: There you go, that was, was that leaflet dropping you were saying you were doing at the time? That’s the one, that‘s the Paris trip.
JT: Paris, yeah.
OTHER: ‘Cos you went from [unclear] Paris and then you went, started, you seemed to go to Germany and Munich.
JT: [unclear]
OTHER: [unclear]
JT: But I was in the Ruhr Valley.
MC: You went to Cologne?
JT: Oh yes and somewhere else, I forget.
MC: Cologne and —
JT: Two or three trips to the Ruhr Valley. Yep, they were always a bit hairy.
MC: Yeah, because of low level defence —
JT: The thing was you’ve got a battery of searchlights and the second you got near to them, the searchlights were on you and you were dodging the searchlights all the way through.
MC: Did you, I mean did you get hit, you never got hit any time by flak?
JT: Sorry?
MC: Did you get hit any time by flak?
JT: I think we did but err, nothing to, well nothing to put us off keeping going.
MC: Yeah.
JT: Although that was, always took the length of the runway. According to the skipper you had to hold it down to make it, take itself off.
MC: It took a while to get off with a full load?
JT: It did yeah.
OTHER: So that would have been, you know especially if you had long trips, with a full fuel load as well.
JT: That’s right he would hold it down to the end of the runway to make it fight to get off, yeah.
OTHER: Is this a —
JT: Poor old Johnny who was in the rear turret was wondering when he was going to leave the deck. [laughter]
MC: Were there many times when you came back —
JT: Yes we did get a recall once.
MC: You had to bring the bomb load back?
JT: . We had to go out to the North Sea, there was a dumping area out in the North Sea, we used to have to go and dump them there and we’d say ‘ah flippin’ heck’. Or sometimes you’d get a hang up with a bomb and in theory you still had to go out to the North Sea but in honesty, disconnect the camera, get rid of it [laughter]. We didn’t do it that way, we did go sometimes but sometimes we didn’t.
MC: What sort of dumping area, you dumped it elsewhere?
JT: We’d just disconnect the camera, pull the toggle and away we’d go [laughter]and put the camera back on [laughter] get a picture of cloud.
MC: Yeah, yeah [laughter] So did you have to bring many bomb loads back did you?
JT: Sorry?
MC: Did you have to bring many loads back or was there —
JT: We never brought one back, only, we dumped one but we never ever brought any back.
MC: Oh you always dumped them?
JT: Yeah, yeah.
MC: What sort of bomb load was it you were carrying?
JT: Probably thousand pounders, [unclear] in cans. Four thousand pounders with cans.
MC: Four thousand.
JT: Four thousand pounders with the cans, well, a load of thousand pounders with the, oh bloody hell what are they called, not flares. Oh I can’t think.
MC: Incendiaries?
JT: What you say?
MC: Incendiaries?
JT: That’s right.
MC: Yeah, yeah and were there many mishaps, did you experience any mishaps?
JT: Pardon?
MC: Did you experience any mishaps at Skellingthorpe while you were there you know?
JT: No we didn’t actually, we didn’t get any hang ups, no.
MC: No, I meant did you have any accidents at Skellingthorpe or anything like that?
JT: Aahh, not that I can recall.
MC: So what did you personally think about the bombing raids then, about the —
JT: I thought they were a great success really.
MC: Yeah. And the morality of it, what did you think about that?
JT: I think Bomber Harris had it right. The only thing was he put a raid on once, I think Winston Churchill insisted and they lost a lot of aircraft that night but err, I thought they did a good job.
MC: Were you on that raid?
JT: No.
OTHER : That would be Nuremburg?
JT: Yep, That’s ninety six or ninety five.
MC: Yeah.
JT: Yeah, well that wasn’t going to go ahead but Churchill insisted that it did and we lost ninety six aircraft that night.
MC: Hmm, yeah.
JT: I mightn’t have been here now. [laughter]
MC: You didn’t do Dresden then?
JT: We’d finished.
MC: What did you think about Dresden then, you were aware of the Dresden raid?
JT: Well, it’s hard to say really. We never had to encounter the problems they had when they got there so we don’t know. I mean they said it was a walkover[?] for them. In fact a pal of mine who was a navigator in another squadron said he didn’t like, he regretted it said he was ashamed of going there but having said that and he came back but some people didn’t so it’s all right talking if you got back. Yeah. That was Ken Boxon, [?] Ken went to Dresden yeah.
MC: So what did you think about the way Harris was treated after the war?
JT: Sorry?
MC: What did you think about the way that Harris was treated after the war?
JT: I thought he had a very despicable treatment. I think for what he did during the war I think it was a crying shame. If it hadn’t been for him Bomber Command wouldn’t have been the force they were, I thought he was great.
MC: Good for Bomber Command.
JT: Absolutely, he was yeah, Butcher Harris. [laughter] But he didn’t get the justice he deserved.
MC: Yeah. And did you get your clasp, Bomber Command Clasp?
JT: Yes.
MC: You did get your clasp?
JT: I don’t think it’s worth a light. Little tiny thing, not worth a light. I don’t know why they bothered to make it to be honest. I think I brought it with me.
BT: In the box is it? Is that the one?
MC: So, yeah you did apply for your clasp and you got it. That’s um —
JT: No it’s not there.
MC: You said there was a lady at the end of the runway. She used to wave you off.
JT: Sure, she did. She came down, she’d wait for us to come back. She was the lady who used to treat us to coffee. She was the lady who gave me coffee that night when they called us in from Lincoln to go on ops.
MC: What was her name?
JT: Mrs Cook.
MC: Mrs Cook.
JT: Mrs Cook. She was a lovely lady and she’d come down and stand at the end of the runway and she would wait until we got back to the air traffic tower. She was lovely, really was.
MC: I suppose there would have been a few people waving you off?
JT: Sorry?
MC: I suppose there would have been a few people waving you off at the end of the runway?
JT: There were, that’s right there were, but she never, she never missed a trip that we were on, no.
MC: So did you mingle with the other crews much during the day?
JT: Well we did obviously but when we to, we had specialist briefing, nav briefing, WOP briefing, pilot briefing, but then, but at night you did OK, I mean we’ve got, if they were in the pub, the same pub as we were we’d mix in there but we never had, we had our own gang.
MC: Were you very conscious of the losses? I mean you know, were you aware of some of the aircraft that didn’t return?
JT: Well, the thing was, the following day there were empty beds. This was it.
BT: Yeah.
JT: That’s when you knew how many had been lost.
MC: Hmm. But it was never you.
JT: No. When you lose five out of eleven that’s a lot of [unclear]. We were, we were always there. We was very lucky.
MC: Is that what you put it down to?
JT: Yeah, it was luck, pure luck.
MC: And the skill of the skipper.
JT: And Dougie Milligan’s skill. Yep, yeah. He was [emphasis] skilful. When he got back he used to get, he got reprimanded once for taking his time coming in to land. He always complied with the instructions [background noise] for landing. Other air traffic come back ‘cos they went before him and they used to play hell about the, but Dougie never did, he always complied with them. [background noise]. The rules of landing. He was a good skipper.
MC: Which contributed to your success.
JT: Oh he did, without a doubt, yeah.
MC: So when you got your medals after the war did you? When did you get, collect your medals, did you apply for them straight away or —
JT: Ah. Did I? I can’t remember now whether in fact they —
MC: So what medals have you got?
JT: I’ve got the France & Germany, the Aircrew Europe, the Victory Medal and another but I don’t know what it is.
BT: Have you got them there John?
JT: They’re there somewhere.
OTHER: They’re in your blazer pocket.
JT: Ahh.
MC: Yeah, I was just asking you know about your medals, what you’ve, when you got them?
JT: I’ve got the Aircrew Medal at the end of it as well. I still put that on.
MC: Yeah. Then you’ll be err, France & Germany Star?
JT: France & Germany.
MC: That’s the one, I think it’s, that’s the one the clasp goes on.
JT: I don’t know, I don’t, didn’t go on, I never put it on anywhere. And then the Aircrew Europe.
MC: Yep.
JT: And then the Victory Medal and then err, I think I’ve forgotten what the other was. There’s certainly four of them. [unclear]
OTHER: No, no.
MC: So when you —
OTHER: They apologised to him.
MC: Talking about America, going back to when you were flying in America.
JT: That’s right.
MC: You say you flew in formation?
JT: Twelve Lancs in formation. Oh we were tight, it was a tight form, I could look out of my Astrodome and see the bloke in the next jar alongside me and we did that in tight formation over America. When we got to Army Air Corps Day the Yanks had three Superforts in formation. They were miles [emphasis] apart, they were absolute bloody rubbish and the commentator said ‘Ladies and gentlemen, don’t you think this is the best bit of formation flying you’ve seen today?’ and he had to apologise for it. Yeah.
MC: You’ve obviously [laughter]
JT: Three miserable bloody Superforts.
MC: You had twelve in tight formation?
JT: Twelve in tight formation.
MC: So you saw a fair bit of America then did you?
JT: Oh yeah we did.
MC: Whereabouts did you get to then?
JT: We started off at New York and Wash —, um, down to down south, oh I forget where it was and then we went to Hollywood, that area and then we went to Texas and we came back to Washington and somewhere else on the coast and then back to err, New York.
MC: So you flew the Lancs across did you?
JT: Oh yeah.
MC: You flew all twelve?
JT: Twelve yeah.
MC: Twelve Lancs across —
JT: That’s right. We stopped off in the middle of the Azores. We had to land in the Azores to refuel.
MC: The Azores?
JT: Yeah. And then we carried on from there to the States and one of our lads nearly wrote the Reception Committee off. He came up too tightly on the front and he had to pull up and the Reception Committee were lying on the deck [laughter] yeah.
MC: You got a good welcome from the Americans then?
JT: We got a wonderful, wonderful welcome, incredible. Really did. But err, I wouldn’t have liked to stay there. Having been born there I wouldn’t go back there, no, no.
MC: Yeah, well, whereabouts were you born?
JT: Helena, Montana.
MC: You did say, yes.
JT: That’s right, yeah. [pause]
BT: We’ve been over there.
JT: Ken and Al have taken me back there and Beryl —
BT: And me.
JT: All the four of us went. They took us over there.
MC: You [unclear] you back yeah.
JT: When did we go?
OTHER: We went on your 80th.
OTHER: Yeah, yep, just as, well I’ll tell you when it was because we stood under the Twin Towers and three months later they weren’t there.
JT: That’s right.
OTHER: They were —
BT: That’s right.
JT: We beat a path between the Twin Towers.
MC: What’s this?
JT: Flying Fortress, fifty thousand feet, bags of ammunition and a teeny weeny bomb.
[laughter]
OTHER: That’s what they said about the Yanks because they were flying so high [unclear]
JT: [unclear] little tiny bomb and we had a four thousand pounder on and a load of ammo. [laughter] In fact we took a crew one night with us and they couldn’t believe it before we got off and where we were going how much bomb, how many bombs we’d got on board. They could not believe it. They did just one trip with us, only one, that was it.
MC: This was on an operation was it, you took a —
JT: Oh yeah.
MC: You took an American —
JT: Took the Yanks one night, I think we took three of the crew [sound of door closing] on the rear gun, one by the skip and one alongside the nav and me. They couldn’t believe where we were going and what load we’d got on. Yeah.
MC: Amazing. ‘Cos they, they didn’t have such a big bomb load.
JT: Well that’s where this little song came from ‘Fly fly a fortress, fifty thousand feet, bags of ammunition and a teeny weeny bomb’ [laughter]
MC: You did two spells at EHB, that was your, wireless operator?
JT: Wireless operator, yeah.
MC: Yeah.
JT: We went from Blackpool to EHB and then we went back for a refresher later on when I’d done my gunnery course, yeah. EHB.
MC: So at that time, there was, what was the living accommodation?
JT: When I went the first time I was an AC2, when I went back the second time I was a sergeant. [laughter] Different approach altogether.
MC: Absolutely yeah. Well thank you very much John for your time.
JT: It’s been a pleasure
MC: Some interesting stories and err, —
JT: It’s nice to talk to you.
MC: and it’s been great talking to you [emphasis].
JT: Thank you very much.
MC: Thank you very much.
JT: It’s a pleasure.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with John Tait
Creator
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Mike Connock
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-06-10
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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.
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00:42:42 audio recording
Language
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eng
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Sound
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ATaitJT160610
Conforms To
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Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
John Tait was prompted to join the Royal Air Force, as he was American by birth and therefore he had to report to the police station once a month because he was considered an ‘alien’. He was a wireless operator and gunner, flying in Ansons, Wellingtons, Stirlings and Lancasters. He was based at RAF Skellingthorpe, enjoying the social life in and around Lincoln, flying bombing operations over the Ruhr Valley as well as various marshalling yards in France. At the end of the war he joined 35 Squadron who flew Lancasters in formation both in the UK and the USA. He was on the first aircraft that was allowed to fly over the White House after the war.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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France
Germany
Great Britain
Wales
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Bridgend
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
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Tina James
35 Squadron
50 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
entertainment
Goodwill tour of the United States (1946)
Lancaster
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Padgate
RAF Scampton
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Stormy Down
searchlight
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/347/3515/PWatsonPHC1701.2.jpg
1a6dd5111450a588dbfdd0228f3bae68
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/347/3515/AWatsonPHC170123.1.mp3
73879fdb831b3fe83b9751209444c0e4
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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Watson, Peter
Peter Henry Clifford Watson
Peter H C Watson
P H C Watson
P Watson
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Peter Henry Clifford Watson (182029 Royal Air Force), his log book and a photograph. He flew operations as an air gunner with 101 and 115 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-01-23
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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Watson, PHC
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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JM: OK [pause] OK, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jean MacCartney and the interviewee is Peter Watson. The interview is taking place at Mr Watson’s home in Clontarf, New South Wales on the 23rd of January 2017. Peter, you mentioned you were born in 1924 but I don’t know quite where. Where was it?
PW: I was born in South Wales, a very — in a little village near Cardiff.
JM: Right, and did you do all your education in Wales?
PW: I did part of it in Wales and then I went to King’s School, Worcester for four years. That’s a cathedral school in Worcester.
JM: Right and does that mean you were part of the choir there?
PW: I was. Well, yes, a little bit. I was what? I used to sing in the choir.
JM: Right, right and was that the, the latter part of your education?
PW: Er, well actually when the war started they evacuated the whole school to North Wales for one year and then they brought us back to Worcester, and then I finished my, er, matriculation in 1941, and left the school there and then started a training to become an engineer until I was old enough to fly.
JM: Right, OK, and so that was until 1943?
PW: ’43.
JM: When you enlisted?
PW: Yes.
JM: And whereabouts did you do your enlistment?
PW: We did it in London.
JM: Ah, the London Recruitment Centre?
PW: Yes.
JM: Right, OK.
PW: There were about a hundred of us in the, in the one intake and, er, I might mention every one of us wanted to be a pilot. We all wanted to fly Spitfires and shoot down Germans, and get Victoria Crosses, and then end up with a romance with the group captain’s daughter but it didn’t happen that way [slight laugh]. And after a couple days we were told, whether we liked it or not, we had to be trained as air gunners because there was a surplus of pilots and a shortage of air gunners, and that was the last thing we wanted, but we volunteered to do what we were told and that’s what we did.
JM: Yes, indeed and where did you do that? After you, you had your recruitment in London and then after that where did you go?
PW: Yes. We went to, I went to Bridlington in Yorkshire, just for ground training then flying training started at Stormy Down at South Wales for several weeks. And then we went to a thing called an OTU, um, Operating Training Unit, in Tilsbury [?] near Sal— , near Sal— near, er, oh dear, North Wales anyhow. And then we crewed-up and then finally went to a four — four-engine — you were trained on two-engine aircraft, then you finally became a crew member and a seven member crew was formed at the, er, four-engine training centre in Lincolnshire.
JM: Right.
PW: And then because we — when we were sent to our first squadron, er, it was known as a special duties squadron because we carried an eighth member of a crew. Instead or seven, we had eight. The eighth member being a German-speaking person, who had radio equipment, who was carried on board our planes to interfere with the German night fighter system.
JM: Right, so this is 101 Squadron?
PW: 101 Squadron.
JM: And this is in February ’44.
PW: Yes. Ludford Magna.
JM: Yes, yes and because that had the ABC equipment, um, is that right?
PW: Airborne Cigar.
JM: Yes, so that was, um, so you, you were in part of those flights there then?
PW: Yes, I did, I did I think it was thirteen or fourteen flights from Ludford Magna and then we were selected to go and form a new squadron, essentially with Polish airmen, at a place called Faldingworth, about twelve miles away, and we finished the rest of our tour with 300 Squadron.
PM: Right, so, um, how long, how — in the 300, 300 Squadron is the Polish Squadron is it?
PW: Yes.
PM: So how long were you in that squadron for?
PW: I think, I think it was about three months between the time that we’d — I think we’d done, I’m not sure, about fourteen or fifteen at Ludford Magna before we went to Faldingworth and we ended up doing the balance of thirty three trips with, with 300 Squadron.
PM: Right, OK. And so that took you through then to 1945?
PW: Well after, after we had finished our tour we had to be grounded for six months and I was selected for some reason or other to, to go to 460 Australian Squadron at Binbrook, in a non- non-operational unit, because they were doing a special — they were trying to introduce radar operated rear turrets in Lancasters and Halifaxes and’ um, I was part of that study to introduce that and it was called Operation Village Inn. But after that, after six months, I got orders to go back on operations so I went down to Number 3 Group in, in, um, Cambridge, and I forget the county’s name of Cambridge but it was Cambridge, and I did two daylight trips with, with 115 Squadron and then the war ended and then we went on to, er, taking food to Holland and then bringing back prisoners of war from France and Italy.
JM: Right, so that was all part of 115?
PW: Yes.
JM: Yes, right. So 115 was probably what? From about May, May ’45 was it?
PW: Yes, yes, 115, September ’45 until, er, September ’46.
JM: Right.
PW: And then, um, funnily enough I went to Leconfield for a two-week training course where your, your father was but by then it was just a post-war training and they were doing training for gunnery leaders, and then I was promoted to gunnery leader of Number 15 Squadron at Wyton. And that’s where I stayed until I was demobbed but I was a flight lieutenant by then. But then at the end, as a post-war economy measure, every war-time officer was reduced in rank from flight lieutenant to flying officer [slight laugh] so I was finally discharged as a flying officer.
JM: Mm, OK. So that was a little thumbnail sketch of, of your service there.
PW: Yes.
JM: Perhaps we’ll go back and, um, just take a look at each of those three sort of postings. What? You said you had about fifteen missions in 101, um, was that more over Ger— over Germany particularly or —
PW: Yes, essentially Germany and then —
JM: And was your, was your plane dropping bombs as well as jamming or —
PW: Oh yes. We were essentially a bomber but we just carried this extra man and we were honour bound never to talk to him about his job, even though he ate and slept with us, we were honour bound not to because of the secrecy but the aircraft were very obviously — you could tell which aircraft they were because they had big aerials forward of the mid-upper turret and, you know, they could pick us off easily and what we didn’t know at the time was that the Germans were able to hone in on our equipment. We didn’t know this until after the war. They were able to hone in on our equipment and pick us off and, er, hence our losses at 101 were much higher than the average. In fact, I think it was Nuremburg, which was the worst of all the night flights, when we lost 108 aircraft, 96 over Germany and I think twelve over England afterwards and, er, it was, it was a dreadful night but there we are. But yes, that was it.
JM: So, um, that meant, obviously, you were going into some pretty densely populated areas I presume?
PW: Yes, yes, yes. Places like Nuremburg, Munich, Augsburg, Schweinfurt, Brunswick, Berlin. I didn’t do Berlin but Berlin was one of the very populous, very common areas. Hamburg in particular, Kiel canal, where, incidentally we went to bomb the martialling yards but, er, accidentally dropped our bombs a little bit away and it, it landed on the German battleship the Admiral Von Scheer and sunk it. So, I mean how lucky were we? And when I say ‘we’ — the squadron. One of the planes from the squadron dropped its bombs in the wrong spot and sank the Von Scheer.
JM: It wasn’t your actual plane?
PW: No.
JM: Right, OK, well so instead of getting a bit of a bollocking they would — there was a bit of a cheer I suspect.
PW: Yes. Yes.
OK. Yes. Yes. So, um, OK. Then when you moved from 101 to 300 did your whole crew move together?
PW: Yes, yes.
JM: So your whole seven stayed together.
PW: The eighth member stayed at 101.
JM: Eight. OK and was your crew, were all of those eight people, er, English or did you have any other —
PW: We had one Canadian.
JM: One Canadian.
PW: Yes and our special operator later on was, was an Aussie, yes, called Beutel, B E U T E L, Graham Buetel. Yes.
JM: Aha and then in your — you had a number of missions in the Polish Squadron? What sort of — was the emphasis — was there any particular action?
PW: We were just, we were just part of the main force but we didn’t leave 101 Squadron at Ludford Magna until two weeks after D-Day, and D-Day was a particularly interesting project for us because we, we were put onto a special flight to try and imitate a naval fleet going from Dover to Calais to try and make the Germans think that that was where the invasion was going to take place, and we went round in, in sort of square circles for about six or eight hours to try to imitate — dropping window stuff to make the Germans think that that might have been where the invasion was taking place. Whether it succeeded we never found out.
JM: So that was still part of 101?
PW: No, er, that was part of 101 and it was the last but one I think before we left, yes.
JM: Right OK and then in, um, Polish Squadron just normal —
PW: Just normal.
JM: Normal routine flights there. Day and night or just —
PW: No, all night stuff and we took a lot of Polish people as extras on flights prior to them taking over the — on their own flights. You see, the Ger— the Polish airmen were complete for one air— for a particular aircraft. It would all be Polish, but before they did that we used to take them as second dickies and things like that, to get them trained and also to control them because they were a very uncontrollable lot, in the sense that their, their hatred for Germany was so great that there were rumours, and I think it happened, that after bombing in Germany they would go down at ground level and try and shoot at all the searchlights with the rear gunners but that was the sort of emotion that existed on that station and it was very prevalent.
JM: Yes so —
PW: But mostly I think of my flying is with 101 because that’s when the dramas started and I did have a couple of dramas.
JM: As in?
PW: Well, I was extremely lucky. In the first flight that we made we got attacked by a Focke-Wulf 190 over the, over the target, and we got hit a little bit and we hit him a little bit and he came back for a second attack on us. We fired at him again and we saw him — well, we saw him going past at the side of us after he flew to one side and another aircraft watching from the other side, flying parallel with us, saw the pilot bail out, so we were unofficially given the credit of having destroyed him, and it was a particularly nasty experience because we also got, we were hit in many places but none of us were personally hurt and we, we thought after that flight we wouldn’t last more than two or three more flights because it was so horrendous, you know. But then the second night, that was at a place called Schweinfurt. And we went to bomb Schweinfurt because they had a lot of production of ball bearings at factories which they needed for the for U-boats, and the U-boats were giving curry in the Atlantic at the time, and they thought if we could bomb the ball bearing factories the U-boats couldn’t go to sea and they couldn’t sink our ships. That was the sort of theory. But the second night was a night where I’ll always remember because over the target we were coned by searchlights. There would have been fifty of them at least and, er, an explosive, a shell, blew, blew us underneath us whilst we were on our bombing run and it completely destroyed all our hydraulics, and also we were hit with another bomb dropping from an aircraft above and we had about six feet of our wing tip broken off. And luckily our pilot, who was wonderful, managed to keep us stable and fortunately all our engines were OK, but we ended up with our bomb doors open with, with some incendiaries that we couldn’t release and, and we couldn’t come back and land normally. We had to come back and belly land because we had no wheels to put down, we had no flaps and we didn’t know even whether we’d make it because we, when we hit the ground we had all these incendiaries on board, but fortunately they dropped off and went off like fireworks while we skidded on the ground for about half a mile and then finally came to a stop, but we, we never thought that we would survive that night but we did. And, do you know, one of the first people to turn up afterwards while we waited for a crew wagon to pick us up was the Salvation Army canteen and they offered us cups of tea and cigarettes. Oh, they were wonderful and, er, but the emotional part of that is that I had to go into hospital for a short while and while I was there my crew went off with another gunner in my place and they never came back. Well they came back but they crash landed and were all killed so there was I, on my own, and the thing that, I suppose emotionally, and I never forget and it’s still with me, er, we shared a Nissan hut with two crews, our crew and another crew, so after my crew disappeared I was the only the one there with the other eight members of another crew. Two days later they disappeared so I was one, one person in a room of sixteen, in the middle of winter with nothing else to do, and the emotion, and knowing that all your crew were dead. And, er, you didn’t have group therapists in those days. You just had to put up with it and that’s sort of stuck with me ever since [sniff] mm.
JM: Goodness me and, and then they expected you to go off and just happily join a new crew and get on with it.
PW: Well, once, once you were — you were seen as a jinx. If you were a survivor of a dead crew nobody wanted you, er, but there were so many times when crews needed other people that I was eventually put with another crew and within a few days we were all good mates and I, we spent the rest of our tour as a crew very happily. Yes.
JM: And is that the crew — and that crew was also all —
PW: They were all English.
JM: English. Which crew was it that the —
PW: Well the pilot of my first crew was a Sergeant Roy Dixon and, er, I didn’t know until later that the night that he died his commission came through as a pilot officer. He was just a sergeant before and he also got the Distinguished Flying Medal. And I have a photograph here of our aircraft when it landed I could give to you if you like.
JM: That would be very interesting to see that.
PW: Incidentally, in the photograph because of security reasons they ob— obliterated the two aerials.
JM: Of course yes, yes.
PW: Yes. That was, er, that was life but it was tough because our losses and, in fact, at Nuremburg we lost five aircraft. That’s a lot of aircraft in one squadron.
JM: That’s a lot. That’s a huge amount, yes. At least from all those subse— those first two missions were the first two that really —
PW: Blooded us.
JM: Yes, well and truly, and then from there on in you, you and your crew stayed intact for the rest of the course of the — all your other subsequent missions, which is so pleasing given such a horrendous, horrendous start for you. Yes indeed. And, um, and then on that basis I guess nothing compared with those early experiences from 300 and 115 really?
PW: No, no, no, they were much easier. I mean, you couldn’t go on and you couldn’t get away with what we got away with there more than once I’m sure, but, er, and luckily by the time we landed from the flight, because we were flying with our bomb doors open and no flaps and so forth we landed when, after everyone else had gone, had landed. Sometimes, or very often, when you got back to your aerodrome there were twenty other aircraft waiting to land and you hung around for perhaps an hour before it was your turn to land but by the time we got home we were about an hour late —
JM: You were a straggler.
PW: And we went straight in but we weren’t allowed to land on the runway. We had to land on the grass which really was good because it was wet and soaking and —
JW: Made it slippery [unclear]
JM: And flame-wise it was good and we didn’t — we anticipated we might blow up because of the bombs we still had on board but they dropped off instantly, fortunately, and by the time we came to a halt — and I don’t think there was much left in the petrol tanks [slight laugh]. But on our first trip I might have mentioned that the — when we were attacked he hit one of our fuel tanks and set it on fire but we were able to extinguish it with an extinguisher system that they had in the aircraft, which is wonderful. And one of the big, one of the big loss reasons — there were two reasons we lost a lot of aircraft, one was collisions, because when you had seven or eight hundred aircraft all going within half an hour of bombing a place you had to be more, more careful than ever of bumping into anyone else and the only times you could see them was when it was moonlight. Other times, all you could see was the red, red exhausts. The exhausts of the Merlin engines are red hot and the only thing, that’s the only thing you could see on a flying, plane flying alongside you, but you had the rear gunner, the mid-upper gunner, the wireless operator and the bomb aimer all looking because they didn’t have anything else to do until they got to the targets, you see. I mean, the bombers would — the air gunners were looking for fighters but the others were also looking for fighters but as well to make sure you weren’t bumping into any aircraft and we had a couple of near misses. But that was the way things were.
JM: That’s right. Right and with, with this crew, um, you stayed together right through in 300 and 115. Did you stay together for the post-war stuff as well?
PW: Yes. Yes. The war finished in, well in May and then in August we were going to go out of the Far East because Japan was still, still active in the Far East but then in August of that year the war ended in Japan, so we never went but we were kept as a squadron. The Air Force kept a fairly strong force of Lancasters and Halifaxes for at least two years and one of the reasons, probably never written in history, but England was frightened of Russia coming west and we, I think the Government, decided we’d better stay powerful, so I didn’t get de-mobbed for two years after the war had finished. But by then of course I was a gunnery leader in 15 Squadron but we had very, very little to do and very boring in the end.
JM: Yes, so you were actually doing what? Training flights or —
PW: Training flights and things like that. And, er, when the immediate war finished in Europe though we were quite busy. We would fly to France and pick up released prisoners of war. The Americans flew them from wherever in Germany, and Italy, and around there to France and then the Royal Air Force used the Lancs and Halifaxes to fly them back to England. And I, I think we had seventy thousand prisoners we managed to get back. Then after that we flew out to Italy to bring similar prisoners of war who’d been stuck in Italy. We flew them back to England. And we loved those trips because we’d never been abroad and it was the first time we’d flown into a place where it was really hot weather and we could buy apricots and peaches. [laugh]
JM: Because again you were flying in, in spring summer sort of by this stage so —
PW: Yes and really the gunners were really only like only flight lieutenants, yes.
JM: Because you actually had no —
PW: Nothing to do except being sort of stewards for the people and of course it was very uncomfortable where they could sit down in the aircraft wherever they could find a spot.
JM: Well that’s right because I presume they tried to put as many people as possible onto those flights to maximise the, the value of each trip so to speak.
PW: Yes. That’s right. It took about five or six hours to get from Italy back to England and that’s a long time for people not in very good condition.
JM: Well because a lot of them would have had injuries, um, sickness and being in prisoner of war camps they would have been in pretty poor shape generally I would assume.
PW: And, er, quite a lot of them had been originally before the war out in India and they were on their way back to Europe in 1940, ‘41 I guess, and they got caught in North Africa and from there they were taken prisoner by the Germans and sent to Italy, so some of them hadn’t seen England since 1935.
JM: Goodness me.
PW: Yes and there was one, there was one old tough old fella there and we put him up in the nose so he could see the white cliffs of Dover and we flew — he started crying. He couldn’t, couldn’t resist. It was very emotional.
JM: He couldn’t not [emphasis].
PW: No.
JM: Goodness me. When you went did you — was it like a day trip for you in as much in that you went straight back in, loaded the servicemen, and then flew straight back out again or did you fly in and have a day off?
PW: Oh we always had a day off.
JM: Day off, right, OK. So you actually got to see the immediate surrounds of the airfields where you flew in then?
PW: Yes, yes.
JM: What memories do you — any particular experiences that stand out there?
PW: [laugh] Funnily enough, funnily enough, um, the first time we went in it was a place called Pomigliano and it was very much a basic aerodrome, and on the end of the runway was a local road, and when we went in the first time we saw a horse and cart [slight laugh] going across just as we were going in and we missed him fortunately. That’s one thing I remember. The other thing was that, you know, being young and, and flippant, we were only what? 19 or 20 years old. We all liked to smile at the local girls but they all had to be chaperoned and, er, they would always have a mother or father or a brother with them so we had to be very careful there. The other thing is that the fruit that we had never seen before, oh it was beautiful and, er, also, you wouldn’t believe it, but even then the, the Italians were flogging watches, you know, wrist watches, and we’d never seen, we’d never seen this sort of post-war stuff that the Italians were doing and, er, funnily enough, and I suppose it’s OK to say this, but our navigator had a girlfriend and he bought her a watch, and because of customs finding out, he put the watch inside a condom and then put it inside an oil filter in the aircraft until we’d got back to base. So whether, whether he got oil in the watch I don’t know but that was one of the funny things that happened. You were asking for unusual memories and that was one of them [slight laugh]
JM: Yes, gosh that’s — it would have been interesting to know whether he got it out in one piece or not undamaged. Yes and so you had those flights and then subsequent to that you had the Manna flights as well?
PW: Yes.
JM: And how many runs would you have done?
PW: I think we only did only about three.
JM: Right.
PW: Yes, and the first time we went over we had to come back because the airfield or the — I think it was a sports ground, where it had been arranged that we should go and drop, it was full of people and we realised that we would, we’d be bombing people with tins of flour and potatoes and things like that, so we came back and waited until the Germans cleared the thing and then we went in and dropped the food. We weren’t very accurate because we’d never been trained and one lot went into the greenhouses. That didn’t appeal to them very much. But you saw people on, on the roof tops waving sheets and clothes and things just to welcome us because we had to go in at ground level. And one thing that I remember one of the last trips we made was on the VE, er, VE night when there was to be a big celebration in the, in the mess, have a party to celebrate the end of the war, and we had flown so low that we evidently hit the branch of a tree because when we got back we found our bomb door, when we opened it, had a big scar in it and it was a piece of tree in it and so our ground crew were very upset because they were going to miss the party because they had to repair it overnight [slight laugh]. Isn’t it funny how you remember these little things.
JM: Yes, absolutely. And so were your trips there all to the same place in — when you were doing these drops?
PW: Yes.
JM: Which was where?
PW: It was Juvincourt in France and Pomigliano which is virtually I think Naples, in Italy. Yeah, they were was the only two places we went.
JM: The Manna drops I’m talking about.
PW: Oh, the Manna drops. No, I think, I think two were to The Hague. I think one was Amsterdam or Rotterdam. It’s very vague now, yes. I have a photograph of, of stuff being dropped whilst we were doing training in England. We did train for a few days to know how to do it and I’ve got a photograph if it’s any use to you.
JM: Yes, we’ll have a look at that afterwards. Thank you. That would be very interesting. And so then, um, with 115 I believe there were a couple of notable planes in that squadron. Were you ever, um, did you ever hear, were you ever close to any of those pl— notable planes or just —
PW: Well, it was an unusual squadron, um, because with the development of radar we were able to, we were able to go and bomb and have the bombs released from a ground station instead of ourselves and we were able then — I think our last trip, I think it was to Hamburg or somewhere and we were able to bomb half a mile from the front line British troops, and there was a bridge or something they wanted bombed and, and, er, I can tell you now. Can you just pause for a second? [pause] To The Hague and one to Rotterdam. That is food dropping. Then we went to Juvincourt to pick up prisoners, ex-prisoners or war, two trips there, and the last was to Brussels and then we went to Eng— to Europe after, to Italy, Operation Dodge it was called. We went to — oh, Bari but it was actually I think it was Pomigliano. Bari is, is the capital of — it’s on the Adriatic side of Italy. And, er, after that that was the end of our really useful work.
JM: But you were saying about [unclear] the, um, with the bombing with the — from the ground the — that’s using the G coordinates is it?
PW: It was called, um, it was called G2 I think. We flew in formation of three and, er, only one of the aircraft had the equipment on board and as soon as he dropped his bombs we, we dropped visually on his bombs. We saw his going. We knew they were due to go and as soon as he felt his go he pressed a button and we would release ours.
JM: Right and which —
PW: Hamburg I think it was.
JM: Hamburg. [background noise of pages turning] I’m trying to think back. ’45.
PW: Yes. 115. Just April ’45. Just one month before the end of the war. ‘Intense accurate heavy flak,’ I notice here. So that was at Bremen, not Hamburg, I beg your pardon.
JM: Right.
PW: Bremen and we were damaged by flak. It was very, very accurate. But sometimes, you know, you’d feel a bump then — well we didn’t knew where it came from but when you got back home you might find a few holes in your fuselage and, er, on one occasion, it’s rather amusing, the only bloke who got damaged was our bomb aimer and he got, he got damaged. He got a piece of shrapnel into his bottom [slight laugh], not seriously, but he was the only one who was hurt. But frostbite was a problem for the gunners and that was what put me into hospital, um, when they went off with another gunner. It was at Ludford Magna. I’d got a lot pain. It wasn’t severe but it was enough to stop me because you had to be one hundred per cent fit before they’d allow you to fly. If there was anything slightly wrong with you they used one of the spares to take your place. Particularly important was the breathing because, you see, up at above ten thousand feet you had to go onto oxygen, and one of the reasons why the losses were so great with rear gunners was it took so long to get out of a turret, if you had to get out quickly, because if he was on oxygen he’d have to disconnect, then find a bottle of, a bottle of portable oxygen, connect that up then [emphasis] get out of his — and what? He had four pairs of gloves on and, and trying to get out was hopeless. I would say two or three minutes at the earliest he could need to try to get out a rear turret and in the meantime, of course, by then it could be too late. And on that trip to Augsburg that I mentioned we got hit, as well as damaging our hydraulics, er, the bottom floor of the aircraft was blown out and the rear door, which we used for getting in and out of it, was blown out as well so how we, how we got back I don’t know to this day. And he, and Sergeant Roy Dixon, our pilot, he was all of twenty years old. You know, when you think of it —
JM: Amazing, amazing.
PW: So I, so I have a lucky star.
JM: You have indeed and were you a mid-upper gunner most of the time?
PW: Most of the time I was mid upper, on a few trips I was rear gunner. Most of the time I was mid- upper, yes, yes.
JM: So you would have been able to —
PW: Oh that’s an easier place to get in and out of. It doesn’t quite get so bitterly cold because you got a little bit of heat coming back. The people at the front were warmed by the engines. They had a warming system and so forth but the, the rear gunner was the coldest of all.
JM: That’s right.
PW: And I might mention one of the big losses was that the Germans introduced a very clever idea, instead of firing from wing guns, they put a forty millimetre cannon into the fuselage pointing upwards, forty-five degrees, and they would come up underneath and fire at us, and a forty mill— cannon you only need a few things to set the petrol on fire and that would be the end of the aircraft but, you see, we couldn’t see them because we couldn’t look down. The Americans had a belly gunner but we didn’t. We had nothing. We were blind. That’s right.
JM: So that’s why quite a lot of losses were due to that experience.
PW: Yes.
JM: Yes and with, um, your crew after the war did you maintain contact?
PW: No, no. Well you see we came out to Australia two years after I retired from the — well I was demobbed from the RAF and, er, they were all scattered all over the place. We sent Christmas cards but they eventually disappeared. I never kept up after I left, left England in May ’49.
JM: May ’49.
PW: With a three month old baby.
JM: Right. OK.
PW: And when we got on board, on board the migrant ship, the people at the top of the gangway they said, ‘OK Mr Watson you go down that end of the ship and Mrs Watson and the baby you go up that end.’ So three weeks of the trip we were separated. Of course we met during the day but at night — but of course instead of two people in the cabin we had four because they were — anyway we were very lucky to have got that migrant ship, very lucky.
JM: And that was May ’49, so coming, stepping back a little bit, so you were demobbed in, um, ’47 so between, er, from the time you were demobbed did you work or —
PW: Yes, I went back to the company that was training me as an engineer.
JM: Where was that?
PW: In Cardiff.
JM: Cardiff right.
PW: Yes and [slight laugh] I was earning, I was earning five shillings a week, would you believe it. It’s one of those things, like an apprenticeship. I think they called it an articled pupillage? Anyhow, my boss was a wonderful man because in the meantime I had fallen in love with a lovely girl and wanted to get married but on going back to getting back to getting fifteen shillings a week or five shillings a week I couldn’t do that and he smiled at me and said, ‘Look, you get married and I’ll see that you’re alright.’ And he did [slight laugh] and I was with that girl for fifty-eight years and she died in 2004.
JM: Right, right.
PW: Yes and her best friend had lost her husband, and she and her late husband, and Audrey my wife and I had been friends for forty years, and when Audrey died Ruth, the other, the widow, and I got together and we’re together now. And it’s been twelve very happy years.
JM: Very good.
PW: And that’s her there.
JW: That’s her there. That’s right. And so you got married and then made the decision to come to Australia. What prompted that decision?
PW: Er, well first of all I had developed asthma. I’d had a little bit of it as a kid but it came, it came back as a post-war thing I think and somebody said, ‘Why don’t you go to a warm climate?’ Not, not only that I was in an industry that was going to be nationalised, and everyone was very depressed, and even in 1949 rationing was still on. You still had to ration petrol and that sort of thing. And Audrey, my wife, had an uncle, who was very prominent in Australia, and he came to London on a conference and while he was there he came down to see his sister, who was my — was Audrey’s mother, and said, ‘Look if you come to Australia I can assure you we can get you a job and we need new migrants.’ That’s how it all started and never looked back.
JM: Never looked back. No, so obviously —
PW: And our three-month old baby is now sixty-seven and we produced as Aussie but she died in a car accident when she was sixteen. It’s one of those awful things that you have to put up with. So that’s my story as an air gunner.
JM: Yes and that’s — and when you came, when you migrated did you come here to Sidney?
PW: No, sorry, we migrated to Perth.
JM: Perth right.
PW: Yes. We were there for seven years and then I got a job with Caltex Oil as an engineer and I was there for thirty-two years. Not in Perth but a couple of years after I joined them, er, they promoted me to a manager of an installation in Adelaide, and so we moved to Adelaide and we were there for ten years, and after penny died ( she was killed in Adelaide) the company said, ‘Why don’t you come to Sidney and start again.’ And my wife was a very plucky mother and she was fretting terribly and though she resisted coming she knew it was the best thing to do, so we did it, and that was 1967 and we’ve been here ever since.
JM: And did you come here to Contagh or — straight away?
PW: No we were three months in — the company had a flat in Martin Place, Martin, no not Martin. Oh I forget the name of it. Anyhow, Win—
JM: Oh, OK.
PW: And we were there —
JM: Market Street.
PW: Market Street. That’s it, yes. Right opposite the park.
JM: A brilliant park there.
PW: Yes and whilst we were there Audrey was looking for a place. She was the searcher for a place to come and live and she was offered this place and it had been on the market for five months because, as you can appreciate, young people can’t afford to live here and old people don’t want it because it’s so steep but at the time you buy you never think you’re going to get old, do you? So anyhow we bought this place for, would you believe, thirty-five thousand dollars [laugh] but that’s how things were.
JM: That’s how things were back then. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right, yes. So right and as I say — well you just stayed with Caltex through to, until you finished?
PW: Well, I was sort of given a package. When computers came in and they wanted to get rid of numbers and all the oldies, I was fifty-nine by then, they said, ‘Would you please go.’ Sort of thing.
PW: So I retired from there and I started a business of my own which I’m still running.
JM: Oh OK, right. Oh very good, very good, and that’s just a sort of consultancy business I presume?
PW: Yes, yes. It’s to do with finance broking, yes, but for twelve years, the first twelve years after I retired, I actually had a pump agency for an American company and I eventually sold that and with the proceeds I started a broking company ,which I’m still running.
JM: Still running. Goodness me. And going right back to the very beginning when you enlisted, way back in ’43, what was the decision, was there any decision in particular that directed you to Air Force rather than Navy or Army?
PW: Yes, yes. I’d always, you know, wanted to fly and so you vol— put your name down as a volunteer and I guess they kept your name on until you were old enough to be called up. And, and they said, ‘Are you still keen?’ And I said, ‘yes’ and I went up to Birmingham for a test, a medical test, and back to Cardiff and they said, ‘You’re fit enough. We’ll call you up next week.’ And they did [laugh]. It was a great disappointed when we were told we had no choice.
JM: To be an air gunner.
PW: Nobody wanted to be an air gunner. They called it the lowest form of animal life in air crew. But still there we are.
JM: And what — you said you’d always wanted to fly. What was the attraction, of just being —
PW: Well I think, um, the Battle of Britain and the success of our, of our planes then inspired young people like myself and, you know, you were going through the romantic age of what do you want to be when you know you’ve got to go? And Air Force was more appealing than the Army or the Navy. Yes, my sister went into the Navy. Ruth, my partner, she was a WREN. Yes, so we were all in it. And, er, actually we were, before that, in 1941, it’s the only time that Cardiff ever got bombed badly. A few times, I remember there was one bad raid and I was stuck in Cardiff while the raid was on but it was OK. But then I had to walk back to my little village, which was seven miles away, in the dark because the power, all the power had gone off. When I got there I found all the windows and doors of my house had been blown in and what had happened was that a stray bomb, because I mean who would want to bomb a little village, a stray bomb the Germans had dropped about a hundred yards on the other side of the road, on the golf course that we faced, and it had blew it all in but my family had gone to the back of the house into an air raid shelter that they had there and they survived. But we had to evac— evacuate our house because it was unliveable until it was repaired. So we went down to a place called Llanelli, which is about fifty or hundred miles west of there, put up with some friends and eventually got back into our house.
JM: Right. And your family had built the air raid shelter in the garden?
PW: They actually converted the back veranda with steel and stuff and, you know, and when the raid was on it as only my mum and my sister. I was in Cardiff, and my eldest sister, and my elder sister sorry, and my two sisters and my mother and another cousin, who was expecting a baby, but she lived in London and came back to Cardiff, came down to Cardiff to have her baby because she thought it was safer and she ran into — but they survived.
PM: Yes, yes but even in Cardiff though and out, and I appreciate that you’re saying your village was seven miles out of Cardiff, but even then the, um, the normal procedure was to build some sort of — at that time was to build an air — some sort of shelter?
PW: Something safe. I think the main thing was with those sort of things was that falling beams from your house or your roof. You know, I mean, you hear of people hiding under the dining room table because that was protected but, um, and some people put an air raid shelter in their, in their garden, and the Government provided a galvanised iron sort of thing. It was a very easy thing to do but it was the safe, the safest thing you could do.
JM: Mm, yes. So that would have — that was just another sort of —
PW: And it was the only bomb that had ever dropped in the village. Because, you know, I would imagine the like, having the experience later on, you sometimes had the odd bomb that didn’t drop off and you went and released it and it didn’t matter where it fell so long as you got rid of it. So I think that’s probably what happened. But of course the local press said that they were after the, you know, they put all the experienced people have said, ‘Oh yes, well they knew something we didn’t.’ It was wonderful.
JM: Oh dear yes, yes, but as you say that was the only time that Cardiff was actually —
PW: Heavily, severely bombed as a city. Other times it had bits and pieces blown, er, thrown at it but this was the Baedeker [?] raid but it wasn’t successful in the sense that it wasn’t concentrated, it was spread out, but what had happened was that they — it had effected the power supply and everything was in dark and, you know, in January that’s really dark and when I had to walk home seven miles in complete darkness —
JM: And that was January ’43 was it or ‘42?
PW: ’43,
JM: ’43, yes.
PW: Sorry no, ’41, yeah, two years before I went — I was only a school boy.
JM: Right, right, so ’41. Mm, gosh. So that was a very, much of a little bit of a taste of what London was experiencing and all the other cities in England , so —
PW: Yes, yes. I think what had happened was that they stopped bombing London. I think they thought they couldn’t do any more with London and I think they were going to concentrate on shipping ports to try and starve England. That was — they really wanted to starve us into submission, you see, with their U-boats and they were very successful and very close to succeeding I think at times. But anyhow Cardiff is a port, you see. Cardiff is very much like Newport, our Newport here. They produce steel, they produce coal and about the same size but there you are.
JM: Yes, yes. That’s right. Yes, and in terms — you mentioned you didn’t maintain any contacts, er, long term ongoing contacts with your former crew members.
PW: No.
JM: Did you, were you aware of any associations, um, to link up with, you know, in Australia here at any time? Did you became a member of RSL or join in and then subsequently — about the only other organisation would have been the Odd Bods Association because you came here to Sidney in ‘67 I think so —
PW: Oh I’d been in the RSL right from day one and of course I joined 460 Squadron old boys here because although I didn’t operate from 460 I was sent to the Squadron and we used their aircraft for training on this thing called Village Inn. Yes, and actually for me it was six months of very easy living because I didn’t have to fly on operations. By then I was an officer and you were in — and Binbrook was a peacetime built ‘drome so the facilities were very, very good.
JM: Yes, so that was sort of a, a far more peaceful, less stressful, sort of period of time for you rather than the stress of the tour?
PW: Oh there was no stress at all whatsoever. In fact it was very easy living. That was the intention to try and defuse you and, you know, so — by the way my second pilot, who I joined after the raid when Roy Dixon was killed, we kept an association afterwards and he, he left Bomber Command and went into the Fleet Air Arm, and finally he was retired, and he came to my wedding in 1946, er, and but then he went out to North Africa doing something with the shipping company. We kept on for a little while but we’ve lost — I’d have liked to have kept — I regret now that I didn’t.
JM: But communication back then is not what it is today.
PW: No, I think that’s right.
JM: I mean between — only being able to post letters that took weeks to, to get anywhere and you couldn’t make phone calls back then because they cost so much money between Australia and, and the UK and, er, not everyone had a phone back then you know so —
PW: But I always felt though I’d like to have kept in touch with Roy Dixon’s family, you know, but, um, I mean I was — although I was in hospital I wasn’t serious in hospital but I was just not fit enough for flying because of this frostbite thing but, um, when Roy was killed in Norfolk he was able to be buried back in his home, near Doncaster I think it was, and but they wouldn’t allow me to go to his funeral because of the, ‘Oh, why you? Why are you alive and my son is dead?’ Sort of thing. I can understand that and of course you also had the problem with people who couldn’t take, couldn’t take it and they refused to fly after their first two or three missions. Their nerves went. And they were very, very severley treated by the Air Force. They were branded LMF, called lack of moral fibre, and they were sent off nasty jobs and got rid of.
JM: Very difficult times.
PW: Oh very difficult. I think fear, fear kept you together and, and doing the right thing by your mates, you know, kept you together.
JM: And I think, from what I understand, that’s what they used that glue to keep those crews together to, to ensure that moral support within the crew all the time.
PW: Well, one of the things that I haven’t mentioned but it is significant is, how do you choose your crew? And the simple answer is that, er, when you were, when you were — during training and you’d finished, everyone was ready to be put together as a crew, they put you all into a hangar one afternoon and there was probably hundreds of us, after we’d finished our training, the pilots, navigators, bomb aimers and so on and they said, ‘Listen boys you’ve got to form yourself into crews. Go and have a yarn with each other and see if you can match up friendships.’ And that’s all it was and it was the most successful system the Air Force had ever used because you were then with people who’d picked you or you picked them and, you mean, you might see one bloke and say, ‘I like that bloke. I wonder if he needs an air gunner.’ Or a pilot might say, ‘Have you got a crew yet?’ If he liked the look of you and I said, ‘No’ or ‘Yes’ and that’s how it went, and you ended up with seven crew, seven members of the crew. One or two of them might have been officers but it didn’t matter. You were all crew together.
JM: Yes, that’s an interesting approach to the way —
PW: Some didn’t like it. It was a very sensible thing to do.
JM: Yes, well I guess it was from the point of view that they knew they were going to keep the crews together so it was important for the crews to each like each other.
PW: Yes, exactly, yeah. And that also built a camaraderie I suppose so you never let your crew down. You were always aware that without you they could be in trouble and each one, perhaps less with wireless operators and bomb aimers, but with pilots and navigators — well, if they didn’t have a good navigator you were in trouble because you’d get picked off. If you didn’t have a good air gunners who picked up enemy aircraft when you should be shooting at him, you know, you realise how important each job was. And, er, and also I found that we were attacked many times but if they find out that you, if you fired at them quickly they would leave you alone because it was awful for them to come in from behind with — you’ve got four guns in the rear turret and two in the mid-upper and you’re firing bout twelve rounds a minute and he’s got to fly into that to shoot at you so he never came in behind you, he came in on a curve. Now, if, if you saw him coming in on a curve and you timed it right and then you turned the same way as he was going he couldn’t get around to shoot you, so if you, if you kept your nerve and did the corkscrew at the right time he’d never get you. Interesting.
JM: Very interesting.
PW: But of course doing a corkscrew when you’re in several hundred aircraft, right?
JM: It was a little bit difficult.
PW: Collision was awful.
JM: Yes. Again comes back to the skill of the pilot and to the lesser extent the navigator.
PW: And more often as not he still had his load on board, his bombs. Never mind. I don’t know how many tons, I suppose four or five tons. I’ve no idea but it was a very heavy load.
JM: It was a very heavy load to take but Lancasters and Hallies were all carrying at that time.
PW: Your husband would be on Hallies I would think?
JM: Not my husband, my father.
PW: Pardon.
JM: My father.
PW: Your father rather.
JM: On Hallies yes. So, yes. So that’s some amazing memories that you’ve shared with me now. I really appreciate your time and, um, your thoughts.
PW: Well, thank you very much.
JM: But there’s probably time to wrap up at this stage. I presume there’s nothing else that you, no particular thoughts that you want to mention. Any other things that you — you mention you do speeches for Probus Clubs so was there anything from those speeches we haven’t covered or —
PW: No I think what we’ve covered is what, what formed my thing. A lot of people ask questions because they had parents or uncles or brothers who said, ‘Did you know Sergeant Jones, so and so.’ You know. But it was a big force, the bomber force, we didn’t — but there we are. I’ve had a very lucky life, very lucky, and lucky in that sense, you know, but and also I was one of the luckiest — we’re not recording now are we?
PM: Yes.
PW: Oh. Well it doesn’t matter but, er, one of the fortunate things was that during the depression of 1935 to ‘38, ‘39 my father retained his job, which was pretty good in those days, which enabled me to be given a decent education and that’s held me in good stead all my life. And that’s why I, one felt that with the education that I had, to have to be an air gunner was a bit degrading because, you know, we were all pipe-dreaming at the time about it. As I said before we wanted to fly Spitfires, the glamour of that, being shot at [laugh].
JM: Yes, indeed, indeed.
PW: But we made wonderful friendships and some of the bravery of some of those fellas was quite incredible. You’ve probably read about it all.
JM: Did any of the — your pilot wasn’t awarded any, um, given any award for bringing that plane home in the way he did?
PW: Yes. He was awarded the DFM but he didn’t know it until he died, you know, when he died it was the same day that his commission came through. So he got the DFM not the DFC. DFM is for non-commissioned, DFC was for commissioned. I got a Polish, Polish award. I forget what it was called now, something, er, but I never bothered with it but it was just some sort of service medal, you know, but there you are.
JM: Very good. Aright well I think we’ll wrap it up if you’re happy with that?
PW: Yes. What’s the time?
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AWatsonPHC170123, PWatsonPHC1701
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Interview with Peter Watson
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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eng
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01:05:04 audio recording
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Pending review
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Jean Macartney
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2017-01-23
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Watson was born in South Wales and joined the Royal Air Force in 1943. He wanted to be a pilot but there was a surplus of pilots so he became an air gunner. He crewed-up and flew with 101 Squadron initially, a special duties squadron, and he explains they took an extra crew member who had radio equipment, Airborne Cigar, to interfere with German systems. He describes the first two flights being memorable; on the first night his aircraft was shot by a Focke-Wulf. On the second night, during a bombing trip to Schweinfurt the aircraft was coned by searchlights and was badly damaged by a shell and bomb being dropped from above. He also describes the squadron’s role in D-Day. He later transferred to 300 squadron, a Polish Squadron, to help train the Polish crews. He completed 33 operations. He describes the Operation Manna drops and Operation Exodus, picking up prisoners of war. He was eventually de-mobbed in 1947, by which time he was a Flight Lieutenant gunnery leader. He talks about the discomforts of flying but also the camaraderie of the crews and his distress at losing a crew. They didn’t return when they went on a flight without him. After being de-mobbed Peter returned to a job in engineering but emigrated to Australia in 1949 with his wife and baby.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Kiel Canal
Italy
Italy--Pomigliano d'Arco
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
101 Squadron
115 Squadron
15 Squadron
300 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
crewing up
fear
Fw 190
Gee
grief
military ethos
military service conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
radar
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Wyton
searchlight
training
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/302/3459/PLambAM1702.2.jpg
5bb20bc0ccac9b450bc8f96ec8e8496b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/302/3459/AMcPhersonLambA150726.1.mp3
5e35283fa31ed4090662324faaffc571
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
Lamb, Alexander
Alexander McPherson Lamb
Alexander M Lamb
Alexander Lamb
A M Lamb
A Lamb
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. An oral history interview with Alexander McPherson Lamb (b. 1925, 1827673 Royal Air Force), his decorations, album and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 15 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Alexander Lamb and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-25
2017-08-16
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lamb
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BB: Good morning Alistair, and thank you for letting me come into your home. I am representing the International Bomber Command Centre at Lincoln and we’re doing an oral history of Bomber Command veterans. So this interview is being held with Mr Alexander McPherson Lamb in his home in Stirling. Would you like to tell us your story? Thank you.
AML: Well, I joined the RAF in — I think it was March. I’m not quite sure now unclear] I think it was March. And I volunteered for aircrew. I was a junior clerk in the civil service. War Department. And I joined the RAF in, I think it was March. March ’44 I think it would be. I can’t remember.
[background chat]
BB: Sorry Alistair.
AML: That’s alright. You start again? Or is it alright?
BB: No. Just carry on.
AML: You’ve stopped it.
BB: Yeah. Just carry on. Yeah.
AML: And I think it was March ’44. And I volunteered as an air gunner. Had my attestation and medical and whatnot initially in Edinburgh prior to that. And I think I actually joined in March ’44. Yeah. March ’44 was when I actually joined. Went down to London to Aircrew Reception Centre in London where we were sort of needles stuck in us and examined and —
BB: Was that the one in St John’s Wood?
AML: Pardon?
BB: St John’s Wood.
AML: St John’s Wood. Yes. St John’s Wood. Then we went from there overnight by train to Bridgnorth.
BB: In Wales.
AML: I can’t remember the number of the OTU. Of the thing it was. Bridgnorth anyway. I can’t remember where, what it was actually called. It would be RAF. I can’t remember what Bridgnorth was. I’ve got it somewhere. Maybe get it in my logbook.
BB: Ok. We’ll look at that later.
AML: And then did our initial training there. March, gunnery, various things. Air force law. The usual jazz that you get when you join up first of all. And after that we were then [pause] I can’t remember how long we were there. I’d need to look up my logbook again. We then went to gunnery school which was at Stormy Down in Wales.
BB: Right.
AML: Number 7.
BB: That’s right. Number 7 Air Gunner’s School.
AML: At Stormy Down’s in Wales. Near, near Porthcawl. A lovely — it was a good station and I enjoyed it very much. We flew in Ansons there.
BB: Yeah.
AML: We did our gunnery in Ansons there. We passed out. It would be in 28th I think. 28th of July or June, I’m not quite sure, ’44. And then came home on leave. From that we went back to Market Harborough. OTU. 14 OTU Market Harborough.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Where we spent the first three weeks more or less meeting people. Knowing about, meeting guys. All the crews that were there. And you were allowed a month, a fortnight or three weeks to what was called crew up. There was no compunction. You picked your own crew over a period of time and that. Then you went in a huge hangar and I don’t know who it would be, the CO or somebody said, ‘Who are the people who have got full crews?’ And they all went to one side. The last of us were left. If you didn’t have a full crew you were then left and there would be other spare people left as well.
BB: Right.
AML: And they would then say, ‘Well here’s a spare pilot.’ ‘Here’s a spare navigator.’ ‘Here’s a spare gunner.’ Would you all like to, ‘Would you like to crew up?’ And basically that’s how you crewed up.
BB: Which was all very sensible really because you got to know people that you could trust and you liked and you got on well with.
AML: That’s right. That’s right.
BB: So there was method in their madness.
AML: Oh there was. The usual thing as you do in all these things when you join up first. There’s always somebody who knows something about everything. And they said, ‘Oh look for a warrant officer pilot because he’ll have a lot of flying experience. Don’t look for a young flying officer who’s got none.’ Or a young sergeant pilot. A general thing.
BB: Very sensible.
AML: It didn’t matter. You just picked who you found. You took a like to somebody even before you know their qualifications. If you liked them you liked them you know.
BB: Yes.
AML: We picked a warrant officer pilot and when we went in to be crewed up we were told well he’s been posted somewhere else. We were then left standing until this lone sergeant pilot arrived. We didn’t know he was French and they said, ‘Well here’s a pilot needing somebody. What about a crew?’ And I must have been looked at and he said, ‘What would you like to ask?’ I said, ‘Well we’ll take up then.’ So that’s how we got crewed up.
BB: So you had this French, a French airman.
AML: Very very much French actually.
BB: French pilot.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Who was kind of left.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Was he in the French Air Force or was he in the RAF?
AML: He was in the French Air Force initially I think.
BB: Right.
AML: He came from — maybe this is more or less rubbish to you.
BB: No. No. Carry on.
AML: He came from France when the Germans invaded. I forget where it was. It was down in the south of France. Not as far as they were but it was quite far down. Near Bordeaux I think he was.
BB: Right. Southern France. In Vichy France.
AML: Aye. And he escaped and came back to this country and because he had very little English at that time he was put in a reserved occupation building aircraft. He was punching wing ribs out for an Auster aircraft in Leicester.
BB: Oh I see. Right.
AML: That’s where he was sent to. And he got so fed up with it he said the only way you could get out of a reserved occupation during the war was if you were volunteered for submarines or aircrew.
BB: I see. Right. They were so short on both.
AML: So he volunteered for aircrew and did his training, I understand with the French Air Force and the French training him. Probably the RAF but under the auspices of the French.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And then in the usual way the wheels worked somebody said, ‘What’s this guy with a Scottish, with an English name doing in the French Air Force?’ Jack was then humped out of one into the other and we got him at OTU. His language was quite a problem for a while but we got to know about it. We then went on to Wellingtons at OTU at Market Harborough. And, I don’t know, I can’t remember the dates at Market Harborough. I need to look up my logbook.
BB: That’s ok.
AML: But you can fill them in after. I think we went to Market Harborough in ’44 some time. I can’t remember when. August ’44. I need to look at my logbook. You’ll see it in the logbook.
BB: Yes.
AML: ’44. Market Harborough I think. And we left there and when we did our stint we did a hundred and ten, about a hundred and ten hours on Wellingtons at Market Harborough. The reason we did so many is another story I wouldn’t bore you with. Anyway, and we then went home on leave and came back as a crew to — what did I say it was? Heavy conversion. 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit.
BB: 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit at Wigsley.
AML: Wigsley. Wiglsey.
BB: Yes.
AML: Flying Stirlings.
BB: Yes. How did you find the Stirling?
AML: I liked the Stirling very much indeed. I was very taken with the Stirling. Very very strong aircraft. Very robust aircraft. Plenty of room in it. Because you know how tremendous.
BB: Yes.
AML: I got extra flying time. We used to carry on till the [unclear] you see.
BB: It was a long way off the ground. I remember. And I see you have a model here too which shows the size of it.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Compared to the same scale.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: That you have a Wellington or a Lancaster.
AML: Aye. It was wingspan. You know the story. The wingspans were reduced to get it in to the hangar.
BB: Yes. That’s right.
AML: Which didn’t do it any good at all.
BB: No. Not good at all. No.
AML: It was literally a Sunderland wing.
BB: Yeah. Oh I see.
AML: You see.
BB: Made by Short’s of course.
AML: But ninety nine feet which made it very manoeuvrable but it couldn’t get much higher than —
BB: Couldn’t get the height.
AML: Sixteen thousand and there.
BB: Which made it very vulnerable to flak and fighters.
AML: Very vulnerable to flak. Yeah. Yeah. Same types of turret I had in the Lanc of course. Exactly the same. Anyway —
BB: Yes. Frazer and Nash turret.
AML: Went from there to the same OTU, same conversion. We went to, joined Lancs at that unit. We were then, we went over to Lancs at the same place. 14 OTU.
BB: 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit.
AML: Conversion Unit.
BB: Yeah.
AML: We went on to —
BB: 15 Squadron.
AML: No. Not at that time.
BB: Ok.
AML: We were then posted when we finished that course. I forget how long. I don’t remember how long. It wasn’t terribly long. We then went to 15 Squadron at Mildenhall in March ’45.
BB: That’s right.
AML: More or less a year after we joined. March. I joined a year ’45. And the first thing we did when we got there we were sent to Feltwell to do a GH bombing course.
BB: Gosh that must have been interesting.
AML: It was only about a fortnight’s course I think. A beautiful little airfield. I think it was Harvards they had there. It was a fighter. I think. I can’t remember.
BB: Yeah.
AML: But it was a very nice peacetime ‘drome. A lovely place. I liked Feltwell for the short time we were there.
BB: So that was fighter affiliation.
AML: No. We simply did GH bombing training.
BB: Just bombing training. Ok.
AML: For the navigator’s really.
BB: Yeah.
AML: The navigators and bomb aimers. This type of GH bombing. I can’t remember.
BB: Yes. That would meant that you would have two yellow stripes on your tail when you qualified to be a bombing leader.
AML: Aye. GH leader. Some of —
BB: Yeah.
AML: Some of the aircraft had yellow striped on the tail.
BB: Yeah. That’s right.
AML: Some hadn’t. It was a means of identification.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: Then we came back from there just more or less overnight to RAF Mildenhall itself. Where we were originally. And we were there at RAF Mildenhall until we left in — when would it be? When did we leave Mildenhall?
BB: Mildenhall.
AML: ’46 I think we left Mildenhall.
BB: 20th of August ’46 I think you mentioned before.
AML: Yeah. They moved. They moved to Wyton. The squadron moved to Wyton.
BB: Did you go with them to Wyton?
AML: We went to Wyton. Yeah.
BB: Yeah. Ok.
AML: And the crew, the whole crew went to it. That was the last trip my skipper did. He was then posted as an instructor.
BB: Right. He was screened.
AML: Aye.
BB: And went off to an OTU.
AML: Aye and of course by that time everybody was getting broken up because ’46 the demobbing was taking its toll and people were coming and going. And new people were coming in and sort of general get togethers what was disappearing quickly because you were losing people left, right and middle. And as I say I was fortunate. I stayed flying until I was demobbed which was quite lucky for me.
BB: Yes. Yes. That’s right.
AML: Because 15 was a peacetime squadron. So that’s why I think.
BB: Yes. So with that pretty well organised.
AML: Pre-war squadron.
BB: Yes.
AML: That’s why we were probably kept as such. 44 and 15 and some of the others, 7 were all peacetime squadrons.
BB: All the wartime squadrons were disbanded.
AML: That’s right. Yeah. Were all disbanded.
BB: The peacetime squadrons were re-kept.
AML: Yeah.
BB: And some of the wartime ones were re-kept.
AML: Yeah well —
BB: Like 617 for example.
AML: We had Tuddenham. We talked about Tuddenham.
BB: Tuddenham. Yes.
AML: Just across the road from us.
BB: Yeah. Yes.
AML: A case of wheels up, wheels down, landing.
BB: Yes.
AML: Then we stayed there until we were posted. As I say we were posted to Wyton. Wyton, a beautiful station. A peacetime.
BB: Yes. I’ve been to Wyton. Yes.
AML: A very modern peacetime station.
BB: Yes.
AML: A lovely station. And I was there until I was demobbed.
BB: Yes.
AML: We did a lot of stuff after the war. Immediately after the war, before the war actually ended in Japan. We brought liberated prisoners of war back. We did supply dropping to the Dutch.
BB: Yes.
AML: I got a medal from the Dutch government for that. We did three trips of supply dropping to the Dutch and I think we did three trips for bringing prisoners of war back but I think we came in to —
BB: Yeah.
AML: Westcott.
BB: Westcott. Yes.
AML: I think so.
BB: In Bucks.
AML: Oh my memory’s not as good as it used to be I’m afraid.
BB: So — that’s ok. So how many actual operations did you do? You came in late in the war.
AML: I came in very late. I didn’t join —
BB: Did you do six or five or —?
AML: I did, I did, the crew did six and I did five.
BB: Ok.
AML: I took food poisoning.
BB: Oh right. So you did your five ops. And —
AML: Four daylights and one. Four daylights and one night.
BB: Ok.
AML: Kiel was a night op. And I understand that the war was still on this time — these supply drops trips and prisoner of war would have been turn ups. I don’t think they were actually given as that.
BB: No.
AML: And somebody said to us, ‘Oh you could, in a push, count them as ops,’ but I never ever did that.
BB: No. No.
AML: I didn’t do. But that was —
BB: No.
AML: That was on.
BB: But in terms of bombing German or French targets. Yes. Yes.
AML: Actual bombing Germany itself.
BB: Yes. As target. Yes. Yes.
AML: I did four daylights.
BB: Four daylights.
AML: Munster, Bocholt, Heligoland, Kiel and Bremen.
BB: And Bremen. And Bremen was your last one.
AML: Last one we did.
BB: Yeah. And did you, did you drop — did you have a chance to drop those big bombs?
AML: No. Not at that time.
BB: The Tallboys. No.
AML: 15 Squadron wasn’t doing that.
BB: No. No.
AML: It was a specialised.
BB: Yes. 617. Yeah. Yeah.
AML: 617.
BB: Yes.
AML: Was a specialised squadron for that.
BB: So you dropped the normal, you had a normal cookie and the normal other ones. Yeah.
AML: That’s right. A normal cookie.
BB: Normal load. Yeah.
AML: Or an eight thousand pounder double cookie sometimes.
BB: Right.
AML: And I’ve got to know, I think about a fourteen thousand pounds was about the standard bomb load we had.
BB: Bomb load. Right.
AML: Sixteen hundred gallons of gas. Fuel.
BB: Yeah.
AML: It’s in my logbook. You’ll see it there. Yes. Then 15 Squadron became a sort of — well we were doing a lot of training. Long range navigation exercises. Things like that. Then we started to convert to get the Lancaster ones, the ones they were using for the ten ton bomb.
BB: Yes.
AML: I forget why it was. Like B1 specials I think they were called.
BB: B1 specials. They took the nose turret off and —
AML: The top turret off.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And bomb doors off.
BB: And the bomb doors off to take the Tallboys.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Yes.
AML: We dropped those. We called it Operation Farge I think it was called. We did the dropping of these bombs on the U-boat pens at Farge.
BB: Yeah. Ok.
AML: Because they didn’t know when the war ended exactly what damage was being done with the Halifax that did this. Then we did — oh what was the operation? There was a point but I can’t remember. Where we bombed [pause] ships in the English Channel to see what would happen to bombs.
BB: Oh to see what the damage —
AML: Yeah.
BB: Yeah. Would be —
AML: We flew then at a certain height and we dropped a stick of bombs. I think they were five hundred pounders. And then if and when we went to hit a boat [laughs] It was HMS Firefly. I think it was. It was an ex-mine sweeper. They then stopped the bombing and the navy went aboard the board and put a real bomb in where our bomb had struck or where somebody’s bomb had struck.
BB: Yes.
AML: And then detonated that bomb from a launch so they could then say that an aircraft at eighteen thousand feet dropped a five hundred pound bomb going into number two engine room would do X amount of damage.
BB: X amount of damage. Yes.
AML: This is what we did. We did some research on that.
BB: It was to see what the actual damage was.
AML: That’s right. That’s right.
BB: To a vessel being hit by a bomb of that kind.
AML: That’s right. That was to give them —
BB: So they could either improve the munition.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Or just to see the damage.
AML: It was to give them a general – they didn’t physically know, you know, but now they could actually do it. So we did quite a bit of that.
BB: Right.
AML: And then we got, we were lucky enough to get a trip to Italy.
BB: You went to Italy to bring back POWs.
AML: No. To bring back guys on leave as well.
BB: Oh ok. Right.
AML: I think it was a reward. The squadron got a reward. The squadrons got a reward.
BB: A chance to go and get some oranges and stuff like that.
AML: That’s right.
BB: From Italy. Yes.
AML: Yeah.
BB: And some wine no doubt.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Excellent.
AML: I think we landed at Blackbushe.
BB: Blackbushe right.
AML: Coming back. Aye.
BB: And did your crew all survive the war?
AML: Yes. Yes.
BB: Do you keep in touch with them at all?
No. They’re all away now. My skipper died. I’ve been to see my skipper. My navigator and I went to see my skipper in Australia. I went on my own once and he came with me the next time.
BB: Right.
AML: And he’d been over here. Funnily enough I’ve just had a phone call from Australia saying they’re coming across for my eightieth — for my ninetieth birthday.
BB: Oh that’s nice. That’s good. That’s very nice. Now just to remind me. When were born again. What’s your date of birth?
AML: 1925.
BB: Pardon?
AML: 5.9 ’25.
BB: 5.9 ’25. And that was in Stirling.
AML: Stirling.
BB: Yeah.
AML: In this house.
BB: In this house. Right. Ok.
AML: I’ve lived here ever since.
BB: So you’ve lived in here.
AML: Ever since.
BB: Ever since.
AML: No desire to move.
BB: No. And you were with the civil service before you —
AML: Yeah.
BB: Before you went and when you came back from the war that’s what you did.
AML: I was —what do you call that? I worked in the War Department as a boy messenger initially.
BB: Ok.
AML: For a few months until I then got a junior clerks job. And when I left I was a clerk. What they called temporary clerks because there was no establishment at that time, I understand. During the war.
BB: And that was in —
AML: Stirling.
BB: In Stirling.
AML: [unclear] in Stirling.
BB: Oh in the military side of it there.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: Ok. Ok. And so they didn’t [pause] was that a reserved occupation in that sense?
AML: Probably it might have been. I don’t think so. Anyway —
BB: Because you volunteered for air crew.
AML: Aye.
BB: Yeah.
AML: But what happened then I understand. I don’t know maybe you shouldn’t quote this but I think, I think the people who had gone out had to get their jobs back. You know, after the war.
BB: Yes. They had to be kept for them yeah.
AML: And I went back in. And realise there would be no things like that. I then transferred to what were called the Department of Health and Social Security I think we called it.
BB: Ok.
AML: National Insurance, I think. In Stirling. I was still a temporary clerk.
BB: After, after the war.
AML: Yeah. After the war.
BB: Ok.
AML: And I was there when I had to sit the civil service exam.
BB: Right.
AML: If I wanted to become established. That was the only way you could keep it.
BB: Yeah.
AML: So I sat the civil service exam, passed it and was posted on a permanent, as a permanent civil servant to Elgin.
BB: Elgin. Right.
AML: Elgin. And I was in Elgin for seven — nine months. Then I got back to Stirling. Well I got back to Alloa.
BB: Yes.
AML: And then I got from Alloa to Stirling.
BB: Right.
AML: I was in Stirling until I was demobbed.
BB: Right.
AML: And became a HEO, acting HEO and I was that until I came out. Where did I come out? ’48. Would it have been 1984 ’85 ’86? I can’t remember.
BB: That’s when you retired.
AML: When I was sixty.
BB: Sixty.
AML: In my grade, at that time, you had to go. At your age.
BB: Right. You couldn’t, you couldn’t negotiate.
AML: You couldn’t stay on. Now you can go on forever I understand.
BB: Right. Ok. And you went to school in Stirling.
AML: Went to school.
BB: What? The High school?
AML: Riverside.
BB: Riverside. And that’s where you, did you get your school certificate there?
AML: Yeah. Well I got — I left at fourteen.
BB: Yeah.
AML: As most people did in those days. .
BB: Yeah.
AML: I think I got what they called was it a day school or—? I can’t remember actually.
BB: Yeah. But you had, but you had enough to qualify for aircrew.
AML: Well, I don’t think it really mattered what scholastic abilities you had if you passed.
BB: Passed their test.
AML: The sort of general assessment test.
BB: Yeah. Yeah. Well there were –
AML: Yeah — there were quite a few lads, that’s the wrong word, who were plumbers or joiners who had, you know.
BB: Done apprenticeships the same.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And they went too. Yeah.
BB: Right. Ok. And your mother. Your parents lived in this house.
AML: Yeah.
BB: And obviously that was a great worry to your mother. Going off flying bombers.
AML: Yeah. Yeah. My father died.
BB: Rear gunners position in the bomber at that. The most dangerous position in the aircraft.
AML: My father died. I think in ’40. 1940.
BB: Oh right. Ok.
AML: He was a regular serving soldier prior to that.
BB: What? In the army.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Ok.
AML: A twenty eight year man I think he was.
BB: Did he die in the war? Or did he —?
AML: No. No. He was out of the war. He came out the forces in 1924.
BB: Oh. Ok. So must have been a boy soldier and worked his way up and all that.
AML: Yeah. He joined the Seaforth Highlanders when he was eighteen.
BB: Ok.
AML: I think.
BB: Ok. And these are his medals on the wall.
AML: That’s right. Then after, after the Sudan campaign. Kitchener’s Sudan campaign.
BB: Yeah.
AML: He came back to Egypt.
BB: Right.
AML: In fact I’ve got a letter there written when he was in Egypt. He lost a sister during the terrible flu epidemic. I remember that was in the letter.
BB: I see he’s got the Egyptian Medal.
AML: That’s right.
BB: And the First World War.
AML: Yeah.
BB: War and Victory Medal and looks like —
AML: He’s got a Long Service Meritorious Medal.
BB: Long Service Medals and Meritorious Medal. Yes.
AML: He also has the Russian Order of Saint Stanislaus as well.
BB: Oh right. Ok. Interesting. So he served in the first, he had been a combat soldier.
AML: A regular serving soldier.
BB: In those campaigns.
AML: He was —
BB: How much did his military service influence you in, you know in going into the RAF?
AML: No. I don’t think so. Terribly much.
BB: No. No.
AML: I was never really army orientated.
BB: No. I didn’t mean the army. Just the whole military culture was in the family.
AML: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
BB: Yeah. That’s good.
AML: My cousin was killed at Dunkirk.
BB: Was he? Yes. What was he in?
AML: He was in the Royal Artillery.
BB: Royal Artillery. So he’s buried in France.
AML: Somewhere in France.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: I don’t know where.
BB: Exactly where. No. Oh dear. Ok.
AML: Research to that.
BB: Right.
AML: And all my other cousins were in the forces during the war.
BB: Yes.
AML: You know. In various bits.
BB: Yes. But no brothers and sisters.
AML: No.
BB: No.
BB: But you remember your cousins were in the armed forces during the war. Did you ever meet up in Stirling? On leave and things.
AML: No.
BB: No.
AML: I never met them at all.
BB: Never met them at all.
AML: No. It just so happened that, you know —
BB: What was leave like? Did you get regular leave or did it — haphazard? Or —
AML: When you were flying on operations you got I think every seventh week was a leave week. I can’t really remember.
BB: Right.
AML: You got quite a bit of leave. We were quite fortunate. I think, I think it was every seventh week. I can’t remember to be quite —
BB: Yeah. But you did get regular leave.
AML: We got regular leave. Better than most people.
BB: Yes.
AML: Better than most people. Yes.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: Yes we did. Aye. Aye.
BB: I’ve heard that before from other veterans.
AML: Yeah. And we always got our [unclear], you know. Of course. I’m talking from an NCO point of view.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: I don’t know remember what the officers got. They would get the same as us.
BB: Right.
AML: But that’s, that’s their —
BB: Were you made up to flight sergeant before?
AML: After a year I was —
BB: You were a warrant officer weren’t you?
AML: I was, after a year I got my flight sergeant.
BB: Yeah. You went in as a, sorry, you must have joined as an LAC.
AML: Oh I think I was an AC2. I don’t know —
BB: Sorry, AC2.
AML: An AC2 I think.
BB: And then gone through your training.
AML: Training.
BB: And then you would have got your sergeant’s stripes.
AML: Sergeant. That’s right and then I got my flight sergeant.
BB: Now, was that before you went to OUT? Sergeant. To be sergeant.
AML: Yes.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Ah huh. When everybody went to OTU they were all aircrew by that.
BB: Yes.
AML: They were all qualified aircrew.
BB: Ok. Ok. So once you got your wings you made a sergeant.
AML: That’s right.
BB: And then you got your flight sergeant.
AML: Yes.
BB: And then you got your warrant officer.
AML: Warrant yeah.
BB: That’s very good.
AML: I got my warrant officer last. I told you. After nine months.
BB: Yes.
AML: You could take, you could take your flight sergeant after nine months.
BB: Yes.
AML: And your W after a year.
BB: Yes.
AML: But Tom said, ‘Oh no you should do it the other way around. You get more money.’ But you don’t get it you know.
BB: And was that was that on a selection basis or a board?
AML: No. It was automatic.
BB: Was it automatic?
AML: Yeah.
BB: Oh I see.
AML: Unless you really had been a bad boy or something.
BB: A bad boy. That’s right.
AML: As far as I can understand it virtually just came through on station, a station order, you know.
BB: Routine orders. Yes. That’s it.
AML: Follow through on flight sergeants.
BB: Right.
AML: In fact I’ve got the papers of my father.
BB: Right.
AML: The same way.
BB: Yes.
AML: In the army way back.
BB: So it was, it was on a good record and on time.
AML: That’s right. Yeah.
BB: Ok. That’s fine.
AML: And I got my warrant officer the same way.
BB: Yes.
AML: The warrant officer was slightly different. I can remember. I think you went in front of the CO.
BB: Yes.
AML: Or your squadron CO.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And he asked you a few questions. Blah blah blah. He knew of you. He knew of you of course by this time anyway.
BB: Yes, of course he did.
AML: And he would say ok.
BB: And he would have had your flight commander’s report and all the rest of it. Yeah.
AML: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
BB: And so you got your Tate and Lyle’s on your, on your sleeve.
AML: Aye. I’ve got a picture. Over there.
BB: Yes.
AML: Over there.
BB: Yes. Yeah. Got your Tate and Lyle’s.
AML: My Tate and Lyle’s. Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Yeah.
BB: That’s great. Now tell me about, tell me about, I’m going to ask you certain aspects of Bomber Command and you can say well did you know about these things or not. There was a lot of, there was a lot of problem with venereal disease in Bomber Command. So much so that the Bomber Command chief medical officer went to see Bomber Harris and —
AML: In his book yes. It’s in the book. Aye.
BB: Was there any instances of that on your squadron that you knew? I mean it’s not something that somebody would brag, talk about.
AML: No. No. I don’t think, I don’t remember.
BB: No.
AML: I don’t remember.
BB: The medical officer didn’t give the talks and all that kind of thing.
AML: No.
BB: No.
AML: No. We got a very terrible talk. A horrible talk at ITW. At —
BB: Initial Training Wing. Right.
AML: At Aircrew Reception Centre.
BB: Oh right.
AML: Most of us didn’t know the first thing they were talking about. That’s how innocent we all were.
BB: So naive and young then.
AML: Oh absolutely. People don’t believe it. We were really.
BB: Yes.
AML: You got an odd guy who’d been a bit of a man of the world sort of style.
BB: Aye. No.
AML: But the rest of us we knew what women were and all the rest of it.
BB: Ok.
AML: But that was it.
BB: Alright. That’s fine.
AML: No it was —
BB: No. It was fine.
AML: It was a sort of movie. I mean they actually, you know.
BB: You grew up very quickly no doubt.
AML: Yeah. It was an American made movie.
BB: Right.
AML: About how they met and this guy goes with this lassie and all the rest of it.
BB: Right.
AML: And then graphic pictures of your [laughs]
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: Thingummy.
BB: All the aftermath of all of that yeah.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: But to scare you as well and to give you information.
AML: Aye. It did. I never ever met anyone to my knowledge.
BB: No. No. Ok. Well as I said it’s nothing you would sort of say, hey. You know. But the other thing I want to talk about is LMF. Lack of moral fibre. Did you have any knowledge or —
AML: I never met anybody of LMF.
BB: No. Anybody on your squadron or the station that —
AML: Our first navigator.
BB: That you know.
AML: Our first navigator. We’d had a long protracted training at OTU because we kept losing people.
BB: Right.
AML: We lost two navigators at OTU.
BB: What? They were scrubbed?
AML: Aye. Scrubbed.
BB: Yeah.
AML: The first one just suddenly packed up his nav bag one night and said, ‘I’m not having any more of this.’ And disappeared. That’s the last we saw of him.
BB: Right.
AML: I don’t think it was LMF. It was just a case of —
BB: Just got out of it.
AML: I mean he was fully qualified to be a navigator.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And then the next thing what happened to me was much the same. Two navigators on the trot and of course —
BB: That would have delayed you graduating from OTU.
AML: Yeah. Of course the pundits said to us, ‘Oh you’ll get a lot of hours in Wellingtons you’ll finish up in the Far East in Wellingtons.’ This sort of thing. You know. That’s what happened to us. That’s why we were held up first of all.
BB: Right. Ok. And the other and the other issue was morale generally. Because at your time with, in Bomber Command it was towards the end. Was morale fairly high?
AML: Oh aye. Very high. Yeah. Yeah.
BB: Yeah. I mean the losses had, the losses in Bomber Command were horrendous.
AML: Oh aye I’d be the first to admit that. It was unfortunate of course. People getting killed the last day of the war.
BB: Yes.
AML: That happened.
BB: Yes.
AML: But we didn’t have the colossal losses they had in —
BB: 1943.
AML: 1943/44.
BB: 1944. Early ’44. Yeah.
AML: Oh No. No. No.
BB: The Battle of the Ruhr. The Battle of Berlin.
AML: That’s right. That’s right. That’s when the chop rate—
BB: Were more or less gone
AML: That’s when the chop rate were really something to —
BB: But German night fighters were still flying.
AML: Oh yeah.
BB: When they got the fuel.
AML: Yeah.
BB: And the flak was just –
AML: Yeah. Flak was, your biggest worry was flak.
BB: Did you ever get to see any of the German jets?
AML: Yes.
BB: The Luftwaffe jets.
AML: Yes. I saw a 163 in actual action. It’s all in my logbook.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And we went to [pause] the last raid of the war we did. I saw a 163 way below us [schwoooo noise]
BB: That was the Bremen. Bremen.
AML: Bremen.
BB: Yes.
AML: Aye. Aye. Aye. But no —
BB: It didn’t, it didn’t attack or —
AML: No. It had come up — I think 5 Group went to Hamburg the same day.
BB: Right.
AML: And —
BB: Of course you were in 4 Group.
AML: I was in 3 Group.
BB: Sorry. 3 Group.
AML: Some of the things I’m telling you now is on reflection. I mean I would need to really, you know think what exactly it was what it was on reflection I can remember.
BB: Right.
AML: Because I don’t want to line shoot to you under any circumstance. No. That was, that was, I saw a 16. I saw, I saw 262s in Germany after the war.
BB: After the war. On the ground.
AML: We were over in France.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And I saw them there.
BB: Yeah.
AML: They were certainly a very terrible aeroplane. Wonderful.
BB: Right. Now. Dropping the food parcels and other things to the Dutch. That must have been very rewarding.
AML: Oh very. Great. Great.
BB: Because the Dutch were starving at that stage.
AML: The great thing about it was you were allowed to fly low.
BB: Yes.
AML: Down to two hundred or less. Three hundred feet. In fact lower. My skipper took us down to about twenty eight feet some of the time. We were so low. Because he wanted to low fly and I used to say I’m getting water in to the tail turret [laughs] We flew low over —
BB: You did three of those you said.
AML: Pardon?
BB: You did three trips.
AML: We did three trips.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Yeah. Yeah
BB: And then the other humanitarian thing was bringing the POWs back.
AML: That’s correct. Bringing prisoners of war back. Yeah.
BB: From Italy and Germany.
AML: Yeah. The Americans were flying them from either lower or upper Silesia and we were picking them up at Juvincourt.
BB: Right.
AML: And I can remember I think the station was run by Germans as far as I can remember. Nearly all the German people seemed to be able to do the menial tasks there.
BB: Yes. Right.
AML: And then we, the Japanese war was still on of course.
BB: Yes. Of course.
AML: We were bringing them back from Germany at that time. Yeah.
BB: And they, they were obviously very pleased to get, be getting home.
AML: Oh yeah. Yeah.
BB: How many could you get in a Lancaster?
AML: I think I can remember off hand. It was either thirty or twenty six. I can’t honestly remember.
BB: And they all sat on the floor.
AML: Yeah.
BB: Or wherever they could.
AML: Yeah. They used to say in the air force you know this is a rubbish and that’s rubbish. I never saw organisation so wonderful as supply dropping and the prisoners of war. When we, when we went out to bring the prisoners of war back I can remember I was given a bag and in it was discs. And on the disc was a stencilled number one, two, three, four, five, six.
BB: Yeah. Whatever yeah.
AML: And on the fuselage someone had stencilled numbers inside the fuselage. And the idea was that I gave you a number five disc and you went in and the other gunner would say, ‘There’s number five. Sit there.’ And he sat on the floor.
BB: Yeah. Ok.
AML: At number five.
BB: So it was like a boarding, a boarding pass today.
AML: It was really.
BB: Yes.
AML: A very highly organised.
BB: Everybody had their place they had to sit.
AML: That’s right.
BB: And this would have been worked on a centre of gravity basis in the aircraft presumably.
AML: It must have been. Although it was some of the, some of the crew wanted to see land and of course they moved about, you know.
BB: Right.
AML: And I said, ‘Now don’t move about.’ You know.
BB: And did you ever go on any Cook’s Tours as well to look at the German cities that had been bombed.
AML: Yes. I did the Cook’s Tours as well. Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
AML: You’ll see the places we went to.
BB: Yes. That must have been quite sobering.
AML: We took, we took ground crew with us.
BB: Yes. Yes. Ground crew and the ground crew and the people from ops and the WAAFs.
AML: That’s right. Aye.
BB: And so on. Yeah.
AML: Took them with us. Aye.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: I forget where we went.
BB: Ok.
AML: You’ll see it.
BB: Did bomber Harris ever come to see you at the station?
AML: I think he did. As I told you, I think, yesterday.
BB: Yes.
AML: I can’t honestly remember but I’m almost certain somebody told me he did — I can’t, I would be wrong to tell you.
BB: No. No. He did go around.
AML: I’d be wrong to tell you. Yeah.
BB: How was he perceived by the guys on the squadron? Was he just, was he just Harris and that was it or –
AML: Oh aye. He was —
BB: Or did they actually —
AML: He was a good leader.
BB: Yeah.
AML: He did a lot for aircrew. He, again this is all —
BB: Yes.
AML: Sort of —
BB: Your own opinion. Yes.
AML: General talk.
BB: Right. Right.
AML: I don’t know how true or how bad it is.
BB: Right.
AML: But I understand he was the person who wanted every aircrew be commissioned. Or everybody LACs.
BB: Right.
AML: And I mean no different. He wanted all crews to be the same because they were all taking the same risks.
BB: Right.
AML: It couldn’t have worked that way.
BB: No.
AML: But that was the idea.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Most pilots of four engine aircraft were commissioned.
BB: Yeah. Or warrant officers.
AML: Or some —
BB: Yeah.
AML: We had two ome sergeant pilots.
BB: Yeah. A lot of sergeant pilots.
AML: They blotted their copy book but were so good they stayed as they were.
BB: Yeah.
AML: If you came on a squadron it was possible to be still a sergeant. Might have been a flight sergeant by the time he got to bomber, to thingummybob.
BB: Yeah.
AML: But there was. You’ll see on the crew list there.
BB: Yeah. Sergeants.
AML: Sergeants. Aye.
BB: And and and then you came out – what in ’47.
AML: I came out in ’47. I think it was ’47.
BB: ’47. You know the war had been finished a while so you had all that civilian.
AML: Flying.
BB: Flying. And you had obviously bringing back prisoners of war still at that time.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: Some weren’t being released until late.
AML: Yeah. Yeah. We converted on to Lincolns before I came out.
BB: That’s right. Because they were —
AML: Tiger Force.
BB: Tiger Force. That’s right, they’re the ones that were going to go to Japan but didn’t happen because they dropped the atomic bomb.
AML: No. Just as well.
BB: Yes. And so you didn’t consider staying in as a regular? Transferring to the regular air force after the war.
AML: Yes and no. But then somebody said, ‘Well, ok you stay in.’ Who the hell wants a gunner when the war’s finished? I’d have to re-muster probably.
BB: Well it had them in the Lincolns so you would have been a very experienced air gunner if you’d stayed on the Lincolns.
AML: Ah. No. I mean they were on the Lincolns. Ok
BB: They’d probably give you a job on ops or something like that.
AML: I didn’t – Unless I was flying I wasn’t interested.
BB: No. Ok. So you weren’t tempted. One because you had this very good job in Civvy Street which was being held for you.
AML: Well that’s right.
BB: Yeah.
AML: At that time it wasn’t such a good job. Just a normal clerk’s job.
BB: But it was a regular job.
AML: But I had a job to come back to.
BB: It was a regular job.
AML: Plus the fact my mother was living alone.
BB: Yes. Exactly. Here.
AML: Here.
BB: Right.
AML: And I thought well what am I going to do?
BB: Yeah. That’s right.
AML: Funnily enough I met quite a few chaps who I’d served with in the squadron who had stayed on and signed on and finished up at Lossiemouth.
BB: Oh yes.
AML: And when I went to Elgin. My first posting with the civil service at Elgin.
BB: That’s very close to Lossiemouth.
AML: I met one of these guys, one or two guys in the pub. They said, ‘You should go back in again. The money’s good.’ And I half thought of going back.
BB: Yeah. Because you could have re-mustered.
AML: Oh well.
BB: Because they, you were, once they awarded your brevet.
AML: Yeah.
BB: You wore it forever.
AML: You wore it. Yeah.
BB: Unless you did something really wrong.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: And they took it away from you.
AML: Yeah. Oh no.
BB: But you know I —
AML: They couldn’t take your brevet off you.
BB: But when I was a reservist I was one for thirty three years. When I first joined as APO, acting pilot officer up at Kinloss and other stations you had these old hairies as we used to call them. Who still had their —
AML: That’s right.
BB: You know, wartime brevets on.
AML: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
BB: But they’d been re-mustered as ops clerks.
AML: Did you never, did you never fly at all Bruce?
BB: In Nimrods.
AML: Oh Nimrods.
BB: I used to fly in the Nimrods.
AML: What as? Not as aircrew though.
BB: No. I was —
AML: I thought you said the technical. Aye.
BB: Well I was in intelligence so I was there to look at things. Yeah. Yeah.
AML: No. I never thought much about that.
BB: No. No. But they were a great bunch. And of course the Nimrod is a multi crew aircraft.
AML: That’s right.
BB: So it had kinships to Bomber Command.
AML: Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s right.
BB: You know. You had your crew.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: And you know everybody stuck together and —
AML: Oh you could read each other like a book.
BB: Oh yes. And of course we had to brief those crews much the same. And it hasn’t changed. You know, they’d all come to briefing. They’d sit down. The wing commander would stand up. Or the group captain would stand up. The curtains would be drawn.
AML: That’s it.
BB: Just like that.
AML: Aye.
BB: And they would either go [groan] another Atlantic trip or another Mediterranean trip or wherever it was. And all the plot would be up there. Where everything was.
AML: Isn’t it funny that you found out about your crew in many ways? Our wireless operator thought he was the greatest wireless operator in the world.
BB: And was he?
AML: I don’t know. But anyway we had an exercise we did occasionally to go out to the North Sea or out to the Atlantic to — navigation really .
BB: Yeah. Nav ex.
AML: To find a weather ship.
BB: A weather ship.
AML: Or a destroyer. Or something.
BB: Yeah.
AML: I can’t remember all the details. And you had to signal and of course he was in the astrodome and of course aldis they had in the Navy you see —
BB: The aldis lamp.
AML: Aye.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And I always remember he couldn’t read so he said to send up, ‘Please send slowly.’ [laughs] He couldn’t read the navy. You know, they were, they were tremendous. You know.
BB: Yeah, that’s right.
AML: I’ll always remember that.
BB: That’s right.
AML: And my skipper. He hated, he didn’t like landing in the half light and it used to annoy my navigator furiously because you were coming back and I’ m talking about, this is basically after the war. Of course during the war you were restricted what you could and couldn’t do. A long cross country you know.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Our navigator was a great one for food. He was desperate for food. And he would say, ‘I’ve packed up my nav bag. You’re alright. You’ll be over the fields in ten minutes.’ And Jack would say, ‘I want a dog leg.’ And he would get a fury, ‘What the hell are you on about?’
BB: I want to eat my sandwiches.
AML: ‘I want to land in the dark.’ And I said why do you like landing in the dark?’ He said, ‘What I can’t see doesn’t bother me.’ [laughs]
BB: Yeah. Well that’s very true.
AML: Yeah. That was him.
BB: Yeah.
AML: He liked to land in the dark. Yeah.
BB: That’s good. That’s right. And then of course when they came back from their trips in the Nimrod, just like in Bomber Command, we would sit down and debrief them.
AML: That’s right.
BB: And they used to hate that.
AML: Aye. Aye.
BB: Because they wanted to get away to their bed or get their breakfast.
AML: That’s right.
BB: Or whatever.
AML: The trouble with that was with your egg. We got an egg with everything.
BB: Yeah. But you really had to be very strict with them and say, ‘No. Let’s get this done and then you can go.’
AML: You had to get an egg with everything.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And the favourite was, ‘I’ll have his egg if he’s not coming back’
BB: if you’re not coming back.
AML: This sort of thing.
BB: And of course you must have seen even even at that late stage of the war, bomber offensive, you must have seen vacant chairs at breakfast and —
AML: Aye well —
BB: Guys that didn’t, that went out and didn’t come back.
AML: Funny. We were very fortunate on 15. I don’t think the time I was on it we had a very heavy —
BB: Casualty rate.
AML: Casualty rate. Funnily enough one of the chaps in the Aircrew Association was on 15. A hell of a nice bloke. He was shot down in France. I didn’t know him in the squadron but he was shot down in France. Had quite a rough time getting out. Eventually captured and became a prisoner of war.
BB: Right.
AML: And was on The Long March.
BB: Right. Ok.
AML: He was on the same squadron as I was. 15.
BB: Right. That must have been.
AML: Quite a lucky squadron. 15.
BB: That wasn’t great.
AML: I don’t think we had colossal losses on 15. I don’t know why or how. I don’t remember saying oh —
BB: What about, what about losses at OTU? HCU. There must have been crashes there.
AML: They were quite high. Yeah. Those. Somebody said to me after, of course, please understand I’m talking fifty sixty years ago.
BB: Yeah. I understand.
AML: Somebody said there was almost a crash every day at OTU. Now, I couldn’t ascertain that or confirm that. I don’t know.
BB: Well —
AML: But there were certainly one or two crashes when we were at OTU.
BB: I know that my late uncle was killed as an OTU. Instructing.
AML: Yeah.
BB: At Westcott. Number 11 OTU.
AML: Yeah. And we had one or two hairy do’s at OTU.
BB: And we paid, we paid tribute to him a couple years ago and all the guys at OTUs. And I did my research and something like eight thousand aircrew killed at OTU in Bomber Command. And just in Bomber Command.
AML: Probably would be. Well the chop —
BB: From collisions or bad landings.
AML: The chop rate on Wellingtons was quite high.
BB: Yeah. One in ten.
AML: They were second hand aircraft at OTU.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: I mean they weren’t, aircraft had been sent to OTU. You know.
BB: Yes.
AML: So we understand. I don’t know.
BB: And they went didn’t they? Yeah. Well there were, yeah. Well you take the Whitleys. They were front line aircraft.
AML: That’s right.
They were relegated to the OTUs.
AML: That’s right. Yeah.
BB: You know you went on the Whitleys.
AML: Well, they certainly were.
BB: And the Wellingtons as well.
AML: Wellingtons at OTU.
BB: And the Stirlings of course at the Heavy Conversion Unit.
AML: Aye. Heavy Conversion. Stirlings. Aye. Aye.
BB: Because they didn’t, they —
AML: They took them off.
BB: You either went to a Heavy Conversion and then on to a Lancaster Finishing School but you —
AML: I don’t know why we did that.
BB: Didn’t do that.
AML: This is the thing. Quite a lot of people — had to believe, hard to believe I was on Stirlings. Most of them went from OTU to Lanc Finishing School.
BB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And that was it. I don’t know why we went on. I don’t know. Just the way the system worked.
BB: The system worked. Yeah.
AML: We went, they went on to to that and we weren’t really long on Stirlings.
BB: No.
AML: But we were on Stirlings anyway.
BB: But it gave the heavy, it gave you the heavy, it gave the crew the sort of heavy experience that they needed.
AML: Aye. I liked the Stirling very much indeed.
BB: It looked a very roomy aircraft.
AML: It was a very roomy aircraft. Just like a big Sunderland.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: Really is.
BB: Yes.
AML: And I liked it.
BB: A Sunderland with wheels.
AML: Yeah. I didn’t care much for the Lincoln.
BB: Well it was a kind of a hybrid wasn’t it? You know.
AML: A hybrid. I didn’t care much for Lincolns.
BB: We’ll add a bit of this and add a bit of that.
AML: We had a twenty millimetre cannon on a Lincoln.
BB: Yes. Yes.
AML: And a lot of trouble with them and a lot of trouble —
BB: They used them in, against the terrorists in Malaysia.
AML: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: The Australian Lincolns anyway.
AML: We never did that and I think latterly the two turrets that took the twenty millimetres out the turrets. I can’t remember honestly but I flew in the tail of a Lincoln all the time. I flew first, initially I flew as an air gunner instructor and for a while the rule was flying that when we first got Lincolns they were nearly all ex-instructors that were in the top turrets.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: Because the bloody cannon recoiled across your head. If you moved out the road the, rotated, you could get your head taken off easily.
BB: Right. Right.
AML: These are things you remember yet you couldn’t put down on paper and say this is the God’s truth. You know.
BB: No. No. No. No. I know.
AML: It’s just the things I remember. It’s difficult.
BB: Well Alistair thank you very much for for telling us your story and we do appreciate it very much. And I’ll now terminate the interview. And I’ll have a look at your logbooks and other bits and pieces if I may.
AML: Aye. Aye. Sure. Sure.
BB: Yeah. Thank you.
AML: A lot of that stuff of course you’ll probably be able to edit out. You won’t use it all will you?
BB: No. No I don’t think so.
AML: No.
BB: And also thank you for signing the sheets and the other forms that I’ve asked you to sign. Thank you very much. So —
AML: Aye. Aye. Aye.
BB: So —
AML: I think you’ll find that most aircrew don’t really talk very much about it to other people unless it’s aircrew people.
BB: Right.
AML: And you can always find out somebody immediately they start saying, for example that I was told to bale out, and the crew – the nineteen crew baled out, you know someone makes a mistake.
BB: Yeah.
AML: You know right away that they’re actually line shooters. Ahat they said, you know.
BB: Yeah.
AML: You can’t really.
BB: No.
AML: Well we never did that, you know. Like on our squadrons, we cleaned our guns, well a lot – we didn’t do that on our squadron. I depended on the gunnery.
BB: The armourers used to do that.
AML: Yeah.
BB: But mind you had to be able to clear blockages in the aircraft.
AML: Oh yeah. Sit down, blindfold, sit down blindfold.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: And all that sort of thing.
BB: Right.
AML: But each squadron had its own different thing that depended how the CO looked at a particular item.
BB: Right.
AML: He might say, ‘Well I want you to do this,’ and you did it.
BB: What about dinghy drills and things like that.
AML: We did that as well. Yeah.
BB: Was that a regular thing?
AML: I don’t think so. No. We went to [pause] now where did we go? When we were at OTU we went to the Leicester Baths.
BB: Yes.
AML: And the baths were blacked out.
BB: Sure.
AML: And you got in first of all and they said, ‘Right this is your dinghy drill.’ There were RAF instructors I’m sure there. We all went up in one of these big huge big gareys. These big trucks they had with maybe four or five crews. Or three crews anyway. And we wondered why these guys were all dashing to go in such a hurry, you and saying, ‘You’re bloody keen,’ but we didn’t realise that if you went in first you got dry flying kit. If you went in second you put a dirty, you put a wet flying kit on.
BB: Ok right.
AML: You put the flying kit on you see.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And you had to use this and you had to jump in the dinghy with the lights out.
BB: Yeah.
AML: That’s why you had a whistle.
BB: Sure. Because it was dark. Simulating Bomber Command.
AML: The whistle was supposed to, aye. That’s why the aircrew used whistles.
BB: Whistles.
AML: Every aircrew whistled you know.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And you did this. Then they turned the dinghy upside down.
BB: You had to right it.
AML: You’ve got to right the dinghy again.
BB: Right.
AML: Exactly.
BB: And it was a five man dinghy. Or a seven man dinghy.
AML: Five man dinghy. Something like that.
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
AML: These are the sort of things you remember. That was one of the things. Why were they in such a hurry to get in? Because that was —
BB: What about using the parachute? Did you have any training?
AML: No.
BB: On how to do that?
AML: No. Never had any training on the parachute training at all.
BB: It was just there it is. Count. One. Two. Three. And pull the string.
AML: That’s right. That’s right. I think basically the reason would be that if you had to do a parachute jump and something had happened you wouldn’t jump in an emergency.
BB: No.
AML: You know you may be frightened to do that.
BB: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. And that’s very good wisdom. Yes. Because —
AML: I think probably. I don’t know.
BB: If it’s your first time to go anyway.
AML: These are things that have come up in reflection when you were talking to a pupil.
BB: Yeah.
AML: Maybe that’s the reason why we didn’t do that.
BB: Yeah.
AML: You know.
BB: Ok.
AML: I don’t think there was any sort of written down about that. But we did do a bit of, of what I can remember now, we were in a hangar and we seemed to get a harness on.
BB: Oh yeah and swing a bit.
AML: And you jumped and you swung down and landed.
BB: Yeah. Just tell you how to land.
AML: Close your knees and this sort of thing, you know.
BB: Yeah. And what about parades and drills? Did you do squadron parades?
AML: Air crew are notorious for not wanting drills you know.
BB: Yeah.
AML: We really were a rough shower. I mean we were really were. I mean we got away with murder. I mean I must admit.
BB: Well I can assure you they haven’t changed.
AML: Yeah. If we could get away with it we got away with it.
BB: Yeah.
AML: I’m not going to bore you to tears of course, I hope.
BB: No.
AML: One of the great things you would probably know — after the war things changed of course dramatically as you can well imagine. And they had, I think it was a Friday. I can’t remember. The whole airfield shut down. And you had to participate in organised games.
BB: Oh yes.
AML: The whole station. WAAF. Everybody had to go on organised games. And it was organised in as much as they came around the gunnery section and said, ‘Right. Who’s all going to be play football?’ ‘Who’s all going to play rugby?’ ‘Who’s all going to play netball?’ You know. This sort of thing. It was all down. Your name was put down.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And I, when you’re out in your —
BB: Your PT kit.
AML: Your PT kit and your fancy [unclear] You went down to the front of the hangars and somebody would, I can’t remember, maybe the station would detail all the crews. Who’s going to be?’ And I hated sport. I hated sport. I never was fit. My father was a football referee and all that. I had no time for sport. I still don’t have time for sport. Anyway, I thought well this is bloody terrible.
BB: So what did you do? How did you get out of that?
AML: Well —
BB: Stay in the goal and hope nobody came near it.
AML: No. Well it was quite regular. You had to be back at a certain time. And I thought how can I bloody get out of this thing and I happened to hear one day to hear oh he said there’s flying. I said how do you get in to Waddington, or how do you get to so and so. Oh we’re flying. And I thought so I said to skipper, ‘Did you hear that?’ Because he hated sport too. And I said, ‘Can you no volunteer us to fly crews up?’ And he always wanted somebody in the tail, we all, so that would be a good idea. We got away with that for, however, we didn’t get away, they said right. I said, ‘Well what’s the least supervised job you could get?’ Cross country running.
BB: Go away and hide somewhere.
AML: So we used to run in to the pub [laughs] we used to put a pound note in our shoe.
BB: Yeah.
AML: And around the nearest pub and sit in the pub and then come running back.
BB: Running back. I see.
AML: We got caught out because when the squadron sports came on.
BB: Yeah.
AML: They couldn’t get relay through. The three mile relay run. They couldn’t get, the skipper said, well the CO said, ‘All those who did cross country running can do it.’ We nearly got killed doing this ruddy thing after. You know.
BB: Never mind. Ok.
AML: We were found out, you know.
BB: Right.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AMcPhersonLambA150726
Title
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Interview with Alexander Lamb. One
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:47:13 audio recording
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Pending review
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Creator
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Bruce Blanche
Date
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2015-07-26
Description
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Alexander Lamb grew up in Scotland and worked in the civil service before he joined the Royal Air Force. He flew five operations as an air gunner with 15 Squadron.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
Wales--Bridgend
Contributor
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Julie Williams
11 OTU
14 OTU
15 Squadron
1654 HCU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Cook’s tour
crewing up
Gee
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lincoln
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Feltwell
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Wigsley
RAF Wyton
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/129/40/PFlowersJ1502.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/129/40/AFlowersHJ150602.2.mp3
f58403692c6da41dbb74bf1dcbd8b1fe
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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Flowers, James
H J Flowers
Horrace James Flowers
Harry James Flowers
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. The collection concerns the wartime experiences of Flight Sergeant Horace James Flowers, a rear gunner with 50 Squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe. The collection consists of one oral history interview, a propaganda leaflet and nine photographs. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by James Flowers and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Flowers, HJ
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HJF: My name is Horace James Flowers. I’m known as James. I am recording my, I served in the RAF for four and a half years from 1944 until 1947. I attained the rank of flight sergeant and flew, and served with 50 squadron and 44 squadron, 50 squadron at Skellingthorpe and 40 squadron, 44 squadron in Tiger Force at a number of squads, at a number centres, stations. I’m recording this for the International Bomber Command Centre on the 2nd of June, er, 2nd of June 2015 in, at xxxxx Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire. Yeah. I was born on the 9th of 10th, 9th of the 10th 1924 in a small village called Huthwaite in Nottinghamshire. I remained in Huthwaite, remained in Huthwaite during my education which was only secondary modern. Secondary modern. I then left school at fourteen, 1939. That sounds bad doesn’t it?
MJ: That’s alright.
HJF: I left school, I left school when I was fourteen. That was 1939. I became an apprentice butcher and loved the job. I absolutely loved it and if it hadn’t have been, hadn’t have been for the war, I’m certain I would have remained in that trade for the rest of my working life. However, Sutton in Ashfield area, Huthwaite and Sutton in Ashfield area rapidly became an area, a training area for a battalion of troops. And also there were Yanks at er, at Kingsmill Hospital and there were the paratroopers at Hardwick Hall five miles away. They was the elite and they used to come in at night time and the village had, all the village halls had been turned into dance halls so the town was thriving at night time, with hundreds probably thousands of, of soldiers coming in to be entertained for the night. It was so exciting. Now, the paratroopers were special. They were elite and when they used to come in they used to create skirmishes in the, you know, to a teenager it was so exciting and at the same time my brother had joined the navy and he was he was in, in, he was stationed at Brightlingsea at what they called [unclear] sorry [unclear]
[pause]. Yes.
HJF: German U-boats used to, used to speed in and torpedo any, any ship that was in the area. At the same time, at this particular time I had a girlfriend whose brother was in aircrew and he was a wireless operator and he used to come home at the weekends and I used to listen to his stories about his fly, what was happening while he was flying. This really stimulated my interest so I just had to get to it, get involved. Now, on the 18th of February 1943 I attended the, enlistment section-
[pause]
On the 18th of February 1943 I attended the recruitment section, recruitment place at Mansfield to be given a medical for aircrew which I passed A1. How excited I was when the medical officer told me that I’d passed A1. Not that my excitement was allowed to last long because shortly after the recruiting officer called me in to his office to give me the bad news. Now then, this is, ‘I’m very sorry to tell you, you can’t be accepted. We can’t accept anyone who is in a reserved occupation.’ I was completely devastated because I’d took a year to get in. I pleaded for them to change their mind, ‘Sorry you can only be accepted if the authorities release you from your reserved occupation.’ To a teenager desperate to volunteer this was terrible news. It felt as if a bomb had been dropped on me by the recruiting officer. My factory manager showed no sympathy at all. He firmly informed me that unless I was medically released I would have to remain with them until the end of the war. The problem was that I needed to be A1 to be accepted for air crew and unfit to be released from the reserved occupation. How do I get around that? Continuously I racked my brain to try and think of a way that I could overcome this problem. Months went by and I began to despair. It seemed as if my chance of joining the RAF had gone forever. At last I had an idea. I wondered, will it work? No matter whether it did or not I just had to try something. So with my heart in my mouth I arranged an appointment with my factory doctor. Attending the appointment I showed the doctor all the spots on my face, and telling him that I considered that the heavy fumes of the machine grinder on which, on which I was working was giving me dermatitis. I then requested that I should be released from this work. My case was so thin and I knew it but I had to try something. I then had to listen to the doctor giving me a real dressing down. How awful he made me feel. He ended his lecture by saying, ‘You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. Men are dying for the likes of you.’ Feeling very subdued I then quietly said, ‘But doctor, I only want releasing from munitions because I volunteered and been accepted for air crew. The RAF won’t take me if you don’t release me.’ With my heart in my mouth I waited as he fixed his gaze on me for what seemed an eternity. He looked me straight in the eye. Then without another word he reached for his pen and signed my release. As I got up to leave the surgery he leaned forward and shook my hand and wished me luck. All these problems had taken a year to resolve. Is that?
MJ: Yes
HJF: Now, having reached my ninetieth year I can’t help thinking how much slimmer my chances of surviving this terrible war would have been if I’d been allowed to leave my reserved occupation in 1943. Although I knew that being a rear gunner was a very dangerous job with a very high casualty rate, so much so that rear gunners were named Charlies and that’s another name for stupid fool, it didn’t matter to me what others thought. This was the way I wished to serve my country. Yeah, so that goes on to my “Tail End Charlie’s Story”.
MJ: Ahum
HJF: This was the title I gave to my book which I’ve, which I’ve had produced, “A Tail End Charlie’s Story” ‘cause I think that fits the bill. Right, on the 6th of March 1944 I reported to the induction centre at Lords Cricket Ground, London along with hundreds more recruits for entry to the RAF. Lords Cricket Ground was used during the 1939 ‘45 war as an induction centre for air crew. A roll call, a roll call was made during which, to my astonishment, a second HJ Flowers’ name was called out. It was then that I first met Henry James Flowers. Henry told me that he came from a village called Bargoed in South Wales. From then onwards we became constant companions. We remained together during basic training at RAF Bridgnorth after which we were posted to RAF Stormy Down for air gunnery training. Fortunately, we were kept together during flying training and in actual fact ended up serving on both 50 and 44 squadron, squadrons. Now, ok, recruitment before I get on to?
MJ: You can put it whatever way you like.
HJF: Does that sound alright?
MJ: Yes it’s fine. It’s superb. I mean I know exactly what you mean when you said that London had had a right bash of it.
HJF: Yeah.
MJ: I mean, my nan got bombed out twice. You know, nothing left.
HJF: We got friends, we’ve got a friend that lost everything twice. Absolutely everything.
MJ: Yeah, yeah.
HJF: She lived near where I was stationed yeah.
MJ: ‘Cause the road that they lived in doesn’t exist.
HJF: Yeah.
MJ: And so on. You know people don’t-
HJF: Yeah.
MJ: Realise this sort of thing. Are you ready?
HJF: Yeah ok. After disembarking from the troop train at Bridgnorth railway station we formed up in threes. Shouldering our heavy kit bags we began the long march to camp. The last mile was up a steep hill. As new recruits, unfit, with no marching experience at all, all carrying a heavy kit bag the formation rapidly turned into a gaggle. By the time we reached the camp everyone was on the point of collapse. Next morning, after the recruits had been formed up on the parade ground the NCO in charge of the parade informed us that we’d be confined to barracks for the entire six weeks - square bashing, ‘You will not be allowed in public until you can be a credit to your uniform.’ From that moment on we spent every minute of every day drilling and exercising. My muscles screamed out from the strains. The course seemed never ending. Much to my surprise the strain became less. I was obviously getting fitter. Not content with keeping us hard all day we were also given guard duty at night. On Saturday and Sunday a percentage of recruits were picked out to stand guard throughout the weekend. It was just the luck of the draw as to whether your name would come out. By the end of the fourth week I was badly missing my girlfriend Eunice so despite the ban on boots, new boots, new recruits leaving camp I began to make plans. Now, having been on guard duty at a sentry box on the edge of the wood at the rear of the camp I knew there was a way in and out. Those on guard duty were given instructions to arrest anyone there but be that it may I let loads of them through expecting them to make the, make the favour, if I, if I needed it. I noticed. Now desperate to return home I was willing to risk anything. So after duty on the fourth Friday I slipped out of camp by the back way and began thumbing lifts. In uniform they came very easily and with a matter of hours I was back home again. Early next day I walked the two miles to my girlfriend’s house. This was the first time that Eunice had seen me in uniform and I knew that I’d created a good impression. We had a lovely day and a half together. I can still remember going for a walk that Sunday morning along a very attractive country walk known locally as Skegby Bottoms. The sun shone brightly as we sat there. I was at peace with the world. I wanted it to go on and on and on. Late Sunday night I successfully re-entered the camp through the back. Through the woods. In no time I was back in my billet. The moment Taffy saw me he exclaimed, ‘Your name was called out several times for guard duty over the weekend.’ ‘Oh dear,’ I thought, ‘Blimey I shall be on a charge on Monday morning’. Sure enough I was called off the parade ground and told to report to the commanding officer. Shaking like a leaf I stood to attention in front of him. ‘Sorry. I didn’t hear my name called out.’ Not impressed, he said ‘Fourteen days jankers and do it again and I’ll throw the book at you.’ Next day I reported to the cookhouse in full pike. Just my luck to be the only one on jankers, jankers at the time to peel the thousands and thousands of potatoes needed to feed a camp full of hungry airmen and then to wash the pots that had to be used for meals. Gosh it was hard work. You may have thought that all this effort made my weekend worthwhile. I’m in no doubt at all. It was.
Now then, what did I get to? 3rd of, 3rd of June 1944 see us arrive at Bridgnorth for flying training. Now this training was on Avro Ansons. It had one mid upper turret and we used to fire at drogues that used to come by with a, with a Spitfire travelling a drogue alongside us. And quite honestly, quite honestly it was I think, I think the pilot was, of the Spitfire, was in more danger of us hitting him than us hitting the drogue. Anyway, when, when we finished this course, at the end of this course I managed to get a day’s, a weekend off so I travelled home to see Eunice. She was in the Land Army near Grimley and I remember as I arrived at the, at the hostel, at the hostel Eunice was telling me about the, about someone who was getting married. One of the Land Army girls getting married. And I could feel that this was the, that there seemed to be a longing in her voice which suggested to me that this was the right time to once again, for the hundredth time ask her if she’d marry me. And so as she turned to me I said, ‘Well shall we get married then?’ and she said, ‘Yes, let’s.’ I’m not joking with you I could have fallen through the floor. Anyway, we decided there and then. She said, ‘What are you doing now?’ I said well I’m going now to Husbands Bosworth for a ten week course on OTU training and she says, ‘Ok when will that finish?’ Well we calculated it out that it would finish about October the 14th. She says, ‘Ok we’ll add a week to that. We’ll add a week to that. We’ll get married on the 21st of October.’ Not for one minute did we think the things that could happen in a flying training. So naïve we were. Anyway, a week before, two weeks before the October the 21st flying training, all flying training was cancelled through bad weather. We didn’t fly for nearly eight days. Comes the 20th, comes the 20th of, of October and I’m getting married the next day. I’d still got four hours flying to do that morning. Anyway, by sheer luck we got the flying training finished, finished by dinnertime. We then needed to, to get cleared from the station, and of course collect all our gear because we’re moving to another, another station. And, and we’d got, in those days, today if you wanted to get cleared from a section they do it on computer, can do it in five minutes. In our day we used to have to go to every section to get our chitty signed, mainly on foot. Fortunately, Taffy managed to borrow a couple, a couple of bikes. He was going to be my best man so he’s coming with me. We circulated and of course there’s a tremendous area in, in, on an RAF aerodrome and we circulated the area on these cycles and I’m certain that everybody, every section knew we were getting married because as we were, the next day every section and as we, the next day, and as we came in they immediately signed my chit. Bless them all. Anyway the admin section was closing at 5 o’clock. We arrived there at five minutes to five. The admin, the officer then cleared us from the section and, and he says, ‘Ok, right, you can go now. Report to RAF Wigsley on Monday the 23rd.’ I thought, bloody hell, two days. We then had to start [laughs] we then had to start our journey. Now in those days, in those days there was very little transport. We had to, we had to cadge lifts we had to catch buses, local buses, train journeys, local train journeys. It took us all night. We didn’t arrive in Sutton in Ashfield until half past eight on the Saturday the 21st. Having been awake all night I was absolutely shattered. Anyway we walked out of Sutton in Ashfield railway station and Eunice lived a mile to the right and I, and I lived two miles to the left. Taffy walked to tell Eunice we’d arrived. I walked the two miles to Huthwaite to, to my parent’s home. Now there was so much happening. The wedding was planned for 2.30. There was so much happening I never got any rest. I was absolutely cream crackered. By, I remember, I remember we were in, as we got in, as we got in to the taxi turned up to St Mary’s Church at Sutton in Ashfield and I says to my mum ‘Oh I can’t.’ ‘Go on, go on, ‘she said, ‘Oh no. You’re here now. Go on. Get going.’ Anyway we got into the church and I’m not joking I stood at the altar and I was absolutely asleep on my feet. I can’t explain how tired I was. Anyway, after a while suddenly there was a thump in my ribs and I opened my eyes and said. ‘I will’ and it was back to sleep again and quite honestly that’s all I remember of my, of my, of my wedding. And then photographs. The photographer wouldn’t take any photographs at the church. He insisted that we went down to his studio which was a couple of miles away and then he only took, would agree to take two photographs. One of Eunice and I and the wedding group. How different it is these days. Wedding photographers dominate the wedding and take millions of photographs and charge a tremendous amount of money. They do, don’t they? Anyway, Eunice was late when she arrived at the, at the church. She told me later, she said as the taxi drew away from her house a funeral appeared. Now it’s bad luck for you to go past a funeral. That’s what they said. So, quickly the taxi driver changed direction, changed direction to, to avoid it. Lo and behold they were just about to turn up the drive to the, to the church it was quite a long drive two or three hundred yards long and another, another funeral appeared so quickly he turns around and went back again and made another deviation. Well, she says she thought this a sign our wedding wouldn’t last. Well sixty nine years, seventy years later I think probably her premonition was a little bit wrong.
[laughs].
Fortunately, the Sunday, Sunday, a telegram arrived at my home to tell me that I’d been given eight days leave. So, so we didn’t have to report to Wigsley until eight days later but I want to go back a little bit now to my flying training because quite honestly flying training on Wellington bombers, it was a marvellous experience. Dangerous. Always exciting. Mostly enjoyable but quite honestly we were like kids playing with big new toys and we couldn’t get enough of it. Now, many things happened, happened, that quite honestly, that could, we could have bought it there and then. I remember one instant. One instant comes to, comes to mind. This was a training flight up to the north of Scotland and, and this was one for the first night trips that we had. Now, navigation in those days was very, very difficult because they didn’t have radar, the navigator didn’t have radar. He had to use his maps and they used to even use the stars and, and even used to ask us, ask us for things on the ground so that was how primitive it was. Anyway, we flew up to the north of Scotland. It was six and half hour trip and when we got to the north of Scotland we were due to turn, to turn starboard to come down the North Sea but instead of telling us to turn starboard the navigator told Skip to turn port so instead of travelling down the North Sea we were travelling down the Irish Sea. In fact we were rapidly going towards bloody America [laughs] and extended the flight trip quite a long way. He said the reason why this happened was because he accidently pulled his, we were flying above twelve thousand feet and he accidently pulled his, his oxygen cylinder thing out, connection out so he, but that was his story. Anyway, we goes down the North Sea. I remember we got back to, we got back to the Husbands Bosworth area and I remember looking down. It was absolutely, early hours of the morning, it was absolutely pitch dark. You could not see a thing on the ground and Jack the navigator says, ‘Ok Skip. We’re over base.’ Skip says, ‘Can’t see anything.’ So he says, ‘Ok, dog leg.’ so he does a five minute dog leg, comes back again and he says, ‘Right Skip. We’re over base.’ And when he says that there’s a chorus of voices says, ‘You’re up the spout, you’re bloody up the spout we can’t see anything.’ Ok, another dog leg. We did another dog leg and another dog leg and then when we gets to the fourth one there’s a voice, the flight engineer butts in and says, ‘Hey. Hey, we’ve only got, you’d better pull your fingers out, we’ve only got four minutes of fuel left.’ I was sitting, I was in the rear turret listening to all this going and quite honestly my ring was beginning to twitch. I thought to myself, ‘bloody hell if they don’t do something about it we’re going to crash’. So I switched it on. I say, ‘Skip why don’t you call somebody up?’ He says, ‘Oh yes.’ He then calls out the base. The base called in the, the aircraft codes, signs and immediately lights, the aerodrome lights flicked on straight beneath us. Navigator, nav, had been right all the time. We made an emergency landing. We taxied around this, we taxied round, around the perimeter. We turns in to, turns into our bay and as we turned into the bay, before we were in, the engines stopped. That’s how close we were. Ok now then. I’ll go forward now to after my wedding ok.
MJ: Yeah.
HJF: Are we still going?
MJ: Yeah.
HJF: After, after the wedding I reported to, to Wiglsey. Now, once again we, one, one time comes to mind we had a complete and utter cock up on Stirlings. I remember we were corkscrewing, corkscrew starboard, corkscrew port and the Skipper was saying to me diving starboard, diving starboard, climbing port, climbing starboard, rolling port, so on. The corkscrew. And in the middle of this cork, and this Spitfire was attacking us, was attacking us from behind and I was giving a running commentary on, on him coming in and all of a sudden the aircraft levelled out and a panicked voice came over the, came over the intercom, ‘Put on parachutes, jump, jump, jump.’ And I thought, ‘bloody hell, I can’t believe this’. The next second, ‘Put on parachute. Jump, jump, jump. I can’t hold it, I can’t hold it, I can’t hold it.’ I thought to myself ‘bloody hell there’s something happening I can’t see’ and I thought to myself, I thought ‘I’ll have a go’. So I drags the turret around to the beam, pulls on my slider, green as grass I was at the time. Now with experience I’d have opened the door and just flopped back outwards but green as grass I dragged myself out of the turret outside and I was standing outside and the wind was terrible. You can imagine. We were twelve thousand feet, travelling two hundred miles an hour and I’m looking down. I remember standing there with one, with my feet on the edge of the turret, one arm’s holding the top of the turret and I looked down and cows in fields looked, looked like flies. I thought, ‘Bloody hell I wonder if my parachute will open.’ Anyway, I thought to myself I’ll have a go. So therefore, I thought, I started, I released one hand and took, took, began to take my helmet off and quite honestly it was, there was so much noise outside I could hardly hear anything. All of a sudden I heard a faint voice and I didn’t care what it was it I thought, that’s somebody shouting something. It took me twenty minutes to get out but five seconds to get back in. I was back in like a bloody flash and I held my hands to my ears and it was the flight engineer. We’d got a, we’d got a extra member of the crew that time, he was a tour expired extra flight engineer and he was shouting, ‘Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go.’ So, right, well what happened? When we got down as we came down to land I was so stressed up with this thing as I climbed, as I came out of the turret into the fuselage I just asked myself, I just had to know whether my chute would have opened. So I immediately, I pulled the rip cord and my parachute spilled out into the fuselage. It cost me two and six pence to have it, now that’s a lot of money. When you think it’s only two pounds a week for me and I was giving a pound to my Mrs that was a lot of money to me but I didn’t care. It gave me the confidence that at least, at least it opened. Now, when we got out, when we got out I say, I says, I says to Skip, ‘What happened?’ He says, ‘Well’ he says, ‘We were diving,’ he says, ‘We were diving and climbing and rolling in the what do you call it,’ he says, ‘And all of a sudden a window just at the back of my head, unbeknown to me, flew out.’ The window had got, on the inside, had got a lead weighted curtain and as it, as the window blew out it sucked this lead weighted curtain out and he says it just started banging on the side of the fuselage bang, bang, bang, bang he says, ‘I suddenly heard this bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang tremendous noise’ he says, and at that precise moment by sheer coincidence the instructor, flight engineer, the bloody fool, sitting at the side of me, the starboard outer oversped. Now, the standard procedure is to pull the nose of the aircraft like climbing a hill to steady it down. Now, instead of just poking the Skipper or, or switching his intercom on which was at his mouth and saying what was happening he immediately dragged on, dragged as hard as he could on the controls to lift. Now, the Skipper at the time because he was hearing this banging noise was trying to keep the aircraft straight and level and at the same time the flight engineer, and they were pulling against each other and I’m not joking it was a complete and utter cock up but I’ve often thought to myself what did that bloody Spitfire driver think of me when he saw me standing outside, climbing out, he must have thought I were doolally.
[laughs]
Another thing happened whilst we were in flying training. We were doing the corkscrewing. All of a sudden all four engines cut out. Quick as a flash Skipper slammed the aircraft in to a vertical dive and kick-started the engine. Fortunately got them going, fortunately we got plenty of height, kick-started them. By golly that did make your heart flutter [laughs] and then our final training, training trip with, on Stirlings we had an emergency landing and we had, we had to make an emergency landing at Woodhall Spa, the home of 617 of all places, and as we, as we touched down all of a sudden the Stirling swung off, swung off the runway and headed straight for flying control. Now the Stirling was a massive aircraft and, and the cockpit, when the cockpit, when it was stopped, when it was stationery the cockpit was level with the windows in flying control and we, we careered across the, across the, the grass and stopped about a couple of foot from the, from the flying control windows and Skip said he could see flying control people running away from the windows in panic and when we stopped he says, he switches on, he says, ‘Flying control, ‘he says, ‘Can you see where we are?’ and a droll voice, a dry voice came over, ‘Yes’.[laughs] Anyway, the bonus for this was we spent the night at Woodhall Spa and we were, we were able to spend the night in the mess and we were able to mix with those elite airmen, the 617 people. It was absolutely wonderful. Anyway, the next morning we flew the thirty five minutes back, back, back to base at Wigsley and that was our last training trip, flying training trip. The next day we went to, we transferred to RAF Syerston for Lanc finish school which we spent two weeks there. At the end of the two weeks we were being moved to squadron. We were now fully trained. Now, for some reason we, on the 24th of January 1945 we, we boarded a RAF transport to take us from there to squadron. For some reason and I don’t know why we were taken to RAF Balderton for the night. Now, we were absolutely dead beat when we got there. It’s a bit sexy.
[laughs]
Absolutely dead beat so we went to bed very early. Now, we were in a Nissen hut with about twenty beds and there was entrances both sides. Now, fast asleep, late on, I don’t know, about midnight, all of a sudden there was a door opened the other end and a couple, excited couple came in and they obviously didn’t know there was anybody there. Short time later the excited talk, sexual. [laughs] and this went on and on and on and on. Anyway satisfaction came in time and they crept out laughingly and after they’d gone a quiet voice says, ‘Did you hear all that?’ [laughs] It goes without saying that fit aircrew fully trained wouldn’t miss a thing like that. It certainly brightened my night up. The next day we were a, to 50 squadron Skellingthorpe. We arrived at RAF Skellingthorpe on the 25th of January 1945. Now, the atmosphere, there was quite an atmosphere on training, training, on training stations but it was nothing like this. There was that feeling like an electric feeling. There was so much bustle and things going off, watching, actually we were nearly month before we did our first operation but we, all right? Seeing aircraft take off, disappearing, new aircraft coming in, the wild, wild parties that were in the mess. The atmosphere was absolutely wonderful. Now as I said we were a month, we were doing training during the time and I remember wonder, wonder if, if I’m going to be up to it because you never know do you? Anyway, it was the 5th of March, the 5th of March by the time we, we did our first operation and what an operation. What an eye opener. Now, I remember we walked into the, we walked into the briefing room, and The excited chatter and then all of a sudden the briefing officer came in quite pleased and deathly silence instantly. Your target for tonight will be Bohlen. Bohlen. Apparently, I found out, it was going to be a ten hour trip. Your, your route will be passing the Ruhr, in the Ruhr, in the Ruhr 3 Group will be attacking the Ruhr. In that area expect to see enemy fighters attacking in pairs. One from above and one below. If one gets above, if one gets beneath you they will shoot you to pieces. So be careful. Beware. Anyway, briefing finished and we’re standing outside. They’re all chatting all excitedly together and I’m talking to Flight Lieutenant Ling’s rear gunner and I can’t remember his name but I knew that he’d been, he was getting towards the end of his tour. I says to him how are things going, what was the flight like? Obviously, obviously I was quite uptight and he said, ‘Oh don’t worry, there’s nothing to it. Nothing to it. And I said something to him which I’m not going to tell you about which made me think, made me think ‘You’re not taking it seriously enough.’ He said, ‘Oh’ he says, ‘Don’t worry. I’ve never seen, I’ve never seen a fighter at all.’ Unbelievably, we came, we came across our first Messerschmitt less than four hours later. He say, ‘Don’t worry. There’s nothing to it’ and I thought, anyway they got the chop on the next trip, the next what do you call it, you see. Anyway, I remember going out to the aircraft at Skellingthorpe and the tension in me was absolutely sky high and I remember it didn’t seem to take us long, didn’t seem to take us long before we were taxiing out and as we were taxiing out I was looking around and there was all, I’m certain as I remember 61 squadron were also going that night and there were all these aircraft taxiing around the perimeter. The atmosphere was absolutely electric and all above, above, above all above us we could see the Lincoln cathedral in front of us and all above we could see heavily laden bombers gradually circling up, circling around. The tension inside me just went just like that. I was ready for it. Anyway, we turns on to the peri track, taxies up to the runway, waits our turn, turns on to, turns on to the, turns on to the, on to the runway. Skip calls, ‘Brakes on. Full power.’ And then, ‘Right, brakes off’ and, and we began to surge forward and alongside the, alongside the runway was a line of ground staff waving us off. What a wonderful take off. What a wonderful send off. Anyway, this was the first time that we’d been in a, in a Lancaster with a full bomb load. We’d got fourteen thousand pounds of bombs on and two thousand two hundred gallons of fuel. It was as much as any aircraft, Lancaster aircraft could carry in those days. I remember we were surging along, we were surging along, the vibration, this was the first time I’d heard the engines on full throttle right through the gate. The aircraft was absolutely, all the fuselage was vibrating with the tension of it. Anyway, as I, as I remember one two five was the one, was about the speed that you used to take off. I remember engineers started to call out one twenty, one twenty one, one twenty two, one twenty four, one twenty five and then Skip dragged the aircraft and you could feel the fuselage vibrating as he was fighting to get the aircraft into the air and then we had another problem. The Skellingthorpe runway was aimed straight at Lincoln Cathedral on top of that hill. Now that’s like a pimple today but to us in, in 1945 it was a terrible object to get over and we used to have to be banking while still at stalling speed. We used to be banking to miss that, well, I say ‘bloody cathedral, oh God’ and then when we got to a thousand feet it was such a relief. Anyway, I remember, I remember gradually climbed up. Our operation height was twelve thousand feet. I remember circling around. There were hundreds of aircraft. I think there were about two hundred and fifty aircraft involved in that operation. They were oh wonderful sight, wonderful sight gradually, circling around getting up to height and then a green light, Very light came from came out of one of the, the leading aircraft and we immediately began into a bomb, into a stream and we started to head out for Germany over the North Sea. Now, gradually, we’d set off at half past five at night, March and it was getting dark, getting quite dusk and as we set out, as we set out over the, over the North Sea gradually the light disappeared and so the aircraft, the aircraft, gradually, my night vision was developed. It used to take you twenty minutes for your night vision to develop and, and gradually all you could see was just, you could see Lancasters when they were the image of them when they were very close and you could see the sparks of the engine and we used to, we used to, we’d been told, warned about these twin fighters so we were swaying from side to side so we could look straight beneath us so we wouldn’t be caught out and I remember we’d been flying over the North Sea and were now entering, entering, enemy territory for the first time. The tension built up in, the adrenalin. I should say adrenalin building up inside me and I remember I was looking, it was now almost pitch dark, although it was a moonlit night it was still dark and I remember watching this, watching this Lancaster drift slowly underneath us, about twenty or thirty feet beneath us and it had just drifted underneath us. I could just see the sparks from its engines and just as he drifted there was a tremendous explosion just a short distance behind us and the explosion, the light split in half, then the next second, two, two seconds later there were two tremendous explosions. Two Lancasters rammed each other and both exploded in mid-air and then it was back to complete darkness. It hadn’t, the shock, the shock it hadn’t taken me long to realise the difficulties of being on operational active service but you know sadly fourteen air crew, airmen had lost their lives in that second but the shockwave was, it was so close to us the shockwave came right through our aircraft, violently vibrated us and quite honestly I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had blown us down. Anyway, we carried on. We climbed up to twelve thousand feet. Now, it was a moonlit night, a moonlit night and the clouds, the clouds looked like a rolling sea. It was so picturesque. The clouds were up to ten thousand feet, we were two thousand feet above and it looked so picturesque. It was lovely and I remember my concentration was absolutely sky high and all of a sudden I saw something which could have been a fly on a window, it was just a slight movement right down deep, deep on, on the starboard side and I thought to myself, bloody hell a fighter. Can’t be. Who said he’d never seen a fighter? Yeah, I thought, anyway it was at that moment that I made, through inexperience, something which could have been, could have been fatal to us because I should, all my, all my training, I should have in actual fact immediately called and, and warned the crew what was happening. Nevertheless, despite this mistake I automatically aimed my guns at it. Gradually this object moved gradually astern and when it was dead astern at ten thousand feet gradually it started coming up. Now when it got to, when it got level with us the image of the aircraft filled my, filled the ring on my gun sight and it was at that moment that the hundreds of hours that I’d spent viewing, viewing pictures, silhouettes of, of fighter, of enemy fighters, fighters on screens in training paid off because I recognised it a Messerschmitt 109. Immediately, without, without a second thought I pressed my, pressed my button and gave it a prolonged burst straight at the fighter and I watched my, I watched my tracers go straight in it. At this fraction of a second I immediately switched on and shouted, ‘Fighter. Fighter. Dive, dive, dive.’ And the Skipper slammed the aircraft straight into a, into a vertical dive and he’s shouting me, ‘You mean corkscrew. You mean corkscrew.’ But I didn’t. I meant dive because there was no deflection required because he was absolutely dead astern. Anyway, I watched my tracers go straight into it, straight into it and the fighter immediately went straight down as if out of control straight into the cloud. I’m convinced now that I shot it down but of course rules do not allow you to claim anything when you don’t see the ground and we were at ten thousand, the clouds at ten thousand feet so therefore that’s but I’m convinced that I got him. Anyway, we carried on to the target, this was another couple of hours RT silence and all of a sudden, all of a sudden a voice, RT silence was broken. Now, a voice came over as calm as I’m talking to you, ‘Control to Link One how do you read me?’ And it was the, it was the voice of the controller who I feel certain was Wing Commander Stubbs, a man I had a great respect for. ‘Link One to control. Loud and clear. Control to Link One go in and mark the target.’ Ok. Right, carry,’ I listened to this conversation. We’re gradually, now we’re quite some distance from the target but gradually now the pathfinders are now beginning to drop their flares so the sky’s beginning to light up so I’m beginning to see lights in, lights in the sky and gradually as we are approaching as we are getting nearer and nearer the target. I’m listening to the conversation of the controller and the Link One now when everything was done and everything had been marked with satisfaction controller says, ‘Ok. Ok Link One, go home, go home.’ Then he called out which I’m certain was Bandwagon. They called the bomber stream Bandwagon, ‘Hello Bandwagon,’ and that was our call sign, ‘Hello Bandwagon. Come in and bomb the target. Bomb red flares,’ and he was giving instruction to which flares to bomb and when he’d finished all that he says, he says, now, ‘No flak. Watch out for fighters.’ So, anyway, we approach the target and just before the target, just before we reach the target all of a sudden a single engine fighter which I’m certain was a Messerschmitt 109 suddenly made a run at us. I immediately, now I was listening to the bomb aimer and Skipper beginning to give instructions for our bombing run and our instructions was that you should not corkscrew during that time. We were taught to be quiet so immediately I aimed and fired. Calamity. The back of my gun sight dropped out and a white light there, I’d been five hours in pitch darkness, and this white light bomb sight bulb was right in front of me. Now, it only took me seconds to put it together but twenty minutes for my, for my night vision to come back and during that time anything could have happened. I couldn’t have done a thing. I could hear what was happening and all the talk and I couldn’t see a thing. What happened to that fighter I will never know. Anyway, we went on our bomber run and, and I could hear the bomb aimer saying, ‘Left, left, steady, steady, steady. Ok bombs gone.’ Now, the bombs used to drop at about a thousand feet per second. We were twelve thousand feet so twelve seconds later he says, ‘Photograph taken.’ Now, immediately Skipper slammed the nose of the aircraft right down. We went straight down a couple of thousand feet straight into the cloud and we stayed in those clouds for hours. Anyway, we came out of the clouds eventually and then lo and behold as we came out of the cloud over to our, over to our side I can’t remember if it was port or starboard there was a bloody Lancaster flying on with all its lights on. The stupid buggers. With all his lights on. We scooted away from it as quick as we could. So anyway we got back to our area where the cathedral, over the cathedral. Now, Skellingthorpe, Scampton and Waddingon, their circuits almost intertwined around the cathedral, more or less. Now, when we used to come over the cathedral you can- now you can imagine everything was visual so therefore there were loyal scores of very, very tired, tired aircrew so all, all desperate to get home, desperate to get home so there was a tremendous danger of collision and another thing, another thing, the night before this, the night of the 4th , 4th of March, three intruders had shot three Lancasters down in the circuit at Waddington and one at Fulbeck so this had immediately filtered through us so instead of relaxing as one do after, after being in the turret for nigh on ten, eleven hours my concentration as we switched our landing lights on, we just used to have landing lights while we were in the circuit, and I remember as we switched our landing lights on about, about twenty aircraft close by and they must have been in different circuits switched their lights on. Now, I remember I was, my concentration was sky high and I remember thinking Skip calls twenty degrees of flap, a hundred degree of flap and I was all the time searching all the way around thinking to myself I’m not going to be caught out by an intruder because this was the dangerous, you’re like a sitting duck then. We came in to land we stopped in dispersal all the twelve hours of tension drained out of me. I thought to myself ‘bloody hell and this is only the first one’. And that was my first operation. Yeah. Another interesting operation was the one to Lutzkendorf which was on the 14th of March 1945. There were two hundred and forty five Lancasters involved and eleven Mosquitos. Eighteen aircraft failed to return. Never even reported in the paper and that’s nearly two hundred people it’s just, yeah, anyway. Anyway, took off about ten minutes to five. I remember we, we flew past the Ruhr and once again rear group, 3 Group were attacking the Ruhr and I remember as we passed by I could see the fight that was going on. I could see flak shells bursting in the air. Tremendous. I could see air to air tracer bullets from, from bomber to fighter. I could see bombs dropping and I thought bloody hell we’ve got another, we’ve got another two hours to go yet and then we continued a short distance away and now there was another problem. We’d been warned that there was a fighter, a fighter aerodrome, a night fighter ‘drome in this area which had a light shining from its roof, from the top of flying control so that, so that we knew from one that there would be, there would be fighters, night fighters in strength in this area and this light was on specifically so they could stay in the air until the last minute, down, refuel and be up again. Now, I remember I suddenly saw this and the adrenalin was such, I thought to myself God the night fighter are bound. All of a sudden I saw the airfield had been strafed. The light disappeared. Obviously, it must have been one of our aircraft. One of our aircraft. I know full well that putting the light out didn’t, didn’t make much difference to the fact that fighters were around but boy it did relieve me. Anyway, we carried on to the, we carried on to the target and once again, once again, I can’t remember the controller it might have been Wing Commander Stubbs but he went through the same procedure, went through the same procedure. I remember him saying at the end, ‘No flak. Look out for fighters. Watch out for fighters’. This was our fourth trip and the tension was beginning to build up in me as we were going through the target and I remember without me intercom switched on I was listening to the, I was listening to the bomb aimer saying, ‘Left, left, left, steady’ and I was shouting, I was shouting in a loud voice, ‘Drop the bloody thing. Drop the bloody thing and let’s get out of here.’ Anyway, after what seemed an interminable length of time he said ‘Bombs gone.’ Skip immediately slammed the aircraft down into a dive and disappeared from the, and as we as we left the target I thought to myself, ‘thank God, we got away with it’. Little did I know. Now, I remember we’d left the target, we’d been gone probably ten and fifteen minutes and I could still hear that controller over the target. ‘Bomb green, the green flare,’ do this, undershoot it, do this, do that. It was absolutely inspirational. He must have been, he seemed to have been over the target hours. Anyway as I’m listening to this left from the target about approximately fifteen minutes when all of a sudden a fighter flare burst straight above us. From complete darkness it was like switching the light on, an electric light on in a pitch dark room. The shock of it made me sink deep in, deep in to my, in to my turret. My seat. Mind you, immediately my mind started working like lightning and I, looking out of the, looking out of, I searched the area. I searched the area all the way, all the way. I searched the area all over and sure enough high on the starboard side I could my left I could see an FW190 coming in fast dragging all I’d been looking I hadn’t been turning my turret around so as quick as I can I’m dragging my turret around. I didn’t have time to aim. So, immediately I got anywhere near I pressed my, I starts firing, my gun starts rattling away I’m dragging, trying to drag my tracer, tracer bullets into it and I’m watching it. Then all of a sudden with this, this aircraft coming in fast I felt rather than saw something on my, deep on the starboard side and forcing myself to take my eyes off this aircraft I had a quick glance to the right, to the right, and there deep down, deep down on the port side. It’s my right but it’s the port side of the aircraft, deep down on the port side was a JU88 almost underneath us and I thought, bloody hell. Immediately I realised that if he could get underneath us he was going to shoot us to pieces so I stopped firing at him, drags my turret around and as soon as I can, as soon as I can I began firing at this JU88 and immediately, immediately they both of them broke away. Now, they played cat and mouse with us for twenty six minutes. Now, that might not seem a long, a long time but as each, each attack only lasted about ten seconds. How many times they came in I don’t know but anyway Lancasters, Lancasters didn’t have any power assisted controls. The Skipper was corkscrewing continuously for forty minutes. The physical effort on him must have been absolutely terrific. Anyway, the tension inside me remained after. I didn’t realise they were twenty six minutes. After a time, after a long time with my tension, with my concentration, still sky high they disappeared. They must have decided that, that, you know, either run out of fuel or they realised they might as well go for an easier target. Anyway, the navigator, I only know it was twenty six minutes because the navigator told me later but when we got back I remember the relief as we passed over the English coast. It was absolutely fantastic. I know we weren’t safe but the relief to be over. It seemed so much comfort to be coming over, over this country. Now, when we, when we, after we came in to land I found out that all ten thousand rounds that I’d supplied to my rear turret - I’d fired every one. There wasn’t one left. So if we’d have had another attack by one of those fighters I couldn’t have done anything about it. That was as close we were to disaster. Phew. And sadly, sadly Flight Lieutenant Ling and crew did not return from this, from this operation and I’m not surprised. Well I shouldn’t say this but, no I won’t say any further. I did think that the rear gunner was getting a bit blasé and probably he wasn’t doing what he should have been doing but I don’t know. I can’t say anything more about that. But that was my fourth operation.
Another interesting operation was a daylight operation to Nordhausen. There were two hundred and forty Lancasters involved. Now during briefing we’d been told that the SS troops had been transferred to Nordhausen to protect Hitler. Now, this was what made it interesting with thoughts that we might be bombing Hitler. Now, we didn’t have any flak or fighters to contend with but all we had was problems. Now, I remember we took off. Generally speaking most of my operations in fact all of the other operations we used to take off from, from Skellingthorpe and go straight out to the North Sea. On this occasion we were going to travel south, south and meet up with 3 group aircraft and, and, and travel to Nordhausen with them, you see, which, which meant we were going to drive past the London area. Now, we’d been warned at briefing be careful near the London area. Their ack ack gunners don’t like strangers, unidentified aircraft flying over. They will fire first and ask second so beware. Anyway, having taken off in the early hours of the morning it was still absolutely pitch. 2.30 we took off. It was still pitch dark as we went by, went by the London area and I remember as we arrived there, there were absolutely hundreds and hundreds of searchlights shining up and quite honestly we were so close to them I thought, I was really on tenterhooks, because I thought bloody hell, thinking about the fourteen thousand pound of bombs underneath us and those, those twitchy ack ack gunners. Anyway, I was looking down, all of a sudden Skip slammed the aircraft in to a vertical drive. Now the g-force on me was tremendous. It drew me, stretched my body up and my body, my head hit the top of the fuselage with a bang, the top of the turret rather with a bang and just at that precise second, now you’ve got to remember that I had no perspex at all in front of me, so, therefore, therefore the open air was just there and just as that happened a Lancaster aircraft flew just over and I swear to this day that if I’d have put my hand out I could have touched that aircraft. Another one of our nine lives. Anyway we carried on. We met with up 3 Group, over Reading it was, and we drifted out over the, over the, on to enemy territory. I remember we were so widely spaced out well, we were used to flying at night-time, we didn’t need to be in a gaggle when all of a sudden there was a voice came up, RT silence broken and it was obviously the fighter leader controller, fighter leader and he shouts up ‘Close up. Close up. How do you expect me to bloody protect you?’ Anyway, we got to Nordhausen and boy did we close up. Our operational height was about twelve thousand feet as far as I could remember. I can’t remember. Somewhere in that region. But two hundred and fifty aircraft then from being miles apart suddenly homed in together in to a thin line and I remember there was aircraft all the way around us, almost touching us. Now, I didn’t mind the ones at the side or the ones below or the ones straight above us but I was leaning forward in my turret and looking up. The ones I was concerned of one above in front that I couldn’t see because I thought to myself they’ll be dropping bloody bombs on us and I’m looking at them when all of a sudden, all of a sudden a full load of bombs missed the back of my turret with this, with a fraction. Almost touching us. Ten, ten one thousand pound bombs and a cookie. Now, they go down like lightning. Fifty foot beneath us was a Lancaster. The first, the first thousand pounder hit this fuselage right in the middle, right, just at the back of the mid upper turret. I cringed, expecting it to explode but lo and behold the bomb went straight through the fuselage and disappeared, continued down. The next, the next thousand pounder hit the middle of the wing and I still couldn’t believe it. I’m still cringing again and it bounced back and bounced off. Now the cookie, which was a contact bomb, they must have had err, you know biometric things that didn’t explode above five hundred feet or something but the cookie was a contact bomb. It missed the side of the fuselage by a skin of paint. Anyway, I remember the, the aircraft disappeared and there was a lot, there was a lot happening. I forgot about it. Anyway, by sheer chance at the end of the war I was listening to Canadian troops embarking on to the ship to go home and, and the person being interviewed was a pilot and it was an interesting story and do you know he went through what I’ve just told you. It was the, it was the pilot of this aircraft and he said, he said, and it was so pleasing to know, that they’d staggered back to the North Sea and dropped their bombs and got, and they survived the war. Anyway, anyway we were coming over the North Sea about, about ten thousand feet and all of a sudden I saw two Lancasters drop right down to zero feet and I thought bloody hell they’re going in. They’re going in. And all of a sudden from the back of one of them I suddenly saw foam appear and it was like watching a motorboat swing, speeding along and this foam behind, I can’t remember, two engines, two of the engines, this foam was behind it for about four hundred yards when gradually it picked up, climbed up and I thought to myself, ‘oh they’re ok. They’re alright’. Anyway, by sheer coincidence four days later when we returned from an operation we were diverted to Spilsby of all places, 44 squadron which I eventually finished up on and we were able to get out of the aircraft to have a walk you know and have a stretch and I was walking by this aircraft which had got props bent and all the props on one side. I think it was just on one side [laughs] I think it was just on one side. They were bent almost double and I, and there was a ground staff working on it and I said, ‘God, what happened to that aircraft?’ He said, ‘The silly buggers,’ he says, ‘This bloke and another bloke coming from an operation a few days ago, they were playing about to find which one could get closer to the sea. This silly bugger dragged his props in the water. Nearly drowned his rear gunner.’ I thought to myself, ‘God, how did they manage to keep the aircraft flying with damage like that?’ Anyway, he said they were being court martialled. I don’t know. Anyway, and that was that.
[laughs]
Another very interesting operation was a daylight operation to Hamburg oil installations, Germany on the 9th of April 1945. During this operation twenty five jet fighters ME262s attacked the bomber force. This was, I believe, the first time that any fighters were ever used during any war, first attack. Anyway, there were, there were, there were fifty seven bombers involved. 50 squadron, 61 squadron I think we got twelve and something like that, 61 squadron and 617 and 9 squadron. We were to, we were to drop, we were to drop thousand pounders on the oil installations and 617 and 9 squadron were to drop a tall boy. I can’t remember if eight thousand or twelve thousand pound bombs on the, on the submarine pens. Now, the thing was that because of the weight of the Tall Boy they’d taken out of the Lancasters, 617 and 9 squadrons they’d taken away the bomb doors and had actually taken off the mid upper turret to lighten the aircraft so to be able to carry it ready to take off and because of this we were, we were instructed that we were to fly in a gaggle and fly as quick, as close as possible to support them. Now another thing the apparently 309 squadron, a Polish squadron flying mustangs, would escort us and 65 squadron were also taking part. Now, we took off at about well 14.48 I believe it was. The weather was perfect and I remember our operational height was twelve thousand feet. Now, I remember we were passing over, we were passed quickly, over, over the, over the North Sea and I’m thinking to myself now Hamburg was a very, very dangerous place. A very important place to Germany. Still is. Still is. But because of this over the war, during the war they’d built up a tremendous defence and if you had any aircraft attacking there we could have heavy losses so we knew that we were in for a difficult time when we got there. I remember passing over, over Germany and all of a sudden every so often the flak was bursting, shells were bursting shells were bursting around us but quite honestly I never gave them a thought. You know I was used to night, night bombing where the flak was a bright light but I never gave as I say, probably I should have done. Anyway we got to, got to Hamburg, near to Hamburg and I rotated my turret. I can’t remember port or starboard side but we were coming up and turned square to the right over Hamburg.
Other: Can somebody come in here?
Going back a little bit I remember as we were going over the, going over the North Sea it was a completely cloudless sky, brilliant sun and I remember thinking to myself where are those bloody fighters supposed to be, that are supposed to be protecting us? Three squadrons were supposed to be protecting us but every so often, every so often we saw right in the distance swirling around oh I thought, ‘Oh lovely. There they are.’ Anyway we carried on. I remember as we, as we, as we entered, got over mainland Europe gradually every so often we’d hear the phuf phuf of flak shells at the side of us which I just ignored. I don’t know a bit complacent probably but I just didn’t care about them. Didn’t take any, anyway we gets to Hamburg and Hamburg, I’m just, I’m repeating myself now. Hamburg was a very special place. Was then. Is now. And during the war years they’d built up a tremendous, tremendous defensive force. They, they could send up a box barrage of flak in an instant and I remember we were approaching, approaching Hamburg and I can’t remember which side we were. Left or right. But I leaned forward, leaned forward and I looked and turned my turret to the beam and leaned forward to look forward and I could almost see in front of us and I could see the target as we were approaching her and I’m not joking I have never seen flak like it. We were, we were, I think we, I think we were, our height was we bombed from about sixteen thousand feet but up to around our bombing height there was a complete black cloud of flak shells bursting out and I remember thinking to myself, bloody hell we’re never going to get through that. Now I’m just going to divert a little bit because we were at the back of the fifty seven aircraft and a friend of mine on 61 squadron, Ted Beswick, he was in the front aircraft and he was telling me later he says they were watching this predict, this flak. I forget what you call it. Predicted flak. It gradually approaching him and he said until one burst right in front of the nose and he says and, and, and parts flew through the front through the bomb aimers position and, and, and badly injured the engine, the bomb aimer. Anyway, we carried on to the target. We turned on to the target and we, I’m not joking with you, I can’t describe what it was like going through the flak. It was absolutely frightening you. I was thinking, I say, frightening. Anyway, believe it or not we went, we got through the target unscathed. We dropped our bombs and I understand it was a successful bombing. Anyway, we left the target and I could see aircraft. I feel certain I could see aircraft around, some damaged but nobody shot down. Anyway we’d left the target and we’d been left a few minutes. I then turned my turret around and I thought to myself, bloody hell, we’re back marker. Sitting duck for any fighters. So immediately I switched on. I said, ‘Skip, Skip we’re back marker. Sitting duck for any fighters.’ He says, ‘Ok. Ok.’ So he immediately shoves full throttle on and gradually, gradually we moved forward so we could see aircraft behind me. That made me feel a bit better. Now, a short time later and I can’t remember how long, all of a sudden twenty five ME262s attacked the formation. I only saw five but I know from later reports it was twenty five but I saw five aircraft coming along the, coming along the ground level and I, I called, ‘Skip Skip I can see, I can see five small aircraft on almost at ground level.’ God, I’ve never seen aircraft travelling so fast. They, they, they began to climb. I says, ‘God they’re climbing faster than I’ve ever seen any aircraft dive.’ Within seconds they were up to our operational height. They levelled out and came straight at us canons blazing. Canons blazing’s straight through us like a dose of salts. Now, one of them come straight at us and I’m firing as hard trying, trying as hard as I could ‘cause it’s like lightning is happening, trying to drag my tracer bullets into it and it came so close I thought to myself it’s going to ram us and I’m not joking he then swung in between us and another Lancaster by my side, by our side and, and I could see the, I could see fighter, I could see the fighter pilot as close as I can see you now. Anyway, I’m swinging and firing my turret and all of a sudden I realised that I’m firin my, still firing my bullets straight through this Lancaster at the side of me. I lifted my arms like lightning off, off my, off my off my controls and, and, and I thought to myself bloody hell, I thought to myself might have shot down my, the aircraft but of course you can’t shoot an aircraft down by firing straight at it you have to fire in front of them but that was fortunate because it was a 617 aircraft. I don’t know what would have been said. Anyway, we, we’d left the target, we left the target and only a few seconds later after they’d attacked us all of a sudden by the side of us the aircraft, the back marker aircraft exploded, broke in half and began to drop straight down. Now, when it had dropped about a thousand feet I saw although the rear turret would immediately lose, as it broke in half, lose, lose any control we had we had a handle which we could turn and swing the turret around. Anyway, after about a thousand feet I saw the, this is another story I’ll tell you in a bit which I’d forgotten to tell you. Forgotten to tell you. I watched this rear gunner drag himself out of the, out of the turret and fall away and I thought to myself oh thank God, he’s, thank God he’s, going to get away with it. He was a friend of mine. Anyway, the parachute opened and a few seconds puff it exploded in flames and then I had to watch this friend of mine, friend of mine struggling, drop away, gradually drop away to his death. Now, I’ll tell you a little, I’d forgotten to tell you but when we went out to the aircraft, when we went out to the aircraft after we’d had the briefing you all race out and you all try to get on to the buses as there were buses and lorries. Now, the buses were a lot of comfort so therefore you raced to get in those. Now we raced in and I sat in the front seat and, and sitting at the side of me was Norman, Norman Garfield Fenton. Friend of mine. I say he’s a friend, he was a squadron friend not that I knew much about his private life other than that he was from Kettering. But I says to him, ‘What aircraft are you in? He says, ‘Fred. F Freddy.’ Now F Freddy, we did four ops in there so it gave us, gave us chat, you know, something to talk about. Anyway we got to the dispersal area and, and climbs out. All of us rush to our aircraft and climbed aboard and did our pre-start checks and afterwards there was still an hour or so to go. We climb out of the fuselage and, and, and went Taffy and I went, went and sat down, sat down on the grass and a few seconds later Norman walks across and we sat down and there we are. I think we took off at 2.30 so it was quite warm and where we sat there chatting away talking about what we were going to do. I remember I do believe he said he’d got a little child. I can’t remember but I think he said he had a young family but we were chatting about what we were doing and four hours later I watched him die. You know, it really did affect me. I mean, at night time you just disappeared, didn’t have the same effect on you but knowing, I recognised the aircraft as it dropped away as V and F. I could see it clearly so I knew this was Dennis, Dennis struggling and nearly got out and I had to watch him fall and it did affect me for quite a long time and poor Dennis and Flying Officer [Berryman] who was his Skipper and, and one of the other crew are buried in, in Hamburg but oh dear it did affect me for quite a long time that. Ok. Now one thing I’ve got when we got back to briefing. When we got back to briefing we turned around and told the briefing officers we’d been attacked by jets and they says not possible. Not possible. Not possible. There’s no, there’s no airfields around Hamburg for jets but little did we know, little did we know that jets, the Germans were taking off from motorways. Ten out of ten for them for innovation. But apparently the, the powers that be killed the story because they were so fearful of the effect it might on morale, of morale of our aircrew. But then I want to go back a little bit now to Ted Beswick. He saw all, I only saw five but he saw all twenty five. Now, one of them came at us came at them and he shouts port corkscrew, corkscrew, go, go but of course they couldn’t because they were in gaggle. Anyway when the, when the ME262s had attacked they began to swung around and began to go around to reposition they could only do one or two attacks because of limited fuel but one drew up by accident right on, right on their starboard side I can’t remember starboard or port side. Anyway he immediately fired and saw his tracer bullets go straight into it, straight into it and immediately, immediately the aircraft went straight down as if out of control and he watched it spiral down. Ted is convinced that he made a kill, he made a kill. Of course he couldn’t claim it because once again he didn’t see the ground. But they had another incident they did. They had a hang-up bomb. They couldn’t get rid of it and try as they might they couldn’t get rid of it so they started to go back and try to get rid of it in the, in the North Sea. They still couldn’t get rid of it so they decided to bring it back, bring it back to Skelly. Now as they came in, in to land there was a bang as they touched down and the bomb dropped on to the bomb doors. Now, they pulled up immediately at the end of runway, got out of the aircraft, scooted away from the aircraft called up and a short time later, a short time later well some time later along comes the ground staff, gingerly opens up the, opens up the, winds open the, the bomb doors, bomb doors. Two of them stands there, catches a thousand pounder and then, you know, we have got a lot to thank those air crew people, ground staff people for. Wonderful, wonderful unsung heroes. One, one interesting operation was to [?] in Norway. I remember there was, I can’t remember how many aircraft, several hundred aircraft involved. But we’d been in we’d been told that we were to fly at zero level up the North Sea and I remember in the half-light seeing probably a couple of hundred Lancasters flying, almost touching, almost touching the waves. It was so exciting. I loved it I did. And I’m certain Skip enjoyed it just as a much as I did. Anyway, we got to the, we got to the, got to Norway and, I can’t remember how long it took us. Anyway, we climbed up to bombing height which would be, it would have been about ten to twelve thousand feet. Now, I seemed to remember one gun, one heavy gun but if I’m to believe records, records say there was no, no flak but I seem to remember one gun as we approached. One heavy gun. Anyway, we came in, we came in to bomb and, and we’re virtually on our bombing run and I’m listening to the Skip and the bomb aimer conversing when all of a sudden, now, always before when the Skip had had to dive the aircraft had to change direction of the aircraft it had always been a dive. On this occasion it was different all together. All of a sudden the aircraft reared straight up. Now, I remember I’m clinging on to my controls and I was transfixed. I was transfixed and even though my head still thumped the top of the turret because of the reaction of the aircraft swinging and at the same time we used to carry our flasks and sweets and chocolates given to people, aircrew and I remember them coming straight up in the air, straight up in the air and as the aircraft, aircraft levelled they all went straight out of the window and I said oh sod it. I was saving those for the return. But another thing happened. Ass this was happening. I’m hearing a swirl, a swirling noise of machine gun noise coming into my turret. Thousands of bullets was coming along the ducts into the aircraft. Now, I didn’t realise this was what happened but they came in and completely jammed the turret. Anyway, we levelled out. We crept back over the sea and got back home but if anything had happened we couldn’t have done a thing about that. Now, the thing is when I was on that operation, in our billet, in our billet was another crew err if you just give me a second I’ll remember his name. I’ll just get, now this operation was on the 25th, 26th of April 1945. Now, in my billet, in my billet was another crew. Now this crew, they disappeared and I didn’t know what happened so I just, this is when people got the chop things, just used to take there was usually two crews to a Nissan but when they got the chop they used to take, just take their things out. They disappeared. Never heard anything about them. Anyway, last year, last year at our reunion, our reunion a fellow approaches near our memorial. He says, ‘Hello James. Do you remember me? And I says to him, ‘I don’t think so. I can’t remember.’ Well, he says ‘You were in the next bed to me on 1945. January 1945.’ I says, ‘Oh yes.’ I said ‘What happened to you then?’ I said, ‘You disappeared didn’t you?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ He says, he said, ‘When you were going on [?] we were on Exodus.’ Exodus operation. Fetching prisoners back from, from Europe, probably Brussels. Anyway, he says, ‘We dropped the prisoners, the POWs, ex-POWs down he said and headed for home and on the way back we crashed.’ He said, the, the ‘We had problems, engine problems and in trying to avoid these houses the wing tip hit the ground and, he says, ‘And it slewed into the ground. My turret was thrown off into, into a field.’ He said, ‘My guns were buried in the ground.’ He said, ‘I was in hospital for a week.’ He said the mid upper turret, the mid upper gunner got away with it he got a broken leg but the rest of the crew were all killed. I said, ‘Oh good God.’ I says, ‘I wondered what happened.’ They just disappeared. So there you are. Made contact all those years later but how did he finally manage? Probably he managed to find me because with me doing so much on our website. I’m better known. More people know me then I remember them. That’s probably it isn’t it. Could be couldn’t it? But an interesting story that isn’t it? There you are.
MJ: Ahum
HJF: Now then. I want to carry on. On the 1st of June, is it on? Switch her on.
MJ: It is on.
HJF: Yeah. On the 1st of June ‘45 we were transferred from 50 squadron to 44 squadron to be part of, to be part of Tiger Force. The intention was to, to, to fly us straight out, quickly out to the Far East. As a matter of fact Okinawa was going to be our base. So we, we went, we transferred to Spilsby. Now, from day one we started doing high level training. Anyway, I can’t remember but it was a few days after we got, one of our trips, it was only one and three quarter hour trips I think it was just about the worst one of all. I remember we’d got fourteen thousand pounds of bombs we were going to drop into dispersal area in the North Sea and as we taxied around all of a sudden, the port, the port inner set on fire. Now, the smoke was coming and filling my turret and I thought to myself silly bugger put your oxygen mask on, puthering in to me. Anyway, rapidly the, the engine was feathered and after a few minutes the Skip calls up flying control and tells them, ‘Engine fire. Waiting for instructions.’ We waited for instructions and a few minutes later the flying control calls, ‘Right, start the engine up. Give it a run up. Take off when you’re ready.’ When he switched off there was a chorus of voices, ‘We’re not bloody going, the stupid buggers, that engine wants checking. We’re not bloody going.’
MJ: Ahum
HJF: ‘We’re not bloody going.’ Anyway, Skipper in the meantime started the engine up. He revs it up, he says, ‘It seems ok to me. We’ve got to go.’ And we kept saying, ‘We’re not bloody going.’ Anyway, we turns on to the, and eventually gets and I’m not joking I was full of trepidation. I could feel in my water that something else was going to happen. Now, anyway we’d just got our wheels off the deck and the starboard outer seized. Now, let’s just think about it. We’ve got a dicky port inner and we got a, a seized starboard outer and we’ve got fourteen thousand pound of bomb. I’m not, that’s as much as an aircraft immediately started to vibrate telling me, telling me she’s going to stall. She’s going to stall. Now, quick as that I thought, my apprehension just disappeared. I thought to myself I’m going to, I’m going to jump no matter what the height. So, quick as lightning I swings my turret to beams, pulls open the doors. like a flash I was sitting outside and there I sat outside listening to, feeling the violent vibrations of the, of the aircraft as it gradually gained speed and height. It took us about thirty minutes to get up to about two thousand feet and while I’m sitting there just thinking about myself there our poor old Skipper was at the front fighting to keep this aircraft in the air. What a brilliant, brilliant Skipper. Anyway, we eventually get, gradually the vibration stopped. We got to the dispersal area, drops the bombs as near, as near as we could and returned. That, that trip took an hour and a quarter and it seemed the longest one of all. Good God we were so close and then what turned out to be our final trip, final flight actually for seventy, nearly seventy years as far as I was concerned. We were taking part in a dodge operation. Which, Dodge Operations were returning, returning British soldiers, taking, taking Italian troops back to Italy, to Bari in Italy and bringing British soldiers home. Now, we’d been so many times we used to fly visual. We used to go down to Marseilles, turn left over Marseilles, out over, out over the North Sea to the tip of Corsica and, and, and then make for Rome and over Rome straight for Bari. Now we were so casual about this we used to fly you know, anyway as it turns out the engineer, the engineer used to do a bit of piloting every so often. They used to keep their hand in. Anyway, fortunately the engineer had strapped himself in. Now we were carrying twenty one, twenty one Italians and I was sitting in the fuselage, in the fuselage. I was more or less a steward. Now, we were climbing, we were climbing up to ten tenths cloud. Now it was a very, very stormy day. Very, very hot day. Tropical storms everywhere and as it turned out we were the only aircraft only two of us arrived at Bari. Aircraft were diverted all different places. Anyway, we were climbing up through ten tenths cloud at ten thousand feet when all of a sudden cause safety height over, to cross the tip of Corsica, safety height being eleven thousand feet when all of a sudden the aircraft veered straight up, straight up and we flew slap bang into the centre of cunim, Now the tremendous upward force hit the belly of the, hit the aircraft and flung it straight up in the air. She stalled, dropped on her back and started to vertically drop down. Now, the Skipper standing by the side of the engineer as I say he was, he was, he was piloting was thrown up to the roof and he dragged himself around the, and for a time he thought to himself bloody hell we’re going. I’m going to drag myself back. Then he realised that the flight engineer was beginning to get a bit of joy so he drags himself around the fuselage, the side of the fuselage to a standing position alongside him and there was only single controls in a Lancaster. He then grabs hold of the controls and the two of them used all their strength to pull the aircraft out, out of its vertical dive. Now, as I told you I was in the back of the aircraft looking after these, looking after the Italians. I was thrown up to the ceiling and a water tank that was there for them floated up in the air, floated up in the air and were virtually trapped beyond the fuselage and as I looked, I could look at the back and there was, we’d got a Lancaster wheel in in the back, in the back which we were taking. Probably somebody had a burst tire. They’d left it loose. The silly buggers had left it loose. I watched this, watched this Lancaster wheel do a full circle of the fuselage. It smashed the auto gyro and it went around and it hit the machine gun ducts and right to the side of the ducts were the, were the rudder bar controls and I thought to myself, I was praying that it wouldn’t come rolling towards us when the next second, the next second with a slam I was banged down, banged down on to the floor, banged down on to the floor and I dragged myself up. All the Italians were in a complete panic and without thinking I just slotted the bloke at the side of me, slotted him, knocked him down and said, ‘Lie down.’ I made him lie down. Anyway, then I thought to myself, I thought as I’m standing there I thought to myself, actually I called Skip up. I said oh I think one of these, one of these Italians had pulled the [aerial] controls and we knew we’d lost an aircraft through somebody pulled themselves, their all external inside the aircraft and pulled them up and it had caused the aircraft to crash because it was almost you know in a position where they couldn’t change so I thought that’s what had happened, Anyway, as I’m standing looking all of a sudden the aircraft reared up again but not quite as bad. So I thought sod it I’ll have a look at this. Now our mid upper gunner had been transferred because of the end of the war you see, had transferred so I climbed into his turret and I was amazed. We should have been at eleven thousand feet to cross over safely over the tip of Corsica. We were then travelling along the coastline on the edge of the mountains, parallel. Somehow or other in the process of diving vertically we’d changed direction. Now, I don’t know whether it were luck or whether it was the skill of our pilot but anyway we turned, we were flying along the coast of, coast, coastline. Now then we came into land. Now at Bari, at Bari there was only one single runway. One single runway. And, and aircraft were, aircraft were positioned, were parked either side of the runway. Yanks on the left, yanks on one side and all Lancasters on the other. Now, as we came in to land, another thing, just at the end of the runway was a, was a large quarry and on very hot days, on very hot days used to cause an air pocket above the, right above the end of the runway. Now Skipper might have forgotten that or it might have been just because let’s face it I was stressed up and I was only looking after them, so God only knows how he was feeling but anyway as we came in to land we dropped from about sixty foot straight down. We hit the ground, we hit the tarmac with such a bang and the aircraft reared off, reared off, slewed to, slewed to port and, and coming, taxiing right down, right down just in front of us was a, was a flying fortress. We were heading straight for it. Skip immediately slams port throttle, full port throttle on, slews the aircraft and I could feel the undercarriage bending. Why it didn’t break I don’t know and there we are slewing across to the other side and going straight for the Lancs and he shoved full throttle on the other side and we straightened out and that was it and we levelled out. Now, you might have thought that was enough trouble for one thing but when we were coming up, we stayed there four days and I remember I was standing, we were waiting to return and we were standing about halfway along the runway and there were thousands of troops, thousands. There were hundreds of aircraft and thousands of troops, American and British, and we were watching the first Lancaster to take off and it came by us and it was almost as it came flashing by us it was almost at take-off speed when all of a sudden it turned completely ninety degrees. Now there were four line I think, I can’t remember whether it was three line or four lines but it went through the first ones, first ones, missed all the aircraft but hit another one in the line absolutely broadside and just as it hit its undercarriage collapsed but when it hit it’s props were churning into the side of the aircraft churning, churning. Now, thousands of us ran across thinking to ourself, expecting that there would be many many fatalities, many many fatalities but when we got to the aircraft, when we got to the aircraft there was a great big hole in the nose of the aircraft. Three, three, three soldiers climbed out of the front of the nose and do you know and people were pouring out of all sides of the engine. All sides of the aircraft. Do you know there were thousands of people out but do you know to my knowledge there was only one person, there were nobody killed and one person injured and that was he was injured through flying glass. Absolutely fantastic. I thought to myself this is a bloody mugs game. It’s time I pack this game up. Well I’ll tell you now it was an uneventful trip back to the, back to the, back to England but that was the last time I flew in any aircraft until about 2012.
[laughs] 1.38.08
Now, at the, I now over the years, over the years over the last, nearly twenty years I’ve been involved with the 50 and 61 Squadron Association website. Now, quite honestly I never, until, until I was in my seventies I’d never used a computer. But anyway, anyway I was instrumental in helping, helping, eventually, not for a start in helping to start up our website 50 and 61 Squadron Association websites. Now, I have a veteran’s album. I don’t do hardly anything these days Mike [Connock] does it but until, at our reunion 209 Air Vice Marshall Nigel Baldwin came up to me and says, ‘James, I’ve got a story here, an interesting story which would be good for your veterans album.’ Now, it was then I was interested to, I was then introduced to a person called Chris Keltie. Now -
Other: I don’t want to hear your secrets.
HJF: Yeah Chris Keltie. He then, Chris told me a story which at the time -
Other: Make him at least give you a drink.
HJF: No. No. You’re alright.
Other: At least make him. Now I’m telling you. Go on.
HJF: Oh did, did we bring that cup of coffee in? Did we leave that coffee in there? I don’t think we did did we?
MJ: No.
HJF: Oh bloody hell we forgot. Oh sorry.
HJF: As I say. Chris Keltie. Chris Keltie. He told me a story which at the time I just didn’t believe. I couldn’t believe that anybody, because of my experiences, I couldn’t believe that anybody could do what I was being told but he was telling me that a pilot whilst severely injured and weakened by loss of blood had regained control of an earthbound Lancaster and, and in pitch darkness brought the thing in to land and thereby saved the lives of, as it turned out, three of his crew members. For this he got nothing. Not even get, now I’ll tell you the full story. On the, it’s Victoria stuff. Victoria Cross stuff. I’m not joking with you. It was in July 1944 I can’t quite remember exact date. It might have been the 4th or 5th. Anyway, they successfully, they were bombing a V1 bomb site. It was 61 squadron aircraft. QR D Dog was the aircraft. Bill North was, Bill North, flight lieutenant. He was the flying officer at the time but it was Bill North, Bill North was the pilot and his aircraft was QR Dog. Now they were to, from thirteen thousand feet they were going to bomb the V1 sites. Now, which they were the first aircraft to bomb it and after, as they left the target an FW190 sprayed their aircraft. It blew away the fin, the port fin. It blew away the port fin. Blew away the port outer engine and fuel tank and it also it splattered the middle of the turret. Now, the mid upper gunner, now I used to say it was either between six and eight bullets, non life saving bullets in his body. Unbelievable. Splattered the turret. Anyway, it splattered all the Perspex, the cockpit Perspex and, and the pilot screamed out in agony as four bullets hit him. Two in his thigh and two in his left arm. Now, his left arm one of them hit the nerve and it paralysed his arm so his arm was flailing there. Now, immediately and the aircraft immediately begins, it’s earthbound screaming towards the earth. He immediately gives instructions to bail out and begins to drag himself out to go to the escape hatch. Now, as he drags himself out of the seat the flight engineer who is sitting by his side reaches back. Now, as the pilot had sat on his parachute. Now, but the, but the flight engineer and the rest most of the crew, the rear turret and rear gunner all had clip on chutes now his was clipped on the fuselage. Now, he reaches back to unclip his, his ‘chute off the fuselage, the side of the fuselage and as he pulls it off it’s been shot to pieces by bullets. It’s just at that point Bill was about to drop out of the escape hatch. Quickly he grabs hold of his shoulder and shouts my parachutes gone, my parachutes gone. Now, nobody would have blamed Bill North If he’d have thought to himself nothing I can do. I’m badly injured myself and just to have gone just to continue to drop out but without one second thought he made a conscious decision to drag himself back into his to his controls. Now, the, the landing an aircraft, a Lancaster is a two man job. You need, you need the help of the flight engineer. The flight engineer was frozen with fear. Couldn’t do anything. Now, Bill North, with one hand, his adrenalin must have been five hundred percent I have no idea how he did it but unbelievably with the aircraft screaming earthbound he regains control and in pitch darkness not only did he regain control but in this very heavily wooded area he found, he found a clearing, brought the aircraft in to land from an impossible height at an impossible speed. No, no flaps involved because the bloke couldn’t, the flight engineer couldn’t do anything. Had the presence of mind as he brought the aircraft in to land it tail down so there would be less danger of fuel tank, of fuel explosion and landed and when it became stationery he was so weak from the loss of blood that he slipped into unconsciousness. Now then, as it turned out not only had he saved the life of the flight engineer alongside him but apparently the mid upper gunner and another person, I think wireless operator, were both trapped in the fuselage because their turret ‘chutes had been shot to pieces, so they, as I say he slipped into unconsciousness so they had to carry, carry him, they had to carry him out of the aircraft and as they laid him on the grass at the side of the plane he slipped into unconsciousness and they thought he was dying. Anyway, time went by. The French were involved but I can’t remember who else was involved but in time the Germans came, whisked him into a hospital and he remained in hospital for several months after which he was, he was transferred to a concentration camp and he finished the war, and finished the war in a concentration camp. For this he didn’t get any mention in despatches. Not even a mention in despatches. Absolutely disgraceful. This is, this is, this is VC stuff. Now when Mr Ball when, when Nigel Ball contacted me I, I wrote this story, this was several years before, I wrote his story on my website. Now last year, October during last year the, the sons of, of Bill North, he’d passed away the year before, wrote to David Cameron to thank him for what he’d to done to get the air crew their memorial in London and thanked him for getting the clasp. Bloody clasp. Ridiculous. Anyway, anyway out of the blue, credit to David Cameron. David Cameron phoned them personally. No wrote to them personally and invited to them to come and see him at the, at the House of Commons. Now, they decided that what a golden opportunity this to try and get a posthumous award for their father. So they put together a delegation of about ten people and they wanted a representative of the squadron association to be, to be, to be with them. Now, as to whether I was the only one or not I’ve no idea but I was the person that was invited to go. Now, I travelled down to London and I remember, I remember we, we, David Cameron was wonderful actually. I remember he took us and we were chatting to him in his office and he was chatting to all the party and I couldn’t hear him he was right at the far end of the room and I says, ‘I can’t hear.’ And he says, ‘ok’ and got, upped sticks and came and sat right to the side of me and I’m listening to them talking. Now, quite honestly as I was listening to him you know how people are when they’re talking to someone of higher authority? They, they become meek and mild don’t they? And I’m listening and I don’t hear very well. After they’d been going on for quite some time I thought to myself they’re missing the point so in actual fact I had spoken to him and told him that why I was there to represent the association and I, I interceded. I said, ‘But sir, we’re missing the point of our visit.’ and I says and I then went into detail of this, of what Bill North had done and I says to him this is bloody Victoria Cross stuff and for this he gets nothing. Not even a mention in despatches. This is a complete disgrace and I remember, I remember David Cameron looked set aback and he looks at me and says, ‘Well I don’t know. All the hassle I’m getting here.’ He said in a friendly way. It wasn’t nasty. ‘All the hassle I’m getting here and he says the hassle I’ve had in question time today and he says and it’s my birthday today.’ And I said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ He said, ‘It’s my birthday today.’ I says, ‘It’s mine as well’ and he reached over and he said, ‘Birthday boys.’ [laughs]
[laugh]
There you are but do you know something we had, we had a celebration last year for my ninetieth birthday and, and, and seventieth wedding anniversary and last year. It was in October. October. And last year, about three weeks before our, before our party a friend of ours and I don’t know how he got this phone number my friend answers the phone and this voice says, ‘Hello, this is David Cameron here’ and she says, ‘Oh don’t – tell me another one.’ And he said, ‘No. This is David Cameron ringing from the House of Commons. Can you give me the details of Mr and Mrs Flowers celebrations’ on the, and you know he said, ‘Because I want to send them a letter’ and lo and behold lo and behold on the, on the, my birthday arrives a letter comes, ‘Dear Mr Flowers,’ from the House of Commons ‘I’m writing to you wish you a very happy ninetieth birthday. This is a marvellous occasion and I’m sure you will use this opportunity to celebrate all your many achievements and all you have seen and experienced. I would like to send you, Samantha and my best wishes for a wonderful birthday.’ That was on the 9th of October. On the 21st of October we gets another one. ‘Dear Mr and Mrs Flowers I am delighted to send my congratulations to you both on your seventieth wedding anniversary. It’s a huge achievement to celebrate such a long and happy marriage. A great example to family and friends and your local community. Samantha and I would like to wish you all the best on your anniversary. We very much hope you enjoy your celebrations. Have a lovely day. David Cameron.’ We of course did have the letter from the queen we all know the queen the queen had millions. She can’t do it personally do it you know that’s a secretary but to think that David Cameron made the effort during such political time to ring my friend up to find out details of our celebrations and then to ring us up and send this. As a matter of fact I sent him a Christmas card and he sent me a Christmas card back.
[laughs]
There you are, now, that’s different isn’t it? In conclusion I would like to go back to the time in 1941/2, I can’t remember the exact date, my first sighting of my dear wife. Of my Eunice. I remember at the time I was working on munitions twelve hour shifts a day, week about and I was on daylight day shifts this time and I’d finished at 7 o’clock, cycled home and, and home and quick change and cycled back two miles to Sutton in Ashfield baths which had been converted to a dance hall and as I went in it had a balcony. I went in about 9 o’clock. I climbed the stairs to the balcony and I remember looking down and it was a teeming mass of dancing local people, RAF, navy all having an absolute, and a wonderful band with all the top, all having, and the RAC band was there. It had top musicians in it and I remember I was looking down and I saw right beneath me I saw this beautiful young lady in a yellow and white check dress. I’m not saying anything wrong but she was flitting from one male to, from one friend to another. She was obviously the life and soul of the party and I thought to myself God what a cracker. So, quick as lightning I rushed downstairs and I stood in the background until the opportunity came and I tapped her on the shoulder and I said to her, ‘Can I have a dance please?’ and ‘ Yes.’ And the first time I held her in my arms oh she didn’t have make me quiver and it was the first time that I met my dear wife. [laughs] How I ended up with her I will never know. She was so beautiful and so energetic. She was out every night dancing. There were thousands of soldiers all around training all on the lookout, all on the lookout for, for, for as beautiful women and here I was just working on munitions. Nothing going for me. My chances of making a go with her were very very slim. Anyway, gradually I became a friends. It was two years before she’d call me a friend. But there you are. That’s how I met my dear wife and there we are seventy years later. Love of my life. Still feel as we did as all those years ago. Beautiful woman. Still beautiful woman still beautiful in my eyes. How’s that. As I say I’m in my ninetieth year and I can’t help thinking of my family. Thinking of the time on the 25th October when our first son Ian was born and when he was accidently deaf when he was only thirteen and a half you never get over it, time never heals it. The birth of my second son Richard and when he was accidentally shot in the head by his wife. He was so lucky to have survived. Then my third Phillip born ‘68, ‘58 and to his lovely daughter. She was absolutely beautiful. Passed away when she was two years and nine months. Then there was my fourth son was a whopper when he was born and the, and the midwife says to my he’s the biggest baby I’ve ever had and she said ironically he’s the biggest baby I’ve had as well. Then I think to the stresses and strains and excitement I felt during my aircrew years and the thirty two years as a driving examiner and to the pleasure we felt on the birth of two granddaughters, eight grandsons, fourteen great grandchildren and finally I recall the seventy years that I’ve been married to my dear wife Eunice. I can’t help thinking of all the times I felt like throwing her in the bloody river or burying her with the plants in the garden yet despite all this she still remains the love of my life. Such wonderful memories.
I would like to end by saying that during the time that we, as a crew, were involved in bomber operations we were attacked by ME109s, JU88s, FW190s, ME262s jet fighters, passed through flak you could have walked on, almost touched passing aircraft, almost crashed through fuel shortage and fell vertically from eleven thousand to five hundred feet. Nothing special. Just the normal sort of thing that most Bomber Command aircrew had to put up with during World War 2. Happy days.
MJ: On behalf of the Bomber Command I’d like to thank James Flowers for his interview on the 2nd of June 2015. This is Michael Jeffries, recordist.
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 James Flowers
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Horace James Flowers was born and grew up in Huthwaite, Nottinghamshire. He became an apprentice butcher before being released to volunteer for the Royal Air Force in 1944. He trained as an air gunner at RAF Bridgnorth, RAF Wigsley and RAF Syerston and attained the rank of flight sergeant, serving largely with 50 Squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe. He recounts his experiences on several operations, including Bohlen, Nordhausen, Lutzendorf and Hamburg. He was transferred to 44 squadron in June 1945 as part of the intended Tiger Force and also took part in Operation Dodge. He also discusses how he met his wife, Eunice, and their marriage in 1944, his role with the 50/61 Squadron Association after the war, authorship of a memoir ‘A Tail End Charlie’s Story’ and the occasion of his ninetieth birthday when he received a call from the Prime Minister, David Cameron.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Michael Jeffries
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-02
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Heather Hughes
Format
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01:58:11 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Identifier
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AFlowersHJ150602, PFlowersHJ1501, PFlowersHJ1502
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany--Böhlen
Germany--Nordhausen (Thuringia)
Germany--Lutzendorf
Germany--Hamburg
Germany
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
44 Squadron
50 Squadron
617 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bomb struck
bombing
fear
final resting place
Fw 190
Ju 88
love and romance
Master Bomber
Me 109
Me 262
military discipline
military ethos
military service conditions
Operation Dodge (1945)
P-51
Pathfinders
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Syerston
RAF Wigsley
recruitment
Spitfire
Stirling
Tallboy
target indicator
Tiger force
Wellington