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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/214/3353/PBrewsterDG1602.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/214/3353/ABrewsterDG160617.2.mp3
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Title
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Brewster, David
David G Brewster
David Brewster
D G Brewster
D Brewster
Description
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Two items. An oral history interview with David Brewster and one photograph.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-06-07
2016-06-17
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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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Brewster, DG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AH: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Anna Hoyles. The interviewee is David Brewster. The interview is taking place in Mr Brewster’s home in Horncastle on the 17th of June 2016. Could you tell me a bit about your early life?
DB: I was brought up at Sutton on Sea as a little boy and we moved actually from Sutton on Sea to Alford in December 1939 but before we moved there I was taken up onto the sand hills at Sutton on Sea by my father and saw the Germans bombing a convoy out in the sea. We could see the aeroplanes and the ships and the bombs dropping in the water and some of our fighters were going up and down the coast to make sure none came inshore. That was my first recollection of the war and then we were dished out with gas masks, all of us at school, and we had to test those in the school and then, as I say, we moved to Alford and at Alford there was only ‒ Alford was only bombed on one occasion and the goods shed at the station was bombed one night and the night watchman was killed and, er, but we did see a lot of German aeroplanes over and, like, I remember standing outside my front door in Alford and there was a Heinkel 111 up in the sky and the hillside at Miles Cross Hill was covered in incendiary bombs, little fires all over. And once, I can’t quite remember just when it was, but I know there was two German ‘planes shot down at Bilsby It was one lunch time and my brother, he gobbled his lunch quick and gone out to some of his friends and came running back in saying “The Jerrys are here” and so, what did we do? We all went outside to see (laughs). These three German aeroplanes were flying over, being attacked by some of our fighters, and one of them was on fire and they disappeared into some cloud and then all bits were falling out and parachutes coming down and a lot of people from Alford went to see where they’d landed. Though I didn’t actually go to that [emphasis] crash site but I did learn that two of the aircrew were killed and, with a friend of mine, we were biking around Bilsby on one occasion, just afterwards, and there was a funeral taking place, a military funeral, so we stopped and had a look, and it was these two Germans that had been killed, so we went to the funeral. And, but there was quite a lot of planes that flew over. We saw these thousand bomber raids, the sky was absolutely full of aeroplanes. But near Alford there was Strubby airfield. Well, as boys we used to bike up half way up Miles Hill out of Alford and we could look down over the marshland area there over Alford and out to Strubby and we could watch them take off. And I used to go to an uncle’s farm near Stickney, near East Kirkby airfield, and there we used to bike and watch them take off and watch them come back again there. So, I did see a lot of aircraft around at different times and one thing that always stuck in my memory, and has done, was going out with my father out in Orby Marsh, out Skegness way, and we were walking across the fields to ‒. My father worked for the Drainage Board and we were going out to some drag lines where they were cleaning the drains out and these three Mustangs, these American Mustangs, flew over and they were so low we ducked [slight laugh]. And they were going [emphasis] (where they were going I don’t know) but they were in a hurry. And I also remember being at Sutton on Sea on one occasion, again during the wartime, when a flight of Beaufighters flew past. They’d got torpedoes under them and looking down to Huttoft way there was a pall of smoke going up. So I thought ‘what had happened?’ So next day at school I asked one of my friends from Huttoft I said ‘Did something happen down your way yesterday?’ He said ‘Yes and one of those planes crashed’. He said it had come down in a field just outside of the village and he says ‘You’ve never seen two people get out of a ‘plane and run so quick for their life’ as they’d got torpedoes on board. So they got out in full flying gear. He said ‘They would have beat any Olympic record to the nearest ditch’ [laughs]. But we used to bike out, my friends and myself all over to aeroplane crashes and try and salvage bits of them to see if we could have a souvenir of a plane crash somewhere, and we went out to all sorts, German and English planes, that had come down. One Lancaster – there’s a little monument just near Ulceby Cross. I don’t know if you’ve seen it there. Um, as you come to Ulceby Cross Road from Alford, go straight over towards Spilsby and on the next bend there’s a road goes off to Harrington and that way, and just in the corner of the first field there’s a little monument to a plane that crashed and it’s the Lancaster that got shot down by intruders. And Peter Rowlands from – He’s an ex-headmaster from Ancaster Grammar School (unfortunately he’s dead now) but he wrote a book about – “Lest We Forget” and it mentions that plane crash in there and it says about somebody biking up from Alford to it. Well, I said ‘I wasn’t the person that was written about in the book but I biked up the next morning to that crash and had a look at it’. Because the police sergeant lived next door to us and he came and told us where it was. But I also went to a German plane crash near Spilsby, at Asgarby, and there was a guard on duty on the gate and he wouldn’t let us in so I said ‘Can’t we go down to the wreck’ and he said ‘No, not allowed’ and I said ‘Well, you’ve got a guard down there’. ‘Well’ he said ‘You see that piece of stuff half way down there?’ I said ‘Yes’. He said ‘That’s an unexploded five hundred pound bomb’. So, he says ‘I’m not letting anyone go passed that’. But, well, we got around quite a lot of crashes. I also remember, as a naughty boy, scrumping some pears on one occasion, up a real tall pear tree in Alford, when a Heinkel 111 flew past and we could see the crew in there because they’ve got a big glass front and you could see the crew in there as they flew past. We didn’t pick any pears. We got down as quick and went home. [Slight laugh]. What happened to those, I don’t know. I also remember walking out. My father used to be a big walker and he’d go for a walk every Sunday morning while lunch was being cooked and I used to go out with him quite often, and we walked out on the road towards Strubby on one occasion, and we saw a plane come over, flew over us. It was a German plane. It went back and it dropped some bombs over Mablethorpe. We saw the blow from that. Also, in Alford, we did actually see the glow from that serious bombing they had at Hull. We could see the glow in the sky from that night. We stood outside in the road and we could hear planes about. We couldn’t see any because it was dark but we could see the glow in the sky from Hull burning, which was something you don’t forget. But it was, it was, a hectic time. And then, when I got to be thirteen I joined the ATC and used to go Manby every month and get a flight in some airplanes or other and I actually got a flight in a Lancaster and a Lincoln when I was there so I was very fortunate. But I could probably think of a lot more things later but, er, there was some of my recollections of the wartime.
AH: When you were in the ATC what did you do?
DB: We used to go to Manby once a month, and we used to go on the rifle range, shooting, we used to go and look at them, you know, watch the people repairing aeroplanes. It was a training place Manby, and we used to watch them doing all sorts of repairs and that sort of thing. And we were tested out on Morse code and everything. We had to know all about it and one of the main things was aircraft recognition, to make sure we knew what was ours and what was theirs, and they always used to take us for a ride in something while we were there. We flew in ‒, well I flew, in Ansons, Avro 19s, Harvards, Tiger Moths, Lancasters, Lincolns. I had a good old time really and thoroughly enjoyed it.
AH: Were they nice?
DB: Oh yeah, they were very good to us. And there was quite an interesting one, he’s dead now of course, he was our CO at the ATC from Alford, Geoff Hadfield. In your recollections and all things happening with bomber command I’m sure you’ll find out that name will crop up more than once ‘cause he was, what you’d call them? Looked out for aircraft, not an air raid warden, but they’d got posts, Observer Corp, that’s right. He was in the Observer Corp in Alford and so he had a lot of recollections and he wrote a lot of books and things, about things as well. He was the CO when we went flying in the Avro 19 and I nudged him and said ‘Geoff, the engine’s stopped and we’ve only got two’ and the colour sort of drained from his face. He said ‘It’s alright, it’s started again’. After a minute or two that [emphasis] one stopped because they were engine testing [laughs] but I could always see the funny side of that. I got a peculiar sense of humour. ‘Cause my rule about flying is, ‘the man who takes me up wants to come down for his dinner so he’s going to get down if he can’. So, there’s more chance of getting down than anything happening and I was always lucky, one or two rough landings, but mainly they were alright and afterwards, many years later, I actually flew in a microlight at Manby. I was the only one in the office that dare go up but we had a club running on East Kirkby, Manby ‘cause I worked at East Lindsey at that time on Manby. I persuaded the man to take me up for a ride. [Loud sound of chiming] Excuse me.
AH: And you went to Yorkshire with the ATC?
DB: Yes, with the ATC I went to a week’s camp at Diffield airfield and during that time I did get a ride in a glider which was quite novel, but I was lucky. But unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of breeze and we just did one circuit round but I found it very quiet [laughs] but again very interesting.
AH: Did you enjoy flying in the different ‘planes?
DB: Oh yeah, I’d fly in anything. We actually went on holiday once to Monaco for a week, sorry for a long weekend. Took my son for his eighteenth birthday and we flew from Manchester to Charles de Gaulle, from Charles de Gaulle to Nice and a helicopter from Nice to Monaco and then the reverse journey coming home again. And while we were coming home we took off in the helicopter and there was a big cruise liner just coming into Monaco so we flew round it so we could have a good look at that as well.
AH: How long were you in the ATC?
DB: Er, about three years, I think. Yes, I joined at thirteen and I started work at sixteen, that’s right.
AH: What year were you born?
DB: 1931. I’m getting a bit old in the tooth I’m afraid now. [Slight laugh.] Eighty-five this year.
AH: And so you first lived in ‒?
DB: Sutton on Sea. We were there in Sutton on Sea until the December of 1939. War started in the September and then my father’s job took him ‒ he had to ‒ he was working in Alford but he had to go and live in Alford. So we left Sutton on Sea which, from looking back with hindsight, was a very good thing really because our playground was the sand hills. And the sand hills were all mined in the wartime and whether we could have been kept off them or not is anybody’s guess because I know one or two people were blown up by them. And when they finally moved them all out, got rid of all the mines, they couldn’t find a lot because the sand moves and they’d moved with the sand, and they washed them out with hose pipes and, er, some of the bomb disposal people were at Well, just outside Alford, at the army camp there and Ted Burgin, one of their people, was on this and he was a real footballer and he played for the England B at football afterwards. He used to play for Alford on a Sunday, no, on a Saturday, army on a Sunday and when he came out of the army he played for Sheffield [laughs]. I knew him quite well at that time ‘cause my friends lived up at Well, so I spent a lot of time round there.
AH: What was he like?
DB: He was a very nice bloke actually, a very ordinary person, but dedicated to what he was doing, shifting all these mines and he was laughing about washing them all out and them exploding all over the place.
AH: Who got blown up by them? Was it children?
DB: I can’t remember but I do remember some mines going off at Mablethorpe once, but I can’t remember whether it was children or who it was but it was somebody in Mablethorpe area that got injured by them. But there was defences put all down in the sea, like scaffold poles aiming outwards in the sea on the coast there, in case anything came ashore. Because the shore on the Lincolnshire coast is an easy place to land normally, come in at high tide and you’re right up on the foreshore, right at the top end. So that had these scaffold poles aiming out to sea so if anything came in they got stuck [slight laugh]. They were down at low tide.
AH: Was there a feeling that you could be invaded?
DB: At that time, yes, there was a worry that we could easily be invaded and, yeah, we were very pleased to hear the news at times about when things turned round and of course at Well Camp as well, there was an awful lot of airborne there, before Arnhem. ‘Cause they were at Woodhall Spa as well but there was a lot at Well, and they all went off and I can’t remember how many came back now but a lot of them didn’t of course.
AH: Was there a charge when the war started round here? Did society round here change? Was there a big influx of - ?
DB: We had refugees from – We got them in Alford from Grimsby and at school, my class at school, there was two or three of these people that had come from, boys of my age like, come from Grimsby and were – They were there for the duration of the war so we got to know what it was like up there [loud clock chimes] because they were in touch with their family but, yeah, anyway I can’t remember how many came to Alford, but quite a lot.
AH: What was that like?
DB: Well they just became part of the school and I remember one of them, he was lodging with a farmer who had a milk round and, of course, in a few days he was doing the milk round [laugh].
AH: Was there a big influx of service persons?
DB: Oh, service persons, well a big army camp at Alford just as you come out of Alford going towards Spilsby on the right hand side by the cemetery, where the cemetery is now, then next to the cemetery is a big highways depot and some of them buildings are ones that were put up in the wartime. They’re still the same ones, well that part and the field beyond was a big army camp. And there was a big army camp at Well and a big army camp at Bilsby and Bilsby at one point became mainly Polish people, later on, after they moved the Germans out. I’m not sure where there was an Italian prisoner of war camp but there was an Italian prisoner of war camp in the area and they used to take them out in the lorries, working, ‘cause I remember going with my father down to Anderby Creek ‘cause the creek itself, which is a drain outfall into the sea, it had got sanded up and they got a lorry load of these people to dig it out and I went down to see them there.
AH: What did they look like?
DB: Well, same as anyone else. They were in a uniform but that’s all. And at one point in the wartime I also worked on a farm just outside Alford. My friends had a farm and their father said they wanted some help and I went to help them in harvest time and there was two German prisoners of war worked there and they used to be brought in every day and taken out again at night. But there was a German prisoner of war camp at Moorby just between here and Revesby. I think it’s all gone now but it was there until not long ago. Oh, I know where there were some Italians up at, er, just the other side of of Baumber, Sturton [?] Park, because when I was up at Manby we got some planning applications there and one of the lads went out to visit the site there and, in some of the huts at that point, there was still some paintings on the wall that the Italian prisoners of war had done but they’ve all gone now, all disappeared, which is a shame.
AH: Did you ever talk to any prisoners of war?
DB: Talked to the ones I worked with at ‒, on the farm, yeah, one was very dour ‒, hardly said a word, but there was a young one there. He was only eighteen and he chatted away. He spoke quite a bit of English and he was looking forward to going home after the war and I presume he did. But he was just an ordinary person.
AH: What did you talk about?
DB: We talked about the war and we talked about ‒, at that time it was going our [emphasis] way, and he said ‘Yeah, let’s hope it soon finishes and I can go home’. But he was talking about the farming and life in the prisoner of war camp. They were fairly well looked after. He’d had no complaints but I think, if I remember rightly, he was on the Russian side and it looked like he’d be captured there and he’d got right back across to the American side and give himself up [laughs] ‘cause he didn’t fancy being captured by the Russians. He got back and presumably ‒ I never saw him afterwards, like. I presume he went back to Germany. I did meet one German after the war. I got some relations and that they’d met some Germans before the war and after the war the German had contacted them again and he actually came over to stay over here, across in Lancashire, in actual fact it was Mary’s first husband who was friendly with him, and he came and stayed with them in Darwen in Lancashire and they brought him over to Lincolnshire, to Partney, which was Mary’s home and he was a very nice bloke. No problems.
AH: And he’d been a prisoner of war?
DB: No, he hadn’t been a prisoner of war. He’d been in Germany all the war. But as I say, he’d made contact as a boy before the war and afterwards he wrote to see if they were still about, and found out they were, so he came over and there was no enmity or anything like that. He was just a good friend. But Mary’s first husband, he finished up in Colditz.
AH: What happened?
DB: I don’t know what happened altogether. Somewhere up in the attic upstairs I think, or somewhere in my records, I’ve got a newspaper cutting about him when he died. He weren’t all that old when he died. But he, er, he was captured, like, on the continent somewhere, I’m not sure where, maybe Dunkirk, I don’t know, but I’ve got all the details somewhere but I just can’t find them at the minute, but he finished up at Colditz and he was released from there at the end of the war.
AH: What was his name?
DB: Jim, Jim Walsh. He worked for ICI and, originally, I think he must have met Mary in the wartime because he was over at one time or just after the war. Because he worked at Grimsby for the Wallpener [?] shop. Wallpener was a type of emulsion paint of yesteryear. They used to sell it in a shop in Manby. ICI, he worked for them in Grimsby and he met Mary somewhere there. They got married and lived in Grimsby and then he got transferred to their headquarters at Darwen and he moved back there and Mary went with him, of course ,obviously, and they made a life over there and, unfortunately, he died and she married again, Eric, and he was the one was out in Italy during the wartime. He was at the, er, Montecassino there, and he was out there one day, him and Mary, after the war, they were out there after Montecassino had been rebuilt, and they were out there looking around it on one occasion, they went on holiday, and they met an army – I think he was a major. And they were looking round and he said ‘Do you know this area?’ Eric said ‘Yes, I know it very well,’ he said ‘I was here in the wartime’. ‘Were you?’ he said ‘Yes’ he said ‘I was here in the wartime behind that hill over there’. [Another person enters the room.] Eric and Mary were out there. He said ‘Where were you?’ He said ‘I was behind that hill over there’. ‘Oh’ he said ‘We’ve got a special service on Sunday. Would you like to come?’ So they went and they were special guests at this memorial service at Montecassino. So it was ‒ they enjoyed it very much. Eric often talks about it now.
AH: What’s Eric’s surname?
DB: Johnson.
AH: And Mary was your cousin?
DB: She was my father’s cousin.
AH: What was her surname?
DB: She was a Holdiness before she was married, from Partney. They farmed at Partney. She was one of ten and my mother she died, unfortunately, when she was only forty-eight and my father married again and he married his cousin, which was Mary’s sister. So it was a bit of a complicated family [laughs]. But I had one brother and he was a year and nine months older than me. Unfortunately, he died about twenty years ago now. He was only fifty-nine when he died. He was Just due to retire the following year. He was in the Met Office. He had a heart attack, unfortunately. But these things happen. [Long pause.]
AH: And when you saw the ships being bombed from Sutton on Sea, were they‒? How far away was it?
DB: Four or five miles out I suppose, something like that. You could see they was ships and we could see splashes in the water. Obviously bombs were being dropped. We did hear on the grapevine somewhere, I don’t know where my father got the information from, some of the planes were shot down. I don’t know whether they were or not but they were Heinkel 115s, I do know that. The float planes. They were sea planes.
AH: How did it feel to watch them?
DB: Well, it was so far away. You could hear the bumps but they were too far away really to realise what was happening, I suppose, as a young lad of eight years old [laughs]
AH: And you saw a Zeppelin?
DB: Yes, I saw a Zeppelin pre-war. Again, I was at the sea front with my father and this Zeppelin flew back, obviously going back to Germany, it was going out across the North Sea, and it was either the Graf Zeppelin or the Hindenburg. I don’t know which, I believe the Graf Zeppelin ‘cause it flew over here quite a lot, I believe, and I remember this great cigar-shaped thing in the sky. It was enormous.
AH: And how did you feel about that?
DB: Well, as a little lad, excited, and of course there wasn’t a war on, of course, at that time, before the war, and as a little lad I thought it was marvellous to see this thing fly over. Little realising what it was really doing. I’ve actually flown in an airship since then. The Goodyear airship. I got a ride in that on one occasion at Doncaster race course. And they call them airships and you can understand why when you’re flying in them because it feels like a ship at sea. That’s what it feels like. That was through Goodyear Tyres ‘cause my wife was company director, company secretary sorry, for B A Bush Tyres at that time and we got an invitation to go [slight laugh].
AH: How exciting.
DB: I don’t know what else I can tell you. I’m sure an awful lot more will come back as time goes on.
AH: Has Sutton on Sea changed a lot?
DB: Oh, changed enormously [emphasis]. The biggest change was after the flooding in 1953 because I remember them building the sea front, basically, there, the original sea front with all the chalets on the top, the colonnade as we’d call it with the chalets on top and half of that was washed away in the flood. But before that there was the old promenade on the front and it had railings along the front and just steps down. And I can remember being stood on there as a little lad, I can’t remember what ‘plane they were flying, but Alex Henshaw and his father flew past as we were stood there on the promenade, and we looked into the aeroplane it was so low and we could see pop Henshaw and Alex in the aeroplane as it flew past. ‘Cause Alex Henshaw was a test pilot during the war, for Supermarines. He was a test pilot, in Spitfires mainly, and during that time, in the wartime, his home was at Sutton on Sea but he was actually stationed at Brooklands, I think it was, where they flew from mainly, and he had a good system. He used to, on a Friday late afternoon, he’d take his Spitfire up for a test flight, he’d fly up to Strubby, land at Strubby. He had a bike there, he’d bike down home for the weekend and on Sunday night he’d bike back, jump in the Spitfire and fly back. I actually got to know him quite well after the wartime. He was a very nice person, a very ordinary person, and I knew his son very well, young Alex (he was an Alex as well). But Alex, he only died not many, just a few years back now. He was in his nineties when he died. But one of the stories that went around at Strubby, ‘cause he did also test Lancasters out as well, they got him to test one at Strubby on one occasion, and the story that went around was that he flew along the runway so low that if he’d put his wheels down it would’ve jacked him up [laughs]. Now that was the story. Whether it was true, right or wrong, I have no idea but knowing the way he used to fly I can well imagine it was true. But he still holds the record for a single-engined light aircraft from England to Cape Town and back again, which he did in 1938, I think it was, and that record still holds for that type of plane and somewhere in my records I’ve got a photo of that plane. And as a little lad at school at Sutton on Sea at that time there was a reception at Sutton on Sea for him when he came back and all the school went.
AH: And where was the reception?
DB: In the front of what was The Beach Hotel. Well, the Beach Hotel is no longer there. It was badly flooded in the flood in ’53. It was used afterwards for a time but since then it’s been demolished. And as you go down Sutton High Street the pull over is in front, and the war memorial, and just to the left of that was The Beach Hotel and the car park, and it was in the car park of The Beach Hotel. I shouldn’t think there’s many people now as remembers that.
AH: And what happened at the reception?
DH: Well, all I can remember is being there as a school and him on the platform in front, basically. And he was introduced to us and congratulated on what he’d done. That’s all my recollection is, as I say. I think it was ’38 when he did that so I wasn’t very old.
AH: Have the amount of holiday makers changed going to Sutton on Sea?
DB: Yes, yes. Well, Sutton on Sea has grown enormously [emphasis] since the flood, in fact, because where we lived in Church Lane at Sutton on Sea if we didn’t get the sea in our front garden in winter time we’d had a bad winter. We thought it was marvellous if the sea came over the top but of course there was a big dyke opposite and most of it would run into the dyke and disappear. And there was fields opposite as well. Well the fields are now all developed, all housing and everything like that, and there’s an awful lot of housing gone on there in Sutton on Sea and in Mablethorpe, of course, as well. I don’t know how many times it’s doubled or trebled in size but quite a lot. But the shops down there now are nearly all seaside type shops. They’re not the shops they used to be. There used to be one shop in Sutton on Sea, Miss Johnsons’, which was a ladies outfitters shop, and people from Nottingham used to come there shopping. It was a real high class shop and if you bought something from Miss Johnson’s you’d got something [emphasis]. It was the fashions of the day but it’s gone now, it’s no longer that. It’s a hardware shop or something like that now. And next to it is The Bacchus Hotel and the car park at the left of The Bacchus Hotel used to be The Bacchus Hotel garage and one of my uncle’s worked in that.
AH: So your family, were they around?
DB: My father came from Sutton on Sea. The name Brewster maybe rings a bell. The Brewsters of the Mayflower days. One of my father’s uncles, my father’s brothers [emphasis], he was an elderly uncle of mine, he did some research into the family history. He was a Detective Sergeant in the Police so he was a good man to do that. He sorted out, he went down to Somerset House to sort out and he sorted out that the Brewster family that went over to America on the Mayflower, some generations later some of them came back to this country, and we are descended from that lot and they came back to Orby and they were all blacksmiths in Orby, and so we are descended from them. The original ones came from just outside Gainsborough ‘cause there’s a Brewster Cottage next to the church at Gainsborough and, of course, at one point they sailed from Immingham originally and there’s a monument at Immingham to them sailing there. Well, it was in the middle of the docks on the point where they sailed but now it’s been moved to the village, just opposite the church, because it was all surrounded by big oil tankers in the docks and of course people weren’t allowed in there. Although, I must admit I went in a few times. I was able to from my work. But the, er, my grandfather, he was the son of the blacksmith at Orby. He thought being blacksmithing was too hard work and he moved to Sutton on Sea and he was the first person to have horses on the beach for people to ride on, on the beach at Sutton on Sea, but unfortunately he died when my father was only three so my father never remembered him.
AH: And did they carry on with the horses?
DB: No, no way. My grandmother then sold the house they were in and built a pair of smaller houses in the park at Sutton, in Park Road East, and she moved into one of those and let the other one.
AH: Is that how she survived?
DB: Yeah, and my father was brought up there in that house. He can’t remember being in the other house at all or didn’t remember. He doesn’t now of course. Unfortunately he’s gone. But he didn’t remember the original house, Sidney House, as it was known as. It’s an estate agents now and where the arch was at the side of it to go through to where he’d keep the horses is now a fish ‘n chip café belonging to the fish and ship shop next door. They’ve got that bit of it. So things have changed a lot.
AH: And what did your father do?
DB: He worked for the Alford Drainage Board. He was the Finance and Rating Officer for the Alford Drainage Board and they had an office at Mablethorpe originally, a sub office, and that’s where he worked originally. Then they moved him to the Alford office and he had to move to Alford and he moved up there in 1939.
AH: What did you think of that?
DB: Oh, it was exciting really. We’d only just recently moved in Sutton on Sea from the original house, which didn’t have a bathroom, to a house that had got a bathroom. We moved in, I think it was in the October, and in December we left that house and went to one in Alford without a bathroom again, one that had only got gas lights and a pump outside for water. So we lived a little bit of a spartan life until after the war and then the landlord there put electricity into the house and a water supply and then put a bathroom in later. But it was rather spartan to start with [laughs].
AH: And where did your mother come from?
DB: She came from Stickford and I think she went to Sutton on Sea. She worked for Crawfords, who were bakers down there. She went down ‒ Her elder brother was running a garage there and I think that’s why she went there, I think he found her a job down there working for Crawfords and she worked for them, not Crawfords, Copelands sorry in those days, became Crawfords later. But they, that’s where they met and they married in 1924 at Stickford and that was where my grandfather at that time ‒ he had The Globe Inn at Stickford, the pub there, and that’s where we used to go for our holidays, to the pub.
AH: And how was that?
DB: Oh, we used to love going there. Because my grandfather had got a field as well, where he used to keep chickens and grow potatoes and things like that, and just across the road from the ‒, from his field, was the local cobbler and he had a barrel organ in his place and we used to go along and play it (laughs).
AH: During the floods in Sutton on Sea did you have family still living there?
DB: I had an auntie and cousin living there at that time and they were flooded out. They lived in what had been my grandmother’s house and they were flooded out and my father ‒. They were brought to Alford from there and my father at that time had married again and he was living at Partney, at the farm, and he fetched them to the farm and they lived there for a while.
AH: Did they say anything about the flood?
DB: I’ve got some photographs of it and there’s a heap of sand about as high as this room in front of their house, which came out of their house and out their garden. Oh, I actually saw the flood that night, at Hannah, about what? A couple of mile in land. I was ‒, I got some friends with me staying the night, not staying the night, they come over and were playing cards, my brother was at the Met Office and he was at Manby at work and my ‒, I lived with my sister in law at that time and my brother, and as I say my brother was at work, my sister in law had a friend staying the night and I got two friends down from Well and we were all playing cards. And the baker used to come round late at night, about half past nine at night, the baker would come. And I went to the door. I said ‘It’s a bit rough tonight Mr Heath’. He said ‘Yes, it is. This time the sea is this side of the railway at Sutton on Sea’. I said ‘Come off it, I lived down there. If was splashing over nicely it would be worth going to look at’. I went back in and said to the rest of them ‘The sea is splashing over nicely at Sutton and Mr Heath says he’s heard it’s this side of the railway line’. And one of my friends, he’d got his father’s car, he said ‘Let’s go and look’ and we went off down and we go to Hannah and the house on the corner and all the houses round about had got all the lights on, and by this time it was about ten o’clock at night. Well, by that time, out in the country like that, most people had gone to bed. And we were going up a little rise going up to the church from a farm at Hannah and my friend who was driving pulled up and said ‘Let’s go and look out’ so we pulled up and his brother and myself got out and had a look over the hedge. All you could see was water. That was the sea coming in and we looked down behind and it was coming across the road behind us so Ray went and put his finger in it and tasted it ‘It is the sea, it’s salty’ . So I shouted ‘For Pete’s sake turn the car round, we’re going back’ and by the time we went back, where it had come across was about six inches of water had come across the road, and we went back up. But I didn’t think then, in our own mind, that Sutton would be as badly flooded as it was because, just near where we used to live in Sutton on sea, I’d got some friends down there. There was the estate agent in Sutton and he lived about three doors from where we used to live and I went to help, well we all went down to help him clear his house out. He wasn’t at home the night of the flood so everything was just as he left it, and as I stood in his front room it was my eye level, the water level, and one of these metal buoys, about that big, that they have on fishing nets and such like, had come through his bay window, for one thing, and we found that in the front room. But we took everything out. He salvaged what he could out of his sideboards and that sort of thing, what he thought he could deal with, and the rest of it was just put the hose pipe on. And we put the hose pipe right throughout the house. I know my brother and myself, we dragged the carpet out and we hung it on his clothes line, and the clothes line really sagged but he couldn’t do anything with it. It was way past it. It was covered in sludge and everything. So we did a good move in moving away from there [laughs].
AH: And when you – Did people have time to get out?
DB: There were quite a few casualties all the way down the Lincolnshire coast. I don’t know of any in actual Sutton on Sea but there was some down at Sandilands. One house in Sandilands, it was about ninety per cent washed away. There was two walls standing and one room upstairs and the people were in that room, there was two ladies in that room, and they got out. But the whole of the area was under water. It was dreadful. And after the flood I was working in the planning office at that time at Louth and I was seconded to the River Board, Lincolnshire River Board it was, which is now the Water Authority. They were the authority, you know, sorting everything out and my wife worked for them and her office in Sutton on Sea was flooded out and my father arranged for her and the other girl out of the office to stay with my brother and his wife and me in Alford and we had various people up there as well. Other friends and relations come and stayed. Some of them stayed only one or two nights and went but Olive and Gretta, they stopped for quite a while, and Gretta married one of the other lads that was there. And she lives at, what do you call it? Scremby now, out there, and I married Olive and we were married fifty four years before she died. So it did a good thing in some respects [slight laugh].
AH: Absolutely.
DB: But we had ‒, although it was a very hectic time, I worked in the offices there on the radio to the engineers down there, for the engineers and such like, in the offices at Alford. They took over a whole big two or three storey building in Alford Market Place, which now is no longer here. It’s been demolished since. But I worked the day shift and a friend of mine, a colleague of mine, from the planning office at Lincoln, he did the night shift. We did a twelve hour shift each, eight ‘til eight. People wouldn’t do that now but we did and I know on one occasion I was ‒, Henry [?] had just come on at eight o’clock to take over from me, and one of the engineers came through ‘Can any of you drive?’ I said ‘Yeah’. ‘Take my Landrover down to Mablethorpe to the office down there. They won’t mind. It’s got the radio in it and bring me one back’. So, I jumped in his Landrover with, I think, one of the army blokes. We’d got some army people with us as well. Well, he jumped in with me and we drove down to Mablethorpe. We got in the Landrover there to drive back and it was chug, chug, chug, chug, going at no speed at all. So I said ‘There’s something wrong here somewhere’. And of course it was in four wheel drive, wasn’t it? [laughs] I’d never driven a Landrover until that night. Anyhow, I managed to find out how to get it out of it into ordinary drive and we came back and I think I got my tea that night about 10 O’clock.
AH: And what did your aunt do on the night of the flood?
DB: She went upstairs. She went upstairs out of it. I had a cousin in Mablethorpe who was flooded out. Her husband wasn’t at home. I don’t know where he was that night. And she was sat in the room and she suddenly found her feet were getting wet. That was the first thing she knew that anything was happening. And she went and the children went upstairs but one of the friends that came to stay with us, well two of them, one was this estate agent that I knew in Sutton very well and they’d got a new baby and his sister, no his brother in law that’s right, his wife’s brother, had also got a new baby and it was going to be the christening the following day. Of course, that was all cancelled. Had to be. But they lived in a bungalow in the park in Sutton and they were keeping everything they could out of the water as much as they could, putting up on top of tables and everything, like, trying to keep everything out of the water and I think Frank made a way through into the false roof so he could go up there out the way. But it was very frightening. In one estate at Ingoldwells there was seven people drowned on one estate, the Lovedays Estate as they call it down there. As I say, an estate of bungalows, supposedly built as holiday bungalows, on the seaward side of Roman Bank. Well, of course all of that area up to Roman Bank filled up with water and it came over, over the top, and they’d nowhere to go but they were in a state of, er, ‒. Two or three dozen bungalows in there that had been built at that time (they were still building them at that time) and, er, they, now it’s ‒. Some of the bungalows were left, some were twisted on their foundations and did all sorts. And they were all taken down and now the rest of it is caravans.
AH: Before we started you were talking about a man, a neighbour, was killed during the war, one of the oldest who were killed.
DB: Yeah, Mr Scrimshaw.
AH: Just tell me about him again.
DB: Well, he was in the RAF and he volunteered for aircrew and he was an older gentleman. Well, he was thirty-nine when he was killed. And his daughter worked for my father and after she left my wife actually worked for my father (before we were not going out or anything) and then she ‒. He used to come home on leave and lived just round the corner from us. And he used to come past our house on his way to, up to the town to the pubs for a pint at dinner time, and, er, he used to stop and talk to us on the way past. Like we knew him well, we knew the family well and he, unfortunately, didn’t come back from one raid. And when I was at the memorial centre at Riseholme they looked him up and they found out that he actually flew from Skellingthorpe but they found out the details of it and where he went down and everything.
AH: And what was his role?
DB: I thought he was a navigator but they got him down in some of their records, they showed him as a rear gunner. And they got in some of the records as a flight sergeant and some as a pilot officer so he obviously got promoted during his time in the RAF or in flying crew presumably. But he was in, as I say, just about the end of his tour ‘cause they used to do thirty raids. That was their tour. But I know one person down in Old Leake area, Sid Marshall, down there. I’ve met him a few times and he did two tours. He did over sixty tours of flying. And when the Canadian Lancaster was over here, I can’t remember where he flew from, he flew in the English Lancaster [unclear] from Coningsby, and they flew him in that that day, and they flew back to Coningsby somewhere, and they flew Sid in it and he hadn’t been in a Lancaster for I don’t know how long. But it’s amazing the people who you meet over a period of time and where you’ve been. When I was in the ATC at Manby once I actually sat in the cockpit of a Messerschmitt 163, which was the rocket propelled German fighter. They had one parked up there and that is now part of East Lindsey offices where it was parked in [laughs].
AH: Where had they got that from?
DB: I don’t know. When we went there it was there one day and they took us to show us it and we could sit in the pilot seat. It’s only a one man band like. They also flew a Messerschmitt 188 there for quite a while. Well, they flew it after the war until they couldn’t get any more parts to keep it going and it was scrapped then. I saw it there a few times.
AH: What did you like flying in best?
DB: Well, I think I just liked flying. I don’t think – I enjoyed the flight in the Lancaster ‘cause we flew over the Humber and over Hull and in that area, and one of the interesting things on that particular flight, I was just at the back of the cockpit, stood up in the back of the cockpit, so I could see everything happen. The pilot was there and the flight engineer and there was another lad up there with me in there. He sat down and began to look a bit pale and the flight engineer said ‘Are you alright lad?’ He said ‘I don’t feel very well. He said ‘I’ll cure you’. Stood him up, opened the window and stuffed his head out [laughs]. He wasn’t sick and he wasn’t sick any time in the flight. It cured him [laughs]. We were flying somewhere over the Humber at that time. But drastic treatment. But it worked. It cured him [laughs].
AH: Did your mother work?
DB: No, she was in the Red Cross right through the war. In fact, I’ve got her medals upstairs from that and she was in the Red Cross right through. As far as I remember the only work she did after, when I was a little lad at Sutton on Sea, we used to take in visitors in the summer time and we would all move to the back of the house and the front house was let out, it was let out to visitors, and she would cook and look after them. But my father was seriously ill in ’36 ’37 winter. He didn’t work for about six months and she had saved up to that point a hundred pound. Well a hundred pound at that time was a lot of money but that kept us going right through until he could work again. And for the last fortnight before he actually went back to work he went to Bournemouth for a fortnight’s convalescence down there, him and me mother, and they went down there. And that was the last of money she’d got so it did a good job because he lived ‘til he was eighty three [slight laugh]. Lived for nineteen years on one lung.
AH: What was wrong with your father?
DB: Well, he lost his lung just after we were married. He, er, he worked for the Drainage Board and they’d been sorting out some old records and they were down in the cellar. They were all damp and fusty and he breathed some of that fust in and it stuck in his lung and grew and he had to go down to Bromfield, yeah, Bromfield Hospital in London and they took one lung out. I spoke to the surgeon afterwards. He said when they opened the lung out ‘You know what a fusty loaf of bread looks like?’ He said ‘that was what his lung was like inside’. The other one was OK and he lived another nineteen years on that and he got, I don’t know, pneumonia or something like that in the end and unfortunately he died from that. He got a chest infection anyway.
AH: And what did your mother do in the Red Cross?
DB: I used to be a patient and she used to practice bandaging on me [laughs]. But she worked at a Red Cross group in Alford and she went to that every week, I think it was, and they used to be available to look after all the army and navy personnel or anybody who wanted looking after in the wartime. And they did anything, any accidents and that had happened they were called out and they looked after these people until they could go somewhere different. As I say, I got three or four of her medals upstairs what she had for her services in the Red Cross and I still support the Red Cross.
AH: You said you saw the good sheds burning? Or did you see it?
DB: No, I didn’t see the goods shed burning but it was blown up while we were there and I didn’t know until a long time after we were married, and we lived in New Bolingbrook, that the person who was killed in there was – I know he was a bloke called Bush ‘cause I didn’t know any Bushes at that time but, of course, when I went to New Bolingbrook my wife went to work for B A Bush and Son, the tyre people (and she had twenty-two years working for them) and it was one of their family, Ivor Bush, who ran the depot at, er, well, built the business up basically, it was his uncle who was killed. But I do remember on one occasion there was a raid on during the war and I remember my brother – we all dived into our mother and dad’s bedroom and we could hear planes about and my brother was looking out the window and he said ‘Oh, that’s one of ours just gone past’. With that it opened up with its cannons on the army camp [laughs]. It was a German night fighter and it, the guard at the camp, he dived under the road bridge (there’s a drain went underneath) and he dived right under that and there were shells all round him where he’d been. And also I’ve mentioned Geoff Hadfield, in the Observer Corp. There was an Observer Corp post down Willoughby road, that was the post where he was at, and he was in the place that night, and in the grass field across to it there was cannon fire up to about a hundred yards before it and it started again one hundred yards past. For some reason he’d taken his finger off the trigger, the German pilot had, and the Observer Corp post wasn’t hit but if it had, well, they wouldn’t have a chance because it was a directly in line of fire. I don’t know if that was the night the plane was shot down at Ulceby, near Ulceby Cross, or not, but that was by an intruder. It was shot down by an intruder. There’s a little monument there in the hedge bottom, two of them, and every year there’s a little poppy wreath goes on it. I don’t know who does that. And I actually worked for the Air Ministry at one point rebuilding East Kirkby and Steeping airfields for the Americans so I worked on there and at East Kirkby behind the hangars there. There’s twenty-three acres of concrete and I did the surveys for that. They built a mass parking apron, as they called it then, because by that time when the airfields were built in the war there was these dispersal points all-round the airfields, so they parked all the aircraft round about, so if there was any bombing took place it only took out one or two but, of course, with the modern bombs , if they dropped one on the airfiled it would flatten the lot, so they put all the planes together ‘cause it was easier to look after them and built this mass parking apron, twenty-three acres of concrete. I did the surveys before it was built and then it was designed and built and I supervised it being built.
AH: And when was that?
DB: Er, ’55 ’57 when that was built and it was only used for about a month. I actually joined the Air Ministry as an Assistant Engineer and my post really was as build draughtsman because I had to do a survey of all the buildings on East Kirkby and Spilsby airfields or Steeping as we knew it as. Because they’d all been altered by the Americans over the wartime and there were no records of them. So my first job I was employed at Grantham and then I was posted to East Kirkby because I could live at home and work from there at Alford at that time (there was my brother and sister-in-law over at Alford) and so that’s what I did and so I started off on that, doing this survey of all the buildings there so they got a record of them all. They’d got records of what they should be like but they weren’t [laughs] and I started doing that and then they came on with the part one contract, as they called it, to do the runways and everything and build this mass parking apron and I was transferred over to that group. So I did surveys of the runways at East Kirkby and at Steeping. ‘Cause we did some roller tests on them for safety to see if they were strong enough and they weren’t. We’d put a fifty ton roller over East Kirkby and a two hundred ton roller over Steeping and when they’d finished rebuilding Steeping and they did a test on it, the test should have come out at forty LCN, as it was called in those days, Lowest Common Number (they got a special testing rig that gave these figures). It came out at nine so it wasn’t fit to use and it never has been used apart from the odd light aircraft landing on it now and again but East Kirkby was better. The asphalt, the hot rolled asphalt put in went wrong for some reason, I don’t know why, but it went wrong and it was rotten underneath. The surface was good, if you dug the surface up you could just pick it up with your hands there was no strength in it, so what caused that –? When I left them they were testing, still testing, to find out what caused, what the problem was. But the Americans actually did use East Kirkby for one month for a big NATO exercise and they had big strata tankers in there flying for this month and then it was closed down. But they were testing when I was there and the junior engineer above me, he was posted to South Uist in the Outer Hebrides and I didn’t want to go out there ‘cause I wanted to get married. So I began looking round for another job and I went to work for Holland County Council at Boston. I got a job there. And then from there moved to the Lindsey County Council at Lincoln and then to East Lindsey from there. So I had a few trips round Lincolnshire but never moved out.
AH: And was that doing planning all the time?
DB: Yes, apart from rebuilding the airfields I was in planning. I went back to planning from there and started qualifying again and managed to qualify as a planner when I was at Lincoln and that stood me in good stead for a job at East Lindsey and I became the Assistant Director of Planning there. And I had that for nineteen years before I retired and then I worked for the best part of three years, just two days a week, at Chattertons the solicitors in town here, as a consultant for them. They wanted me, they’d been after me for a long time, ‘cause I knew them very well. So I had two days a week working for them and then I decided it was time I did retire.
AH: And when did you move to Horncastle?
DB: 1969. Had this house built and the builder was next door at another house. He lived in there and I built next door to him. And my son was five. He was five on the one day and we moved here the next day and he started school the next week in Horncastle. We’d arranged that, like, and the school at that time was a private school at the bottom of the hill and it was er ‒, my wife at that time, worked for Bushes. And her offices were across the road, of course, so she could see him in school and out of school he used to come across the road to her and be in the office with her until she came home.
AH: Did you have any other children?
DB: No, just the one boy. No others arrived. Just the one. That’s him and his wife at the bottom there.
AH: That’s nice.
DB: They were going to some function there.
AH: Well, is there anything else you’d like to say?
DB: No, I don’t think there is at the moment. But if you can think of any other questions you want to ask, yeah, I’m quite happy to answer them or I’ll try to give some indication of what happened.
AH: Did you have air raid shelters?
DB: We didn’t have an air raid shelter, no, but people did have them. But we used to go under the stairs, in a cupboard under the stairs, go into that when there was an air road on, if it was bad. Other times we’d get under the bed. But a lot of people had Anderson shelters in their gardens or Morrison shelters, which they’d have in the house ‘cause they were a steel frame shelter that you could have in your ‒ and you could sleep in them or on them. A lot of people slept on them, put mattresses on them. If there was a raid you went underneath.
AH: And what about rationing? Do you remember rationing?
DB: Oh yeah, things were rationed. Like, we never saw oranges or bananas or that sort of thing throughout the war. They were just disappeared. I worked from being thirteen to going to work at sixteen. I worked in the local butchers and I used to deliver rationed meat, it was all rationing at the time, and I used to bike round the area with a proper butcher’s basket on the front and a tray and I used to take the meat to the houses but it was cut up and rationed, cut up into sizes, certain sizes. Some things weren’t rationed. Sausages weren’t rationed but, of course, they hadn’t got a lot of pork and they used to put any scrap of meat they got anywhere went into sausages. And corned beef came to the butcher’s shops in very large tins in those days. I think they were ten shillings a tin, or something like that, and some of that used to go in sausages. It wasn’t rationed either but I’ve cut those up, cut big tins of corned beef up, to make sausages but you made do and it was amazing what you could do. And my mother was an excellent cook, fortunately, and she could make a meal out of nothing, basically. She could make a meat pie, or fish pie out of a tin of salmon you know, if you could get salmon. I know the only salmon you could usually get was grade three, which was the poorest of the salmon, and I remember on one occasion my grandfather was staying with us and he was taken ill with food poisoning afterwards. It didn’t affect anybody else but just he got it and unfortunately that was my mother’s father. Unfortunately his wife died, my grandmother died during the war. They kept the pub at Stickford and then he kept the pub for a year and had a housekeeper to look after things for him but then he packed it up and retired and he lived amongst the family and he used to come to us for so long and one of my aunties and uncles for so long, stop at all of them.
AH: What was he like?
DB: A little tubby fella [laughs], a real publican, and he worked originally for Salby, Sons and Winch, which was a brewery in Alford and then he got the pub at Stickford. It was one of their pubs and he did that. And he had a pony and trap at one time and he used to do a bit of carrying around the area but his horse would never pass a pub, it stopped at every one [laughs]. He was quite a character. He used to weigh, oh, fifteen or sixteen stone and he was only about five foot six at the most. He was a little barrel.
AH: And what was his pub called?
DB: The Globe at Stickford. It’s not a pub any longer. It was taken over as a pub after he’d retired out of it. Other people had it and somebody called Burton took it first, and then one of the Catchpoles took it I think after that, but it packed up being a pub many years back now. It’s just a house. But one of my uncle’s, my mother’s brothers, he had a garage across the road and there’s still a garage there but it’s not the garage that my uncle had. It’s totally changed and the original house that they lived in, which was a little shop and post office as well, it’s all gone and different houses there now. But I did meet one of my cousins from there last week. He lives at Woodhall. But my grandfather used to come and he’d bring his bike with him and he used to bike round the area. But we kept pigs in the war time. My father rented a sty just at the end of the road. And there was about five or six sties in there and he rented one of them and we kept pigs, so we’d always got some bacon or ham or something uncut during the year, and most people did that who could do. It was a way of life. I used to like it when they used to kill the pig ‘cause I was very fortunate that I could taste sausage meat before it was cooked and tell you if it needed more salt or pepper or sage or whatever was wanted in it. I could taste it and I used to go round all our friends that kept pigs as well when they were killing them and putting them all away and be tasting their sausage meat [laughs]. Before that, oh, they always used to test it as well. They used to put some in the oven and cook it a bit and they would taste it cooked but I could taste it raw.
AH: How would you realise that?
DB: Just by tasting it I think and I liked it. But as a teenager I was a good hand.
AH: And did you grow vegetables?
DB: Yes, we had a vegetable garden there and a little lawn and just a vegetable plot and we had fruit trees at the bottom of it and next door to us there was a house. It was a semi-detached house in Alford we had. A police sergeant lived in that side and we lived in this one and on the other side was a new house that had just been built, was pre-war, and they were builders in Alford. Two brothers had a building business there. One of his grandsons or one of his brother’s grandsons still runs it. Woods the Builders in Alford. It’s still there and behind them there’s a big orchard and everything and the man who lived beyond that side, in the next house, his garden come right round and took all that in. He had about half an acre of garden and chickens and everything, and he had one, a James Grieves apple tree in there, which they are one of the earliest eating apple trees. And all the fallen ones he used to push through the hedge for my brother and myself. These were the gifts we used to take [slight laugh].
AH: What was your address in Alford?
DB: 16 Chauntry Road. The house we lived in at Sutton on Sea just before we, not the one just before we left, the one before that was St Clements Lodge and it’s still St Clement’s Lodge ‘cause I passed it not all that long ago, and it’s been painted white outside. But when I was at the planning office at East Lindsey we had a planning application to do some alterations in that house so I said’ I’m doing a survey at that one’ and I went down and knocked on the front door and this lady came and I explained who I was from the planning office and I said ‘Can I have a look and see what you want to do but’ I said ‘actually I’m here just being blooming nosy’. She said ‘Why?’ ’Because’ I said ‘I used to live in here until I was about eight years old and wondered what it was like now’. I went in. The staircase was exactly the same with the same cubby-hole, mahogany coloured. I went in the front room. The fireplace was the same fire place. It was a Victorian fireplace with tiles down the side. It was just as I remembered it and I went through into the back room. It was ‒ I think it had got new windows and that in it. But the others hadn’t and then the kitchen, that’s right, they were rebuilding the kitchen area ‘cause it was built on the back. And then I said ‘can I have a look upstairs as well?’ and she said ‘Yes, of course, yeah’ and I went upstairs and the front bedrooms were the same, three front bedrooms it had got, that’s right, and a back bedroom. And on the way through to the corridor to the back bedroom was a little alcove. Well, my father had a bed made for that for my brother to sleep in. It was smaller than a full size single bed but it was big enough for a ten year old boy and he had a bed made to fit in that alcove. I said ‘Here then now’ ‘cause it was a door. She said ‘That’s the toilet in there’. I said ‘Our toilet was across the yard’ [laughs]. We did have a flush toilet but it was across the yard in the house next door basically. Well, next door was a shop. It was in one of their outbuildings but that was our toilet and I think the reason for that was, like, our house belonged to part of the family that was next door, it belonged to the wife’s parents I think, down there. They were a well-respected local family at Sutton on Sea, the Wileymans, and Cass[?], she lived next door. She was married to Mr Johnson and they had the shop next door to us. I used to go round as a little boy and sit in there, helping making orders up and that, and I used to help them make ice cream in the outbuilding at the back. They had an ice cream maker that you wound. Nowadays you have the electric to go round but you had to wind it, put ice in it, pour the liquid in, wind it round until it made the ice cream and take it out again, put it in the shop and sell it. And you could buy an ice cream for a ha’penny , the old ha’penny.
AH: Did they flavour it or was it vanilla?
DB: It was all vanilla. All vanilla ice cream. You didn’t have any flavoured in those days, not like they do now with about twenty-five different flavours.
AH: And in what road is St Clements Lodge? Where’s St Clement’s Lodge?
DB: St Clement’ Lodge? In Church Lane, Sutton on Sea. It was, if you go to Sutton on Sea, turn right, you come down the high street, turn right at the end of it virtually, there’s a car park there, you turn right down York road and then follow it through, past the playing fields. The road actually now goes round and you go off there and you go round there to the end, it turns right very sharply, and we were about the third house. There was a house on the corner, then there was a shop, and we were next door to that. But as you turn off down that road past the playing fields the first house there is made partly of railway carriages, two downstairs and two up. In the middle, downstairs, that was their lounge. Upstairs, each bedroom was a compartment from the railway carriage. Some of my friends used to live there as a boy and he had a model railway set, big enough to go right round the house, but in those days, of course, you had no electricity, no electric railways, they were all mechanic. You had to wind them up so you had to have someone at the far end to wind it up again to send it back. And then he got very modern. He got one that worked with steam and methylated spirit and it would go right round on one filling. But that’s been sold now. I don’t know who lives there now. But Frank, he kept it for a long time and I saw only a few years ago Frank Unwin died and it was sold. But just past there, there’s two more bungalows that had just two railway carriages downstairs, one’s got a pointed roof and one had a tin roof going over. But they were there, they were built, I think, in the 1920s or something like that. But quite unique.
AH: And that’s near Church Lane?
DB: Yeah, I think, is it Furling Lane, they call that bit of it? It goes from – you go down the high street, turn into York Road and go straight on down behind the sand hills, and there’s a playing field out on your right hand side, and then the first lot of bungalows, there’s a little group, you see a group of bungalows. I think it’s called Surfside, or something like that, and that one’s built on what used to be a pond. I remember sliding on that as a boy. Now it’s a group of bungalows. I hope they’re built on rafts or something or something to make them safe. But as I say, you keep on behind the sand hills, right at the back. There’s some interesting little places in Sutton on Sea when you go round. In the centre of Sutton on Sea there’s a car park in the middle there. Well, on that used to be, when we were boys, was some big wooden sheds and they belonged to a Mr Sheardown the local second hand furniture dealer. And they were full of furniture (hello, Tracey wants me ‒). But when we actually flitted in Sutton on Sea pre-war days (oh sorry, beginning of war time ‘cause it was October we flitted) we actually flitted in a horse and dray and the person who flitted us was the man who run the donkeys on Sutton on Sea, Harry Bucknall, and I earned my first money ever leading donkeys on the beach at Sutton on sea when I was seven years old. I got about sixpence for the week I think, something like that, which I thought was marvellous. I used to go down in the morning and fetch the donkeys up from the field to his house where he had the stables for them, get them saddled up and all that, take them to the beach, and have them out on the beach, and they’d be there three or four hours, and take them back, and take all the gear off, and take the donkeys down the field again [laughs].
AH: That’s very young.
DB: Yeah. And when I took my son, when he was, what would he be? About three, no more than that, I took him down to the beach for a ride on the donkeys and it was the still the same man running the donkeys, Harry Bucknall, and he looked at me and said ‘I took you to be born!’ He actually took my mother to Louth Hospital. He had a taxi business as well as his donkeys and he took my mother to hospital in his taxi when I was born. And he said ‘You’d better give him a free ride’, that’s my lad, he got a free ride on the donkeys (laughs). So it’s, it’s a small world you know when you go round. Like, I came to work in Louth in 1948 and lived down River Head in the little council houses down there. I lodged in number two, I think it was. I can’t remember the numbers now but it was the second one along, I know that, and the people I lodged with, the man was the ‒ he looked after all the warehouses down there, down River Head. They were all in the one family, one big ownership of the Jacksons, and he worked for the Jacksons and looked after all those, ‘cause in those days they were all full of corn and all that sort of thing. They’re all changed into something different now, those that are left. One of them used to be a restaurant. I don’t know if it still is. It was down Thames Street that was. I have an idea they might have had a fire there at one time but I can’t remember. And further along there, originally, there was the gas works. They became Ludermeaties [?]. ‘Cause Ludermeaties[?] were in Eve Street at one time, off James Street, and they outgrew that business and moved into the gas works down Thames Street. I know a lot of history of these places. I’ve been around too long.
Ah: Well, I think that’s all. Thank you very much.
DB: No problem. Do you want me to sign that, do you?
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ABrewsterDG160617
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Interview with David Brewster
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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01:31:23 audio recording
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Pending review
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Anna Hoyles
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2016-06-17
Description
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David Brewster grew up in Alford, and has memories of watching the Luftwaffe bombing convoys at sea, a dog fight and watching bombers take off from RAF Strubby and RAF East Kirkby.
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Civilian
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Horncastle
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Christine Kavanagh
Beaufighter
bombing
childhood in wartime
crash
He 111
home front
incendiary device
Lancaster
memorial
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Strubby
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/119/1215/PThomasWH1501.2.jpg
745fc204912c7bac71a5523c73801932
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/119/1215/AThomasWH150711.1.mp3
b0bbf81f2421a7d15357a2b007230236
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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BB: Ok Bill.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Thank you for allowing me to come into your home and interview you. It’s a real pleasure to meet with a veteran like yourself.
WT: I’ll give you, I’ll give you the bill later on.
BB: Thank you very much. Ok. What’s your birthday date?
WT: 28th January 1922.
BB: And place of birth?
WT: Redruth in Cornwall.
BB: Redruth. And did you go to school there as well?
WT: Yes I did.
BB: And you did your school certificate and all that kind of thing.
WT: I did.
BB: Ok. When did you, did you volunteer to join the RAF or were you conscripted and then decide for aircrew?
WT: Volunteered because as I said I’ve got that thing all written out. We had, in 1938 they started a flight of the Air Defence Cadet Corp.
BB: Yeah
WT: I joined that because our headmaster was an ex-fighter pilot in the First World War. And then I left school to start work so I couldn’t carry on with the flight but I managed to find the town flight and joined them
BB: And what was your pre-war occupation?
WT: In local government.
BB: Ok.
WT: On the health department side.
BB: And what attracted you to wanting to volunteer for aircrew?
WT: I think it, it was our headmaster who was, as I say, he was a fighter pilot.
BB: The ex RAF sea pilot. Yes.
WT: Ex RAF.
BB: Yeah. Good. He encouraged you to do that.
WT: Not only do that when I, when I was working, walking down past his house, as I had to, I heard, ‘Thomas. Why haven’t you joined the ATC?’ I said, ‘Well,’ ‘It’s the school.’ ‘There’s one down the end of your road. I’ll see you tomorrow night at three.’
BB: Good. So you, you volunteered for aircrew. You obviously went for air crew selection.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And they obviously graded you as, as a bomb aimer or did you go for a particular -
WT: I wanted to be a pilot.
BB: Right. And what happened with that that you couldn’t be. Were they oversubscribed or they just needed bomb aimers?
WT: No well I came out from doing the stuff. I went up to Sywell.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Tiger Moths.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Well I got twelve and a bit hours in but I never saw it
BB: And then you were scrubbed.
WT: Well I could take off. I could do everything in the air
BB: But the landing was a problem.
WT: Landing was a problem. On the little mini run, place -
BB: Yes.
WT: We had.
BB: Yes
WT: But the big one I could get in at. The chief flying instructor
BB: Right.
WT: Took me on a check and he said, ‘I’ll try my best but I don’t know what I can do,’ but he couldn’t.
BB: Anyway, so you were remustered as a bomb aimer.
WT: No. As a NavB.
BB: Oh as a Nav oh as a NavB. Ok. Right.
Other: Excuse me for just a second. Turn it off and press that to start again. Hold that down to this constant.
BB: Ok.
Other: Ok, right.
BB: So -
Other: I want to go and check on my dog.
BB: Ok. So -
Other: I’d better check on the dog in the car.
BB: Ok.
WT: Oh alright my dear.
BB: A NavB.
Do you want me to get up?
BB: A navigator bracket bomb aimer ok. Now, was that the half brevet with the B on it?
WT: No the old-
BB: Oh as the old observer. Ok.
WT: Oh yes.
BB: The flying O.
WT: That’s what I got.
BB: Right.
WT: ‘cause I went to Canada. Eventually.
BB: Oh you went, part of the old Empire Training School.
WT: I did. And I did my bomb aiming and gunnery. And then to oh I’ve forgotten what it’s called now - L’Ancienne-Lorette. And I did my navigation training there. I must have come out fairly well because I got granted a commission.
BB: Right.
WT: So the first six, we never knew which ones out of thirty two were commissioned and then I went to Prince Edward Island and we did three or four weeks special training there to go out over the sea. Navigation and all that. So -
BB: Ok.
WT: That finished.
BB: Right.
WT: Back to Moncton and that was the holding unit.
BB: Yeah.
WT: There for ages waiting to go back to England and eventually doing so. I had come over to Canada on the Queen Elizabeth.
BB: Wow.
WT: Came back on the Aquitania.
BB: Which of course had been converted to a trooper so it wasn’t very luxurious.
WT: Luxurious oh it was luxurious enough.
BB: It was enough, still luxurious.
WT: oh it was alright. And then down to the holding unit waiting to be, go somewhere. We were pushed here there and everywhere and eventually back again and told we were then going to Scotland to something, I said, ‘What is that for? Bomb aimers.
BB: Bomber aimer.
WT: So they converted us from that to bomb aiming.
BB: I see. Right. And so what time, at what date did you actually go, finish that training?
WT: Oh I can do it.
BB: Ok.
WT: Do it from here. [?]
BB: Roughly.
WT: Monckton. Harrogate. Oh back to England in November ’43.
BB: November ‘43 so -
WT: And then to Harrogate.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And then we were at Sidmouth, back to Harrogate again and eventually up to Wigtown.
BB: Oh.
WT: That was April ’44.
BB: Ok and you joined so your OTU where you crewed up. Where was that?
WT: That was down at Castle Donington in May.
BB: Castle.
WT: ’44.
BB: And was that? When my uncle was flying for 9th squadron at Bardney, an Australian pilot he did his OTU at Kinloss.
WT: Ah huh.
BB: And they threw them in to a big hangar and all the navs and the pilots and the air gunners and the bomb aimers were all in this big hangar and they virtually crewed up until they found their own crew.
WT: This is what we did.
BB: Good. So it seemed to have been an RAF -
WT: That was the way of doing it. Yes.
BB: Programme.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And it was, it was very good because each crew kind of found the people they kind of trusted to fly with and they’d ask questions like, to the pilot particularly, ‘Were you alright on your course?’ ‘What were you?’ ‘Oh I was above average.’ ‘You’ll do.’ And it was usually the navigator that found the pilot.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And once they’d got those two, ‘oh I met a bomb aimer over there. A guy I liked.’
WT: This was the way we did it.
BB: And that was exactly the same -
WT: We did it the same way.
BB: That you did it.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Ok and so you were all taking each other on trust at that stage.
WT: Sure and then we went on from there to Prangtoft sorry, Sandtoft.
BB: Sandtoft.
WT: And then Hemswell for Lanc finishing school and then I did what, I was transferred then from there to 166 at Kirmington and 166 squadron was there and we were the 3rd flight. AB. I think it was C flight. And they -
BB: And what were they flying at the time? Lancs?
WT: Well that was Lancs.
BB: Lancs. Yeah.
WT: And what they did was they they nearly burst C flight ready and then we went back actually down to Scampton.
BB: Right.
WT: As 153.
BB: Ok.
WT: And we were the first aircraft to land at Scampton ’cause they had just put the stuff in. We were the first aircraft to land there. In A Able which was somebody else’s kite anyway.
BB: Yes.
WT: But er yeah we went along the runway the lads were all waving. He said, ‘There’s mine’
BB: Now, when my uncle was on 9 squadron in ’43 of course. This was a bit later on in the war. The pilot i.e. my uncle and his navigator flew a second observer, a second crew. They went with a regular crew on a raid.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Who were about to finish their tour so the pilot and the navigator flew on that raid as supernumerary just to see what it was like.
WT: Only one. It was only the pilot went from our -
BB: Ok. Right.
WT: ‘cause he -
BB: They still did that in that place by the time you -
WT: Yes.
BB: Yeah.
WT: They did one trip.
BB: Yeah. As a spare bod. And -
WT: That’s right.
BB: They came back.
WT: That’s right.
BB: And then got their own crew.
WT: That’s right.
BB: Was the air, was the Lancaster you had on 153 a brand new one or was it, had it been recycled?
WT: Well -
BB: From another crew?
WT: Well it was one of the, it was one of the -
BB: One of them.
WT: In fact we didn’t get I Item until about four or five and then it was regular hours.
BB: Ok.
WT: Flying. That’s what it says up there.
BB: Yeah my uncle did much the same thing. He did, he did it seemed to be a Bomber Command practice.
WT: Yeah.
BB: That they got the pilot and the nav to fly these initial sorties.
WT: Ahum.
BB: And then they were given a gash not gash but spare Lancs or –
WT; Yeah.
BB: To fly one or two trips.
WT: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: And then their own brand shiny new Lancaster arrived from the factory and they had that for the whole of the rest of their tour. My uncle’s Lancaster was called Spirit of Russia and it finished the war with a hundred and nine ops.
WT: Did it?
BB: And so it was lucky. But anyway we’re not talking about my uncle we’re talking about.
WT: Thomas.
BB: So there you are on ops.
WT: Yeah and we -
BB: With your scratch crew. Yeah.
WT: Yes and we carried on right up until well we did one on the 3rd of February ’45. No sorry the 7th of March ’45. And on the 8th we did a grand loop.
BB: Ah.
WT: Our pilot passed out.
BB: Oh.
WT: We think it was a fit and we were on our way to Castle.
BB: Ah.
WT: And we came out and [wing co Piley?] said, ‘You’ll be flying tonight’ and we said, ‘Not [so and so] likely until we know what’s happened to the skipper.’ He said, ‘You’ll be on a charge.’ I said, ‘I’ll see you there. Sir’ and left it at that.
BB: So, what, the was pilot was
WT: He -
BB: Obviously written off.
WT: Yes he was pretty.
BB: Wrtten off.
WT: He was gone. By that time they’d taken him away. By the time we’d got gathered together and he came back, tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘It’s alright. The spare crew are going.’ so I saw him in the mess.
BB: He didn’t give you a spare pilot to fly that night.
WT: No. Well he wanted us to fly.
BB: Fly. So you didn’t do that.
WT: We didn’t go. No. We just didn’t. It was -
BB: That was your last trip?
WT: No.
BB: No.
WT: So what happened then, Bruce went into hospital and eventually they realised he wasn’t coming out. They sent us home on leave and brought us back and I can’t remember whether they gave us three weeks or anyway we came back again and we did our last three with a Canadian no an Aussie pilot who’d lost his crew and had three to do.
BB: Right. Ok that -
WT: So he did three.
BB: That was usually the way.
WT: We thought we should have done one more so what we did was twenty nine and a half ‘cause we had an abortion in the middle of it.
BB: Right. Right. Ok and I gather that rather unfairly French targets counted for half.
WT: No.
BB: At that time of the war.
WT: No.
BB: No.
WT: No.
BB: No.
WT: In fact the first one was Fort [Frederick Heinrich] just on the Dutch coast.
BB: Oh right. Ok.
WT: But that was a full.
BB: Ok.
WT: That was full.
BB: Yeah.
WT: They were all full.
BB: Yeah.
WT: ‘Cause we didn’t do very many French ones.
BB: No. Not at that stage. No.
WT: No. We were going out.
BB: No. No. Right.
WT: Including Dresden.
BB: Yes. Now what was you’re, ok we’ll get to Dresden later.
WT: Yes.
BB: ‘Cause it’s been quite controversial and everybody sees that as the bad thing that Bomber Command did. Um what what’s your opinion of that?
WT: My opinion is as I’ve said to many people we bombed Dresden because we, one, we were told to. But it turns out afterwards that Mr Churchill was given from the Russians three, three targets that needed to be hit, Dresden and two others. I don’t know which they were. And he was given to us, he gave them to Bomber Harris and said, ‘There’s the three. You do them whenever you think right.’ And we went on the Dresden -
BB: Yeah.
WT: Trip.
BB: Yeah Churchill gave them to Portal who was chief of the air staff.
WT: Yes and he -
BB: And Portal gave them to Harris.
WT: Yeah and Harris, Harris sent them.
BB: Just did what he was told basically.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah [?]
WT: But Harris said to us, you know, we didn’t, he chose them.
BB: Yes.
WT: He chose Dresden. Ten hours twenty that was.
BB: Yes it was a long trip.
WT: It was. And it was the best bonfire night I’ve ever seen.
BB: Yes it did. It was rather grand.
WT: But -
BB: As far as the crews were concerned –
WT: I found out afterwards and I’ve got the book saying -
BB: Yes.
WT: That Dresden was a target. It was full of troops. They were making very small arms stuff.
BB: Yeah.
WT: For submarines and things like that all scattered all over the place.
BB: Yeah it was a -
WT: So -
BB: Legitimate target.
WT: A legitimate target.
BB: Legitimate target. Yes. So that was Dresden and I think in the post war my own opinion and this is my own opinion and you know Churchill wanted to stand in the Conservative government. Labour were coming up and what we understand of labour it’s now called Labour it was a socialist government coming up and he wanted to back away from the actual how effective Bomber Command had been and um and more or less threw Harris to, to the wolves.
WT: And washed his hands.
BB: And washed his hands of it. But he did the same with Dowding after the Battle of Britain so there we go it says something about the great Churchill doesn’t it?
WT: No. I don’t, don’t respect him.
BB: No.
WT: Anymore.
BB: Anyway -
WT: Sorry.
BB: Enough of that.
WT: Go on.
BB: No. No. It’s ok but I saw Dresden on your bookcase and I thought I’d ask about it.
WT: I got it there.
BB: Now getting back to the crew.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And how you all trusted each other and had to rely on each other.
WT: Yeah.
BB: What, were there any, I mean were you scared?
WT: No.
BB: You weren’t scared.
WT: Never scared.
BB: Ok. Funny I’ve heard this a lot from Bomber Command crews. They weren’t, they were apprehensive but they weren’t particularly scared.
WT: No. We just went in and did it.
BB: And did it. Yeah ok. Now we’ve read a lot, or I’ve read a lot, there’s been a lot of post-war um study on LMF issues.
WT: Yes.
BB: Lack of moral fibre issues. In your time in Bomber Command did you ever come across anything of that sort?
WT: I think there was one. One night that I never found out true there was three of us three kites on a set of pads.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Or whatever you call them.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And we did a run up and then we used to come outside -
BB: Yeah.
WT: For a smoke or whatever knowing that the signal would go up, get in your kites, and there was a pilot on one of those things and I didn’t know him sat in the hedge smoking a cigarette and there was a little bit of a kafuffle and three staff cars came down and he went with them. Now, that was the bloke who had refused to go that night. When we got back everything was hushed.
BB: Was he commissioned?
WT: Yes.
BB: Yeah.
WT: We didn’t, I don’t know what had happened to him. I didn’t know the guy.
BB: He was just posted. That was it. Gone.
WT: It was just, he was just taken off. Yeah.
BB: Yeah ok. What year would that be roughly? Roughly. Doesn’t have to be exact.
WT: I can’t remember. It was certainly in ’44.
BB: Ok.
WT: ’45 I mean.
BB: ’45.
WT: The beginning of ’45.
BB: Because, coming back to my late uncle’s crew his rear gunner um Sergeant Clegg had been a pre-war warrant officer but had been busted down to sergeant many times for doing nasty things, naughty things I should say. I won’t go into details.
WT: Right. No.
BB: But he was always in and out of Sheffield. You know what Sheffield was?
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah. He was always in and out of Sheffield and that’s another place that doesn’t have much publicity. It was the air crew rehabilitation centre or whatever they wanted to call it.
WT: Ahum.
BB: But I only found this out by looking at the form 500, 540.
WT: 540.
BB: Yeah and it had all the missions for my uncle and the crews and you’d see Sergeant Clegg and then you’d see three or four trips no Sergeant Clegg some other gash gunner had gone in and I asked some survivors on my late uncle’s crew what about Clegg? At first they were all very protective and then they said well actually Clegg was a bit of a lad and he got into trouble with drink and women and was always been sent to Sheffield but in in the air he was a perfect rigger just I mean you know my uncle trusted him implicitly and when he was at Sheffield my uncle felt really, really uncomfortable with this gash gunner sitting at the back who he didn’t know. But you know he got, he got through his tour unfortunately my uncle but was killed instructing.
WT: Our wireless op he was, he was an Australian and he was a silly B really and he drank like old boots so when he got in the kite he would do everything he had to do but Jack, our navigator was a great guy ‘cause he knew there was a group, a message to come. I’ve forgotten was it half hourly -
BB: Yeah.
WT: Quarter hourly.
BB: Half hourly.
WT: He’d give Digger a kick.
BB: Usually the weather and, yeah.
WT: We’d could usually hear, ‘Digger wake up you silly B.’ And he’d be, ‘Oh oh alright,’ he says and he never missed, he had everything down, he never missed a thing. He knew exactly where we were going.
BB: Yeah. That’s great. My uncle’s navigator was the old man of the crew. He was -
WT: Yeah.
BB: He was thirty two.
WT: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: He’d been a postmaster in the Isle of Man and had volunteered to be a navigator because he was very good at maths but he was the old man of the crew and the rest of the crew called him Pop. Because the average age on, the average age on my uncle’s crew was what nineteen, twenty.
WT: Ahum.
BB: My uncle himself he was twenty one when he was killed. And that’s having done thirty trips.
WT: I was, I got I was twenty one in Canada. While I was in Canada.
BB: Yeah.
WT: I got deferred service so so such a long time.
BB: Yeah.
WT: In fact I registered as I had to do.
BB: Was that because you were local government job that was deferred?
WT: No nothing to do with that at all. ‘cause they were happy.
BB: It wasn’t a reserved occupation or anything.
WT: No it wasn’t.
BB: No.
WT: It wasn’t reserved. What happened was I signed on as we had to do and I said look here’s my number. Oh yes well that’s ok. Three weeks later I got called up for the army and [noise off] that’s somebody downstairs.
BB: Oh right.
WT: Don’t take any notice of that. And I got called up for the army and I managed to get out of that with a big brigadier somebody that we well knew. He rang them up and he said silly B. He told you what was happening because they were going to come and fetch me.
BB: Yeah.
WT: So that worked out alright.
BB: Good.
WT: Because, you know it didn’t always go right.
BB: No.
WT: I was lucky.
BB: So there were, there were evidence of LMF when you were on the squadron.
WT: Just that one.
BB: Just that one.
WT: Just that I know of.
BB: Yeah. Exactly. Just that you know of. And he was commissioned.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah. I’ve heard other stories where had it been a sergeant air crew Harris was so worried about this kind of thing that we would call it post-traumatic stress disorder.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Today um they were, they were lined up in front of the whole squadron, stripped of their chevrons.
WT: That’s right.
BB: And their brevets taken off. Which was very very harsh but it did get the message. And other aircrews I’ve spoken to they were more scared of that happening to them.
WT: That they -
BB: Then facing the Germans.
WT: So that kept them going.
BB: And I suppose that was Harris’ view. You can either be scared of me or you can be scared of them.
WT: Sure.
BB: Make your choice.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Um but it now the Americans had a completely different attitude to it in the 8th air force and they were flying daylight raids.
WT: Ahum.
BB: As you know. So there was a different thing. The other commands, coastal, fighter, transport they had their, it wasn’t so prevalent.
WT: No.
BB: In those commands. But it’s, it’s, it’s an issue that is very interesting academically and the Sheffield thing. So that might be something that might be an aspect of the Bomber Command research.
WT: [?]
BB: No I’m just saying but you knew of it, it happened on your squadron and that was -
WT: That’s it.
BB: Quietly posted away.
WT: Didn’t take no notice of it.
BB: Yes, that’s right. I mean, you know, a very good friend of my father’s, a chap called Musgrave who was a pathfinder, a pre-war fitter when the heavies came in he volunteered to be a flight engineer, went to St Athan, came out with [E] joined his crew at the Heavy Conversion Unit and went on and did his thing but he did ninety three ops at the end and I said to him once, sadly he’s no longer with us but I have his log books and he said, ‘Well, you know we were dead anyway after four,’ four to five ops in that tour no statistically, statistically -
WT: I know. Yes.
BB: Dead. So let’s go.
WT: I’m going to empty that.
BB: Oh I’m sorry. Right.
WT: Are you going to switch it off or not? Whichever you want to do.
BB: No I’ll just.
WT: I’ll run.
BB: No don’t run. Take your time.
WT: No. No.
BB: Take your time.
WT: It’s only two minutes.
BB: Yeah.
[Pause]
BB: Ok.
WT: Sorry about that.
BB: No, don’t be. No, it’s fine.
WT: You can’t stop it you see.
BB: No. I know you can’t. Thank you very much.
WT: You know.
BB: So that’s great.
WT: You know.
BB: That’s great.
That’s great. Sure
BB: We’ve covered why you wanted to join, you joined, you got re-mustered from pilot to bomb aimer sorry NavB er went to Canada for your initial training.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And then came back to the Heavy Conversion Unit. Lancaster finishing school.
WT: Right.
BB: And went to the OTU and got your crew.
WT: Yes. That’s right.
BB: And you did your, you did your trip. Was it twenty nine do you remember? You told me.
WT: We did twenty nine. I always say one was a half.
BB: Ok.
WT: We got out one night and we had an engine go.
BB: A boomerang.
WT: And she wasn’t very, we weren’t very happy but we carried on for a while and then another one started to go sick so we turned -
BB: Now -
WT: So we turned and came back.
BB: Yeah.
WT: That was about -
BB: What mission, what sortie was that?
WT: That was about the 8th of February.
BB: 8th of, yeah.
WT: Politz I think it was called.
BB: 8th of February 45.
WT: Hmmn?
BB: 8th of February 45. Yeah.
WT: Yes.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And er when we got back somebody said, ‘Why didn’t you go on?’ And he had a few rings there and I said, ‘Sir look out on the pan. There’s an aircraft out there. It’s got two good engines. One is alright I think. The other one’s rough.’ I said, ‘There’s seven of us here.’
BB: What did the flight engineer think about it? He must have made the judgement on that?
WT: No, he had -
BB: The captain.
WT: He had to shut it down. It was -
BB: Yeah.
WT: So I said, ‘And you’ve got the seven of us are here are ready to go again.’ I said, ‘We didn’t go over and get a VC and lose your aircraft for you.’ Cause that -
BB: What did he say to that?
WT: So he said, ‘Well forget it.’ I said, ‘just as well [stress] sir.’
BB: Station commander?
WT: Hmmn?
BB: Was that the station commander?
WT: Yeah. No. It was the er -
BB: Squadron commander?
WT: No. It was the station commander. He happened to be there, yes.
BB: Yeah. Station master as they used to call them.
WT: They usually had four rings.
BB: Yeah. Group captain. Yes.
WT: There was the AOC there. He was there. He was great ‘cause I was friendly with his WAAF lady.
BB: Yeah.
WT: I used we used very friendly just chatted and all that and had a drink and I was saying good night to her outside his house one night and suddenly he tapped me on the shoulder, he was coming in. He said, ‘Don’t keep her up all night because she’s got to get me breakfast in the morning.’ He said, ‘This isn’t a -
BB: Yeah, but they knew what was going on.
WT: He knew.
BB: They loved their aircrew. Yeah.
WT: He was happy.
BB: Now -
WT: I’ve done a whole lot screed on me.
BB: I’ll look at that later.
WT: Yeah that’s what I wanted to -
BB: One other thing I wanted to mention to you because -
WT: Yeah.
BB: Bomber Command had a high instance of venereal disease. VD.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And it was, it was a big a big issue because crews were getting sick and having to go to Halton and all these other hospitals and Harris had a view of it that, ‘cause the chief medical officer in Bomber Command went to see him about it, right. Went to see Harris
WT: Ahum.
BB: To, you know, tell him, you know, it’s got to stop and he said, ‘If my old lags want to have a bit of fun let them have it because they could be dead tomorrow. Now get out of my office.’ He said something like that. But I mean did you, were you aware of any of that?
WT: No. No.
BB: Were there any kind of big posters?
WT: No it was -
BB: Or lectures?
WT: No. It was a good squadron as far as that was concerned. No. We had good fun. We had this -
BB: Yeah
WT: We did a lot of that.
BB: Right. But less of the other.
WT: As far as I’m concerned.
BB: Apparently it was a big problem in Bomber Command but probably in certain areas.
WT: We, we were lucky. I was lucky. I think we had a good squadron there.
BB: Yeah.
WT: They really were. I didn’t know all of them or anything.
BB: No. No, of course.
WT: I didn’t get to know them.
BB: No. No. No. You didn’t.
WT: No.
BB: And I suppose there was the usual horror story in the morning when you went in for breakfast and there were blank chairs. Guys didn’t come back.
WT: Yeah but then I mean people weren’t in because I was lucky I was in the mess lower ground floor. All I had to do was come out of my room turn left and right and there was the dining room.
BB: Right.
WT: So I was dead lucky. Well the bar well there was no bar because it was a peacetime mess.
BB: Sure.
WT: I mean we had to go down a little alleyway.
BB: Sure.
WT: And get served in the trap hatch as we called it.
BB: Right.
WT: The [corps?] was very good.
BB: Now inter relationships within the crew between commissioned and non-commissioned crew members? Any, now you flew as a crew and that was it but of course when you landed you went to your separate messes.
WT: Yes well the, Bruce and I were in -
BB: The other mess, officer’s mess.
WT: The other -
BB: Sergeant’s mess.
WT: Five were together in a house.
BB: In a house ok they were billeted in a house.
WT: One of the wartime houses they were in.
BB: Ok. Ok. Right. I’ve heard a lot of stories where they couldn’t mix formally on base so they went to the local pub and the crew got out all together.
WT: Well you couldn’t do it on base.
BB: No. I know.
WT: You couldn’t be walking -
BB: No. I know.
WT: Around chatting.
BB: No but I meant there was the officer’s mess and the sergeants mess.
WT: They couldn’t mix them up. No.
BB: So they went off base to do it. At least that’s what my uncle did.
WT: The only time we, the only time we mixed was the pre-ops meal.
Interview: Yeah.
WT: And usually that was the sergeant’s mess because it was bigger because of their numbers so we could join them there for the meal.
BB: That’s right.
WT: ‘We had our pre-op meal there altogether.
BB: Because you were one of the privileged guys in the Lancasters. PNB pilot/navigator/bombardier. They were the three main crew PNB and they were recruited -
WT: Ahum.
BB: You know as slightly more rigorously selected and recruited more rigorously than let’s say the gunners because you had the, had to have the education to do those jobs.
WT: Oh you did. Yes.
BB: And you had to have the right characteristics.
WT: Yeah.
BB: So -
WT: I had my London General School Certificate.
BB: Well that’s right. That’s right um well that was, that was good. Let’s see, course you came, I mean I’m not, the time you got into the squadron -
WT: Yeah.
BB: It was late ‘43 or early ’44?
WT: Do you know my memory.
BB: Yeah.
WT: It’s the age.
BB: It’s ok.
WT: Alright. My first op was on the 15th of October ‘44.
BB: ’44. So the war was, the war was still there. And -
WT: Oh yes.
BB: Still brutal.
WT: Oh yes.
BB: Bombers were still being lost.
WT: Yes.
BB: Right up to the last day.
WT: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: But was there any feeling of it can’t be long now or did you think it was just going to go on and on until it stopped. I mean did you have any sense that we were winning?
WT: No.
BB: And doing all that stuff?
WT: We were, as I said.
BB: D-day had finished of course.
WT: No, no, yeah it didn’t. D day, D-day, D-day was over, yes.
BB: Yes.
WT: When I was at OTU.
BB: Yeah but there was still, you know -
WT: Yes.
BB: Still the fighting.
WT: Oh yes well we were the old line.
BB: Still bombing.
WT: The line went further -
BB: Yes.
WT: And further back.
BB: Yes, that’s right.
WT: But there was still a line.
BB: Oh a lot of day -
WT: There was.
BB: Yeah. And did you go on any daylights? Because there were a lot of daylight raids coming in
WT: We did, we did the odd daylights. We did one, two, three. About three. No four. I think there were four -
BB: Four daylights and at that stage of the war was the Luftwaffe still effective or were they -.
WT: Hang on. The last one we did was in April.
BB: April.
WT: ‘45.
BB: Ok.
WT: That was at Nordhausen. Wherever that was.
BB: Nordhausen ok but the um but the Luftwaffe by that stage was essentially gone. I mean no fuel, and losses had been high.
WT: They were up in the air.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And I spotted and -
BB: Did you ever see any of the new jets? ME262 or -
WT: I was going to say because I spotted some one night when we were out and we couldn’t understand. We thought they were rockets and they seemed to be going straight up and this happened a couple of times. It was more over Holland.
BB: Oh the V2s coming off.
WT: No. It was, it was the -
BB: Oh the exhaust from the -
WT: New jets.
BB: The new jets. Oh ok.
WT: The new jets no the V2s had finished by that time.
BB: You didn’t, you didn’t
WT: But we, I reported it but didn’t know anything.
BB: Yeah.
WT: I just said I didn’t know what they were.
BB: Yeah ok.
WT: So that was up to them. I, I didn’t know what they were.
BB: No.
WT: Until after the war. I found out.
BB: Yes. Yes and the German night fighters were still around, prowling around um did you, did you at that time they had Junkers 88s and Messerschmitt’s 110s with the Schräge Musik. Upward firing guns.
WT: Yeah. That was yeah.
BB: When they started to appear crews would just see this massive explosion in the sky and -
WT: Ahum.
BB: Thought they’d been hit by flak. They hadn’t, they hadn’t realised that they were getting under the -
WT: No.
BB: The belly and er it took a long time for Bomber Command to actually tell the crews -
WT: Yeah.
BB: About it.
WT: We knew about it.
BB: You knew about it but it, it was a very effective night fighter technique and -
WT: We only, we used to see searchlights in the sky.
BB: Yes.
WT: And there was the old master one.
BB: Yes.
WT: The red one.
BB: Yes and that was the radar and if that locked on to you the radar guided one -
WT: That was radar but one of them was coming towards us and I was screaming to Bruce and he said give me an idea of timing and I said, ‘Now,’ and what we did then we went straight through it.
BB: Yeah.
WT: As quick we could and he went like this and he disappeared.
BB: Yeah.
WT: So in other words he’d he’ll find somebody else.
Instructor: Yeah he’d find somebody else and ‘cause once you’d been combed that was it.
WT: We did it twice.
BB: More or less. Did it twice.
WT: That happened twice.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Ahum.
BB: That was it to get out.
WT: We didn’t get fired at.
BB: Well it happened to my uncle once and he actually put the aircraft straight down the path of the searchlight as best he could.
WT: The front gunner.
BB: With the front gunner blazing like mad.
WT: I would that’s right.
BB: And quick get out of the way and that ‘cause they changed that but it was -
WT: No. But we were, we were lucky.
BB: The [line was still] well ok with the advance of the allies but the German night fighter force went on quite effectively until more or less the end were constrained by fuel at the end and losses.
WT: It was.
BB: And losses of course. But what would between the flak and the night fighters and collisions and all that sort of thing what would you say was the main, the main fear? Night fighters?
WT: I don’t think we had fear.
BB: No.
WT: I’m sorry if -
BB: You put it away.
WT: It sounds big headed but -
BB: No, no, no.
WT: I don’t. I don’t think.
BB: No. I’m not I’m not. Yeah.
WT: We knew we had a job to do. If we didn’t do it -
BB: Ok. I’ll put it -
WT: We were in trouble.
BB: I’ll put it I’ll put it another way.
WT: Yeah. Go on.
BB: When you had the intelligence briefing.
WT: Yeah.
BB: At the brief.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Obviously they briefed you on night fighter tactics
WT: Yeah
Instructor: And where the flak concentrations -
WT: Yeah.
BB: Were and your route was planned.
WT: Yeah.
BB: To avoid these things and you had Window ah Window.
WT: Window.
BB: Were you dropping Window at that stage as a regular thing?
WT: All the way. All the way we could.
BB: And you had Boozer giving you the electronic aid that latched on to the night fighter radar.
WT: I didn’t do anything about that.
BB: Ok. That must have been with the wireless op.
WT: Wireless op had that.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Because he had, he had a little book.
BB: Yeah. That’s right because the Germans countered that by finding the frequency and all the -
WT: That’s right.
Instructor: And all the rest of it.
WT: That’s right.
BB: Everything like that. It went back and forth I think on the -
WT: Yeah he had that on his table.
BB: Yes. Ok. Rebecca and Boozer and all this stuff.
WT: Yeah we had [?]
BB: Yeah but window was quite effective, yeah.
WT: We did that religiously.
BB: Yes.
WT: I was glad to get rid of it mind.
BB: Yes.
WT: Get in the blooming way.
BB: Now the, my uncle’s wireless operator, he was the warmest guy on the Lanc. Everybody else was cold but he was the warmest behind his little curtain.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Um so he was either too hot or too cold but usually hot.
WT: I was happy.
BB: You were alright in your -
WT: I was alright.
BB: Your place.
WT: Where I was.
Instructor: Could you, you were usually you were at the front of course.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah and I mean for take-off you weren’t there you were probably back -
WT: For take-off we had an arrangement. When we were on OTU -
BB: Yeah.
WT: They trained the, what do you call it, to take off with Bruce?
BB: Yeah.
WT: What’s the, God -
BB: Flight engineer.
WT: Flight engineer. Sorry, I’ve got amnesia.
BB: It’s alright.
WT: No the flight engineer he trained, he was trained to take off and land so -
BB: Yes. That’s right.
WT: Fine. Instead of me being down in the nose which was a bad place to be -
BB: Yeah, Yeah.
WT: I’d be sitting on the engineer’s seat and there were two red wheels and those were the fuel.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And they said to me if I ever saw a red light come up.
BB: Scream.
WT: Do that.
BB: Turn it off.
WT: No turn them both off.
Instructor: Yeah.
WT: And that’s what I did until he poked me in the back and he said, ‘I’ve finished Bob, now’ and I’d say, ‘Cheers.’ and I’d go back to my office. We did that. I came up to landing the same way.
BB: Right. Now again I’m sorry to go back again to my uncle’s crew because it’s, it’s not him we’re talking about but they were representative. His bomb aimer, every time they were approaching the target, the whole crew would get on you know well the captain would say, ‘Try and make it one run this time will you?’ ‘Cause you know, ‘Sorry I’ve got to go around again boss. You know it was like it was never did so it was -
WT: Never did one more round. We went in every time.
BB: Excellent. Excellent.
WT: ‘cause I think it was a question of where you were.
BB: Yes, I understand. In the bomber stream. Yes.
WT: You know, in the stream. But I never had to once.
BB: Because you know the Germans were great at having dummy markers and flares.
WT: Sure.
BB: And changing the, trying to get a feel for the aiming point and, you know.
WT: And the whole thing when you worked it out the whole cross wind.
BB: Yes. Yes.
WT: You could pick it up
Instructor: Yes,
WT: Ages before you
BB: Right.
WT: And I’d get Bruce to change so that we had a good direction.
BB: Right. Ok.
WT: And he was very good ‘cause he just used the pedals to to do
BB: [the rudder bar] yes that’s right to correct the [yaw] My uncle’s bomb aimer only went around I think twice on one target but it was, it was, it was an important one. Um ‘cause my uncle went to Peenemunde. He did the Peenemunde raid. Well he was lucky. He was in the first wave. The diversion raids had, there were no night fighters because -
WT: No.
BB: They had, they weren’t there.
WT: They were somewhere else.
BB: They were somewhere else.
WT: Yeah.
BB: But the guys in the third wave-
WT: They copped it didn’t they?
BB: They copped it. Yeah. But of course they weren’t told what it was for.
WT: We were very, very lucky. I really think we were.
BB: I think luck had a big part to play whether you survived your tour or not
WT: I think so.
BB: And that yes as well
WT: Yes.
BB: That and a great crew and a competent crew.
WT: Well our navigator was red hot.
BB: Yeah.
WT: ‘cause one day Bruce said to him, ‘Jack, why don’t you let Bill take over?’ And before I could say anything he said, Bill you don’t mind or Bobs they used to call me. ‘Bobs you don’t mind but I’d rather be responsible myself for what’s happening.’ I said, ‘I’d rather you did.’ And he did. And he didn’t want me to help with the Gee. He did it all himself.
BB: No. Yeah. Yeah.
WT: He wanted to do it all himself. No, he did it all himself.
BB: Yeah. My uncle’s navigator too. He had all these aids.
WT: Yeah.
BB: But he liked to do it himself and used Gee as a backup you know and -
WT: You know Jack was a good navigator.
Instructor: Yeah.
WT: In fact I contacted him after the war. He was over in er, on the east, west coast somewhere and I had a couple of words with him, He got taken ill and died just like that within nine months of my knowing him.
BB: Oh dear.
WT: There’s one of our crew left still here. Harry the rear gunner. He’s down in Yorkshire.
BB: Oh right I must get his -
WT: He’s not a hundred percent.
BB: No.
WT: At the moment.
BB: No.
WT: And we have a reunion of 153 but it’s got that about there’s only about two members.
BB: No.
WT: That go. It’s all the associate members.
BB: I know.
WT: But they meet every year down in err oh down the road -
BB: Scampton oh in Yorkshire. No in -
WT: Lincoln.
BB: Lincoln. Scampton, Waddington.
WT: No. In Lincoln itself.
BB: Oh Lincoln. Ok
WT: In a pub, in a, in a hotel
BB: Yes.
WT: And go to BBMF.
BB: Yes.
WT: And BBMF -
BB: Yes
WT: Bring them in.
BB: Yeah it’s great. I’ve been there.
WT: They are very much with us.
BB: I had the very great privilege of flying in the BBMF Lancaster.
WT: Did you?
BB: Yeah I was on duty as a reservist and briefing and debriefing crews. Modern crews.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And they said do you want, do you want a flight? And I said yeah. They said, ‘There’s Jacko Jackson over there.’
WT: Ah.
BB: ‘He’s the captain.’ He said, ‘Go and see Jacko.’
WT: Yeah.
BB: And he’ll fix you up and I went across and I said, I was a flying officer at the time and I said, ‘Good morning sir.’ And he said, ‘Yeah. I know about you. You’re coming with me on a one hour flip around in the Lanc.’ We were doing a test, air test of something so
WT: Ahum.
BB: It was wonderful and I told him about my uncle and all that and I went to every position except the rear gunner position.
WT: Yeah.
BB: They wouldn’t let you in there but I went mid upper gunner, I went down the bomb aimer and it was the bomb aimer’s place. It was, it was great but you get a sense of how that main spar going across could be a real hindrance if you had to get out.
WT: I’ve got some photographs I don’t know where they are now of our people in that one going over the main spar.
BB: With all the kit on?
WT: No. Well we didn’t have that. We used to throw that down over the top but there’s one of the ladies, she took over as the squadron scribe, association scribe and I still keep in touch with her and there’s one of her looking over the top and all I could see was her backside so it appeared on the thing
Instructor: Yeah.
WT: Guess who?
BB: Guess who. Because you either went out the main door at the back.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Or you went out the bomb aimers hatch at the top.
WT: Hatch.
BB: Yeah and when that, if that’s in a spin or you know it was difficult but it was difficult getting out of the Lancaster but it was quite difficult when those things -
WT: Sure.
BB: When they caught you.
WT: I say, you know, we were so lucky.
BB: Yeah.
WT: So lucky.
BB: Yeah. So did all your crew that you trained with and flew with survive the war?
WT: Yes we all survived.
BB: All survived.
WT: Together yes we all survived together and after that we were dispersed to various place
BB: Of course. Yes.
WT: I went one way, somebody went, Harry funnily enough he was a sergeant he was sent to India and he was in the post office out there somewhere and they dropped him to corporal.
BB: Yeah. That happened a lot.
WT: Terrible that was. I couldn’t understand that.
BB: Wartime temporary. Now you’re a corporal. Yes.
WT: Yeah.
Instructor: That’s right. Yeah. And err in your own case when the war finished when did you actually leave the air force? Was it ‘46 sometime or -
WT: Yeah. I think, ohI can’t remember offhand.
BB: Well just vaguely?
WT: It’s in my in -
BB: Logbook?
WT: No. It’s in my script somewhere.
BB: Oh ok. Well anyway it was most. Most were let loose by 1947.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah. Most.
WT: Where did I put my scribe script?
BB: Oh don’t worry about it but where
WT: Oh, here it is in my hand.
BB: What did they have you do in that time?
WT: Oh.
BB: Were you supernumerary somewhere or were you -
WT: No they wanted, wanted us to train as something and I trained as an equipment officer.
BB: Right ok so the whole surplus aircrew thing.
WT: Yes.
BB: Because of the war
WT: Yeah.
Instructor: They said you can go home, you’re a good bloke, you’re commissioned we need you blah blah blah but you got to remuster as something else.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And, and -
WT: And I was told that’s what I was going to be. I did a course for six weeks on equipment. Got sent to RAF Strubby.
BB: Oh I know where -
WT: Which had been -
BB: Strubby is in Lincolnshire.
WT: Coldest place on earth. Was shut down and it was ready to be everything taken out.
BB: Right.
WT: And I had a few bods there to do that and we had trucks coming out
BB: Taking -
WT: Getting rid of stuff and so on.
BB: That’s right
WT: And I had another guy ‘cause I was attached to some maintenance unit over on the coast and they sent a guy to help me Frank Wilkes bless him a brummy and we worked together and we both got our going off together so we, we, we went off down to London to get our -
BB: Right got your demob suit and out you went.
WT: I didn’t want a hat so he put his, he put my hat that I would have on. I took it outside and I gave it to - [laughs]
BB: So, ok. So you were demobbed.
WT: Yeah.
BB: After all of that. Having gone through that having gone through all that with Bomber Command being demobbed, done your trips with all the trials and tribulations and terror of what could have happened. What did you do then?
WT: I went back to my job.
BB: You went back to your job.
WT: It was reserved. I joined the health department of the Cornwall County Council in September ‘39, no August ’39.
BB: Yeah.
WT: So I was there then until I joined up but my job was held for me, my, while I was only on my two bob or whatever it was a week my pay was made up.
BB: Right.
WT: But as soon as I got more that stopped and I had to go in and pay the, pay the difference
BB: And obviously you rebuilt your life.
WT: Yeah.
BB: After that and here we are and well done.
WT: My wife, my wife was -
BB: I was going to ask about that.
WT: She was -
BB: Did you meet her in the RAF?
WT: No I met her in, at work.
BB: At work.
WT: I remember it was -
BB: Post war work.
WT: Yeah. The uniform did it.
BB: Ah the uniform did it.
WT: So what I would -
BB: It still had the pull of the air crew.
WT: Well I always went up in my full uniform.
BB: Of course you did.
WT: And it was funny when we had that grand loop.
BB: Yeah.
WT: I went home on leave. I went up to see somebody and I went in see the boss ‘cause I was his favourite. He was the first boy post boy he’d ever appointed ‘cause he was new.
BB: Ah.
WT: Dr Curnow and
BB: Curnow?
WT: Curnow same as Cornwall
BB: Yeah.
WT: Curnow.
BB: Yeah.
WT: C u r n o w.
BB: Yes I had, one of my medical officers was from Cornwall. His name was Curnow.
WT: Yeah. He, he stayed there all the time. For a long, long time and he said to me, when I’d finished I went back, and there was a brr brr and his secretary said that, ‘Yes he is.’ She said, ‘He says go in.’ He said, ‘Sit down. Have you finished?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Hold your hands out.’ He said, ‘You couldn’t do that last time you were here,’ he said, ‘You had the twitch.‘
BB: I was going to come to that
WT: [?] yeah
BB: This chap Musgrave I was telling you about. The guy that did the ninety three trips. He had a permanent twitch. It was sort of –
WT: Ahum.
BB: Like that.
WT: No. No.
BB: But he had a twitch and everybody knew you know he had been
WT: Yeah.
BB: Bomber command but he was very, not because he was boasting about it they just knew that he got out. He finished the war with DFC, DFM and God knows else what but he’d been a pre-war guy but he had a twitch and I asked him once where he got it. How it started. And he said he’d had a crash and er he survived. One or two guys didn’t and that affected him.
WT: That was, that was from when it started because he had said he hadn’t noticed it before.
BB: Yeah.
WT: He was a good chief was Doc Curnow.
BB: So
WT: I was his boy.
BB: Yeah. So these things did have a knock on, knock on affect.
WT: Sure.
BB: Now, the, and then you had all that post war thing you know getting a job, getting married, a family and all of that. Most of the Bomber Command people that I have met and indeed other wartime aircrew not just Bomber Command they never, ever talked about it for years and years. Never.
WT: I agree.
BB: And some of them really still are reticent to talk um either it’s too painful for them one way or another.
WT: I don’t know.
BB: Or it’s just that was that was a bit of my life I’ve now put it in a cupboard.
WT: That was me.
BB: And get on with life.
WT: For a long, long time.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Until eventually I joined you know the Aircrew Association and so on
BB: Yes. That’s right.
WT: Especially when I came up here.
BB: Well I mean you guys were young and you’d gone through such a lot.
WT: Ahum.
BB: And it was very hectic and life was for today.
WT: Yes.
BB: Tomorrow you didn’t know if it was going to happen.
WT: I was, I was getting, I was married.
BB: Yeah. You had responsibilities.
WT: And we had our -
BB: And other things took priority over all of that.
WT: Yes, there were.
BB: And then of course there was this post war denial about Bomber Command.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And what they did and all the rest of it. How did that make you feel? Did it make you feel angry? Did it make you feel what the hell did we do it all for?
WT: I could have killed Churchill. Easily. You know, without any argument.
BB: Because of what he did.
WT: Because of Bomber Harris.
BB: I mean they called him Butch.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Because you know but he he loved his crews and -
WT: He was, he came to Scampton once and he was great.
BB: And they loved him
WT: Yeah.
BB: Despite you know sending them off every night knowing that x number of Lancaster’s wouldn’t come back or Halifaxes or whatever. But that’s how he got his name Butch, Butcher.
WT: Yes.
BB: Butcher Harris but they seemed to get on with him.
WT: Yeah.
BB: They seemed to like, you know, his manner.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And his we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that.
WT: The one person on the squadron the squadron we didn’t like was the four ringer.
BB: The group captain.
WT: The group. He was not a nice fellow at all. We didn’t like him a bit and he used to come in to get his fags so we’d push him to the top of the queue so he could get the hell out.
BB: Did he ever fly? Did he ever go off?
WT: Yes he did a few.
BB: Yeah.
WT: He did one or two.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And he was, fortunately not with us but the AOC was there. He was -
BB: Was that Cochrane? Or Saunby?
WT: I don’t know what he was called.
BB: Yeah.
WT: He was a lovely fellow.
BB: Yeah.
WT: He had his own little [?]
BB: Yeah.
WT: In fact his WAAF
BB: Driver.
WT: No.
BB: His PA.
WT: No. Looked after him.
BB: Oh right.
WT: Looked after him. I got courting with her a bit.
BB: Ahh.
WT: Nothing like, nothing
BB: Nothing like going for the top.
WT: Untoward and one night we were saying goodnight and suddenly there was this tap on my shoulder, ‘Hurry up, don’t keep her up all night. She’s got to get my breakfast in the morning.’
BB: The morning. You said, ‘Yes sir.’
WT: Now who would have said that?
BB: They knew and, they knew and they let the guys get on with it.
WT: I saw her afterwards.
BB: In that respect.
WT: And she said that he laughed his head off.
BB: Oh that’s great. That’s great.
WT: They were a good lot.
BB: And now you’ve got your grandchildren, great grandchildren.
WT: Great grandchildren.
BB: And you’re going to be giving them your logbook and one thing and another.
WT: Paul my grandson. I’ve got a grandson and a granddaughter. Paul is supposed to inherit all my stuff.
BB: Yes.
WT: Which he will do.
BB: Yes. Good.
WT: But in the meantime.
BB: I hope you’ve written that down in a will or something?
WT: I don’t. My son knows.
BB: Ok.
WT: He knows. He’s as good as gold but Paul sorry my oldest grandson, great grandson Jack is very keen on Lancasters ‘cause they live in Lancaster.
BB: Yes of course.
WT: And he knows all about that so Jack has got lots of stuff to do with Lancasters and I said I’ve got all these books I don’t know whether I ought to be getting rid of them sometime. Pete said to me, that’s my son, the other day, ‘Dad don’t do anything until August. Jack’s coming up. He’s mad on the Lancaster’s and things, he’s got stuff all over the place so, in his room.’ so there’s four Lancaster – one, two, three, four, five books.
BB: Yeah.
WT: But you know
BB: Garbett and Goulding books.
WT: Yeah I met him and one other there and he’ll have those whatever happens. What, what about the others in the bottom lot I don’t know ‘cause the top one is all Cornwall but they’re spoken for one way or another.
BB: I have four hundred such books and I do a lot of research and I write occasionally in Flypast and other magazines um and they’re just for my own research. I mean, for example you said you were 153 I went to the books oh yes but now coming back to the controversial issue of medals.
WT: Sorry.
BB: Did you have to apply for your medals or did they come through the post eventually to you?
WT: I had to apply for them.
BB: You had to apply for them. And when did you apply for them
WT: Lord knows. I can’t remember.
BB: Yeah because they ok they had a lot to get through.
WT: No. That’s not true. I, I when I was an equipment officer before while I was still under training a bit with another thing.
BB: Yeah.
WT: I was asked to go up the headquarters somewhere and I took the logbook with me and I went through about my medals then and then I said, ‘Yes but I want the Air Crew Europe.’ ‘Well you can’t have it.’ ‘Well I said I don’t want any more.’ I went to go out and they pushed me back in again and they insisted that I had to have these four.
BB: Right, so now the, I had a very, my father knew another very nice man and his name was Slim Summerville. He had been a pre-war regular but he was a wireless operator I gather on Whitleys the one’s that flew like that -
WT: Ahum.
BB: And he hated them. But then he was shot down in November 1940 in France he made a crash landing. All the crew got out, sorry Holland, all the crew got out still fly, they flew in their number ones. Odd. But anyway they were all sitting around, standing around this aircraft trying to get it to burn and they couldn’t burn it. The Germans came. November ‘40 Battle of Britain had just finished. There they were. This Luftwaffe feldwebel came to them and said, ‘look we’ve got nowhere to put you but this Dutch, this Dutch farmer will look after you, we’ll put one of our guards there promise you won’t try and escape.’ ‘We can’t do that,’ they said but, ‘Never mind you go there.’ A month they were in this farmhouse having a life, they thought this is alright. This is ok. And then things got, they were then they were sent back in to Germany and they were sent towards the east. They were part of the great march but and he finished the war all the rest of it. When he was ill he came, I went to see him and he said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘Bruce I never claimed my medals because I didn’t think I’d have very many being a POW but I’d like to pass them on to my grandchild.’ So I said, ‘Well ok.’ He said, ‘I can’t give you my logbook because it was when I was taken prisoner it was all lost and whatever.’ So I had to go to the National Archive in Kew and reconstruct his logbook and I took all this stuff and I said right your entitled to the Aircrew Europe, you’ve done, you’ve done all these missions between the qualifying dates of the -
WT: Yes sure.
BB: Award. Why, they said he wasn’t entitled to it. That he was only going to get the ‘39 to ‘45 star, the defence medal and a war medal. That’s all he was going to get.
WT: Oooh there’s one -
BB: Because he was -
WT: There’s one missing there really.
BB: So -
WT: France and Germany.
BB: Yeah but he was a POW. He wasn’t there.
WT: But did he -
BB: So -
WT: But he’d been doing work.
BB: Yeah but he was captured in 1940. So anyway so I went back and I said no you did x number of missions on the Whitleys you’re entitled to the Air Crew Europe so he said, ‘Well you write. I’ll give you permission and you write.’ So I wrote back to them first to air historical branch then to RAF records and they sent, they said, ‘Yes you’re right.’ So they reissued it. But with, but with the Air Crew Europe and I had them mounted for him and I took them to the hospital to see him in hospital and I pinned them to his pillow and he died three hours later. But he was so happy -
WT: Lovely.
BB: To have got them.
WT: Of course he was.
BB: Yeah. And he said -
WT: I’ve got mine here somewhere.
BB: All the rest was rubbish but Air Crew Europe’s the one so I am going to take your fight up.
WT: No.
BB: If I can do it for him, I can do it for you.
WT: Oh, there’s no point.
BB: Yes there is.
WT: I shouldn’t bother.
BB: Your grandchildren need it. I understand how you feel but if you’re entitled to it why don’t you take it?
WT: I’ve got them somewhere. I thought I had them there.
BB: Let’s have a look. Oh there they are. Right.
WT: They’re a replacement ‘cause I lost mine.
BB: Did you?
WT: And I lost the -
BB: What happened?
WT: Hmmn?
BB: What happened?
WT: I don’t know it was -
BB: They were all issued unnamed.
WT: It was in a move.
BB: They were all issued unnamed.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Now you see if I get you the Air Crew Europe. Right. Just say, let’s just say no this annoys me with the the whole medal thing you did all of that. Now I know you’re very proud and, and, and you don’t particularly want it but you earned it and this parsimonious government took their bloody time in giving you the Bomber Command clasp which I, did you ever claim it?
WT: No.
BB: Right.
WT: Yes I got that.
BB: Right.
WT: Yes.
BB: You need to sew that on.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Now, if I get you the Air Crew Europe if by chance we’re successful they’ll probably give you the Air Crew Europe with the France and Germany clasp.
WT: Ahum.
BB: ‘cause you couldn’t have both.
WT: Ahum.
BB: So you have to give that one back.
WT: I think the other one’s still there ‘cause I always said I can’t sew so
BB: So what I’m saying is they’ll probably take that one probably ask you to return that one.
WT: I’m not fussed about it you know.
BB: I’m just going through the procedure.
WT: I know.
BB: And um they that’s what they would do. Um but it is such a prestigious, it was only it was the only thing of the stars that I’ve talked to with the guys before that meant anything was the Air Crew, Air Crew Europe whether your coastal, bomber or whatever -
WT: Yes. Exactly.
BB: It was. Because they didn’t get a medal. That was only medal they actually got that was you know air force.
WT: I got mine. Those are replacements.
BB: Yes.
WT: Because -
BB: Exactly I’ll take a photo of those later.
WT: In transferring -
BB: Well -
WT: Something got lost and we never found them. I didn’t, I didn’t -
BB: Let me put it this way let me see what I can do and if I can do it you’ll take it. Right? You’ll take it if I can get it for you.
WT: Alright.
BB: Fine. Good.
WT: You’ve won.
BB: I feel very strongly about that ’cause you know medals are very emotive things even today.
WT: I won’t argue with you.
BB: No. Good. Ok well I’m going to stop the interview now. I think we’ve covered all the ground. Is there anything else you’d like to say that I may have forgotten?
WT: No.
BB: To ask?
WT: [If you]
BB: Are these your target pictures?
WT: Target pictures.
BB: Yeah.
WT: We were allowed to have those as the crew, the crew -
BB: Now -
WT: Took some as well.
BB: The other thing that used to get people a bit jumpy, ‘Have you got the flash skip? I’ve got to go around again.’ And, ‘Oh go on then.’
WT: No.
BB: Because a lot of crews were really ‘cause that was flying straight and level for a bit of a time to get that flash picture and if you missed it the first time you had to go back and at debriefing as you know once they processed the film -
WT: [?] that’s right.
BB: You were kind of ticked in the box that it was ok.
WT: The problem was the bottom of those it was -
BB: Yeah.
WT: A job to read
BB: Yeah.
WT: Very difficult to read
BB: It is.
WT: All the stuff.
BB: It is but -
WT: But the one there the first one Fort [Frederick Heindricks].
BB: Yeah.
WT: That was an aiming point.
BB: Yeah.
WT: So I was told.
BB: Right.
WT: You could see the smoke coming away.
BB: How, we hear a lot about the pathfinders and the marking and all these different marking techniques. Were they, were they good? I mean were they -
WT: They were good as far as we were concerned. We would come up and every now and again they would say please you know bomb on so and so -
BB: Yeah they had the master bomber saying forget that that’s a spoof yeah go to -
WT: That’s right.
BB: Bomb on the greens.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Bomb on the greens. That kind of thing.
WT: Yeah. We had that.
BB: Yeah and because so -
WT: And that, that’s they’re all the same
BB: Oh ground zero.
WT: That’s, no that that’s Dresden.
BB: That’s what I’m saying ground zero at Dresden
WT: I wouldn’t know. With, you can see the modern building.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And the one that’s been destroyed.
BB: Yes.
WT: A friend of mine he lives here in Morpeth and they went over to Dresden and he came back he said, ‘Bill I thought I’d take a photograph. This is what you did you B.’
BB: Well yeah tough it was a legitimate target.
WT: Oh yeah as far as I was concerned it was.
BB: Thank you very much. They’re very interesting.
WT: Yes, I, those are, you know, to me, the crew had some you know.
BB: Yeah.
WT: So -
BB: My uncle had some and they used to put them in their logbook.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Because the pilot’s logbooks were different as you know.
WT: Yeah.
BB: They were slightly bigger.
WT: Yeah well they were. That’s why mine is a bit of a mess and just written on. You know, scrolled
BB: I’ll have a look at that later. So I’m going to stop the interview now. Are you happy with that?
WT: Yes you -
BB: Ok.
WT: I don’t know if you saw those. That’s my doings. That’s, that’s how I got to know you.
BB: That’s all the stuff.
WT: And that was the newsletter. Yes.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And that’s, yeah, that’s ok.
BB: And there’s your medals back.
WT: Oh there’s, ok.
BB: Give those back to you there.
Yeah oh don’t worry about that. Oh yes that’s the Bomber Command clasp in there.
BB: Oh yes well let’s have a look, you’ve got to sew that on haven’t you?
WT: Well yes I said my daughter and grand daughter.
BB: Well why don’t you. Is it still in it’s envelope? Let me just take a picture of that ‘cause that’s you. That’s-
WT: You can undo that clip better than I can.
BB: That’s very nice.
WT: That’s what it should be.
BB: About bloody time too.
WT: I think -
BB: I was -
WT: I, I hated the thing actually it should have been a blooming thing like the other people had.
BB: Yeah. I was I was privileged in being selected to be an usher at the Bomber Command memorial opening in London.
WT: Lovely.
BB: And I was in my squadron leader stuff and all my own medals on and it was great and I was given, I was given six, three Australian, three New Zealand, three Australian and three New Zealand air crew to look after. To host.
WT: [?]
BB: Yeah and they were all of your vintage, your age, you know, now.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And they’d come all the way from Australia and New Zealand for free business class with [doorbell] New Zealand sorry
WT: That could be your wife.
BB: Could be my wife.
WT: Oh she’ll be, open the door.
BB: Oh I can get that for you sorry.
WT: No that’s alright. It could be somebody else. Hello.
Other: Hello.
WT: I’ve got someone with me. We thought it was his wife.
Other: Oh a parcel for me.
WT: Oh yes darling.
Other: That’s why I came. That’s very kind of you, Bill.
WT: That’s alright.
Other: Thank you very much indeed.
WT: I’ll keep the sixpence you’ll, I’ll send you the bill.
Other: Sixpence and you’ll send me the bill.
WT: We do things for one another.
BB: Yeah of course you do.
WT: Only around the corner. She’s a dear.
BB: Well done for that.
WT: When I came home last time from hospital I weren’t all that brilliant and she was doing shopping, she was insisting on doing my laundry and all that and I said -
BB: So -
WT: So I took a parcel in for her today.
BB: Right so -
WT: Where’s that going in there wasn’t it
BB: It’s with your medals yeah. Yeah yeah. So I’m with these guys and we’re all sitting them all down and I was getting and it was a pretty hot day and one of the Australians said ‘cause my name’s Bruce you see.
WT: Yeah.
BB: ‘Here, Brucie go and get us a beer mate.’ So I went and got them the beer and they ate this up and, ‘Here, I’m pretty hungry mate. Got any sandwiches?’ And we were going away and they said, ‘Look mate it’s getting hot here when’s this thing going to you know finish?’ I said, ‘Well, you know, the royals are going to be there. The Queen’s going to open it and so on and Prince Charles and Camilla will come and see you.’ ‘Right. Right. Ok.’ So this went on and the RAF BBMF Lancaster flew down and dropped these poppies but it got it wrong got it, slightly, slightly off track and all the poppies ended up in Piccadilly all over the place and -
WT: That’s one of them,
BB: Yes. Yes I know. I recognised that,
WT: Yeah.
BB: And this Australian looked up and he said, ‘Oh Christ the navig, the navs all wrong you know’ and, you know, ‘I suppose you can’t get the people these days’ and all that sort of talk, you know. Anyway I sent one of my little one of my helpers, one of my guys in our squadron, a corporal. I said, ‘Go and pick up as many of those as you can get.’
WT: Sure.
BB: And he met a policemen, this guy, with his helmet -
WT: Yeah.
BB: Just doing this you see and the policeman kept some in his pocket and he gave the rest to this guy so he gave each one of these guys one of the poppies and that was great but this Australian who was really quite vocal, nice bloke but he had with him a group captain Royal Australian Air Force from the embassy must have been the air attaché standing maybe just about there and you’re the guy right and he said, ‘Brucie, look when the royals come down can I ask when I’m going to get my’ dot dot ‘medal because I’m getting old and I’m going to fall of my perch mate and I’d rather like it.’ And I said, ‘Well you could but I don’t think it would be, you know, polite.’ He said, ‘[Dot dot] polite mate I’ve been waiting a long time.’ And then the group captain came across and said, ‘Look I’ve told you about that. That’s my job. Leave that to me.’ You know. Blah. ‘Well you’d better hurry up mate.’ And that was the end of that conversation and of course you get your, get the clasp.
WT: Oh dear.
BB: But it all went it all went it all went very well and every time I’m in London and I’ll be there next week I always get one of those British Legion wooden little wooden crosses.
WT: Yes.
BB: With the poppy on.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And I take my uncle’s crew and -
WT: Put their names down
BB: Just the one name. So my uncle first, then the bomb aimer, then and I put them all down and I look at the little little book they’ve got there.
WT: Yeah
BB: And its people write things down.
WT: Yeah
BB: And there’s obviously flowers. There’s things that gets me is this little one flower and an old plastic see through bag or
WT: Yeah.
BB: Something. With, ‘To Uncle George’ killed blah blah blah blah and you think gosh, you know and it’s such a focus that place for everybody to come and do stuff.
WT: Standing there with tears streaming down my eyes that day
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
WT: I couldn’t even -
BB: And I said to the Ben Fund people
WT: I shouted once, ‘Excuse me I’ve got to go to the toilet. Don’t do anything.’ [laughs]
BB: And I said to the Ben Fund guys who run it you know I hope someone collects all this stuff and takes it away.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Because -
WT: Sure.
BB: You should do a book after five years or something with all the, ‘cause they leave copies of pictures.
WT: Sure.
BB: And crew pictures and -
WT: Yeah.
BB: You know, it’s a great archive there just on its own.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
WT: One of their associate members who’s a bit of a B really but he rang up and said Bill I’ve got a poppy that came falling down. Did you want one? And he sent it up to me.
BB: Oh excellent.
WT: So that’s why I popped it on there.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And it keeps falling down but it fell behind one day so I put it there -
BB: I think -
WT: So it doesn’t go anywhere else.
BB: I think –
And by the way that -
BB: Yes.
WT: Is as good a representation of a lot of us coming off -
BB: Ops.
WT: Off ops yes.
BB: I’ll take a picture of that.
WT: The actual depth of that thing.
BB: Yeah. I’ll take a picture of that but -
WT: It’s terrific.
BB: I think I have at home a programme from that day. I’ll send it to you. From the Bomber memorial.
WT: I was here then.
BB: Yes I know but I’ve got -
WT: Yeah.
BB: You know I think I’ve got a number of spares. I will send it to you.
WT: But I would love to have been there.
BB: Well it was such a privilege.
WT: Two or three of our members were there.
BB: Yeah it was a privilege to be there and, and
WT: ‘cause we had a, I started a help doing it with Johnny [Johns?] on, who by the way has written a lovely book on our stuff. Did I have that out? No I didn’t
BB: That’s ok well I’ve got a feeling -
WT: That is
BB: Ok.
WT: That’s on.
BB: 153.
WT: That is done. Is on the internet somewhere or something.
BB: Is it?
Yeah.
BB: I’ll try and find it when I go back.
WT: Johnny’s done it. He’s got -
BB: When was that written? Let’s have a look
WT: Just inside is by the date its a few years ago. I don’t know if
BB: Oh here we are. April 1998.
WT: Yeah Johnny was one of the pilots that came just after when the war was more or less finished. He started just when we were just finishing the war but he became the chairman of our Association.
BB: Yes. How lovely.
WT: It’s a terrific book because it’s got -
BB: It’s a lovely book.
WT: You know you can see when everybody did everything.
BB: Yeah it was a lovely book. And it’s, it’s -
BB: It’s terrific.
BB: I have one similar for 9 squadron but not in so much detail.
WT: That, that has got every op was done and who was on it and everything else.
BB: Yes.
WT: And about all these tables.
BB: Has anybody got all these for the national -
WT: And the aircraft.
BB: We would have got these for the national archive.
WT: Oh no. No he -
BB: Logbooks.
WT: He was down there. He used to go down and, and -
BB: Yes at the archive.
WT: Yeah, he’d go down there.
BB: Oh I was down. It’s a great place to be it really is.
WT: He lived down in York way.
BB: Yeah.
WT: No he didn’t Salisbury sorry it was Salisbury ‘cause his daughter, one of his daughter is still there.
BB: Yes, That’s lovely.
WT: He used to come regularly to our dos.
BB: And you were on C flight yeah.
WT: Hmmn?
BB: C flight.
WT: No A.
BB: A flight. Ok.
WT: I was A flight. Yeah.
BB: A flight. Ok.
WT: Yeah there was -
BB: Sorry.
WT: You will see our crew there somewhere.
BB: Yes. I’m just looking for it here.
WT: Bruce Potter at the top.
BB: Potter’s crew eh.
WT: Did you not see it?
BB: Yeah hold on.
WT: He was on A flight.
BB: Potter.
WT: Almost where you had your thumb there.
BB: Potter.
WT: Is it over that side somewhere?
BB: Oh here he is. Potter. There we are.
WT: Yeah.
BB: I’ll take a note of that.
WT: His name was Bruce.
10859
BB: Well he’s got an Australian name mate.
WT: Certainly has, yes mate.
BB: Except mine’s more Scottish than Australian. In fact one of my objectives for this when I was down here my uncle who was the Australian he married my mother’s sister ‘cause I was born in Gainsborough which is Bomber Command Hemswell not too far from Hemswell.
WT: Yes, Hemswell. Yeah.
BB: And my brother was born in Newark and my, this Australian pilot was courting my mother’s sister while he was on ops but he wouldn’t marry her while he was on ops ‘cause he didn’t feel, he’d had so many young ladies coming to the mess after their husband’s had died and he wouldn’t do it. He said he would marry her when he’d finished ops but he was killed instructing and they were only married four months but my cousin was born you know shortly thereafter well you know nine months later basically and so he, he was born in the place where I was brought up by my grandmother at Coldstream in Berwickshire and the family claimed, the family claimed the body.
WT: Oh yeah.
BB: And he was brought up by train to Cornhill station and lay overnight in the family house and my grandfather had, was a commander of the local home guard having been an old soldier and he wanted to open the coffin ‘cause it lay in the front room with a flag on it and my mother was a nurse and my mother said I don’t think we should do that ‘cause he was burnt. She knew he had been burnt and so they didn’t do it. They said let’s just remember him.
WT: As we thought he was.
BB: As we was and when the guys came up from, from the RAF station he was at for the funeral his widow, my aunt, said I’d like his watch or his flying jacket please. Sorry all we’ve got is this this and which you’ll get from the committee of adjustment and they’ll send to you and all the rest but so when you go to this little Scottish cemetery you’ll see this Australian AF war grave.
WT: Right.
BB: That’s him.
WT: That’s him. Well I never.
BB: But he was only twenty one and the last time his mother saw him was when he was seventeen and a half to leave, leave Australia to come home come here.
WT: Yeah.
BB: You know.
WT: Yeah.
BB: It was just one of those awful things.
WT: What are you trying to do there?
BB: He had finished his, he had finished his, his ops and was screened and funny you know the crew all got together you know.
WT: Ah huh.
BB: And they said, ‘We’ll go on pathfinders. We’re safer on pathfinders than we are instructing.’ And that was the view and he said, ‘No, I can’t. I’ve got to, I want to get married and I’m not going to that.’ but if he had done that he probably would have been alright.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Exactly.
BB: There we go. It wasn’t to be I suppose. These things are always -
WT: Yeah.
BB: Sad.
WT: Sent to, sent to try us.
BB: They are. Well Bill thanks very much.
WT: That’s alright my friend.
BB: And I’ll be back I’m sure if I’m down this way again. It’s so lovely to talk to you.
WT: Yeah.
BB: There’s all your bits.
WT: Yeah. You’ve got, you’ve got the medals.
BB: I’ve got that picture you leant me and I’ll send that back when I get home tonight and I’ve got -
WT: You didn’t, you didn’t take the medals.
BB: No. No.
WT: No.
BB: No you’ve got them. Better check I don’t want you to, there they are in the bag
WT: That’s alright, they’re in the bag.
BB: They are in your just check please just check. No, no, no I haven’t got them. There they are
WT: I don’t know why, yeah they’re there such as they are.
BB: Well we’ll try and change that.
WT: I’m never bothered about medals.
BB: No. Well a lot of people don’t but the gran
WT: I’m not a medal man.
BB: No. A lot of people weren’t but you know there’s things like grandchildren who, who -
WT: Well. Paul -
BB: You’ve got, you’ve got your grandchildren now.
WT: My grandson.
BB: Who you would obviously like.
WT: They’re down in Salisbury at the moment I’m hoping they’re going to move a bit nearer but he’s interested but his nephew bless him is he’s only seven and a half at the moment.
BB: Yeah.
WT: But there’s a photograph of him up there. Jack. He’s very, very keen on it. Very keen.
BB: Well so he should be. It’s a great honour that you’ve done this.
WT: There’s the office.
BB: There’s the office, that’s right.
WT: These were, these were taken from the just, what is she called the one over, Just Jane over there in, we used to go down there a lot to the Panton Brothers where they’ve got the aircraft that taxies around.
BB: Yeah. Ok what have I got to do here now?
WT: [yawn] excuse me. This is all to do with the Lincolnshire arrangement that going, the spire’s gone up hasn’t it?
BB: Not yet. No, no, no, not -
WT: Oh I thought they’d already lifted it because our lot were down on oh a month and a half ago to their, to the reunion and that was the day when it was going to be delivered. They moved, had to move away because time was going on they’d only just got down the road and they saw it going back up.
BB: Right.
WT: Just coming. So they couldn’t do anything about it.
BB: No.
WT: I thought they said they put it up that night. Erected it.
BB: What? The spire?
WT: Yeah.
BB: In Lincoln?
WT: Yeah.
BB: Well to tell you the truth it might have done but I haven’t heard of it yet but -
WT: Well I thought that’s what they it had happened. They brought that in and the lorries or whatever was carrying it were going to get it upright for them to to anchor it down or whatever. I don’t know. Because they are going to build a great big wall around it aren’t t they with the name of the people who died
BB: Yes
WT: Or were killed. So [they’ll have old Giffords?] down on that one bless him. My room-mate.
BB: Oh God. There’s more bumph here.
WT: Cost you more money now.
BB: Yeah. Yeah. Right so we’d better get on with the paperwork. Let me just have a look at it
WT: Oh I thought you’d done it.
BB: No I’ve just been reading it here so we’ll better get on with it. Won’t be a minute. I think I’ll just call my wife up I’m a bit worried about her. See where she is
WT: I was going to say from my bedroom you can probably see the car.
BB: So when’s your next medical people coming in. When, when do they come in, every day to see you?
WT: No. No. No Wednesday is the day when everything normally happens.
BB: Yeah.
WT: At the moment I’ve got ear trouble but I’m off for another week but on Wednesday they come in to change your leg bag and do all kinds of things so I have to watch it but I’m alright I’m off for the next week or two I’m not doing too badly.
BB: Hi Jeannie. It’s me. I’m finished with Bill. I wonder if you could come back to to look at this documentation. It might need a witness. I’m not sure. Ok I’ll call you later. Or you can give me a call now. Thanks bye.
WT: Oh you’ve left her a message have you?
BB: Yeah she’s -
WT: Oh.
BB: She’s probably walking the dog.
WT: Stay where you are I think I can see the car from here.
BB: Ok thanks.
From the bedroom.
[pause]
WT: No the trees are in the way. I said the tree is in the way.
BB: Oh its William [Headley] Thomas isn’t it?
WT: [Headley].
BB: Oh that’s worth, that’s worthy of a photograph.
WT: Oh I don’t know I was just going to show you that. They were taken more or less the same time. You see what she’s wearing?
BB: Yes.
WT: A new pair of wings.
BB: Oh that’s lovely. May I take a picture of that one?
WT: Oh, go on. You don’t want that man.
BB: Yes I do. You’re, now that, now that you’ve been interviewed my dear boy you are now part of the national archive.
WT: Don’t.
BB: You are going to be in the Bomber Command archive.
WT: Am I?
BB: Yeah, you are.
WT: I thought, I thought it was the Lincolnshire.
BB: Yeah but it’s going to the University of Lincoln.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Yeah.
BB: But that’s why we’ve got to sign this other stuff.
WT: While you’re doing that it’s happened again this damned bag.
BB: Oh I’m sorry.
WT: No it’s alright ‘cause it just happens like that I have a big bag to put on the end of it at night thank God.
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 Bill Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Bill had joined the Air Defence Cadet Corps and Air Training Corps. He volunteered as a pilot in the Royal Air Force and flew Tiger Moths at RAF Sywell but was re-mustered as a navigator. Bill went to Canada as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, where he did bomb aiming, gunnery and navigation training. He was offered a commission and did some special training on Prince Edward Island before going to the holding unit at Moncton.
Bill returned to Scotland and converted to bomb aiming. He crewed up at RAF Castle Donington and went to RAF Sandtoft and RAF Hemswell to the Lancaster Finishing School. Bill was transferred to 166 Squadron at RAF Kirmington, flying Lancasters. They then went to RAF Scampton as 153 Squadron. Bill conducted 29 operations and one which was aborted because of engine problems. Bill then trained as an equipment officer, being sent to RAF Strubby. He then demobilised and returned to his job in local government.
The interview discusses relationships between commissioned and non-commissioned crew, Bill’s thoughts on Dresden, Bomber Command and Arthur Harris, and the awarding of medals.
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AThomasWH150711
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Canada
Alberta
Ontario
Ontario--Toronto
Prince Edward Island
Québec
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Harrogate
England--Hastings
England--Lancashire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
England--Manchester
England--Northamptonshire
England--Redruth
England--Sussex
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Wigtown
Wales--Aberystwyth
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
New Brunswick
New Brunswick--Moncton
United States
New York (State)
New York (State)--New York
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-11
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
Creator
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Bruce Blanche
Format
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01:19:53 audio recording
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
153 Squadron
166 Squadron
aerial photograph
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crewing up
ground personnel
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
memorial
observer
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
promotion
RAF Bicester
RAF Castle Donington
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kirmington
RAF Sandtoft
RAF Scampton
RAF Strubby
RAF Sywell
target photograph
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1186/11758/PWatsonC1704.1.jpg
cf1ce61de2dfa140b6b4109391b34f14
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1186/11758/AWatsonC170628.2.mp3
f97648ac89c80e5091c56c9c1787f1e1
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
Watson, Clifford
C Watson
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. Two oral history interviews with Flying Officer Clifford Watson DFC (1922 - 2018, 1384956, 188489 Royal Air Force), a memoir, his service and release book, and a scrapbook containing photographs and documents. He flew operations as an air gunner with 150 and 227 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Clifford Watson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-06-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Watson, C
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 28th of June 2017 and I am with Clifford Watson at Fenstanton near Huntingdon to talk about his life and times in the RAF. So, what were your first recollections of life, Cliff?
CW: I was born in Barnoldswick, 1922 about three years after my father returned from the war, he opened a radio shop and was building radios and he was getting kits of radios from Pye in Cambridge and I went to the local infant school which was about fifty yards away from the shop. Two years later, my sister joined me there, that’s about the age of ten, my family moved to Keighley in Yorkshire, my father was engineer and manager of the radio relay system. Three years later we moved to Norwich where he established another radio relay firm rather, few years there we moved to London. Went to school at the age of ten, I was at the local elementary school in Norwich. At the age of thirteen, I went to the Norwich junior technical school and two years later to Unthank college in Norwich which a very different curriculum. I hated English literature there but I got a credit in the school’s certificate, by reading, another book overnight and I took the exam with a different book from the one I’ve been studying, I’d read it overnight and I got a credit. When I left the college at sixteen, I was, I was then, what’s the word? I was then with a firm of accountants in St Paul’s Churchyard and when I used to look out, yes, the war had just started and I used to look out through the window into that churchyard, there were a number of graves there and on one of them there was a double cross and it said neath this SOD, is another SOD, Adolf Hitler, it didn’t actually say SOD of course, it said it, yes, well, then the Blitz started and the family firm was in real trouble cause all the engineers had been called up, well, most of them, so I abandoned accountancy and went and helped the family firm in Battersea, I’d been there just a few months when four ladies came for a job, one of whom was a lady of eighteen and Hilda became my future wife, right from now.
CB: I stop, I stop for a minute. Just going back from your school days, what were the things you excelled at there?
CW: Well, at the elementary school, the age of thirteen, I wanted to get to the Norwich junior Tech but I needed recommendation for that, I had to do something and show that I was capable. My father got me a kit of parts for a radio, agreed it was a simple radio, it was from a [unclear] by Telecom, [unclear], I built the radio and gave a talk on it, demonstrating the thing working and I drew the circuit on the blackboard as I went along, told them how it worked, and that secured me a recommendation for the tech but there of course it was all physics, chemistry, mechanics and so on and two years there onto Unthank college, very different, I had, I carried on with tuition, with tuition in chemistry, physics I enjoyed, maths I enjoyed and all went well, that gave me five credits which gave me access to training as an accountant.
CB: Ok. You were talking a bit earlier about the shortage of engineers because they’ve been called up, so, your father tried to engage ladies, how did that go?
CW: Well, my father at that time was in Abyssinia and there was a manager there with little technical knowledge and instead of being a foreman with about six wiremen, there was me and four fourteen year old schoolboys and we were working on overhead lines, I was working about fifteen hours a day, I was earning, yes, fifty shillings a, yes, fifty shillings a week, at the end of the Blitz, well, almost the end of the Blitz, I’d had enough, and I thought the manager was, oh, I, one evening I was, I filled in my paperwork for the day, I put it in the secretary’s tray and there was an official looking document with my name on it and the manager was trying to, it was case it was the Ministry of Labour to get Clifford Watson exempt from callup. And I was furious, I tore the thing up, the next day, instead of going to work in overalls, I went in my best suit, well, my one and only suit and that’s when I went up town [unclear] made a beeline first for the Fleet Air Arm and things worked from there.
CB: So, when you went to, when you tried for the Fleet Air Arm, what happened? You went to the recruiting office.
CW: Well, I couldn’t get further than the door at the Fleet Air Arm.
CB: What did the man say?
CW: Can I help you, lad? That’s when I put on my Yorkshire accent [laughs] which wasn’t difficult at the time. The following, about a week later, I went to industrial house and there was very young [unclear] there, there’s a fairly big hall, half a dozen doors, each leading into a fairly small office and in each place there was I think five Lieutenant and a sergeant, when I went in, we were given a form which I filled in and I was given a card with a number on it and it was the number above the door or two numbers in fact, the doors were numbered and there was another number, when that number comes up on that [unclear] or those two numbers come up, you go through that door and I was interviewed by the officer and the sergeant and they said, this is a very, very preliminary interview, just want to give you some idea of how things go, and they asked a few questions: What did your father do? What do you do? Why do you want to join the RAF? And so on. Ok, there was an interview, there were about fifty people waiting and it was very pleasant, very pleasant too, they said, alright, we wish you luck, and you should hear from us within a few weeks. So I went back home, letter came, report to some place near Euston and I went there, we had three one-hour written papers and then an interview and a medical. At the interview I remember two questions, one was, which is colder, minus 40 Fahrenheit or minus 40 Centigrade? I pretended to work it out, I said, same thing, same temperature, well, I knew the answer, I didn’t need to work it out, but I pretended to do. Right, he said you’re, you know, in a flimsy belt, you’re half a mile offshore, a breeze is trying to take you, what was it [unclear] get it right, the breeze is trying to take you inshore, the tide is taking you out of shore, so in practice you stay put, you’re infested with alligators, all sorts of, animals in the sea but you’ve got to get ashore, what do you do? I said, I think the answer you want is that I lower the boat in the sea, increase the tide, the effect of the tide and reduce the windage, I think that’s your answer but I don’t like it and he laughed, yeah, he did laugh, he said, quite right. That was the two questions. [laughs] After that, that was about the interview, we already had the three written papers and there was nothing there particularly tricky and then there was a medical, half a dozen or so medical people, we went to each one and everything seemed alright, said, right, good show, we’ll let you know and I had a letter, a few weeks later, telling me to where to report but before I reported, I was to see a dentist for one filling and, two fillings and one extinct
CB: extraction
CW: One extraction. I did that and two fillings and one extraction at a cost of three shillings. Imagine today. Anyhow, I don’t question. And that was it. Eventually I was told where to report, meanwhile two other chaps locally had found that I was joining, I joined the RAF, so had they and the three of us got together and we travelled to Newquay together and in fact to Rhodesia together but years later, the one, the first one became captain of a Stirling and disappeared on his first trip. The other one, like me, came off the pilot’s course, I nearly said failed but I don’t agree with that term, I came off the pilot’s course with the other fellow and then carried on. He became a rear-gunner of a Stirling and they were shot up on all three trips which he did, different crew each time, first trip he ditched in the sea, two, he plus two survived, second trip they had to bail out, he and one other survived, third trip, they landed tail heavy, the turret came adrift with him in it, the aircraft bounced, blew up, killing everyone on board and Tommy woke up in hospital, that was there, carry on. [unclear] Whilst in Rhodesia, we were seven weeks at sea getting to Rhodesia, oh, getting to Durban and in Durban we had no money, we’d handed all the English currency in and they were to exchange it for local currency when we got to were [unclear] we were going and on the main track in Durban with no money and outside a Barclay’s bank was a rotary insignature, insignia and it said, Durban welcomes local visiting Rotarians, well, I wasn’t a Rotarian but my father was, I went in, could I see the manager please? I had an introduction card from Battersea Rotary. Let’s see the manager, please, well, the three of us walked in, saw the manager and I said, I’d like to borrow a couple of quid and send it back to you when we get to wherever it is we’re going. He reached into a drawer and gave each of us an envelope with the equivalent of ten pounds in each, he said, that with a compliment to a Rotary, don’t try to send it back, he said, you’re in Africa now, that was it.
CB: We’ll stop there just for a moment. Just quickly before we go on to your, more details of your flying training, Clifford, you mentioned the fact that you were interested in joining the Navy, as Fleet Air Arms, so-
CW: The reason, the reason I went to the Navy was the first one, all I wanted to do was fly and Fleet Air Arm needs pilots, it said, and as you’d heard, I got no further than the door, Fleet Air Arm pilots don’t work, that’s it, and I did, and that was the end of my naval experience. All I wanted to do was fly, that’s all, fighter pilot of course, but that didn’t matter, if anybody had said you prefer bombers or fighters, we’d seen plenty of fighters, it would have been fighters.
CB: There was a glamour in being a fighter pilot
CW: Mh?
CB: There was a glamour in being a fighter pilot at that time.
CW: Oh, everybody, all the boys wanted to be
CB: But, after being rejected
CW: Well, having seen bombers going down in flames and fighters getting away with it, fine, naturally they wanted to be fighter pilots
CB: Yeah. So, the effect of the rejection of the navy man, made you do what?
CW: So, the?
CB: The effect of talking with the man from the navy, that, what was the effect of that on you? You went home and then what?
CW: It didn’t worry me, except that I had this ridge across my nose, and I thought there’s no point in going into the RAF medical with a ridge on my nose
CB: From your glasses
CW: But, from the, yes, from the bridge as, but that disappeared, was only just a mark, so I left my glasses off and it made no difference, I passed the medical alright, in fact, quite often during the war I did wear glasses and I wore them flying in place of the goggles. The goggles were there but didn’t really need them, cause I did wear glasses, I remember a briefing one day and I put the glasses on and one of the officers was looking at that [laughs], a rear gunner wearing glasses? Oh, dear me! They made no difference,
CB: Just going to your experience in Rhodesia, so you did pilot training, how many hours did you do?
CW: Oh, I did eight hours flying with five different instructors and then, in six weeks, and a day or two before the end of six weeks, I got in a further three hours with a sergeant pilot who claimed to have been a Hurricane pilot in North Africa which we didn’t believe, so at eleven hours they were still, let’s get it right, yes, after six weeks, out of the course of fifty, there were still thirty on the course, only fifteen of whom had gone solo and I was one of the other fifteen who hadn’t and that fifteen had to see a fly test and everybody was scrubbed, everyone failed. Well, of that fifteen, twelve of us notified a grievance, we went through the grievance procedure, why had we failed? Why had I failed? And the CO pretended to look up his notebook, Watson you failed on two counts, a, you did wheel landings instead of three pointers, secondly you took off and climbed at half throttle. Well, I said, firstly, I landed exactly as I was instructed and secondly, if it took off and climbed at half throttle, I prefer a miracle and we could all do with one of them, I spoke twice out there, I remember and that was it, there was no appeal, everybody was taken off for some silly reason. A year later, Wing Commander Powell, Speedy Powell, who was in charge of all flying training became our group captain in North Africa and I was about to tell him it was a scam when he told me, he said, no, you didn’t fail, he said, they were just not in a SFTS, he says, to cope with the numbers from EFTS and there were hundreds of you waiting after EFTS to go to SFTS, so they established an air gunner training school and observer training school at Moffat near Gwelo. We were given the option of an observer course and they said, there’ll be a little, there could be a delay in getting on to the observer course, maybe a week or two delay, well, we’d already met people the previous night who’d been there for six months waiting for the thing, so they were not, they were dishonest, there was only one thing to do, and that was re-muster to air gunner and we, there were forty five of us on the course, there’s a picture of that with all those chaps in there.
CB: So, you became an air gunner
CW: Yes, it was an, I think it was an eight weeks course
CB: And where was that held?
CW: That was at Gwelo, aerodrome was called Moffat, at Gwelo near Marandellas in Rhodesia, I spent quite a lot of time on the farm at Marandellas, where there was a little girl called Wendy and I remember repairing a puncture on her bicycle, we had to do something in return for the hospitality. Everybody seemed to pass the air gunner course, I won’t comment too much on that [laughs]
CB: So, did you get your brevet at the end of that course or did you get it later?
CW: Oh, at the end of the course
CB: Then what?
CW: Yes, the two instructors there, they weren’t even qualified air gunners [laughs], I should delete that,
CB: What did you do the training on for air gunnery?
CW: They were Anson aircraft and Anson aircraft, yes, and there was a scarf ring with a Vickers gas operated guns and the only firing we did was on the beam at a drill [unclear] by a Miles Magister, Miles Master, which was, she was
CB: So, how did you get on with it?
CW: Oh, it’s rather, on the way back, we came via Cape Town and whilst we were in the transit camp the three of us went to, went to, oh my Gosh, I can’t recall the name, Muizenberg yes, we were in the beach in Muizenberg and a lady came to us about ten o’clock, she said, look, chaps, what are you doing for lunch? So, well, we’re not [laughs] see that big house over there? Come and see me there half past eleven, come and have lunch with us and we did, at the door ask for Mrs Macbeth. Ask for Mrs Macbeth, right, we duly went to the door and I asked for Mrs Shakespeare [laughs] Many, many years later I was on the [unclear] talking to an amateur in South Africa, I told him where I was and he said he was in Muizenberg and I said, I remember Muizenberg and I told him about that, he said, that place is now a guest house and that’s where I stay and that’s where I’m speaking from, not only that, but he said, whereabouts are you in Mbeya? And I told him, and I said, I’m in what’s the boys quarters at the back of the transferring station in the back of the cottage there in the boys quarters and he said, have a look through the, can you see the back door of the cottage? And I bent down, Yes, yeah, he said, is there a hole in the door, about a foot off the floor, in the middle? Yeah. He said, if you’d been down and looked through that hole, you’ll see a mark on the wall back, there’s a passageway, a mark on the wall. Have a look and I did, and it’d been, it had been plastered over, he said, that’s where my gun went off when I was careless, he was stationed there during the war. And, now, there were two coincidences, million to one, millions to one, infinitely to one, he was told about Mrs Shakespeare and we’d, he’d sat in the same seat during the war. Amazing. [unclear], Rhodesia was a wonderful place.
CB: And the local families, when you had time off, when you had time off from training, what did the local families do?
CW: Oh, on the farm? Oh, they were farmers, we tried to help out on farm, I did a bit of wiring whilst I was there, a lot of wires on pylons and they were in a bit of a state and I did a bit of tidying up there, I remember that
CB: Did they feed you?
CW: Oh yes, yes, was wonderful, Marandellas, that was. Yes, we were entertained quite royally in Rhodesia.
CB: So, we were talking about your holding point at Cape Town when that, what happened there? From Cape Town what happened?
CW: Well, from Cape Town we got on the boat and came back. It was a passenger liner, we’d gone out to Durban in the Mooltan, that was a cargo ship and we were down in, on the bottom deck, about three decks below, coming back we were on the Empress of Bermuda and there were people on it from the Middle East and quite a few Italian prisoners and we came back straight ten days, straight line ten days, the U-boats didn’t stand a chance, going out we had a terrific escort and must have been a dozen ships in that convoy, a dozen navy ships, coming back we were on our own and in a straight line [laughs]
CB: Cause it was fast
CW: It was fast, yes
CB: So, where did you dock?
CW: Where did we dock? Yes, Greenock, came back to Greenock, we had to carry our own kit bag, get our kit bag off the ship, we had full pack, a suitcase, and in fact we had two kit bags and we had to hang them over, one was for the flying kit, which was exactly as it was when we left, we didn’t even open the stuff, we didn’t need it in Rhodesia
CB: Because of the warmth.
CW: Mh?
CB: Because it was so warm.
CW: Yeah. We were and we lined up on the dock with all our kit and our red cap came along and recalled us to attention, right turn, double march, we just stood there with mouths open, double march, with all that clobber? there were no trollies, anything like that, we had to walk. I think we went straight to a train, I think the train is coming to the dock, I’ve got that picture, got on the train and we went back to West Kirby on the wirral. And that was it. From there, train down to Brighton and from, actually managed my pay book said I was, air gunner UT wireless op, which is what I said I wanted to do and he said, well, you can have the wireless op course if you wish, but it means going back to where they say, and you lose your tapes and you go back to where they say, forget that, he said, apply for another pilot’s course when you’ve done a couple of tours. Yes, oh yes, we were at Brighton, I was at Brighton for three weeks in a hotel, we would go in one direction, couple of miles and we’d have a lecture, then a few miles more and do a bit of swimming and that sort of thing, somewhere else do a bit of drill, bit of PT here there, just filling in time which all we wanted to do was get on. [pause] and we were posted straight to OTUs and I went to Finningley near Doncaster and that’s when I skivved off for Christmas and went to see my mother and got caught up in the time, was called out. Doncaster, there was an ENSA concert whilst we were there and the posters gave the impression that it was a real variety concert and they made it very clear, once you are in, you stay in, you don’t come out [unclear], you stay in, watch it, ok, it wasn’t a variety concert, it was an orchestra playing there, all playing classical music which was not really our kettle of fish. The only other ENSA concert I saw was at Kairouan when the Queen Mary came up, you know, the flat top thing, the Queen Mary came and there was a double grand piano on the back and a trailer where the pianist lived, it was Rawicz and Landauer and that was very good, I just sat there on my notebooks watching the, this on the piano and that was a real, they played stuff which appealed to us.
CB: Just to clarify the point, the Queen Mary is an aircraft recovery trailer.
CW: Yes, it was a big flat top carrying anything, tanks, aircraft
CB: So, you appreciated the music
CW: Yes, yes, it was good, was very good, but they were the only two ENSA concerts I saw
CB: So how long were you at the OTU?
CW: That’s a good point, about three months
CB: And you, what were you flying there?
CW: That was Wimpeys. Some Wimpey 1 Cs and then Wimpy 3s, mostly 3s.
CB: And from there where did you go?
CW: I gotta think.
CB: So, after the OTU you went to an HCU.
CW: No, no, we were on Wimpys. From 25 OTU Finningley we went to 30 OU, 30 OTU at Hickson, in Stafford and there we did more cross countries and whilst there we did three trips to France and then we were, then we joined, we went from there, we were there about three months, we went to 150 Squadron at Snaith. We didn’t do any flying from Snaith, one flight from Snaith was being detached overseas, they didn’t say where, we went to, one flight has to go, to go overseas, the other flight stays over Germany, so if you’d both give a preference of what you want to do and we opted to stay over Germany which meant of course that we went overseas. Our entire crew had trained overseas and we wanted to stay in England for a while but, no, from there we went back to West Kirby, back to West Kirby and we boarded a big, boarded a ship and on the deck there was some very big crates and the address Murmansk, it had been partly painted out, the name partly painted out. I said, Crickey, surely enough, we found later that they’d written Murmansk and partly rubbed it out so that the enemy looking at that thought we were going to Murmansk but that’s, that was what they said but we didn’t. We then from there down the Clyde, into the Med, then we went to Algiers, the troop ship just ahead of us was torpedoed and staggered into [unclear] and all the air gunners were on the deck of our troop ship, one air gunners, we’ve never seen the Oerlikon guns before, anyhow, that was it, and we disembarked in Algiers and in Algiers, yes, from Algiers we were stationed thirty miles south at Blida and there was a cargo ship unloading bombs and the bombs were put on ordinary bomb trolleys and trundled with tractors all the way to Blida and Blida is a very busy place, the Americans were there with all sorts of funny aircraft and we operated from Blida on Wimpys.
CB: Ok, we will stop there for a minute. Two, three disappointments in the RAF, yeah.
CW: No, two
CB: Two
CW: One was coming off the pilot’s course
CB: Yeah.
CW: [unclear] on 227 Squadron I was, the gunnery leader disappeared after a couple of weeks and I was a warrant officer then and I became acting gunnery leader and I stayed that way for six months as a flying officer doing the job and the wing commander commented on that and the adjutant oh, Cliff hadn’t done the gunnery leader course, so he said, better do the gunnery leader course. Couple of weeks later, I went up to Yorkshire somewhere and on the course thirty of us arrived to do it, we were given a test on arrival, we arrived on Sunday afternoon, Monday morning we all had a test and at the end of that we were divided into two flights, A and B, fifteen in each, I was in B flight and B flight was told to assemble in the hut next door, in the next hut, we did that, and we were each, we are not recording?
CB: Yeah, it’s ok.
CW: No, not.
CB: You don’t want to?
CW: No.
CB: No, ok. So you had a trip from Sir Archibald Sinclair. What did he say?
CW: Well, Archibald Sinclair thought we would be pleased at coming back through Sicily, Italy, France and so on, we weren’t amused but at Kairouan our diet was bully beef and biscuits. Each morning one member of the crew would go to the mess tent, collect two tins of bully and if we wanted, a few biscuits but they were big biscuits about six inches in diameter, but we used to go into the [unclear] city and I saw, we saw there once, oh, we had a Volkswagen there, a Volkswagen which had been abandoned, we shouldn’t really have gone anywhere near it, we were in big trouble for doing that, anyhow we went to this Volkswagen and one of the chaps fixed it, we more or less pinched the petrol, hundred octane petrol which didn’t do the engine any good and we used that at Kairouan, eventually it was confiscated by the military police, anyway in Kairouan, in
CB: Kairouan
CW: In Kairouan there was a vegetable stall in the market and there were some watermelons and we were admiring those, and the chap invited me to take one so I took it and gave it to him, he cut it up and we enjoyed this watermelon, it was lovely, I thought we could do with some of these back on camp, I bought two hundred of them [laughs] and oddly enough we could afford two hundred between us and we gave them in at the mess tent, some went over to the officer’s mess but when it came to use these watermelons, they were not watermelons at all, they were marrows, that didn’t matter to much because we stuffed them with bully beef, well the cooks did, how on earth, we loaded those watermelons into the Volkswagen but they turned out to be marrows we got there so, how that happened we don’t know, we just can’t understand. But, that was Kairouan, it was from Kairouan we saw this armada of Dakotas and gliders and they were going to Sicily and of course, soon after that we took off. A very interesting operations from, in North Africa, we felt we were dealing there with the Germans, with the military as apart from civilians, bombing them from four or five miles up, we were right down there with them, was a better feeling somehow, we felt we were a little bit nearer.
CB: What were your targets?
CW: Well, there’s a list of them here. In North Africa, all in North Africa, oh no, there’s a page full here.
CB: Ok.
CW: Tunis, Monserrato, Decimomannu, Tunis, Tunis again, Bizerta, Trapani and then there Villa Credo, Palermo, Napoli, Cagliari, Rome, Alghero, Castelvetrano, Chieti or something, Borezzo, Pantelleria, Sardinia, Sardinia, Sicily, Pantelleria, Napoli, Pantelleria, Pantelleria, that was in one night, twice to Pantelleria that night, Siracuse, Pantelleria, Messina, Napoli, Siracuse, Rome, Salerno, Bari, San Giovanni, Messina, Trapani.
CB: So, we are talking about largely mainland bombing, are we, what’s the balance between daylight and night bombing?
CW: This was all night bombing.
CB: All night bombing. Right.
CW: All night bombing.
CB: And how did you conduct the operations? Were you in a bomber’s stream or
CW: No.
CB: Were you in formation? Just as a gaggle.
CW: We’d take off one after the other independent to navigation all on the same route, ETA time on bombing, all the same, but operating independently, at maximum effort there, there were only twenty-six of us
CB: Right, how did you keep a sufficient spatial distance?
CW: What, from the others?
CB: Yeah.
CW: I didn’t even see them.
CB: Right. And you were all set the same height to operate from, were you?
CW: Yeah. Yes, yeah.
CB: And you, the speed was dictated in advance?
CW: Same, was the same, maximum economic cruising speed, it was the same for everybody.
CB: What would that be?
CW: I don’t know, it wasn’t my problem.
CB: No.
CW: One sixty-five knots. And, you can’t quote that, I’m not sure. I was the rear gunner.
CB: Right. Of course, yeah. So, in an operation, after dropping the bombs, you made your own way back
CW: Yes
CB: How easy was it to find the airfield that you started off from?
CW: Well, if, the navigator was pretty good, it was all dead reckoning now, there were no navigational leads at all or no electronic aids, then the navigator had a drift sight, I had a drift sight in the rear turret, I could, coming back over the sea, could drop a flame float, put the guns on that and of course, with the wind on the side and so on, we’re crabbing along, relative to the ground, the nose is not going straight forward, it’s on the
CB: You’d forward the deflection.
CW: There was a deflection
CB: To the navigator.
CW: And I could measure that deflection on the thing at the side and I would tell the navigator, we got sort of three degrees starboard drift or whatever and he would plot that, he could also measure the drift on his drift sight, and it was good, and of course, you hit the North Africa coast, and can see it and fly along if [unclear], if you’re too far east when you hit it but there were no other aids.
CB: So, the role of the gunner is to defend the aircraft. How many times were you attacked by German or Italian aircraft?
CW: No German aircraft, we saw a couple of Italian aircraft, one came up and we looked at it and looked as how it was, be a bit offensive, I fired at the bloke but he cleared off, we’d no trouble in North Africa. We got a bit closer to the enemy attacking, we were supposed to be strategic air force, that was the title but a lot of our work was tactical
CB: Supporting the army
CW: Supporting the army, attacking trains
CB: Yeah
CW: And so on. Low level stuff
CB: When you say, low level, what height are we talking about?
CW: Three hundred feet. Attacking a train at three hundred feet, there’d be three of us, we did two trips like that on the railway line from Suez up to Tunis, a German troop train on there, there’d be three of us, one aircraft would go directly above and bomb it and invariably stop it, stop the train. We would come upon the right, two hundred yards and strafing it, the train was stopped, the Jerries got off at the other side and they tried to get away a bit and that’s when the other fellow came in, number three, blazing with the front turret, and one beam gun and that was it, the three of us would carry on, turn round and then it depends what had to be done then, we didn’t want to derail, we didn’t try to derail the train, anything like that
CB: No, cause you needed the line
CW: We wanted the line for the army
CB: Army did, yeah, so
CW: One of the last things, in Tunis the Germans were evacuating from Bizerte, Bizerte?
CB: Yeah.
CW: Yes. And we was attacking the troop ships, we cut it down, well, I don’t know if it was us or one of them, anyway one of us caught a direct hit on a troop ship, which turned back and beached. And about a thousand British soldiers got off it. Three of them were killed, three British soldiers were killed by us but that was, that ship was full of POWs and it should have been lit up, by international law it should have been well illuminated
CB: Like a hospital ship
CW: But it wasn’t, there were no lights and there was nothing to tell us there were British on board, as far as we were concerned it was a German.
CB: Yeah.
CW: Anyhow, it beached, three thousand troops got off it and we met some of them in Tunis and we weren’t very popular
CB: No
CW: Because we’d killed three of their chaps but they didn’t think [unclear] the rest of us had done lucky [unclear] to be here, they did a good job and they didn’t think so
CB: Cause the Germans were evacuating with ships but also aircraft, so, did you have any role in trying to intercept the aircraft that were escaping? They had the big transport planes, the Arado
CW: We didn’t see any German aircraft, having said that I, I’ve got a vague idea we did once, there were two, one night we were on the way to Italy and at briefing they gave us position of a U-boat reported on, reported, a U-boat in that position and briefing officer, he said, if you see it, make it crash-dive, said, don’t try to bomb it, cause you won’t hit it, I wonder [unclear], speak for yourself, mate [laughs] just divert off normal track to that U-boat, if you see it, make it crash-dive, do a couple of circuits when you get to that spot and try and do that and we saw it and we went for it but we didn’t see it crash-dive but it, when we saw it, the bomb aimer saw the shape, it was just submerged, and he saw this cigar shape, we went down on it, and it’s big trouble when we got back. Can’t you tell a U-boat from a Royal Navy submarine? [laughs] How could we?
CB: No. No way. It’s a good thing you didn’t hit it then, with your bombs.
CW: The bloke was right. Don’t try to bomb it, you won’t hit it.
CB: No, Yeah. On that topic
CW: Speaking of submarines
CB: On that topic of U-boats, the U-boat base was at La Spezia in North West Italy, did you bomb La Spezia?
CW: I don’t think so. I don’t recall the name, no, it’s not here, we were told there was a refueling base, U-boat refueling at Alghero, refueling base, there’s a, oh dear, what do you call it?
CB: A long jetty
CW: A long jetty out, U-boat refuel at the end of the jetty and the oil is trundled down there, if there’s no U-boat there destroy the jetty, but try not to damage the town, strafe it but don’t, no, no bombs, use them on the jetty, and we did and we strafed the town but there was no U-boat there. It was an innocent fishing village but we were told that the U-boat refueling
CB: And this is before the Italian surrender of course, isn’t it?
CW: Oh yes, yes.
CB: In 1943. Yeah. Ok, so you, what else did you do during your tour?
CW: In Africa? Well, it was interesting, but we felt we were part of the war there. Between Sicily and mainland there are ferries going all the time and we bombed both terminals, we put [unclear] to the [unclear], to the, and we hit those terminals.
CB: You’d be flying at a higher level for that, what level would you be flying at?
CW: Six thousand feet was our normal bombing height. We were halfway there on Sunday, that was at three thousand feet.
CB: Were you? What sort of flak did you encounter?
CW: On Italy? A bit of light flak, that was all. On Rome, probably however six thousand and that was supposed to be an open city, we weren’t supposed to fight.
CB: What were you bombing? What were you bombing in Rome?
CW: On Rome, on the city, we dropped leaflets,
CB: Ah.
CW: Then we bombed the marshalling yards then down the Tiber to the Lido di Roma, seaplane base and we bombed that, we didn’t see any seaplanes, but we bombed the, we hit the hangars.
CB: So, what level of accuracy would you say you normally achieved?
CW: I would say pretty good, it wasn’t carpet bombing anywhere, we had, it was pinpoint bombing. Mind you, there were only twenty-six of us, maximum twenty-six.
CB: How many did you lose?
CW: We did lose one or two, we lost five percent, it was twenty-odd when maybe one wouldn’t get back, the losses were the same as over Europe, on average, which I know that’s surprising, probably for different reasons.
CB: So, you came to the end of your tours, then what?
CW: When we finished in, when we finished at Kairouan, we went on the Queen Mary up to Tunis, we had a spot of leave on one occasion, just after Tunis was liberated, or just after Jerry was kicked out, we went up to Tunis, there were several canteens and that’s where the bomb aimer ran into trouble, there were five of us, the canteen was crowded and four blokes got up just as we sort of got near the table, they got up and we sat down but there were five of us, so then the bomb aimer saw a spare chair a few yards away, picked it up, place was crowded, he put it over his head and walked towards our table and some happy soldier looked up, saw the chair hovering over his head, it went round and it gave such a [unclear], knocked him out, well, almost knocked him out, knocked him down, silly devil with a chair over his head.
CB: Yeah.
CW: And the red caps came and he was arrested and put in jail and the, was in at the police station and we moved from where we were staying to a hotel next to the police station, at 49 Rue De Serbie, I remember that address and Chadderton was in jail, was in prison, well we went into [unclear], the canteens were all crowded but there was another we came to, officers only, so, our tapes were just on one arm, on an elastic band, off with the tapes, off with the hat, and we went in, into the, into this posh hotel and sat there having a beer. About half an hour later, the bomb aimer, he almost turned white. I looked round and Speedy Powell was there, our group captain [laughs]. And of course, we got an [unclear], hello chaps, I didn’t realize you chaps were all commissioned [laughs], what are you drinking? [laughs] I thought, oh Crickey, we are in trouble here, so, I like to see a bit of initiative, jolly good, very good show, chaps [laughs], he spoke like that, Speedy Powell [laughs].
CB: How were you notified about
CW: He said, I’m going back, when you’re going back to Kairouan, he said, couple of days? He said, I’m going back tomorrow, give you a lift if you like and he did, he took us back to Kairouan. But first of all, we went to that prison, to the police station and he got Chadderton out, 49 Rue De Serbie, that’s where we were.
CB: So, you got back to camp, then what?
CW: Well, we got back and our tour was nearly finished, whilst at Blida we’d sleep, it was a question of crew but one aircraft per crew, you stuck to the same aircraft, that was yours whilst you’re here, well, there was no vacancy at the when we got there, we’d a spare week waiting for the aircraft and we went to a place called Setif on the coast, a big hotel there and we stayed in that hotel at RAF expense for a week, that was good. And the rooms were already occupied and there was real French entertainment, you see what I mean [laughs], that was, that shouldn’t have been really, anyhow sorry I digress.
CB: That’s alright. So, how did you know that you were at the end of your tour?
CW: We’d done two tours, we’d done, I think it was fifty four trips there, we could have come back after thirty five, it was normally thirty over Europe and thirty-five in the Med but we could opt to stay and do, carry on, which I preferred, and we did fifty-five, in fact we did more than that because a trip under three hours and there are quite a few, well, there are several, a trip under three hours only counted as a half [laughs], so you’d do trips to, well, like those trips to Pantelleria and Lampedusa just under three hours, but it was, you only, was credited with a half, and again you see, if you can’t take a joke, shouldn’t have joined [laughs], there was a Luftwaffe base on Lampedusa and we didn’t know it, we didn’t see it, we were bombing the harbour.
CB: So, did nobody attack the airfield?
CW: No, we didn’t do, I don’t think, I don’t know, we knew there was one, we were not told of any airfield, our job was the harbour
CB: So, you reached the end of the tour, what happened then?
CW: Well, we went on the Queen Mary to Tunis, then
CB: From Tunis, yeah
CW: And then in lorries to Algiers onto a troop ship and back to England, back to Greenock.
CB: What was it like on the troop ship?
CW: I’m just trying to think, yes, well, it was full of troops, I don’t think there were any Germans aboard
CB: Prisoners?
CW: I don’t, don’t remember much about it, the first troop ship coming back that was Empress of Bermuda, what was that airport we got from?
US: Bengasi?
CW: Down the road
US: Where are we?
CW: Mh?
US: Where are we?
CW: Monarch
US: Stansted?
CW: Monarch of Bermuda, that was, I think that was the, it was on that trip Monarch of Bermuda and they’re luxury airliners
CB: Right
CW: Luxury liners
CB: Yeah
CW: And it was good
CB: As a warrant officer, what facilities did you have? Sharing a room or four to a room?
CW: Oh, it didn’t make any difference,
CB: Right.
CW: Rank didn’t really mean very much and the skipper was the squadron leader, the only time we called him sir was if we had to, if there was any VIP nearby then, we might call him sir, otherwise it was Chess, his name was Chester, squadron leader Chester, he never did an OTU, he was- we’re on this thing.
CB: Yeah, go on. We’re stopping for a moment. We’ve restarted as you arrived in Greenock, what happened then?
CW: Well, we’ve come back from
CB: From Tunis. So, you’ve returned from North Africa to Greenock at the end of your two tours.
CW: Yes, from there we went by train down to Brighton, and of course and there it felt it split up and I was posted to, yes, I was posted to 84 OTU and second day I was there I was given a schedule of duties, lecture on the Browning gun, lecture on combat manoeuvre, the corkscrew and so on and I had this schedule, I said, I don’t like this, I haven’t done a course on the Browning gun, I’ve been using one for two tours but I’ve never done a course on it, what’s this corkscrew business? You’ve never heard of the corkscrew? No, what is it? The corkscrew, yes, on a bottle, well, I became an instructor on the corkscrew after I’d had some instruction and combat tactics, what can you do except move and fight it out, he said, what you need is an air gunner course, yes, I said, by all means, ok, I’ve done the job but that doesn’t make me a good instructor, no, I’m not instructing, so they gave me eight sprog air gunner trainees, to shepherd, I became a course shepherd and in doing that, I gradually picked up what really goes on and the corkscrew, you know about the corkscrew
CB: Yeah.
CW: I’d love to do another one [laughs], well, eventually we had, there was a complete crew and we went to Winthorpe and converted to Stirlings and on Stirlings we did a week of circuits and bumps and then cross-countries and then the first cross-country we went North towards Scotland to a bomb site, a bombing range rather, did an exercise there and on the way, or maybe the way back over Yorkshire, you’ll be attacked by a Hurricane, we need a good picture, make sure your guns are on safe and get a good picture of the Hurricane. We were attacked and the rear gunner hadn’t the vaguest idea, he said, weave skipper, weave, he was yelling, weave, it’s coming, it’s nearer and I thought, what the hell is that? He got no idea and the aircraft came from down starboard quarter, came right at us and then came in again and same again from the port quarter, nothing happened, and it came in, I was mid upper by that [unclear], it came in from the beam on the starboard and I gave, well by then was a textbook type of commentary winding up its corkscrew starboard go and nothing happened and the aircraft went underneath, came up on the quarter, more textbook but corkscrew port go, and that time we went dump up [unclear] up board, up starboard, down starboard, that was obviously the screen pilot the instructor.
CB: Ah.
CW: That was good. When, then, he said, on the way back, we’re going down on a raft off the Lincolnshire coast, we’re supposed to fire, strafe that raft but that’s what you’re supposed to do but don’t do that, there’ll be, there are seals on the raft, they live there, I knew that, they’ve been there dozens of times, just give a short burst in midair, fire at the moon, fire as it were , we did that and I just fired a short burst with one gun [laughs], cause they had to be cleaned afterwards, I fired a short burst, the rear gunner didn’t, ok, rear gunner, says the screen pilot, oh, no sir, the guns are faulty, I felt, Christ, was sort of physiology is that? They weren’t US, they were faulty, mid upper gunner, have a look, go and fix him. I went back to the rear turret, opened the flimsy door, and [unclear] pushed him aside, the guns weren’t even cocked, I said, where is your cocking toggle? He said, he didn’t understand, he didn’t know what a cocking toggle was, well, his hat was there, his fancy hat, remember that hat was there but took [unclear] the cockpit, number three gun I saw the thing, cause it was on safe, so I took the safety catch off and I yelled at him, now pull the trigger, botch the trigger, pull it, and he did, he nearly fell off the seat, he would have done if he hadn’t been tied down, said, now do the same as that to the other three, they’re the other two guns, cause one was a camera gun, and he hadn’t the vaguest idea so I did the same to the number four gun, fired that and he just, he hadn’t a clue, and ok but we’d fired from the rear turret. Next morning, the gunnery leader when I booked in as it were, he showed me a report from the screen pilot, do you agree with this? And it was that the rear gunner, he doubted if the rear gunner had had any operational training, did I agree? I said, not only I agree, I don’t believe he went to gunnery school, if he did, he didn’t learn anything literally and that’s what he wanted to know. I said, I’d like to see his logbook, well, it was the end of the month and the logbooks were in the flight office so I went to get them and I got them for the whole crew and I looked at this fellow’s logbook, he’d done no flying at all except at Winthorpe circuits and bumps, and the odd cross-country, that cross-country would have entered but there was nothing there except circuits and bumps but in the back was a certificate that he’d completed the air gunner course, very sad. Anyhow, we got rid of him, I said, he’s finished, that fellow, he’s not flying in my rear turret. I developed a little problem; would you mind if I?
CB: We’ll stop
CW: Nip up there for a second?
CB: So, you find the gunnery school
CW: Is that off?
CB: It’s on now, yeah, right
CW: Rear gunner had the faintest idea and he was sent to Eastchurch, he’d finished
CB: Now
CW: Now on the grapevine, all the information everybody seemed to know what was going on and the chap, the warrant officer on the clay pigeon shooting asked me what was happening, and in fact I didn’t know but he said, look, I want to join a crew and in fact he did, he joined our crew but he was a mid-upper gunner and I said, that’s fine, show me, you can have the mid-upper, I’ll have the rear, if they gunnery leader will agree and he did and the skipper agreed and we acquired a very good mid-upper gunner. Pete Foolkes, Pete Foolkes who eventually went to Canada, and stayed in and joined the Canadian Air Force, nice bloke.
CB: So that’s how you got into mid-upper, sorry, rear gunner, that’s how you became a rear gunner.
CW: I’ve always been a rear gunner.
CB: Yeah, quite.
CW: It was just that
CB: On the Stirling.
CW: I preferred the rear turret.
CB: Did you feel more comfortable with four guns?
CW: [laughs] That’s quite right, the mid upper did just have two, didn’t he, did?
CB: Yeah.
CW: I wasn’t too familiar with the mid-upper, I think you’re right, it’s bound to be [laughs].
CB: There was only space for two. There was only space for two guns.
CW: Yeah. Yes, yeah.
CB: So, you were at the OTU, after the OTU where did you go?
CW: Oh, OTU, right I’m with it again, we that was
CB: Winthorpe
CW: That was a conversion course
CB: Yes
CW: After an OTU.
CB: Alright, a conversion course
CW: A conversion course at Winthorpe
CB: Yes
CW: Well, from there, we went to Bardney
CB: Yeah.
CW: The skipper was promoted to squadron leader and he became flight commander, of A flight and A flight it worked in, with I think it was up at 9 squadron for a few weeks, I did the odd trips with, I think the first two trips from Bardney as part of 9 Squadron really at [unclear], from there we went to Strubby, did a couple from there and then on to Balderton, where the Americans had just left Balderton we moved in and B flight was already at Balderton. We then became a complete squadron of two flights and we operated from there, first trip was on Bergen, I did six trips with that squadron leader, first trip was on Bergen, and we were told to be a very careful run on a specific point in the docks, whatever’s there at that point, if anything, that’s the point to hit, be very careful and we went to the East and coming back, westerly course over Bergen, on the bombing run and there was an awful bang, a bit, wing went down, nose went down, we went down and the skipper, he was trying to hold back on the control column, nothing much was happening and we were going down and it was the navigator who went forward, crawled forward and turned it tail heavy, turned the elevator back and we came out and we came out at three thousand feet. What the bang was we’ve no idea, there was no damage anywhere but of course, the bomb doors were open and we came out at three thousand feet but we came out of it on quite a steep climb and we climbed up to eight thousand and the bomb aimer woke up, say skipper, can you go round again, we still got the goddam bomb [laughs] and Ted was the navigator, [unclear], oh, we are going round again and he pulled the jettison toggle and the bomb rolled [unclear], the bomb just went in the sea, complete waste of time the whole thing and we then came back and landed at Milltown and [unclear] Bergen.
CB: Where is Milltown in Scotland?
CW: Oh, Bergen, 28th of October 1944. Squadron leader Chester.
CB: So, this is with 9 Squadron.
CW: Oh no, no, that was all in the [unclear] of 227.
CB: Oh it was, right.
CW: Bergen, the next one was another fiasco to Walcheren. Walcheren, that was on the Zuiderzee and we were to bomb the sea wall, bomb the, not the sea wall, the, what it was called?
CB: The dikes.
CW: Dike, we were to bomb the dike and ahead of us, mind you, I’m in the rear, I didn’t see all this, there was another Lanc ahead and he went across the dike, stick the bombs right across and of course they all went in the sea, it only needed one bomb on the dike but they all went in the sea and our skipper, I can understand him, he thought, well what a ruddy silly way to destroy the dike, we were in the destruction business afterall, so we went round to the east and came in and went over the dike and dropped a whole stick of bombs all the way along the dike and destroyed it for half a mile, all they wanted us to do was make a hole in it so the water could come through, that’s what we were supposed to do, dug a hole in it and we were actually briefed to bomb a gun emplacement but that gun emplacement was already under water and the barrels were sticking out, there was no point in bombing that, we’d no secondary target so we decided, the skipper decided to do the job that he thought the others were going to do and we destroyed that wall for half a mile and it took, what was it? The pioneer corps I think it was, the pioneer corps took six months after the war to repair it and the skipper was in real trouble for doing that but that was a second trip on there. Next one was an ordinary trip to Hamburg and then Harburg which was a subsidiate, well, in the suburbs of Hamburg, that was long after the destruction of Hamburg, Heindbark, oh, that was a dam, Politz [laughs], Politz, a night raid of course, they were all night raids, Politz on the Baltic, night raid and the navigator, five minutes to Politz but everything was quiet, but by that time there should have been some action ahead, and two minutes to Politz, bomb doors open, ok, bomb doors open, and we, everybody thought, well, we are running up on Politz and we were over Politz and was absolute dead quiet, everything was quiet and then it started twenty miles to the south, fireworks below, twenty miles south and, oh Crickey, we’re twenty miles north of the target, and both the skipper, both the navigator and bomb aimer said, we are over Politz, we’re over the coast, but down there’s not over the coast, we are, we are over Politz, and the skipper wouldn’t have it, everybody is bombing there, we’ll join them and we did, and we destroyed an awful lot of good agricultural land. It was Pathfinder force, no, we weren’t using 5 Group Pathfinders, it was 8 Group Pathfinders, they put the markers down in the wrong place and that agricultural land was in a hell of a mess [laughs]
CB: [unclear]
CW: Many years later, I was talking to the air traffic controller in Nairobi, I was in charge of the con centre at night and we were having a little natter, and he mentioned the, he said, he told me, one night, when everybody bombed twenty miles south where they should have done, and I said, that was Politz was it? Politz! Yes, yeah! We were there at the same time and didn’t know it of course. But the interesting things like that you, happen, Politz, Houffalize, Houffalize, oh, that was the Falaise gap, yes, that’s when Jerry broke through, the Falaise gap, and it was very foggy, there was a film made with that raid, which was a lot of rubbish.
CB: Cause we are talking about France now in July ’44
CW: Yes, well, this was December ’44, Houffalize
CB: That’s not Falaise, is it?
CW: Mh?
CB: That’s not Falaise?
CW: Houffalize.
CB: Houffalize, right. Yeah.
CW: Wasn’t that the Falaise gap?
CB: No.
CW: Well, what was Houffalize?
CB: This is after Arnhem you are talking about now?
CB: [unclear] check it out. Yeah.
CW: Karlsruhe then Politz, Rositz, this is, can’t read that, these were spare boat trips, our skipper had finished by then
CB: Right.
CW: He did six and
CB: Where did he go?
CW: He went on a board of, no, he went on a summary of evidence, he was helpless, in fact at a reunion, many years later, the wing commander said, Chester was the biggest disaster that our squadron had, oh, he wouldn’t have said that if he didn’t mean it
CB: No.
CW: He got rid of him.
CB: Who was he replaced by?
CW: He was replaced with wing commander Balme, BALME, wing commander Balme, although he didn’t take up the point position of flight commander but he was there as a supernumerary, he did the job but didn’t sort of get recognition as a flight commander because he was more senior, I saw him in hospital in Nairobi, wing commander Balme.
CB: So, how many more ops did you do after that change?
CW: I did exactly twenty.
CB: Twenty, did you? Twenty more? Twenty in total? Ok.
CW: I was crazy to do with seventy-six, that was the number of ops, but I counted the halves as whole ones.
CB: Yeah.
CW: I don’t accept that it was half,
CB: It was a [unclear].
CW: Half a tour because
CB: Half an op. So, what caused the end of the twenty? Was it?
CW: Had finished D-Day.
CB: Right. No, ended the war, VE Day
CW: VE Day, sorry, VE Day.
CB: Yeah. So, from VE Day
CW: D-Day occurred when I was at OTU as instructor
CB: Yes
CW: VE Day, D Day, then we went to Molbice, Leipzig,
CB: Leipzig, yeah.
CW: With flight lieutenant Hobson to Leipzig, seven hours, Lutgendorf and Leipzig again, I went to Leipzig three times in all, twice on our own behalf and once with the Yanks [laughs]. Because we diverted to Norwich on one occasion, on one of those occasions, to, and Norwich, not Norwich airport as I knew it then but Horsham St Faith which became Norwich airport
CB: Which became Norwich airport, yeah.
CW: And that’s where I got the idea of a washing machine, that’s a different thing, and in Norwich, what a weird hang-up, I don’t know, not mentioned that have I?
CB: No
CW: No. We diverted to Norwich, and we were resting in a lounge, and very early morning a top sergeant came in, he said, say bud, who’s the headman? I said, him, woke up, what’s the problem? He said, we can’t get the overload tank off. Oh, don’t worry about that, the fighter engineer overload tank, we didn’t know what a tank, yeah, sure, it’s downgrade thing, and the bomb aimer woke up, I did describe it. Crikey that’s odd, that’s a four thousand pounder, no, don’t make bombs that big, that’s a four thousand pound bomb, what do you want, leave it! What are you doing? Anyhow, the skipper sent the flight engineer and the bomb aimer out to go out to look, they tried to take it off, it was, and the tannoy blared everybody to evacuate a mile from the Lancaster [laughs], oh dear, while we were three days in Norwich, which I’d welcomed because I’ve been to school there and I went to see an old girlfriend, Joyce, used to go to school with Joyce, and I went to see her in number one Chester Street and the warrant officer came to the door, I met Joyce and it was good, and he was flying Lysanders, anyhow and a crew came up from Balderton and moved the, took the bomb off [laughs]
CB: That’s why you were there so long because they hadn’t got anybody to move the bomb.
CW: No, they wouldn’t, they, the thing was on its own, they wouldn’t go near it after that.
CB: No
CW: But our own chaps came and shifted it
CB: Cause it would have been fused at that point, would it?
CW: No, it couldn’t have been, it wouldn’t have been.
CB: No. So, when you went on a, when you went
CW: The bomb aimer should have checked when we landed, make sure it’s got, in fact he should have checked before we landed,
CB: Before you landed, yeah.
CW: After we supposed we had dropped it, he should check
CB: So, thinking of fusing, when you got airborne with a full load, at what point were the bombs fused, ready for dropping?
CW: On the bombing run.
CB: Cause what I meant was that this bomb, if all the other bombs went, why would this one not be fused? So, there was a pin extraction job to do.
CW: [unclear] that’s a good point
CB: Cause the hang-up and the fusing are not related.
CW: I haven’t given thought to that one, I wouldn’t think it was fused, I don’t think it could have been
CB: I can’t see how it couldn’t have been, if you’ve dropped all the other bombs, but I don’t know of course, cause I wasn’t there.
CW: I think we bombed, I think we bombed out now, with the [unclear] if they were not fused, could be done,
CB: Yeah, the answer is I don’t know, something worth looking at but I would have thought that the fusing would’ve taken place in a, some time before release, all of them together, that’s what I meant
CW: Normally
CB: But had you dropped
CW: minutes to when you start the serious
CB: On the running
CW: left, left, steady business, yeah
CB: But on that particular op, did you drop bombs in earnest?
CW: I don’t remember, but I think we did
CB: Rather than dispose of them at sea?
CW: I’m not sure which raid it was actually was on
CB: Anyway, so, we’ve got to VE Day, what happened then?
CW: We got to VE Day
CB: You all stood down
CW: Oh, the war was about to end, isn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
CW: But Leipzig was the last raid,
CB: So, did you take part in Operation Manna to supply the Dutch civilians?
CW: No.
CB: And did you?
CW: [clears throat] long after the war I went to a reunion and there was a fellow there, he said he’d been shot down three months before the end of the war, he’d been shot down, he was looked after by a German family who was, didn’t like it. He was released, he left the family and joined when the Americans got close he joined the Americans and they got him back to Mildenhall by air and from there he hitchhiked back to Balderton, this is what he said, got back to Balderton and he said he arrived just in time to take part in Operation Manna and to bring prisoners back from Germany. And I listened to all this, he was a gunner, an air gunner, well, I didn’t recognize the bloke which that was not conclusive, I said, who was your skipper? Oh, he said, I didn’t have a permanent skipper, I did all the spare boat trips, remember Mcgilleyfrey, gunnery leader? Yeah, I said, who could forget? Mcgilleyfrey, I said, yeah, he said, who could forget old gilley. I said, remember Cliff Watson? No. I said, I was acting gunnery leader over that period, Mcgilleyfrey I’ve just invented, 5 group did not take part in Operation Manna, and what was the other point? And we didn’t bring prisoners, neither did we bring prisoners back from Germany, we didn’t take part in that and they came back from Belgium in any case, not Germany. I’d like to see your logbook, oh, he said, I’ll go and get it, he went out to his car and we never saw him again, but there’s lots of things like that going on. The navigator was at a reunion and he, there was a chap giving a talk on his experience in Malta, and one of the, he said, one of the chaps there was in Malta and he said that bloke’s talking an absolute load of rubbish, nothing of what he said actually happened. And I said, I was there, he’s challenged him, and he was on a lecture tour all over the place, lecturing on all this had happened to him in Malta and all a lot of nonsense
CB: Amazing.
CW: I worked with a chap in Nairobi like that, oh, he’d been everywhere, he’d flown Sunderlands from Belfast down to Southampton, from the factory in Belfast to Southampton, he’d been torpedoed in the Pacific, he’d done everything, he was working as a radio officer in Nairobi and we kept a card index system of his [unclear] [laughs]. It was a medical book, not a word of truth in any of it, he had on his briefcase, Slate VC, and he created the impression and deliberately set about to do so the impression that he had a VC, his name was Vivien Charles Slate, the VC was his initials, Slate VC, Vivien Charles [laughs] and everybody thought he had a VC, except some of us who knew better, oh, he’d flown everything, he wasn’t even a pilot, he’d been a pilot, a wireless op, he’d done it all, in actual fact he’d done nothing, he was a traffic control assistant, ok, might have done a good job, but [unclear] done [laughs], Slate VC
CB: Just quickly for background, the repatriation was Operation Exodus, just for the tape. That’s been fascinating, so I’m gonna stop the tape now. Thank you very much because you’ve had a good run and we’ll pick up the other bits later. Thank you very much indeed, Clifford.
CW: Oh, it’s a pleasure.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Clifford Watson. One
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-06-28
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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AWatsonC170628, PWatsonC1704
Format
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01:57:17 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
Clifford Watson at first wanted to join the navy because of a high demand in pilots. After being rejected, he joined the RAF and was sent to Rhodesia for pilot training, but then remustered to become an air gunner. He flew seventy-six ops in total. Was posted to North Africa and recounts various episodes: targeting enemy trains; flying operations over Italy; the accidental targeting of a ship full of British prisoners of war during the German evacuation of North Africa. Flew to Bergen with 9 Squadron and operations targeting dams in Holland. Recounts an operation to Politz on the Baltic, where they bombed the wrong target.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Steph Jackson
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Italy
Norway
Poland
South Africa
Netherlands
Tunisia--Qayrawān
Zimbabwe
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Netherlands--Walcheren
Norway--Bergen
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
North Africa
Tunisia
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944-10-28
227 Squadron
25 OTU
30 OTU
84 OTU
9 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
entertainment
Operational Training Unit
RAF Balderton
RAF Bardney
RAF Finningley
RAF Hixon
RAF Strubby
RAF Winthorpe
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1036/11408/AMorganVT170908.2.mp3
12d992549bbfd624a2cc3b28fbdb104e
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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Morgan, Vernon Thomas
V T Morgan
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Vernon Thoas Morgan (1921 - 2020, 1145635 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer and pilot with 44 and 619 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Morgan, VT
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
This interview is being held by Claire Monk with Vernon Morgan on Friday the 7th September 2017 on behalf of the International Bomber Command.
CM: Right, so, when we spoke earlier you mentioned that you were born and you grew up in Cardiff.
VM: That’s right.
CM: [Pause] And you are an only child.
VW: I am.
CM: What can you tell me about that time?
VM: Well it’s interesting, only child, but next door to me, next door but one, I had a family that had three sons and a daughter and we more or less lived with each other; as far as I’m concerned they were nearly brothers and sisters really. So I was never lonely. I went to school in Cardiff, I went to primary school and an elementary school and then I went to Cathays High School, where I did all the normal things, got my matriculation certificate and then started to look for a job. Sat the civil service exam, very fortunate, nineteen thousand sat it and one thousand were successful, and I passed, and I was in these days you didn’t have any choice about argy-bargy you were told where to go [emphasis]. So I was told to go to RA ROF, Royal Ordnance Factory, Hereford to start work, and off I went. Went into digs there, stayed in somebody’s house and I went in the accounts department of the Royal Ordnance Factory. And that’s where I stayed until the war came. And then I decided to volunteer before I was called up, and I decided I wanted to go in the air force. I had horrible feelings about ground warfare in the army which I didn’t fancy and I didn’t like the sea, so I said well the alternative’s the air force so I joined up. And the only thing they could tell me I could do was a wireless operator. So I said so be it. So I went into the RAF, I went into Blackpool on er August Bank Holiday Monday I was called up there, and in whatever date that was, forgive me [rustle of paper] I’ll look. It was in August 1941 and I went to Blackpool and I started on a wireless operators course and eventually I decided that I’d volunteer for aircrew while I was there. Big thing that because you became elite [emphasis] then, and you got a white flash in your cap and I was accepted, and that started my aircrew training. Um, which I eventually was moved from Blackpool down to the aircrew recruiting centre in Lloyds in London, Lords cricket ground which is where you started all everything to do with aircrew. And that was beginning of my travelling to be a pilot and I went to I don’t know what at Blackpool, I did a lot of medicals, got eyesight and heart and everything, you know you had to make sure you were hundred per cent fit and then I went to a little aerodrome called Booker where I flew a Tiger Moth. And after about eight hours I went solo and they said right that’s it, you’re accepted now for full pilot training. So that was it, and I then waited about a bit, and [rustles of paper] checking on my on my log book to make sure I get my sequences right otherwise I’ll get everything wrong. Yes, for some reason then, I think I told you earlier, I went to RAF Hemswell, for four months and then I went to RAF Cottesmore. What I did there I’ve no idea [emphasis] and I couldn’t find out, so I was, I presume I had some ground training, cause they you did everything. You did meteorology, principles of flying and all sorts of things. I assume I did things like that and then that’s when I went to Booker for my aircrew check to see I was suitable and I was, and then I was waiting for a posting. And you got moved around quite a bit. I went to Brighton, in a hotel. Erm, my first bit of the war happened there [emphasis] because we were doing some again some class in a building on the front which they’d obviously commandeered and we were sitting there doing whatever it is we were doing [chuckle] and a German fighter came across and strafed us so we all dived down on the floor [laugh] underneath the sort of desk and I thought oh yeah, there is a war on you know, and my first sort of indication and then eventually in February ’43 I got on a transport ship; hell on earth I’d call that, um it you know you were in hammocks, there weren’t enough hammocks to go round, always a scramble to find a hammock to sleep on. You were slept down in the bowels of the ship, long tables and the hammocks were strung up over it in the morning after we had to clear up the sick: lots of people were sick and and you had about you know twenty people or so on this table and one of them had to go and get the food from the galley so you trotted off, ship rocking, you trying to carry bowls of soup and things slopping about, and bring it down and serve the people on the table. It was pretty grim, and you know everything was overcrowded, very uncomfortable and you were told always to be ready to put life jackets on in case you were attacked so on. So, I wouldn’t call it a very pleasurable journey and eventually we arrived at Durban. And there we were greeted by cars hooting, people waving and the lady in white who was a traditional well known thing at Durban, who sang a welcome to you as you arrived. And er so we eventually disembarked and went to a camp – Clarewood Camp - where we were absolutely delighted. We could buy bananas and pears and oranges and apples and things we’d never seen at home and going into Durban and having bars of chocolate and going to the canteens there and having bacon and eggs and things, cost us about a shilling I think. So this was real real luxury life there. And then was posted to a little place called Nigel where we carried on with our flying training on Tiger Moths. And after we had finished all the trying flying training there on the Moths, um we went to another little drome called Potchefstroom [background noise] where we finished our flying and then we were posted then to 21 Air School at Kimberley. And this was a place where we were going to do all our flying and get our wings. And er I flew Oxfords there and you had a ‘cope’ sort of training with you. I had someone called Dick Teager who became the best man at my wedding actually and we trained together in the Oxford. Er, did usual things learning all about the flying and night flying and instrument flying, lots of time on the link trainer and er were there any adventures there? Well, there was one, [emphasis] yes, my co-pilot Dick Teager and I were on a navigation exercise and I was flying and he was doing the navigating, and after a little while there was a bang [emphasis] and the aircraft started to shudder. I ‘What the hell’s that?’ ‘Oh no I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Well something’s wrong,’ I said, ‘the aircraft is is shuddering,’ I said. ‘Go and see, find anything that’s loose or missing or something.’ I said. We had no idea really what the hell was going on. So he got up and he sort of crawled back in the aeroplane. He said ‘I can’t see anything wrong’ ‘I don’t like this I think we’d better go back and land,’ you see. I said then, and then suddenly there was another BANG! [emphasis] and I thought oh gawd and the aircraft was quiet and steady and I said ‘That’s very odd’ so I said ‘Well, I can’t see there’s any problem, it’s still flying all right.’ I tried the controls and I said ‘I think we’ll finish the exercise’ so he said ‘Yes okay,’ so off we went and did our exercise and then came back and landed at Kimberley and as we pulled up on to the you know, tarmac there to park the aircraft, one of the ground said [Shout] ‘What’s wrong with your left entry, your port engine there?’ [shout] I said ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’ve only got half a propeller!’ and he, I looked out and sure enough the propeller had two ends knocked off and I said ‘Well, I don’t understand that.’ Then I said, ‘Well what happened is one end came off that unbalanced things, set up a pressure, a tension and the other end came off to balance it and all was well.’ So then I had to appear before, he and I had to appear before the commanding officer. ‘Where have you been low flying?’ I said, ‘We haven’t been low.’ ‘Well how did you lose your propeller?’ I said ‘Look I don’t know.’ But, well he took a bit of persuading that we hadn’t done something wrong, anyway that was the one bit of excitement and [banging] yeah, the flying went alright we were you know spent a good time there, went to the cinema in the camp every Saturday and you know I said it was quite a good life really. We were. there was no sign of war there of course. Er we met girls in Kimberley, actually they were friends of people back at England who they told us to go and see them. So we went, and we went to the family and had meals with them and went out with them, and I said it was quite a good life and then eventually the day came when I got my wings, you know and Brigadier Baston, the commanding officer, pinned the wings on my chest and that was it. There was a little bit of argy-bargy about well what you do now and I said ‘Well, I presume I am going to go home now’ cause I said I had my eye on, I wanted to get back home, I had a girl waiting for me, and they said ‘Well you’ve done very well on navigating and you’ve done very well on instrument flying we think we could post you down to Capetown and you can become a navigator instructor.’ ‘Oh I don’t want to do that’ I said, I this wasn’t me being bold about wanting to fight the Germans, it was me just wanted to get back to England to see Cynthia. So ‘Oh no I don’t want that,’ well, ‘Also we could give you a posting to go to Bomber Command. To Coastal Command.’ ‘Oh no, I don’t want to do any of that, I want to get back to Britain, I want to go onto bombers over there you see.’ Anyway eventually after a lot of palaver, they agreed that I’d be posted back on bombers to England. So then again we had to wait and er for transport and eventually we got on a ship the Orontes I think it was called [cough] no this we did, that was our, we got on a ship that was a, a Polish sort of ship. It wasn’t a very nice ship and we went through the Suez Canal and we dropped off at Suez. We had to stay there for a while to get another ship. Suez was a funny area it was a sort of a desert and I can remember we had to wee in big funnels in the sand and there were warnings that er ‘Do not buy lemonade from local pedlars,’ because the lemonade is not very good it’s made up of urine and Nile water [laugh]. So anyway, we had and after that we got another boat, the Orontes and were on our way back home. And now this is a funny thing too. I can’t remember what port we arrived at whether it was Liverpool or Southampton, it was just a place that we were going to get off the boat and back home and we then we went to Harrogate which was a sort of holding centre, stayed in a hotel there and then I was posted to Perth which was an elementary flying training school with Tiger Moths. I don’t know going down a grade now, back on Tiger Moths, the idea was getting us back up familiarised with this country because over in South Africa you had big wide open spaces and if you saw a town you knew what is was ‘cause there wasn’t another one for hundreds of miles over here of course it was a conglomerate of things and you had to sort of start getting used to the different terrain and the fact that you had a problem knowing where you were so we, we spent some time at Perth and er after that I went to a senior NCO’s school at Whitley Bay. Now again I find it very difficult to know exactly and I can’t find out, I’ve looked it up on the internet, but you don’t get much joy, it was known as the commando course, and all I can remember doing there was scaling a cliff in Whitley Bay! [laugh] So er this was at the time of er the invasion of Europe in April ‘44 and after that, we went back to Harrogate. It then turned out that they didn’t know what to do with us; they had too many pilots and not enough aeroplanes. So we were having to get channelled into doing useful things. A colleague of mine went and drove engines, locomotives on shunting duties erm they couldn’t, they said we haven’t got any spaces on squadrons for you we can’t don’t know what to do so I was posted to another elementary flying school at Derby and from there they sent me out to a little aerodrome called Abbotts Bromley which was a subsidiary of Derby and I think I became the commanding officer there, because I was, it was a little outpost of Derby and there were about a dozen trainee pilots there just starting, and me. And, I had to, we had one aeroplane, Tiger Moth there and the instructors used to fly over from Derby every day and do their training with the lads. This was fine. I, it was a little aerodrome, I was in charge there, one of the trainees brought me a cup of tea in the morning, There was a local woman who acted as a chef there and she cooked me my meals in my own private little room. I thought this is the life, I hope they’ll forget my where I am and lose my records, I could stay here for the rest of the war! So I stayed there and it was quite good, you know, I used to have a little duty in the morning I just had to put out the T to show the way the wind was blowing, although why you did that when they had a wind sock and you could see which way the wind was blowing I don’t know. I kept my hand in flying and the instructors occasionally said ‘Come on, we better do some advanced flying, keep you in trim,’ so they came up with me and we did aerobatics and things and it was very good I, I er had quite a nice time there and erm I did something unorthodox there in the sense I would say well you know I’d like a weekend down in Cardiff to see my parents, so that’s all right you can fly down there in the Tiger Moth, can I? So anyway I [laugh] got in the Tiger Moth one Friday and set off for Cardiff you see. I had to land at Worcester and get refuelled, then I went off towards Cardiff and the weather came quite bad and I thought ‘Oh my gosh’ and then as I got up near Cardiff or up by Newport I could see all these barrage balloons with their cables I thought gawd I need to be careful don’t go too near cos I’m sure this is an unorthodox flight that I shouldn’t be doing, I’ll be in trouble, So anyway I managed to avoid the barrage balloons and I got to Cardiff airport and course it had one runway and it was right across wind and there was quite a strong wind as I can’t land on that, cross wind on a runway I’m only used to landing into wind on grass I don’t think I like that at all. So I flew over I flew into wind cross, low down on across towards the grass and waggled my wings you see, to say this is what I want to do you see. A red very light came on from the control tower, ‘Oh god,’ I thought ‘what’s that for?’ Does that mean that the ground is too rough or there’s potholes, or something and I can’t land there? I don’t know where else to go. [laugh] I won’t have enough fuel to go anywhere else apart from which, you didn’t have navigation aids I don’t know where else there is, so I’ve gotta land here. Well I flew round and I flew down and I picked a different spot fly into wind and waggle my wings as this is what I’ve gotta do: another red very light. ‘Oh god,’ so I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got to land here.’ So I turned around and did another circuit, came in and I got quite close down, see if I could see potholes or anything, I could, well I’ve gotta land I’ve got no alternative, I just hope it’s all right [laugh]. So I landed on the grass into wind everything okay, didn’t tip over, oh thank goodness for that, so I taxied round, back up to the tarmac in front of the control tower and switched off. And got my flying kit off and up into the control tower where there was a sergeant sitting there smoking his cigarette and as I went in, he said ‘Hello mate’ [bang]. I said ‘Hello,’ I said, ‘what was all that fuss about; what did you fire a red very at me for?’ ‘Oh I was just greeting you,’ he said. ‘What do you mean, greeting me?’ I said. ‘You fired a red very I was trying to say I want to land on the grass and you were indicating it was dangerous.’ ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘No I was just greeting.’ ‘Well,’ I said ‘why didn’t you fire a bloody green?’ ‘Oh we’ve run out of those!’ he said. [laugh] So anyway that was all right, So anyway I had a nice weekend with my parents and flew back to Abbotts Bromley. Well, that wasn’t the end then, I then got shunted back to Harrogate, this is where you got while they tried to sort out what to do with you. And then they decided they’d post me to a place called RAF Madley which was near Hereford, that’s all right, as it was near my fiancé lived Hereford so thought that’s okay. So I went about and there they were flying Proctors training wireless operators and I was going to be a stooge pilot going up and flying wireless operators while they were doing whatever they do and so that was my assignation there. So I got onto a Proctor and I had my familiarisation flight to make sure I knew what to do with one and that was okay, so I then reported; I cycled away from Madley into Hereford, saw Cynthia and that was fine. And then I took my first official flight as a Proctor pilot with my group of wireless ops and their instructor, and the instructor was saying to me, because obviously they do navigation fixes and things, ‘Fly on such and such a course,’ you see. Yes, okay I did that, and then they say, ‘Now change course and fly somewhere.’ So I did that. And then they said, ‘Now do something else,’ so I flew that, did that, and then after a while they said, ‘Right, well the exercise is finished now, you can go back to the drome,’ see. I looked out of the window - where the hell am I? Cause I said I’d been so busy concentrating this is my first flight as pilot with these wireless ops on flying where they wanted me on the direction I was concentrating on that I hadn’t not looking where the hell I was going and look out the window and thought I I hadn’t any idea where the hell I am. And of course you looked down and it was just a conglomeration of towns and railway lines and you hadn’t a clue where you were, oh gawd, so well if I fly west, I’ll hit the coast and then I can see where I am, so I did that, and yes oh yes! I can see now and I’ve an idea now what I and I knew what course I had to fly to get back to Madley, which I did. Got back rather late, with a very irate duty pilot in the caravan, you know, that has to see you home, was being delayed going to lunch and very annoyed, so I landed there and I wasn’t very popular. I didn’t say I’d got lost, but, ‘What the hell are you so late,’ ‘Well,’ I said ‘These exercises take time,’ anyway that was my adventure at Madley, so I was still flying there so thought this is all right too I’m having a good old war, this is not too bad what can happen next? A posting came in. You’re going to St. Athan. St. Athan, near Cardiff, oh that’s not bad, that’s near home too, my parents are there I could live out I thought this is turning quite good this war, you know. Not as bad as I thought it would be. And er, it was a technical school and I thought what am I going there for? So I got to St. Athan and they said ‘You’re on a flight engineer’s course.’ ‘I’m on a what?’ ‘A flight engineer’s course.’ I said ‘What what am I on that for?’ ‘Well we’re short of flight engineers and we may be able to get you to a squadron as a flight engineer.’ ‘I don’t want to go to a squadron I’m a pilot!’ [emphasis] ‘Oh yeah, well you’ll still be a pilot.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘this all sounds a bit fishy to me.’ Anyway I had no alternative. I then did a course on the Merlin engine. Now I’m the least technical minded person you can imagine. And yes, theoretically, I learnt about the Merlin engine and I passed whatever it was there and they said ‘Right that’s it then.’ And er. ‘We’ll send you off and we hope you can get to a squadron.’ ‘Oh, all right.’ I then went to this place RAF Balderton. Now, I have no idea what I did there. I was there from er 29th of December 1944 to the 4th of January. Not a very long period, I have no idea what I did there. I can’t remember. All I can remember is it was perishing cold [emphasis]. Absolutely freezing and we had one of these stoves in the Nissen hut, burning wood. So all I all I slept in my flying clothes because it was so cold, and we found some old chairs and broke ‘em up and burnt them to keep warm that’s all I remember about Balderton. I don’t know why [emphasis] I was there, what [emphasis] I did there or anything else. And the next thing I was posted to the Heavy Conversion Unit at Swinderby. Oh, at last we’re getting somewhere near some flying now. There, I was introduced to a Lancaster and I did some training on a Lanc. I did circuits and bumps and got used to flying a Lanc, you see, and again [emphasis] I cannot remember exactly how I got crewed up. I, I’m not even sure exactly where it happened. I know that normally what happened with crewing is that was they crewed up everyone nearly except the flight engineer who joined at the last minute, I don’t know why exactly. But, anyway, I must have joined up and I went into a crew, an interesting crew because there was no Englishman in it. There was me a Welshman, there was a Dane, a Swede, and Canadians and that was my cosmopolitan crew you see. Okay, so be it. So anyway we finished all our training at Swinderby and at last, we got posted to a squadron which er was to Strubby where it was, or was it? [background noises] 619 Squadron at Strubby. And they didn’t know quite what to make of me. ‘Well, you’re down to fly as a flight engineer: you’re a pilot.’ I said ‘Yes, I am a pilot. And I’m not a flight engineer,’ I said ‘First of all I haven’t got a flight engineer badge, Secondly I haven’t got a flight engineer log book, I’ve only got a pilot’s log book.’ ‘Well, of course, you’re a pilot. You’ve got to have a pilot slot, you’ll be a second pilot. And doing flight engineer duties, but you’re a second pilot, that’s what you are.’ And the everybody wanted me to be their flight engineer cause they had a second pilot who could fly the bloody thing. [laugh] So anyway it was quite interesting I had to keep on insisting I was a pilot I’m not a flight engineer, I’m a pilot doing some flight engineer duties you see. And um so that’s how it was. So I then flew with 619 Squadron, and erm and that’s where I did my op, um well, I no there were, well, backtrack a little bit. While I was at Swinderby we got sent on what was called Operation Sweepstake on two nights, which was going flying to Strasburg. Now this is all a bit vague in my memory but I subsequently found that what Operation Sweepstake was was a diversionary flight to deceive the Germans that that’s where the raid was gonna be and they diverted fighters to you, you see. I thought, oh I see, so we’re the bait are we, we’re the ones that attracted the fighters while the others do their raid you see. So that was twice and I did say to the CO I said, ‘Is that counted as an operation?’ ‘Well yeah,’ he said, ‘it was over enemy territory [loud laugh] and you were being shot at’ and so on, so he said ‘I think [emphasis] it’s an operation but it may be a half [emphasis] an op.’ So I did two of those so I don’t know whether they count as two ops or one op, but anyway that’s it. And er then my first op at um at Strubby was a daylight raid over Germany, we were bombing some troop concentrations and this was quite a big operation, you know. We joined up with the Americans flew over there and um [background noise] we got over the target, you know, bomb aimer said right you know, gave his instructions and I looked out of the window and I could see these bombs coming down, like hail stones, and I thought bloomin’ ‘eck [loud laugh] never mind about flying straight and level, what about these bloody bombs, let’s dodge those, I said and then I suddenly thought well at night you won’t see those but I wonder how many people got hit by bombs coming down from their plane. I said there were these things coming down like hail stones round you, so er anyway that we did the bombing operations and came back home, and then I got posted to 44 Squadron which was at, erm, Spilsby. Now, and then, after that I got posted to Mepal, which was also 44 Squadron, and then finally to Mildenhall. Now, while we were at Spilsby and Mepal we did these trips Exodus, where we brought back prisoners of war from Germany. We also did some engine ferrying out to Italy, to Bari, and we also brought back troops from the Far East to bring them home, so we were doing those sort of jobs. I was getting in, I was flying by then, with the commanding officer of 44 Squadron, Wing Commander Birch and he had chosen me, I know why ‘cause he said ‘Well I’ve got you, because you’re a pilot,’ and he said ‘I can have a nap while you can fly the bloody thing,’ so I said, okay, that’s okay with me as long as he said I recognise you’re a pilot not a flight engineer, I said ‘No, if you’re banking on me being very good if something goes wrong with the engine,’ I said, ‘I’m useless, I’m hopeless technically,’ I said. ‘It’s just a ploy to get me into a squadron,’ I said. ‘That’s all right, but I want you in my crew,’ and he said, ‘we’re designated to go into Tiger Force,’ which was going out to the Far East and he said we we’ll be switching to Lincolns, and he said ‘that has two pilots anyway’ so he said I’m going to have you with me.’ So I said ‘oh that suits me that’s fine thank you.’ So we did these trips flying prisoners of war, bringing troops back, flying engines out to Italy and all these other jobs and er we kept doing that and then I got we got moved to Mildenhall and there we were going to switch to Lincolns ready for Tiger Force to go out to the Far East which I must admit I wasn’t looking forward to, and then, they dropped the atom bomb, and it was all over. And I thought [bang] thank god for that, so I didn’t really have any more then I was just left at Mildenhall, did the odd flight in the Lincoln, the odd flight in the Lancaster, all the year, the crew that I had at before the end of the European war disappeared, the Canadians all went, and the Dane, well they all went back home and I had a hotch potch of different crews. The only thing that was constant was Wing Commander Birch and me and that’s how we carried out till the end of the war when I got demobbed in er June 1946 and so ended my life in the RAF and I, oh I did forget to tell you [laugh] one of the things after I came back from South Africa, was that within a fortnight, Cynthia and I got married. I’d been sending her cake ingredients from South Africa ‘cause you could send parcels home, getting round the rationing so all the stuff had been sent home and the cake had been made, so we got married in 1944 and while I was at Mildenhall waiting to be demobbed she came up there and got a flat together and we stayed there until we were demobbed and went back home. We went to live in Cardiff, and I got back into the civil service and stayed there. I got various postings in the civil service and so on and I ended up in the civil service in 1981 when you got retired bang [emphasis] on sixty, 17th of August 1981, finished, retired. And that was it really so, I suppose that’s my history. [laugh]
CM: That’s amazing [laugh]
VM: All right?
CM: That’s fantastic! And now you’ve come back to Lincoln.
VM: And now I’ve come back to Lincoln. I was Lincoln, I mean I, I went back to Cardiff to start with and then I got promoted and went to London, and after that I went to the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell and I stayed there. Then I went back to London, to Surrey and that’s where you know I retired. And I lived in various places in London suburbs, and um until we got older and we went into a retirement establishment in Oxford, and then er then Linda and Joe said ‘Well, you know, you’re getting on a bit now as well and might need some care, so come up and live near us,’ which is what we did and here we are. And this is where we are. My wife died three years ago, four years ago now and that’s it really and the air force has reclaimed me in a way ‘cause I had nothing to do with them until I came up to Lincoln. [Pause] How’s that – anything else?
CM: No, it’s been fantastic. Thank you. [laugh] Yes, amazing. Would, if you had the opportunity, would you fly in a Lanc again – not that I can promise that of course.
VM: What do you mean, would I fly in a Lanc?
CM: Would you go up in a Lancaster again if you had the opportunity?
VM: Oh yes of course. Well I mean it’s very interesting the Lanc at East Kirkby,
CM: Yes.
VM: Just Jane, I went there.
CM: Yes.
VM: I had a taxy in it you see. ‘Course they all suddenly said oh well, he used to be in one of these, and fly them I got very embarrassed because people started queuing up to get me autograph and things I thought bloomin’ ‘eck I wish they wouldn’t do that, and it was very interesting because when I got in the Lanc and walking up the fuselage and then you had to get into the cockpit and there’s a big main spar across. Well, I couldn’t, I mean I had a job, I needed a crane to get over that I couldn’t get had to be helped over it, I go one leg up I said I don’t remember this being here at all before, because as a youngster, you know, I said I don’t remember, I didn’t know there was such a thing there [chuckle] I said I can’t get over the damn thing, I said it’s a major job to climb over this to get into the cockpit so it’s quite funny really. And um yeah anyway, there we are. I haven’t actually flown [emphasis] in one but I’ve been [emphasis] in one and I’ve had a taxy in one and you know, I’ve said to Andy Millican, the CO, of BBMF, I said you know if the opportunity arises while I’m here some time I said I’m ready for a trip. [laugh]
CM: I can imagine. Thank you.
VM: All right?
CM: It’s been amazing. I’m going to hit the pause button 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 Vernon Thomas Morgan
Creator
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Claire Monk
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-09-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMorganVT170908
Format
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00:41:33 audio recording
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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Great Britain
South Africa
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
England--Suffolk
Wales--Cardiff
Description
An account of the resource
Vernon Morgan, from Cardiff, joined the civil service working at the Royal Ordnance Factory, volunteering for the RAF in 1941. After pilot training in South Africa he returned to several different roles: CO of a satellite aerodrome, pilot for wireless operator training. Retrained as flight engineer, he was posted to 619 and then 44 Squadrons, flying operations including bombing runs and repatriation of troops/POWs. He returned to the civil service after the war.
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1944
1946
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
44 Squadron
619 Squadron
aircrew
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lincoln
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Oxford
pilot
Proctor
RAF Madley
RAF Mildenhall
RAF St Athan
RAF Strubby
RAF Swinderby
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/184/2409/PSandersDS1606.1.jpg
bcbc31c9af960e94130f17aa9a184b7b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/184/2409/ASandersDS160305.2.mp3
a759a084fadbc2e92b6a1749462ccfd5
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
Sanders, David
D S Sanders
Description
An account of the resource
19 items. The collection contains an oral history interview with Sergeant David Stuart Sanders (1925 - 2022, 1869292 Royal Air Force), his logbook, engineering documentation, operation schedules, a personal record of all his operations, a Dalton computer, a number of target and reconnaissance photographs. David Saunders was a flight engineer on 619 Squadron and 189 Squadron at RAF Strubby and RAF Fulbeck in 1944-45.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Sanders and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Sanders, DS
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GC: Right. So. This is an interview being conducted on behalf of International Bomber Command. My name is Gemma Clapton. I’m here at the home of David Sanders on the 5th of March 2016. He was a flight engineer in 189 and 619 Squadrons. We’ll begin with something nice and gentle. Tell me about how you joined up for the war for Bomber Command?
DS: Well it’s very difficult because my brother was in the Air Force and I didn’t particular want to go in the army so I volunteered not knowing exactly which part of the aircraft I wanted to be in, but as I was in engineering before as a youngster I decided to go as a flight engineer . So I went to Cardigan and they did an exercise and interviews and I had to file a cube to go into a square [unclear]. I did it perfectly so they said go back home and a few months later I got accepted as a flight engineer. Um, my first thing, my dad took me to Lord’s Cricket Ground for six months, sorry six weeks, as an introducing and being uniformed and have inoculations and all these things there. And we had to march every day to the zoo for our food. [laughs] Anyway – that ok?
GC: OK. Um, where was you stationed first? What’s your first memory of life of Bomber Command itself?
DS: Of Bomber Command? Well ‘cause this came a lot later ‘cause I had a six months course in St Athan. Learning the inside and out of the Lancaster Bomber. Um, so my first actually meeting the crew was at, I can’t remember the name of the place now, but the, the rest of the crew were already joined up and I was the odd man out. So my skipper came and I joined up to the crew, that’s my first thing and we flew into Stirlings aircraft and that was on operations, I forget what they call me. You kept — just a minute, I can’t remember the name of the places now and we were there for several months and flying and then we converted on then to Lancasters. Did training and eventually we went to a squadron. OK.
GC: Can you remember the first time you was inside a Lancaster? First op in a Lancaster?
DS: Oh the first op was quite traumatic because obviously we were all nervous, ‘cause being our first one, even though the pilot’s already done as a spare introducing. Anyway we went to Blenheim [?] and the only fault ever the navigator made he got us too early there and the rest of the time he was perfect. So we had to hang around being fired at which we never experienced before in our lives. After we’d dropped our bombs, on the way out we were combed by searchlights for about seven minutes and we thought we’d never get out of it ‘cause you’re a sitting target. But fortunately the pilot, he was a wonderful Australian, a lot older than us, a lot of experience of flying, just pulled back the throttles and we fell out the sky and we lost them. So we managed to get home and that was our first [laughs] experience.
GC: OK. Tell me a bit about the crew, ‘cause you obviously had an Australian?
DS: Well the pilot, Australian from Sidney, he was in his thirties so we, we treated him as our dad. He looked after us very well. The two gunners were wonderful Canadians, my age. The navigator was more — a little bit older. He was from Nova Scotia in Canada. A little bit snootier him [laughs] but the wireless operator [unclear] came from somewhere Middle East. Unfortunately he was shot down in another plane later. My mate Matt and I were both Londoners.
GC: So you had a real mixed crew?
DS: Very mixed crew, yes.
GC: Did – What was, what was the camaraderie like?
DS: Great, yes, yes we would — generally we used to go out and have drinks together. Perhaps the pilot was a little bit more aloof than us ‘cause we were much younger. [laughs]
GC: OK let’s take this somewhere else. You were obviously quite close to the rest of the crew. Can you describe a bit about life on the station?
DS: Um.
GC: As, as a group.
DS: Yes. Well ‘cause we were, we were in Nissen huts so it was quite, quite funny really ‘cause the Canadians, if you’re from the East or the West they used to fight each other so you had to put the fighters [unclear] up by the door in case we get raided. There was always, always friendly friction between, between people. In each Nissen hut there were two crews. So you had a funny old fire and we had to try and keep warm by putting in anything we could find to keep it — to keep us warm. [laughs] It was quite fun really, you know.
GC: It, it sounds good. OK. So can you, can you — is there a raid or op that sticks out in your memory for a various reason?
DS: Um, oh yes ‘cause most of them. There was an instance possibly in every one. I did say, the — when we went to Dortmund Canal, Heinbeck [?]. We’d go there every three months ‘cause they’d build it up and we’d knock it down again for them. It’s a viaduct. And we lost seven aircraft that time. But on the way back over England we were all relaxed thinking it was good we were getting home. Then we saw an aircraft go down, we thought the poor chappie didn’t make it. And later another one came down. And we had to log them each time. When we got to our aerodrome the perimeter lights were out so we asked them to put them on. They put them on. We landed straight down and we went to the end of the runway and went through our perimeter at the end of the runway. The [unclear] was in the truck ready to pick us up when a Messerschmitt came down the runway firing bullets all the way down. Jokingly the mid-upper Canadian [laughs] he [unclear] in his arms and said ‘it was worth every minute of that’. That night we lost about twenty something aircraft ‘cause we didn’t know the fighters were in, coming in with us.
GC: Was it common for the fighters to follow the planes?
DS: Sorry.
GC: Was it common for the fighters to follow –
DS: No.
GC: Follow home?
DS: No, no it was practically unknown and we weren’t warned ‘cause we had in the aircraft friendly and foe, and you press that and on the radar it would, it would tell whether you’re friendly or not and so they should have seen these coming but they didn’t and they didn’t warn us.
GC: And it wasn’t common?
DS: No.
GC: No. When you was on an op what was more unnerving the, the lights going up or knowing that there was possibly fighters up there with you? Was there a –
DS: Oh no, it’s, it’s very mixed. Another bad raid we had. This time I wasn’t with my crew, I was just spare and I had to go and do this crew. I’d been to Harburg before and Harburg was rather flak. Harburg, which is very near Hamburg. When we went there and bombed there wasn’t any flak and we couldn’t understand it, but when we came out we could see air to air fly, firing going on and as we – all of a sudden our aircraft lit up by an aircraft put a flare beside us. Behind that a fighter came in and fired on us so we had to corkscrew right away. The [unclear] bullets were flying everywhere and the two gunners, very experienced, shot him down. Hurray [emphasis]. And later another aircraft came in we started to corkscrew but he disappeared. We got home safely. The two gunners were awarded DFNs.
GC: Oh wow.
DS: Um.
GC: So, is there, was there a difference in attitudes towards a daytime op and a night-time op?
DS: Um.
GC: Was there a difference?
DS: Well they’re totally different really ‘cause the Americans generally did the daylights and we always did the nights. I went on one daylight. A thousand-bomber raid and you don’t believe what a sight. Everywhere you see is aircraft and when you got to the target you had to look up. You see aircraft are probably opening their bomb doors [laughs] and [unclear] get out of the way skip, you know, but generally speaking apparently all my raids were at night. And, er, you’re individuals. Your navigator is on his own. Do you like one?
GC: No.
DS: OK.
GC: Do you – I’m, I’m reading here your list and it said at one stage you, you went up to Bergen.
DS: Bergen, yes.
GC: Bergen. Would you like to tell us a bit about that please?
DS: It was more or less straight forward, no problems just a bit of flak and not difficult at all. The longest raids I did was Munich into Poland, I can’t think of the names in Poland. Oh Politzs [?] and that thing — they were very long raid. Took us about ten hours and standing in the dark all that time. It’s – your eyes start to play tricks on you. You’ve got to look out all the time. So long raids were very fatiguing.
GC: So if you are doing raids say of nine hours plus. I know going out you’re going to be concentrating. How do you keep your mind sharp to concentrate for that amount of time?
DS: Well you used to take wakey wakey pills. You had little pills to keep you awake [laughs]. But I don’t know it’s very difficult because then you get – your life is at stake so you had to keep, you know keep on, keep on watch. My job being a flight engineer I had to look out a lot to – apart from looking after the engines and everything I had keep doing – and your eyes did play tricks with you sometimes looking out in the dark for so long.
GC: So I take it from that you didn’t have something to focus on it was all done by maps and –
DS: Sorry I missed that.
GC: As I say it was all done by maps rather than what we would class as modern technology?
DS: Oh Yes. Well he had – the navigator had Oboe and other radar type of improvements. Though it was up to the navigator completely. I mean the pilot was the great, he was the chauffeur, but the navigator was very important if he didn’t get us to the proper place at the right time we were in trouble.
GC: Right OK. Is there anything that sticks in your mind from serving in Bomber Command? Any incident or –
DS: Well you see. I learnt to talk about the flight engineer job he was the jack of all trades. I had, once or twice, I had when the trimming – when you trim the aircraft you had a wheel to turn and it wouldn’t, it stuck so I had to go out and put my oxygen thing. Go round the aircraft to try to see what the problem was and the wires had slipped under the little wheels, so I had to correct that for the skipper ‘cause he can’t fly with that keep trimming his aircraft. Odd jobs like that the flight engineer had. We lost an engine one time therefore balancing the fuel was very tricky. I had to switch over and the flight engineer – if one of the gunners was injured or something it was my job to get up and take over so I learnt a lot about being a gunner. So it was rather a different job. And in take off I was the pilot’s third hand in take off and we had quite a thing between the two of us and know how to take the aircraft off. So it was quite an interesting job.
GC: What was it actually like inside a Lancaster though?
DS: Well being tall, six foot odd, I had difficulty getting in the aircraft because there was a part going right across the aircraft where they hold the wings together I had to climb over. So it was very restricted. It’s much smaller inside than you think it is and I had a little portable seat to sit so I could lift it up so the bomber, bomb men could get by and get underneath. So [laughs] it was a – not the most comfortable of places.
GC: OK. I’m going to take a [unclear]
DS: Yeah.
GC: OK. Tell me a bit about the actual training for Bomber Command if you would please?
DS: Yeah. One of the interesting things was that when you fly, when you got above ten-thousand feet you had to put your oxygen mask on and to prove that it was necessary in training we went into a decompression chamber. There was a whole crew we was all in there all sitting round all happy and joking then they said would you write down this poem. So we was writing the thing, we was writing it down and then we had to take our masks off then went down – I was still writing and I just went out. Then after they put us back onto our masks and I looked and I found that after the poem was just a scribble. The other thing he asked me he says ‘what’s the time now?’ I looked at my wrist, my watch has gone. So it just shows you that you’re oblivious once you have lack of oxygen when you go to, as we had to go, up to eighteen-thousand feet.
GC: You said, you said earlier that you had an engineering background. How did they train you? What part did they train you for? I know you were a flight engineer.
DS: Well –
GC: Just want to try and find out a bit about your training.
DS: Well as it happens every fortnight we did a different part of the aircraft and had exam on each one so you could pass onto the next one. So we did the whole – the frame, the engines, the hydraulics, the pneumatics, gunnery, bombing. We did the whole lot over six months. Every, every – it was very, very –
GC: Intense?
DS: What’s the word? Very, very – what’s the word? [laughs] Very, very, um —
GC: Intense? Intense?
DS: Intensitive that’s it yes. Anyway that’s — so at the end you had to pass another, another examination completely. I had a moaning [?] engine in front of me and they asked questions one after the other about that particular engine. I just scraped through. [laughs] OK.
GC: Um. We was talking earlier as well also about your uniform about the boots and things. Was — How was —What was it like putting that on? What —
DS: I think it was no problem really. I think we got so used to it and quite pleased to put it on knowing it was going to warm us up a bit. No I think it was quite easy. I think we got quite used to it. We did it so many times. We had big boots and we had a flight engineer I used to stick something in there just in case I needed it and also I had to carry the thermos for a skipper for when he wanted a drink. [chuckles]
GC: OK. Tell me about one of the ops when —
DS: One of the most vivid things I can remember was going to Brunswick. It was an incendiary raid. Very old town and terribly on fire. When we was going to a bombing raid there was another aircraft right beside us coming in with us. And all of a sudden he was hit and a huge [emphasis] great flame came up and he held us for a little while and then went down. That could’ve been us, we were right beside him.
GC: Did your brain work like that? Did you just accept it or —
DS: Well you had to. You had to go on. Do a bombs. And after you’d dropped your bombs you had to hold, I think for about forty seconds to take a photograph. You dropped a flare and you had to wait until that photograph was taken. And another bit of a funny thing with the photographs because my second raid was on Wolfen Island off Holland. We had to go to the island to breach the fence and when we took off we couldn’t find the group we was in so we rushed over to one to try to find it. It was the wrong group. We keep doing this and all of a sudden the bomber with me said ‘Your targets coming up. Quickly!’ So we lined up, dropped our bombs, came back home. Easy raid only two and a half hours but the next day the pilot and the navigator were up to see the CO. We’d bombed the wrong island. [laughs] So it was a — we’d bombed the — [laughs]
GC: Did they make you go back?
DS: No. Well actually we did it another, another time but they were in trouble. But it’s only because we couldn’t find who we were meant to be flying with. [laughs]
GC: Did you bomb mainly Germany or were you —
DS: No, we, we — Germany, Poland, Norway. Mainly those three.
GC: OK. I’m just going to introduce that there is a third person now in the room and it’s, it’s David’s wife, it’s Daphne. So if you hear a third voice it’s Daphne. So my apologies.
DS: One raid, I tell you is — how clever the Germans were. We went to Munich which is a very long raid. We had to go down South and across Switzerland but on the way we suddenly saw an aircraft on fire and it all of sudden you saw a big explosion on the ground, but we sussed out that when the aircraft was hit it wasn’t moving. So the Germans are very crafty and trying to scare especially the new, the new, new, the ones on their first and second raids. Thinking that they — but they, they shot over a flare up in the air that looked like an aircraft. Then did an explosion on the ground thinking that’s them. It’s very very clever how they tried to trick you.
GC: I know we have spoken about, like you said, the thousand-bomber raids. What was it like being surrounded by all those planes?
DS: You don’t believe it. ‘Cause today if two aircraft go anywhere near each other they’re in trouble. There was a thousand and they were all putting out window. That’s a big strip of things — to try and, to confuse the German’s radar. And everywhere you could see there was aircraft. In fact you know you had to keep your eyes open and tell the skip to watch out, go higher, go lower. Watch out the bombs are dropping in front of you. They were everywhere. [laughs] Anyway it was a very easy raid, there was, I think, only one or two aircraft lost most probably by other, you know, own aircraft. But you can’t believe watching everywhere you see there are so many aircraft in the air.
GC: What kind of bombs did you carry? Weaponry?
DS: Well they varied. The big cookie. Funnily enough once it didn’t release properly and it was rocking about in the bomb doors so the skipper had to open up and waggle the aircraft about tremendously to release it. [laughs] and it did go but sometimes we had incendiaries for fire. Yeah it was varied but generally it was a cookie and a few smaller ones either side of it.
GC: Can you describe a cookie for us?
DS: Sorry.
GC: Can you describe the cookie for us?
DS: Well it was like a big barrel, a huge great bomb, er, nothing like the ones you have on the 617 Squadron. They had, they had huge great things, but it was quite a big one. I forget the weight of it now.
GC: Good.
DS: Quite a big one.
GC: So it was just the one you carried at any one time?
DS: We carried the cookie and we had about six either side of the smaller bombs. [pause and whispering]
GC: Right, tell me about — you was describing to me the take off for a Lancaster please?
DS: Yeah OK. This is the flight engineer’s job on take off. So we taxied round to the runway. Lined up the runway and waited for the red light to come up, or the green light, I forget what, to start. So then we keep the brakes on and the skipper puts the throttles right up, half way up to get big power. Then suddenly releases the brakes so we go off. As the pilot is pushing the throttles my hand is behind him. Then he takes his hand away. Then I take over the throttles and I push them up to what we call the gate. I hold it there. As we go down the runway he says ‘full power’. Then I push it right through the gate and lock it. We can only hold that for a few minutes because it will blow up the engines. So now we manage to take off, so then I throttle back and lock it there. Then the skipper says ‘wheels up’. So I pull the wheels up, then he asks for flaps up by a third. I put them up a little bit then I pull the flaps up. Then we should be full take off then, so now we can just throttle back to the speed we need what the navigator has taken. That’s my initial job on take off.
GC: OK. Thank you very much. You often hear referred to in rides — you often hear referred to the phrase of a corkscrew. Can you describe a corkscrew for us please?
DS: Yes. A corkscrew is a — on the radar I said before when one of the enemy aircraft lit us up and the other fighter came in on the blind side the gunner said ‘corkscrew’. So we go down, fly down, very very fast. Then pull the aircraft up into like a corkscrew, going through the sky like a corkscrew. We’d done this many times on practice so the gunners know exactly where to put their guns. The enemy has got to keep resetting his aircraft to fire upon us, so fortunately this time it worked and we shot him down. But it’s, it’s very dramatic in a sense because one minute your, your blood is pouring down your face, next minute you’re lifted up as if you’ve gone into the sky. So it’s quite a dramatical thing to do really.
GC: Thank you. We was talking earlier as well about superstitions. Did you have any lucky charms or —
DS: Well I had a threepenny bit sewed in behind my wings. And I had a funny little thing that had a little beer barrel on and you tried to pull it and it would come down and you release it and it would go back again. So as I got in the aircraft I always gave it a pull.
GC: You was also talking about you had a dog, well the squadron had a dog.
DS: It was a stray dog which we, we looked after. A big black dog. And when we went into town on our bicycles he used to come along beside us. But as we speeded up a bit he didn’t like it so he rushed in front of us and grabbed hold of our wheels to stop us. So, and also on the way we got a piece of wood and we used to throw it in the field. And on the way back we’d tell the dog ‘go and fetch it’ and believe it or not he’d find that piece of wood we’d thrown in, you know. It’s a great dog. And a stray one. [laughs]
GC: You don’t know where he came from?
DS: No.
GC: You talked about going into town, obviously as a squadron and as a crew. What were the kind of things you did on your off days?
DS: Well. Relax one thing, and the other thing we obviously went to the pubs. We went to Dirty Annie’s for our meal and she used to give us eggs and bacons and things ‘cause we did like the breakfasts you used to have. We obviously had a bit of fun. We had parties in the mess. We went to once with an urn to fill it up with beer to come back so we all had a nice drink. It’s, it’s — we went together. So it’s, it’s about being together and enjoying our company ‘cause we’re, we’re fighting together.
GC: OK. We, we, we talked earlier as well about your crew. Could you just give us a little snapshot of each crew member please? With you.
DS: Well the pilot was Australian. He was in his thirties. He was very senior to us and he was our dad. He was a great pilot. The navigator was from Nova Scotia, Canada. Very, very good, very good navigator. The two gunners, mid-upper and rear were Canadians. The rear gunner at Penrose [?] thought he had enough so he went AWL and unfortunately got the LMF, lack of moral fibre. The bomber [unclear] and myself were both Londoners. And the wireless operator was somewhere from Middle East. I’m not quite sure where but unfortunately he went on a spare trip and got shot down and died.
GC: OK. I’ve read your CV and you, you spoke about bringing the POWs home. Could you tell us a little bit about bringing the POWs home?
DS: What? Sorry.
GC: Could you tell us a bit more about bringing the prisoners of war home?
DS: Oh sorry, yes. After the war, rather a wonderful thing really. We went [clears throat] — a whole lot of aircraft went [clears throat] I think it was to Belgium to pick up the prisoners of war. They were all lined up everywhere and as we taxied we stopped and our line all came into the aircraft. Full up. One sitting — standing right behind me. We took off and on the way back we saw the Cliffs of Dover and believe it or not they were all in tears.
GC: OK. I’d just like to say thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure and an honour to have met you today.
DS: It’s my pleasure. Thank you.
GC: You’re welcome.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with David Sanders
Type
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Sound
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Gemma Clapton
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-05
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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00:31:24 audio recording
Language
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eng
Identifier
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ASandersDS160305
Description
An account of the resource
David Sanders flew operations as a flight engineer with 189 and 619 Squadrons. He joined the Royal Air Force as a flight engineer and discusses an operation when they arrived too early over the target, being followed by a night fighter and having a bomb hang up. He also explains the role of a flight engineer.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Great Britain
Wales
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Contributor
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Tracy Johnson
189 Squadron
619 Squadron
aircrew
animal
bombing
flight engineer
Lancaster
military living conditions
military service conditions
Operation Exodus (1945)
RAF Fulbeck
RAF St Athan
RAF Strubby
Stirling
superstition
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1693/27255/POtteyRA2001.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1693/27255/POtteyRA2002.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1693/27255/AOtteyRA200807.2.mp3
ea4f559ab254093dfd6067f603d46227
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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Ottey, Ralph Alfrado
R A Ottey
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2020-08-07
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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Ottey, RA
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. Three oral history interviews with Ralph Ottey (b. 1924) and a photograph. He was born in Jamaica and volunteered for the RAF. After training in the UK, he served as a driver with 617 Squadron at RAF Coningsby and RAF Woodhall Spa.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HH: Okay. Today is the 7th of August 2020. I’m Heather Hughes for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive and I’m in Boston to talk to Ralph Ottey, a veteran of Bomber Command. RAF Bomber Command. Ralph, thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview. it's very exciting to have met you. Can, for the purposes of this interview would, would it be possible to talk us, to talk a little bit about your early life in Little London, Jamaica and then we'll come on to talking about your experiences during the Second World War serving with RAF Bomber Command and then we'll talk a little bit as well afterwards about how you came to come back to Boston and how come you are still here.
RO: Yeah, yeah.
HH: Okay.
RO: That’s fine.
HH: So tell us about your early life in Boston.
RO: Yes, well —
HH: In Jamaica.
RA: I was, well christened Ralph Alfredo Ottey. Really after my grandfather who was Ralph James Ottey. That's how. I was born in the little village of Little London in Westmoreland, Jamaica. British West Indies. Yeah. On the 17th of February 1924. I went to an elementary school in Little London. A Wesleyan Methodist Church School. And my, I was brought up by my grandparents Ephraim and Sierra Williams who were both prominent members of the church. I did fairly well at school and all the prospects were for me to become a teacher. I had, you had to pass an examination in Jamaica at that time called the Third Year Examination and then you can then apply to go to get a place at Mico College. The only training school for teachers, male teachers in Jamaica at that time. It is now a university.
HH: Is that in Kingston?
RA: That is. That is in Kingston. Which is a hundred and fifty miles away from. At that time it would be like fifteen million miles away from Little London to King, to Kingston. However, due certain circumstances at sixteen and a half I left the school. I passed my, what you call the third year Jamaican exam which gave me the right to apply for a place at Mico. But you couldn't get into Mico until you were nineteen. So I had two and a half years to read up. But then I was a, I was a pupil teacher being paid by the school thirteen shillings and four pence per week [laughs] That was. That was my pay that. Yeah. However, I left. I left there because I went to go to work for my uncle who had a bakery in Savanna-la-Mar. Savanna-la-Mar is the capital town of the parish of Westmoreland and my family is a very, quite dutiful family in, in Savanna-la-Mar. The first mayor of Savanna-la-Mar was an Ottey. Uncle Guy Ottey. So I was well, so I went to work for my Uncle Guy and I worked for, that was 19’ nearly the end of 1940. I was just over sixteen years old and, and I stayed with him for two years. But I always — they, they always want me to be this teacher but at the back of my mind what I wanted was to be a air gunner in an aeroplane. To shoot the Germans down. That’s, that’s all I wanted.
HH: Why?
RA: Well, because of Churchill. I used to know all of Churchill’s speeches. I, oh I managed the war with Churchill. I was disappointed when he didn’t consult me about these things that I had [laughs] And that was my thing in life. They were planning for me to become a teacher and so on. What I wanted was to be in the war. To be flying in an aeroplane shooting down Germans who were bombing London, you see. That was my life.
HH: It's, it's so interesting that you wanted to fly and in a, in an aircraft —
RA: Yeah.
HH: Shooting down Germans rather than, for example being at sea or in the army. Was there something very specific about the RAF?
RA: Special. The RAF was my thing because my father used to say to me, ‘Now, if you want to help in the war why don't you join the Jamaica Military Artillery?’ He said, ‘You have big guns and you're not even seeing the enemy. That's what you should be doing. Why you want to — ’ And I just treat it as a joke because the old man’s idea to be behind this machine gun shooting down Germans. Especially 1940 when the Battle of Britain, you see. That's what I, that was my motive. So I stayed with, I stayed with my uncle for two years. 1942. Then my father who was working with ESSO because the Americans had acquired a right to build bases in Jamaica and they were building a base near Kingston and my father was working for this big oil company and he got me a job with the base. The Jamaica base contractors. That lasted for about six, seven months when they finished building the runways so they laid off people and so and so . I went back to, to Little London because where the base was built was a hundred miles from Little London. So I went back to my grandparents in Little London in 19,’ at the beginning of 1943 and I got a job as a clerk in the local covered market. I used to go around and give people tickets and collect up money. And I, but my thing was the RAF, you see. It never never far away from me. Then suddenly, you know, yes they had a Census. 19’. A National Census in Jamaica in 1943. And I became a census enumerator so some of those stories about Little London I gained by going around doing the Census. So I know all the villages and the people in the villages and so and so. So I did. I did that and then I got, in 1943 [pause] yeah, that's right. I finished up 1943 then I went back to [pause] back to my uncle in Savanna-la-Mar. And I wasn't there very long when there was a notice in the [pause] the, the RAF was recruiting. That was interesting so I applied. I went. Took the exam. Didn't hear anything. Didn't, didn't hear anything from them for months. Then suddenly they said, ‘Come and sit the exam.’ So I went and sat the exams. Then like everything I didn't hear anything from them for a long time. Then suddenly they said, ‘Oh, well we're ready for you now. You have to come and take — ’ I passed the exam because I had to take a proper exam to get in the RAF. Did you know, not just for flying. You had to —
HH: Yeah.
RO: You took the RAF test, you see. So when, when this call came I went took the exam yes let's, got, got through that. And suddenly they say, ‘Oh, yes we want you.’ So we, I it went to another base in Jamaica which was a naval base at Port Royal which was a RAF camp on that base at that time. And I took the physical. Got through. Got through that all right and was given the RAF number, so and I I, they ask you, ‘What would you like to do?’ You know. So, of course, I said, ‘Oh, I want to be [pause] to shoot Germans down.’ Well, they say, ‘Oh, well you know,’ they said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you something. They said, ‘Your English is quite good so we'll put you down to be called a wireless operator/air gunner.’ Just the job as I thought. So I was signed up in the RAF to be trained as a wireless operator/air gunner and waited for a few months. Then they said, ‘Oh yes. We're ready for you now to go to England.’ So we, in the middle of the night they wake us up, put us on a boat and we went to a camp called Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia. American camp. The first time in my life I ever had anything to do with segregation because on this camp, a massive camp at a place called [pause] Oh God I forget the name of it. A camp. Camp Patrick Henry after the great American. Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia. And we stayed here for a few, a few weeks. And then suddenly we were based. We went on the biggest convoy. We went up to New York to catch a ship there and we went up [pause] I think we went on a ship that finished up. The Esperance Bay. Something like that they called it. We finish up being on this boat on the first convoy to come back to come to arrive in England during the, the invasion of France. While we were at sea the invasion took place. And this a massive convoy. Every day you're crossing the North Atlantic. Every day you are at the same place just surrounded by ships and you have their practicing shooting. And I I was very interested in the guns. Firing and so on. But one of the interesting things was, oh when you're young you do not, you're not bright enough to um to sense danger. We were at the bottom of the ship you see and at night they used to lock us in because we were untrained, you see. And if there was any possibility of people getting off, the people who were trained were [pause ] but we, we didn't, didn't worry one bit. Yeah. I think all that would happen to somebody else it wouldn’t happen to me. So it did. It didn’t happen. Never happened to us. We arrived at Liverpool and the first happy thing that really happened was that we were the only, we were the ship where the British servicemen were on [pause] most of them was Americans you see. These massive convoys. So they made the way to the port of Liverpool for British servicemen took off. So we were the first ship to dock at Liverpool.
HH: Great.
RA: That, and when we got there we were met by a Jamaican admiral. Admiral Sir Arthur Bromley, I always remember he was born as an Englishman born in Trinidad and he came, and I and remember the first thing he said to us, he said, ‘Is George Hadley with you?’ Because George Hadley was a great cricketer. I’ll always remember that. Oh, ‘Is George Hadley with you?’ But George Hadley was elsewhere. So we got off the ship and we're not supposed to know where we were going you see. But somehow the grapevine said you're going to Yorkshire. Right. So there was no we went through these stations and so on. There's no names on the stations. That kind of thing. So we finish up at a place called Filey, in Yorkshire. RAF training school. So we went to Filey and we spent thirteen, thirteen weeks being trained there. Doing the military training thirteen weeks.
HH: Were most of the people at Filey from um the Caribbean? Were there other people as well at Filey?
RA: Oh yes. Oh yes. There were lots of Jamaicans who and, and from other places. British Guyana there.
HH: Okay.
RA: And Trinidad. And we were West Indians. Yeah. And so we went to, we went to Filey and we were in, had another interview all over again. And this, I sat down with various officers so now, ‘I see you, you, you want to, you’re down here to be, you’re gunner and wireless operator.’ I say, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Well, unfortunately the way the war is going we don't, we don't have that kind of job anymore. You're either you're either an air gunner or you're a wireless operator. But we have plenty of, we have plenty of those. But what, seeing as your English is,’ that’s what I said to him. He said, ‘Seeing that your English is quite good I think they way you can serve best is you could be a motor transport driver.’ So you know that was it. Well, I’m in the service.
HH: Were you disappointed?
RA: I had to do what — eh? What?
HH: Were you disappointed?
RA: Oh course. Very disappointed. I mean.
HH: But it probably, it probably meant that you would survive the war.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh yes. I I wanted to be in the thick of, in the thick of it so [pause] but of course then I took the oath so there I couldn’t say to this officer, ‘I’m not going to do that.’ He said, ‘That's what you, what you serve. You'll be good at that. So you will be good at, you’ll be good at this. We, we, we need people who, with good English.’ So they were, we did thirteen weeks.
HH: At Filey.
RA: At Filey. And on the passing out one of the people who, West Indian notables who came you know how later on. Yes. I was, because I didn’t keep my mouth shut I was part of the guard of honour. And how this thing happened was this, this sergeant who was training us saying to us that, ‘We are going to have, in the passing out there will be Colonel's Oliver Stanley who is your Colonial Secretary will be coming.’ And I said to him, ‘Well, corporal he isn't our Colonial Secretary. He is the Colonial Secretary.’ ‘Ah.’ So he said, oh he called me mister, he said, ‘Oh. Oh, Mr Ottey,’ he said, ‘Oh, since that you're so you're right but seeing that you're so bloody clever you will be on the guard of honour.’ Which meant a lot of extra training to be, so I realised that , to keep your mouth shut up.
HH: Yeah.
RA: So I was on the guard of honour to meet Colonel Oliver Stanley, the Colonial Secretary. And they were suddenly in the line Louis Constantine was one of the West Indian notables Again, I don't know why to me. He came and spoke to me. He came and spoke to me. He asked me where I was from. Jamaica sir He said, ‘Who brought you up?’ You know. Who? Your family. I said, ‘I was brought up by my grandparents in a little place called Little London.’ And so he said to me, he says, ‘You'll be spending a lot of time in England. He said, 'The English people are very fair,’ he says, ‘And I’m telling you this as one who have taken a hotel who put a colour bar on me because they had Americans there. And I’m telling you that if you, if you behave in England as you behave in the village where you come from, where your uncles and aunties are there you'll be quite alright in England,’ he said, ‘Because,’ he said, ‘English people are fair.’ He said, ‘Whatever happened they are fair-minded so you just do that. Just behave as if you're in the village and your uncle and grandfather also are there.’
HH: And did you? Was that your experience? Is that? Did — was that your experience?
RO: Yes. You see that, that's what he, that's what he, he said to me and so I always remember, I remember that that that I should don't get excited about what's going on. ‘Just behave as you would in Little London.’ He said, ‘Respect elders,’ because you had to in Little London. Respect elders and and so on. So you're a part of it. So that's what, that's what I did and as, as great fortune will fall on somebody I came down to the village from Filey into the town. It was a holiday place and I was in a café, in a little cafe and a little girl [pause] she was about, she was nine years old at the time came up to me and said, would, have I any foreign stamps? She said, she said she was a philatelist or something. This big word and I didn't know what it was really. She was a stamp collector. And had I any foreign stamps? You see. So I said, ‘Well, I haven't. I've got some at the camp because I have letters waiting for me.’ When I get on with the other boys. I said, ‘Well I haven't got any handy but I have some at the camp and I have people in my billet who have at the same. So I will get them for you. When are you going?’ I said. ‘Oh, we are here for a fortnight,’ she said. ‘Anytime you come,’ So I said, ‘Well, next time I'll be able to come out would be — ‘’ at such and such a time and we'll meet. So she took me over to meet her parents. Arthur [pause] Arthur and Lillian Pearce from Scunthorpe. Right. So I met them and I brought the stamps and we had a chat and they invited me to have a cup of tea with them and so on. Then just before, just before she says, ‘Have you,’ Aunt Lil said, ‘Have you, have you any family in England?’ I said, ‘Oh no.’ She said, ‘Well, we’re making you an offer, she says. Why don't you have us as your family and you cannot always come at 157 Cliff Garden, Scunthorpe to spend your holidays.
HH: Lovely.
RA: So from there we get Uncle Arthur and Aunt Lil and this little girl Pat. They called me family. That's where, when I got married they acted as my parents and we —
HH: Did you get married near Scunthorpe?
RA: I got married in Scunthorpe but that's a a later story.
HH: Yeah.
RA: And I I of course I left Filey. Passed out. I didn’t, I expected that I would do, do well at shooting because I loved it but I didn't do as well as I, that I thought I'd get a prize but I didn’t. I was disappointed because I thought I did fairly well but there were chaps who were better. Much better than me. So I left. I left Filey. Yes. I did. I put a story in I didn’t tell you. I missed that, that. They had an exhibition. A West Indian, a West Indian painting exhibition in Sheffield and there again I was part of the guard of honour.
HH: So you got to go to Sheffield.
RA: I went to Sheffield. Marched through the town to the, this Cutlery Hall where we met the Lord Mayor and had, and had something called Yorkshire pudding. Which was a bit disappointing because I was waiting to have a pudding. I was ready to have a pudding and it didn’t turn up. This was a little thing that was [laughs] But anyway we marched through the city and met the Lord Mayor and so on. Went to this exhibition thing. Then I got posted to a place called Little Rissington in Gloucestershire.
HH: Now, in your, in your in your memoir, “Stranger Boy,” you talk about how a corporal accompanied you to Little Rissington.
RA: Yes.
HH: Why was that? Because normally when you were posted somewhere else you were just told to get there on, on your own. But you were accompanied by a corporal.
RA: We, I was taken to um, to this place by, but it was, it was the usual RAF thing, or service thing. He lived around that place. So it was a perk for him to escort us. So he was —
HH: Okay.
RA: He got the chance to get home.
HH: Okay.
RA: I know that now. I didn't realize that but he he took us. There was a party of us you see. About six or seven who was sent to Little Rissington, and I spent my time at Little Rissington. Then I went to Blackpool and Blackpool was an exper, was an experience there. Yeah. n So I got I got involved with American colour prejudice for one incident there and I was rescued. I think I was rescued by a Scotsman who, there was about three Americans to me. I was with a girl. I was. I used to meet her. Me and another English chap used to meet this girl and we used to, we were only friends. We used to go to the amusement places and so on but this time this English chap wasn't, wasn't there and these Americans decided that they were going to beat me up you see. And there was this English serviceman who saw what was happening and intervened and said, you know ‘I can't see what your, your own ways but if you're going to get at him you're going to get through me first,’ you know. Like so they backed off. But that was a thing, you see. Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
RA: But so I, but I learned something in, in Blackpool. I went, I used to, when we get plenty of, we were billeted you see. we didn’t have camp I used to go in town and I went into a jewellery shop. And this chap was very keen to find out about me you see. Then he said to me, he said that he was Jewish, you see. I’m Jewish.’ And so on. So I said to him, ‘Why is it that people are against Jews? So, he says, ‘It’s a long story.’ I said, ‘In Jamaica Jews are just white rich people and that's all really. They're white. They're rich. That's it.’ And, and he said to me, ‘Well it's a long story,’ he says, ‘It started from ancient times when Christians weren't supposed to be usurers. And most of the people with money and the king's and so on used to have a Jew who he used to borrow money and so on. So he says, ‘We Jews, we built up a, between his good states with the Jews between each other and so we, we got in the business of usury because that Christians would, yeah. And he said, he said that's what the cause of it that that there’s antipathy about Jews really.’ We get into a position where we have handling money.
HH: Yeah.
RA: Yeah. But I mean I didn't know. I didn't know that.
HH: Interesting.
RA: I didn't know about that. So I learned. I learned something. I learned something there.
HH: You did.
RA: After, I I passed out as a driver — they did thirteen weeks, you know.
HH: That was at Blackpool.
RA: No. No. No. Blackpool. I only spent a few weeks at Blackpool.
HH: Okay.
RA: Then they transferred us to number one RAF Transport School down in Wiltshire. Melksham in Wiltshire. And we, I spent thirteen weeks there and I passed out as a AC1 in driving. And I did. I could drive. Name it I could, I could drive it, you see. So I was alright. Then I was transferred. No. I became [pause] I was on my own then. They just, I got my pack and my tickets to turn, to come to RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire. There's nobody taking me there. I had to work myself from from Wiltshire to London to get to that's when I could have done with the help to get on there to go to a place called East —
HH: Kirkby.
RO: East Kirby. It was the nearest, the nearest [pause] No I didn't go to — no to go to Boston. I had to go to. Coningsby. That's right. I got, and I got as far as, I got to London alright and crossed station. Got on the train. Got to Peterborough. Get me get my connection to Boston. I got to, I got to Boston and nearly got into a fight. I got off the train and there wasn't any [pause] there wasn't any any, any trains there. You had to wait for a transport from the camps to take us. So I was in with an older, more experienced airman and he said, ‘Oh well, we’ll go in that pub there and wait ‘til the transport come from the camp at Coningsby.’ So we got in there. As soon as I went in — trouble. There was a chap [pause] spoke to me in Spanish, you see. And I, I said to him in Spanish, the little Spanish I know whatever I said intended I’m a black man. And he got me by the throat. Not being allowed to move. I couldn't understand why. Where? How I said it meant that I, ‘I don't talk to you.’ Which was, all I was trying to tell him that I understand Spanish but I can't have a conver, I wasn't good enough to converse with him, you see. Yeah. But he was, he was going to beat, beat me.
HH: You, were you rescued?
RA: Oh yes. There was another airman there. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ And that calmed him down. As usual with the RAF I got on the wrong bus. Instead of getting on the bus to Coningsby I got on the bus to East Kirkby. So I got to East Kirkby and they said, ‘You don't belong here mate.’ I can’t do, ‘But It's too late now,’ They fixed me up with a bed and next day they put me on a train and I got to Coningsby. Got to Coningsby. They say, ‘Oh we don’t want you here. You’ve got to go to RAF Tattershall Thorpe which is next door.’ So off I went. Booked in. And so I got through. There's a system where you have to book into the medical. When I finished that I found myself, and acquired a bike because it was a highly dispersed camp so you had to have a bike. So I had a bike. I went to the MT Section to report to the MT Section. And there was a Jamaican there who was at the camp before me and he, he tipped me off. He says, ‘You are the last one who come here so what's going, going to happen? He's going to give you the dirtiest job in, in the section.’ But he said, ‘You want to accept it as if it's a gold mine.’ You say, ‘Yes sergeant.’ You know, ‘Quite all right. No, no problem,’ you know. Truly a [unclear] So the first job I got in the RAF after doing six months of training was to drive the sanitary waggon. So, ‘Yes sergeant. That's quite all right with me.’ You know. So I i I did that for about four weeks. ‘Quite alright.’ Followed what my Jamaican friend tell me to do. Then Sergeant Colwaine said, ‘Hey, I have a job for you.’ Right. ‘Yes sergeant.’ He said, ‘You're going to be the Chauffeur for the senior armament officer.’ It’s a gold mine. So I got this job to drive the senior armament officer in 617 Squadron. I was attached. I didn’t know about 617 Squadron then.
HH: When did you? When did you become aware of 617 Squadron’s fame?
RA: It’s when I, when I start working with the squadron. So I became the driver for the senior, the senior armament officer, 617 Squadron.
HH: That's quite a job.
RA: Quite. Well, I thought I was on my feet. Not only that. Because it was a lot of what you call down time I realized that in the air force if you use your [pause] you can get training. So I, I signed up at the college to do book-keeping and accounts because I had a lot of waiting time. I just drive the officer there and wait on him and in that time I’m reading and writing up my answers and so on. So I spent quite a bit of time doing learning about bookkeeping and accountancy while I was driving the, the officer around. Driving all over the place. And then of course I get to know about the aircraft.
HH: Did you ever encounter any of the air crew?
RA: Oh yes. Of course, I met the aircrew. They were fantastic. And some of them was my age. You see I was just twenty. Well, some of them were just twenty. They were lads like me And so I got to know them and I got to go. To get inside the aircraft and know all about.
HH: Did you ever get to fly?
RO: I oh I went on a flight. They encourage you. They encourage you at that time if there's a possibility where they're doing an exercise and if there's a pilot you get a flight, you signed up, so I did. And my why flight was they were going to [pause] they they're doing about they had done the bomb, the raid on the dams already before that. But they used to fly up around Yorkshire, you know. They have some lakes. And they used to. And I went on a flight. But they encourage you. They encourage you to do that if you're ground crew and you're near. They encour, they used to encourage you to to, to get at it.
HH: To experience it.
RO: Yeah. But while I was with the, the squadron I learned a lot about the Royal Air Force because of association. I wrote a lot about it. I learned to respect the Royal Air Force. And the camaraderie, you know, being comrades, and in 617 we always used to you learned that the order of things in life was. There was god almighty. There was Winston Churchill. There was Bomber Harris of Bomber Command. There was Group 5. And 617 Squadron. That was how they drilled it in to you and that's how I lived. So while I was, and while I was attached to the squadron I I other than driving the the chief around, armament officer I did other jobs like, oh I could drive a Coles Crane. I did driving what they called a Queen Mary. Yeah. It's you know those big wings on a bomber. They have a workshop in Lincoln and you had to take them for any repairs to Lincoln. I was good handed I drove a bow, what you call a petrol bowser filling up aircraft. I also drove a [pause] equipment which is a, it's a boat and and a cart. Well, you see they had a bombing range. They had a bombing range.
HH: Close.
RA: Near Wainfleet. And this, this vehicle used to be able to take the targets out and if the tide catched up it became a boat and we've lost one or two where it got caught. Caught out there ready for the tide. Yeah. So I used to, I used to, used to drive that out to take the targets out to and so I had a very wide experience in driving all sorts of motor vehicles. Motor vehicles. Which if you follow my story it, when I finished, when I, you know I’m quoting. Yes. So I spent my time at Coningsby.
HH: [unclear]
RA: No at Tattershall Thorpe. And then when the war finished.
HH: Can I just ask you something about those bomber stations where you were based? Is that again reading your memoir on those years I got the impression that at most of the, of those stations there were quite a few black ground personnel. Was that correct?
RA: Yes.
HH: You know. You know.
RA: Oh yes.
HH: There were quite a lot everywhere.
RA: Yeah. Yeah. Oh yes. Oh yes. Every station. Every station there was. Yeah. Oh yes but I I I don't know. I was fortunate in that I wasn't moved about. I, I was at Woodhall. What they called RAF Tattershall Thorpe. They call it Woodhall Spa but it was in the air forces as RAF Tattershall Thorpe. And then when, when the war in Europe finished I was still at RAF Tattershall Thorpe but the squadron was going to, 617 Squadron was going to move somewhere down south. I forget the name of the camp but we were going to go to Okinawa. Right. And I was sent on a course of Japanese aircraft rec.
HH: Oh gosh.
RA: At a place called Strubby in Lincolnshire. So I went. I went. I went on that course and while I was at that course they dropped the atom bomb and then I was scrubbed. And I was annoyed because I wanted to go to Okinawa. Fool. I mean, I don't say I should have known that I should have been glad if they’d posted me to the Orkneys not [laughs] Not Okinawa.
HH: And do you know the dropping of that the first bomb was seventy five years ago yesterday.
RA: Yeah.
HH: Yesterday was the 75th anniversary.
RA: Yes. I was, I was on a course then.
HH: And you were at RAF Strubby.
RA: Strubby. The Japanese aircraft rec.
HH: Incredible. Incredible.
RA: And I, and a incident there I’ll always remember. We, we were trying, using train to fire a twin mounted Browning gun. And we were all there learning and this youngster said to the sergeant, he said, ‘Hey sarge, now what [pause] if I shoot down the plane that pulled the target?’ And this sergeant, who was a comedian as well, he said, Son,’ he says, ‘If you follow the word of command when I give you the word of command to fire,’ because this plane was taking a drogue you see. ‘When I give you the word of command to fire if you hit that plane I will personally see that you become a air marshall.’[laughs] He said that. Because the drogues are apart, only a hundred yards behind the aircraft. So he said, ‘If you shoot that aeroplane down I’ll see you’re all right.’ So that’s what happened. The war, that part of the war finished for me at Strubby. And from then on it was. —
HH: It was winding down.
RA: Oh yes.
HH: The war effort. Yeah. Yeah.
RA: And I became, you know I of course kept on with my studies in. So in the end the the air force, the RAF and the Colonial Office give me a scholarship to do bookkeeping and accountancy. Business Management. So I got a scholarship to go to a college in, in [pause]
HH: Now, had you already, had before you got the scholarship had you already elected to go back to have your training and then go back to Jamaica?
RA: Oh yes.
HH: How many, how many people in your situation decided to stay rather than to go back?
RA: Quite, quite quite a few stayed because the option was open to me. The air force was keen to have people because at that stage we were trained people. So any, any Jamaican who wanted to stay in the RAF was welcomed with, with open arms you see because they trained people getting out into what you call Civvy Street and they you want people like myself who had three or four years in the service too. So I went to college. Did fair. Did fairly well at, at college. Got a diploma. Everything. And went back.
HH: But before you went back you had, you had met the love of your life.
RA: Oh, yes. Yes.
HH: By coming to Boston.
RA: Yes. Yes. Yes. I went to the Gliderdrome.
HH: So you need to tell us about playing cricket and dancing. That's the other part of the story you haven't mentioned yet.
RA: Yes. I got, I was, I got I I was quite I was quite a good cricketer from school. From school I was captain of the school, school team and so on. So I, I fitted very well with the the air force with sports you see. And I I did alright at the cricket in the RAF. In the RAF. And when I came to Boston I I I did. So, so yes I I went back to Jamaica of course. Went back on the Windrush.
HH: You did indeed.
RO: Came back on the Windrush and went to Trinidad and to Port of Spain in Trinidad and there's a, there's a main street in Trinidad. I forget the name of the street. And there's a main street in Kingston. And if you shut your eyes and taken, you could it could be the same place. The people. There were Chinese, Syrians, Indians in that street in Trinidad. Just like, just like Jamaica. So, the West Indians. There is something there's this thing that the same kind of people do thousands of miles away from Jamaica to Trinidad but they are, you know. It’s the same. You walk down the street and the same people. Indians, Chinese, Syrians, Jew, the same.
HH: Yeah.
RA: Some West Indians are really something. And of course we're British. That is a, that is a thing that [pause] I don't know if [pause] it's going from the story but I always see myself, you see as a coconut. You know about coconut. I am the, I am a coconut. I may be brown but inside I’m white because and the, the, the newer, the younger Jamaicans are not like that. They're not like me in that respect in that in growing up as I I wanted the things, the better things in life and the people who had the better things in life were the white people. They had the big house and the cars and the land and so on and that's what I, what I wanted. So deep down I was a, the joke about it was, ‘Oh, you're a coconut.’ But I say, ‘Yes. Yes, I am. I can't help, I can’t help it. I’m a child of my [age] Yes. I’m a coconut.’
HH: But I mean, you grew up when when that was part of the British world.
RA: Yeah, that’s right.
HH: Jamaica.
RA: When the young, the younger Jamaicans are completely different to —
HH: Yeah.
RA: To, to me.
HH: Yeah. They have just known independence.
RA: That's right I I have never voted in the Jamaica election.
HH: Yeah.
RA: You see.
HH: Yeah.
RA: I am, I am your typical Jamaican coconut [laughs]
HH: That's a wonderful story.
RA: Yeah.
HH: Ralph, I’m just going to [pause] So, Ralph we've got to the end of your story of service in the RAF and your return to Jamaica and we're going to conclude this part of the interview by saying it's part one and we will resume with part two and your life back in the UK in the, in the coming weeks.
RA: Okay.
HH: Thank you very much for talking.
RA: Yeah.
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 Ralph Alfrado Ottey. One
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
2020-08-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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00:53:51 Audio Recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AOtteyRA200807, POtteyRA2001, POtteyRA2002
Creator
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Heather Hughes
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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Great Britain
Jamaica
England--Lincolnshire
England--Filey
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
Jamaica--Little London
Jamaica--Kingston
Trinidad and Tobago--Trinidad
Trinidad and Tobago
England--Lancashire
Description
An account of the resource
Ralph Ottey was born in Jamaica in 1924. Brought up by his grandparents, he describes his education and family hopes that he would become a teacher. He left school at 16 and a half but was too young to attend teaching college so worked for his uncle from 1940 to 1942. Ralph wanted to be an air gunner. He explains the variety of jobs he had before attending an RAF recruitment event in 1943. He applied to join but had to wait to sit the entrance exams. He enlisted to become a wireless operator/air gunner. He sailed in a convoy from New York to Liverpool. On arrival he was posted to RAF Filey for 13 weeks basic training. Told that there was no demand for new wireless operator/air gunners he was assigned the role of motor transport driver. He explains that whilst at RAF Filey he met what were to become his adopted parents. He was posted to No. 1 RAF Transport School at RAF Melksham. He passed out as an aircraftman first class driver (AC1) on completing the 13-week driving course. Finally posted to RAF Woodhall Spa he drove a variety of vehicles including petrol bowsers, the sanitation wagon, and Queen Mary trailer. He became the chauffeur for the senior armaments officer for 617 Squadron.
He describes being prepared to be sent to Okinawa, but the war finished before he was sent. He was awarded a scholarship to study accountancy and successfully obtained his diploma. He then returned to Jamaica on HMT Empire Windrush.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Paul Valleley
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
617 Squadron
African heritage
ground personnel
petrol bowser
RAF Coningsby
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Hunmanby Moor
RAF Little Rissington
RAF Melksham
RAF Strubby
RAF Woodhall Spa
recruitment
service vehicle
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1078/11536/APocklingtonAC171115.1.mp3
e7a0ce808c14a23b8955fb5033e305bc
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
Pocklington, Arthur
Arthur Clive Pocklington
A C Pocklington
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Arthur Pocklington (b. 1923, 1589794 Royal Air Force). He served as a radar mechanic at RAF Dunholme Lodge.
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
2017-11-15
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
Pocklington, AC
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IL: Ok. Ian locker. This is the 15th of November 2017. I’m at the home of Clive Pocklington and we’re going to start our interview now. Clive, you were born in, you were born in Hull so tell me a little bit about how you came to, you know your early life and how you came to join the RAF.
AP: Yes. I was born in Hull in 1923. And I was always mad on aircraft as most lads were in those days but my first association wasn’t with the Air Force. My family had always been associated with the Navy. And so I was, I think I was persuaded to apply for the Navy and the Recruiting Centre was in Jamieson Street in the centre of Hull. I would be seventeen or eighteen and I went there and they found that I had a heart problem.
IL: Right.
AP: I’d gone on my bike to that place. About four miles away from home. And surprising how I got on my bike after they’d rejected me. ‘You’ve got this heart problem. We can’t have you.’ I went home. It was about four mile. Went in and who was waiting there but my GP. They’d contacted my GP. Imagine that happening these days. And he, I remember he got me on the settee, took out his stethoscope. No. Nothing. Found no problem whatever. He was an enlightened GP because in those days if you had a sore throat they whipped out your tonsils in no time on the kitchen table. I had always had a sore throat but he would not take my tonsils out. I gargled with alum. Anyway, he went off and that was that. After that what happened? Oh, I was called up for the Home Guard.
IL: Right.
AP: And that was locally. I don’t remember much about the Home Guard. It was nothing like the TV programme believe me. All I remember was going on the rifle range which I rather enjoyed because I was a pretty good shot. And then —
IL: So what were you, so — sorry.
AP: Yes.
IL: Just come back a little bit.
AP: Yeah.
IL: To school days.
AP: Yeah.
IL: So you were at school here.
AP: Oh yes. I was at school. I was at Malet Lambert which was a school in East Hull. And when war broke out in September ’39 I was only fifteen. The school closed. Temporarily but we didn’t know that. But it closed. If you lived in the catchment area you were evacuated to Whitby if you wanted to go. But I lived just outside and so I wasn’t. And so that was my last association with school. I left school when I was late fifteen.
IL: Right.
AP: Never went again. But I did alright.
IL: Ok. So, what, so did you, so were you working at the time? Before you —
AP: I did, yes. My father was in the Water Department and he got me a job in the Hull Corporation Water Department for a few months. I didn’t like that very much and I went into BOCM. That’s British Oil and Cake Mill. In the laboratory.
IL: Right.
AP: You know, doing odd jobs and things. And I was there until I went in the RAF. Anyway, I was in the Home Guard and then I applied to go in the RAF. I went, the Recruitment Centre was in Doncaster. And it was a weekend. We went on the Saturday and we were due to come home on the Sunday.
IL: So, how old were you by that time then? Were you seventeen or eighteen?
AP: Eighteen I’d be.
IL: Right.
AP: I think. Yes. Eighteen. Had the interview. I’ll always remember we went before the board. Very intimidating it was. There were about six, to me high ranking officers. And the one, the chairman I presume he was, he looked at me and he said, ‘What’s seventeen thirty fourths of sixpence?’ I always remember that question. And I knew straight away. ‘That’s thruppence.’
IL: Absolutely. It took a while to think.
AP: Well, I don’t know how I did it but, because I was trembling I think. Anyway, I got in. Yes. Ok. We’ll accept you as a wireless operator air gunner. We had to stay overnight to be, for something happening. Oh, for medicals the next day. Overnight was, we had, we were in this huge hall of about eighty recruits with the beds about five inches away from each other. And there was one candlelight bulb in the, in the top here. And I always remember about two in the morning this poor fella was wandering. I think he’d been to the loo. Well, he must have been. And he couldn’t find his bed. This would be about two in the morning. He was still wandering around at half past three so I hope he still isn’t looking for it [laughs] Looking for his bed. Anyway, to cut a long story short we had a medical the next day and the same thing happened again. ‘You’ve got an enlarged heart. You can’t go aircrew. But if you like you can go on, you know a ground job.’ So, it wasn’t radar in those. It was a radio.
IL: Right.
AP: A radio course. So I accepted that. So I think probably looking back somebody was looking after me. I mean all they had was the stethoscope in those days and obviously it didn’t work too well [laughs]
IL: Yeah.
AP: And so I went on the ground. Ground staff. And went to Bradford, Bradford Technical College. Not far from home so used to come home quite regularly.
IL: So you were called. You were called up straight away. You went straight on.
AP: Yes. Yes. It wasn’t very long. I think they were pretty desperate for radio people. Based in Mannville Terrace in Bradford. I remember the trams going up the hill at night. Rattling away. And we were there about, well a few months and then we had this test. The examination at the end.
IL: So, how did, how did that work then? In terms of were you, you were in the RAF so you were in uniform. Were you based on, were you based at a, did you have a base or were you in digs or —
AP: No. We were in, we slept, we were in empty houses right in the centre of Bradford. There were about six of us in this house. The, we had the mess in the old church hall I believe and the RAF offices were in a little bungalow at the side. We used to do fire watching in there. And I remember I was pretty good in those days with my hands. We used to do. And there were some slips for weekend passes and I got one or two of those [laughs] and I made a very good lino cut of the station stamp. I shouldn’t be saying this but probably —
IL: No. They can’t get you. They can’t get you now.
AP: I would have been a very good prisoner of war because I could make very good stamps and came home a few weekends with that. Anyway, eventually we had the test and I came out fairly high so the top ones were sent on radar and the others were on ordinary radio.
IL: Right. So how did the training — how did, was it classroom based or was it actually —
AP: Yes. It was.
IL: Practical?
AP: Yes. Both.
IL: Right.
AP: Practical and theory. And it was in the technical, in the Technical College at Bradford. Yeah.
IL: Yeah. And they were all RAF people teaching you. They weren’t sort of civilians.
AP: I don’t know whether, no. I think it would have been civilian.
IL: Right.
AP: The teaching. Yes. He was quite good. White I remember his name was. Flight — oh yes RAF he would be. Flight Lieutenant White.
IL: Right.
AP: Came home once and, for the weekend, by train. And we were going home on the Saturday or would it have been the Saturday night? I don’t know. We got as far as Leeds in the train and Bradford is about six miles away from Leeds. And we couldn’t get to Bradford so we decided we would have to find somewhere to kip down for the night. And we found an empty carriage and slept in there. And about half past three in the morning the train was moving. It was the early morning milk train to Skipton. So luckily it stopped not far away from Leeds and we got off and eventually got back and got to Bradford and nothing came of that. Anyway, we passed, passed out fairly high on the radio and was posted to South Kensington, London.
IL: Right.
AP: We lived in luxury flats. I always remember marble bathrooms. It was, they’re still there. I did go in to see this place not long ago.
IL: Right.
AP: Near, near Hyde Park. We used to do PE in Hyde Park. And we used to eat in the, would it be the Victoria and Albert? I think so. I remember there were Ming vases all the way around the —
IL: Yeah. It’s south, well it’s South Kensington, isn’t it?
AP: Yeah. Oh, it was south Kensington all right.
IL: Museum Road in South Kensington is is the V&A and the —
AP: Yeah.
IL: Science museum.
AP: There were no raids while I was there because the Blitz, the earlier Blitzes had finished and the V-2s and 1s hadn’t started. So I don’t remember any raids at all when I was in London. We, I was there for about, oh and I missed out Padgate of course. Before, before I went to Bradford I went to the initial place at Padgate. But, you know, for square bashing.
IL: Oh, basic training.
AP: Yeah. Basic training. We were supposed to be there for ten weeks or eight weeks. Anyway, they cut it down to about five because they were desperate to get the skilled people really. So that should have come before. London I enjoyed very much. Had the test and passed out and was sent to Scampton.
IL: Oh right. How long were you in London? How long? How long? And how many people were there? And what were you, what were you actually doing in London?
AP: We were having lectures and practical work on, on the radar.
IL: Right.
AP: Gee sets, which was [unclear] and H2S hadn’t come into being then, I think. I’ll tell you about those later. And that, we just —
IL: Ok. And how long were you there? But how long did that take you?
AP: Oh. Three months.
IL: Right.
AP: Yes. Three months I think. And then we were, I was posted. Well, I didn’t know where I was going but I ended up in Scampton, and 44 and 619 Squadron. And for the next eighteen months, two years it was simply we used to go out every morning. We all had about five planes to service. Two of us would go together. One would go into the plane to test it. The other one would wait outside with a little van in case anything wanted replacing. Test the Gee and IFF. All those. There was the Gee set, chief one, Monica which was a rear facing radar which would give the bomb, the rear gunner a beeping sound. The faster, the closer the beeps the nearer the fighter was. Well, that didn’t last long because like all radar if it’s transmitting it could be homed in to.
IL: Right.
AP: Like Gee wasn’t. Gee was excellent. It was, gave them the position. It was only a receiver. It didn’t transmit at all.
IL: Right.
AP: So it was quite safe.
IL: Yeah.
AP: H2S which came in very soon was also a bit dicey in my opinion because it sent out, it gave a plan of the ground below.
IL: Right.
AP: But it transmitted and could be homed into.
IL: Yeah.
AP: I used to, occasionally in the morning when we were servicing the navigators would come along just to check things. And I would say, how would I say it? ‘I shouldn’t put this on unless you really need it.’
IL: Yeah.
AP: In my opinion it would have been better to do away with the H2S and use the Gee or there were other ones which we didn’t have and to have a rear facing gun. A gun underneath.
IL: Yeah.
AP: Because they used to come up underneath.
IL: Yeah.
AP: And there was no way of firing down on to them. Anyway, that wasn’t my, nothing to do with me. I just serviced it. We used to — H2S was also very heavy. It had about eight boxes along the side of the left hand side of the fuselage. It had a scanner underneath and it weighed quite a bit and the bomb load had to be reduced because of the equipment they were carrying.
IL: Yeah.
AP: I remember them bombing up. It didn’t bother me at all but I have heard of accidents happening. There were usually about three trolleys. One had a Cookie on. Like a big dustbin, you know. And then some five hundred pounders and then usually some incendiaries depending on how far they were going to go. Lisset, in Yorkshire I gather one did blow up and while they were bombing up. So it could happen. But being eighteen you never bothered about things like that. I used to go up in the morning occasionally. I wasn’t too happy about that though because the first time I went up they used to go on fighter affiliation. They would meet a Spitfire or a Hurricane. Well, the first time I went I didn’t know much. It was the first time I’d flown and we met up with this Spitfire and he did, he did a corkscrew.
IL: Yeah.
AP: Well, you became weightless [laughs] believe me. And I was airsick. Well, I remember staggering down to the elsan which was at the rear of the fuselage just in front of the rear gunner’s turret. And I was doing what I had to do in there and I remember the rear gunner turning around at that time and looked at me and I can still see the look of disgust on his face [laughs] And anyway he didn’t say anything but I don’t think he lived very long. I think, I think that plane was lost that night actually.
IL: Oh gosh.
AP: Anyway, I used to go up occasionally after that but I wasn’t sick any more. I think I knew what to expect.
IL: Do you think this, do you think this was a, an initiation for the, for the new boys coming in?
AP: I think, well, I don’t know. No. I don’t think anything to do with that. I mean, there was no — I mean when you think about these days you have to be strapped in and do that. But we just, there was nowhere to sit even. Well, there was for aircrew but I mean for anybody, anybody else, technicians going up you just sat where you had to and —
IL: Yeah.
AP: Yeah.
IL: So the airborne radar was mainly to give, the H2S was about more accurate bombing. It wasn’t sort of for self-protection really.
AP: Well I don’t, yes it used to work particularly well over coastline.
IL: Yeah.
AP: The reflections from the sea and the coast were totally different. But I mean as I say I think the Gee, Gee gave them a pretty accurate, but it could be jammed of course.
IL: Yeah.
AP: Which, yeah. And then there was IFF which was just a little, it wasn’t very big at all which gave out when they came back whether they were friendly or enemy, you know.
IL: Right.
AP: Identification. Friend or foe. And it had the little, I remember once it had a little explosive device in, in case they came down. It would destroy the crystal —
IL: Yeah.
AP: Which gave them their frequency. And to test it to see if the electric was, we used to undo the, unscrew the plug and put it into your meter and somebody would press the button to see if it was working. Well, once I don’t know if it was me, don’t think it was, didn’t take the plug out in time before the button was pressed. So the thing exploded and destroyed it. But I don’t remember any repercussions on that [laughs] These things happen. Oh, yes. For what I was, when I was going back to London I also, oh I shouldn’t come out with all these admissions. I had a bit of a scam on the, I used to, I wanted to get back to Hull to see my girlfriend. We were in London three months and I came home pretty regularly. I think I only bought one ticket [laughs] because the tickets in those days would last three months. You bought, you know your return ticket. So by various means I didn’t have it stamped [laughs] But I don’t feel guilty about that.
IL: Of course not. Absolutely not.
AP: Anyway, we left. Where am I up to? Oh, up to Scampton. And that was it really.
IL: So when, when were you at Scampton then?
AP: When I was at Scampton. Well, late ’43.
IL: Right.
AP: Yes. Oh, the winters in Lincolnshire believe me.
IL: So that would be just after the Dambusters wouldn’t it?
AP: Yes. It would.
IL: Late ’43.
AP: Yes. Yes. It would be. I remember we, well there would be about — oh, radar. The particular, for some reason majority were Canadians.
IL: Right.
AP: I don’t know why. So would be how many in a Nissen hut? Thirty? Twenty five? Something like that and about two thirds would probably be Canadians. We had one little stove in the centre and winters in Lincolnshire were cold in those days. I think we were issued with two blankets. No sheets. Hadn’t. I didn’t have a sheet for years. And with these two blankets you could arrange to have, well first of all you put your trousers down to get a crease in them. Slept on those. And with two blankets by some you could get five layers beneath and about six on top by surreptitious folding if you know what I mean. And then you put your greatcoat on the top. And it was alright. You’d be, just about cope. I don’t remember ever changing the blankets but they must have done [laughs]
IL: Once in a while. Yes.
AP: Well, yes it certainly was. And I was in Strubby and [pause] no, sorry. Strubby. Dunholme Lodge. And then I went to Strubby. 44 Squadron moved somewhere else and I went with 619. Just don’t know. Where am I up to? [laughs]
IL: You’re just moving to Strubby. But when you, how, so what was a sort of typical? You know you said in the mornings you would, you know pair up and go off.
AP: Yes. Mornings we would pair up and go around and service the kites. And probably about four or five each. Afternoons you’d be in the radar section repairing sets.
IL: Right.
AP: So it was because the all the kites. Oh, they’d all be all ok’d for flying you see and the afternoon was spent repairing things. Evenings in the NAAFI. Fish and chips. No. Egg and chips. No fish. We used to go around to the farms in Lincolnshire and the farmers were very good at selling you eggs which were worth their weight in gold in those days. Yes. So that was it really. We never, we didn’t get to know the aircrew very much because the fitters and the riggers they had their own aircraft.
IL: Right.
AP: And they got to know their aircrew very well and, but we didn’t. We were on different aircraft all the time really so I didn’t get to know any aircrew personally.
IL: Right.
AP: The fitters and the riggers, I don’t know whether it was true. They said when they, when they were coming back from a raid and they were circling around ready to land they would know by the sound which was their aircraft. They were all on, all identical engines. Merlins.
IL: Yeah.
AP: But they were so involved with their plane they would know, ‘That’s ours. It’s coming in now.’
IL: Right.
AP: Whether that’s true or not I’m not sure.
IL: So did you, were you aware of things like losses? And, you know, how did that sort of —
AP: Well —
IL: You know, what was the mood like in the station?
AP: To tell you the honest I don’t think we were. Because within a day if there were two or three — every night every time they went out, well every, most nights there would be one, two or three missing.
IL: Yeah.
AP: You didn’t know whether they’d been shot down or whether they’d been killed or escaped. But within, well a day that plane was replaced.
IL: Right.
AP: So there was usually a full, you know, eighteen planes there all the time.
IL: Right.
AP: Even though three were missing that night. They’d come. New ones would be there.
IL: Right. Were they sort of flown in or were they —
AP: They were flown in. Yes. Yes.
IL: Right.
AP: Yes. I don’t know. The ATA would do that presumably. Perhaps Amy Johnson. You never know.
IL: Absolutely. Well, not 1943 sadly.
AP: Amy Johnson. She was, she was an ATA pilot.
IL: She was.
AP: Yeah.
IL: But I think she was lost in 1941.
AP: Oh.
IL: That’s why I was saying.
AP: Oh, over the Thames wasn’t she?
IL: Yeah. I think that was.
AP: Yeah. Yeah.
IL: I think it was ‘41 that Amy Johnson was lost.
AP: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Oh, it was. You’re right. Yes.
IL: So, ’43, not ’43 sadly.
AP: Yeah.
IL: So that’s something I’ve found quite fascinating really. You know. That you would have thought that in terms of targeting aircraft it would have been the centres of production or the centres of storage would have been a very, you know it would have been very productive for, you know German bombing. Rather than —
AP: Yeah. Well, yes I suppose so but I think there was the, they were spread out.
IL: Right.
AP: They used to manufacture bits here and bits there and then send them to be assembled I suppose. There didn’t seem to be any shortage of planes.
IL: No.
AP: No. They were, they were replaced very quickly.
IL: So, what about social life? You know, you said, you know you spent your evenings in the NAAFI. Did you, did you become close to your, you know the other people you were with and —
AP: Yes.
IL: Did you, you know —
AP: Oh yes. I did. Yes. Yes.
IL: Presumably visits to the pubs or —
AP: I wasn’t a drinker in those days.
IL: Right.
AP: No. It was mostly, mostly NAAFIs and various canteens. No. I I didn’t drink ‘til I was well in my 30s.
IL: Right.
AP: Made up for it a bit now [laughs] Yes. And that was it really. And then the, the war. Oh, I didn’t see any action really. We weren’t involved in any raids. Quite, I had a good war really.
IL: Right. You weren’t, there were no raids on any of the bases you were at.
AP: None whatever.
IL: Right.
AP: No. No. I in the later in the war I did see V-1s. A couple over Lincolnshire. They didn’t have the range. They wouldn’t be land launched. They did fit them to planes and —
IL: Right.
AP: Release them and I remember I was cycling across somewhere or other and I saw this V-1 pass right over. That would be somewhere near Lincoln.
IL: Right.
AP: So where it went to I’ve no idea. I’ve seen V-2s. Not V-2s but the trails for when the Germans were sending out the V-2s later in the war. You know, the rockets.
IL: Yeah.
AP: From the, from the low countries even in Lincolnshire you could see the vertical vapour trails.
IL: Gosh.
AP: About eight, ten, seven, six all at the same time going vertically up. Presumably landing in the London area.
IL: Right.
AP: Yeah. Yes. That was quite fascinating really. And then of course the war, the European war finished and we were put on embarkation leave to go to Okinawa.
IL: Right.
AP: On Tiger Force it was called. And, but very shortly afterwards of course the bomb was dropped. The Japanese capitulated and that was cancelled. So we were put on embarkation leave to go to India.
IL: Right.
AP: I didn’t want to go to India but of course I had to. I’m pleased I did because I loved it when I got there. We went on the [pause] Oh, I went to Blackpool for [pause] waiting for the ships, you know.
IL: Right.
AP: The transport to go. We were in Blackpool about three weeks. A funny thing happened. Before we went, on the way to Blackpool we had to go through Sheffield to get to Blackpool. And it was August, I think. September. And we had to walk from one railway station to the other one to get to Blackpool and there were about six of us walking along. And it was a very very hot day so we took our forage caps off. And luckily or unluckily enough there was a car passing with two MPs in. they got out and came across to us. Took our names, numbers and everything else and where we were going and off they went. Well, the next day we were in Blackpool and we had an assembly in the Tower Ballroom. This huge hall it seemed to be. And they called out our names. There’d be about five hundred people. Air Force people. Well, you ought to have heard the noise. Off we went to the front and we were given a rollicking there. And we’d got, we were told we had to come back the next morning and clean the ballroom floor with a toothbrush. So, we spent about two hours the next morning messing around. They didn’t know what to do with us in other words. But I always remember that. And the time came we had to go. We went to Liverpool to get on the, went on the Samaria. The boat. And went three week journey. It takes three weeks now it takes what? Twelve hours? Which was fascinating. I mean, I’d never been abroad before. Went through Biscay. Calm as a millpond. Saw Gibraltar. The first place I’d seen abroad. Through the Med. Through the Suez. Bitter Lake. Flying fish. I wonder if there still are flying fish. And got to Bombay. Oh, on the boat we slept on a hammock. We had a mess deck it was called. About twenty chaps and a hammock. Morning came. You packed up your hammock and one of you had to go and bring back the food. You slept there and ate there and everything else. Crowded. Commissioned types, they had about two thirds of the ship. Non-commissioned had about one. I remember going where I shouldn’t have gone once and looked into this lounge. First class lounge. There they were all sitting in settees and lounges. And there was a fellow on the piano and he was singing, ‘Willow, did willow, did Willow,’[laughs] I thought well of course class distinction in those days.
IL: Absolutely.
AP: Absolutely awful. But anyway. And we used to, through the Red Sea it was pretty hot and once we, well occasionally we’d go on the deck and sleep on deck. But you had to be very careful to be up by about half past four because they, they swilled the decks down at half past four. And these sailors, they liked nothing better than swilling you out with those. So we did get caught out there more than once. Got to Bombay. Went to the transit camp. Worli it was called. And within five days I was smitten. I think if you go to, if you went to India in those days it wasn’t just the food. I think the air would kill you as well. And I was in hospital for a fortnight with, you know. I don’t know what. Diarrhoea.
IL: Yeah.
AP: And all the rest of it. I remember the drugs we had to take. Sulfonamide would it be? Something.
IL: Yes. Sulfonamide.
AP: And it came in a long strip about two yards long. Taking those. But I slept in sheets which was quite good. Recovered from that. And I was in India fifteen months after that and I never had another, anything else at all. But being delayed in Bombay for a fortnight I lost all the, my mates I’d made on the boats.
IL: Yeah.
AP: I was completely alone. I’ve never been so miserable in my life. Anyway, I got the train eventually when I’d recovered and went up to Kanpur which is a Maintenance Unit.
IL: Right.
AP: RAF Kanpur. In the United Provinces I think it is. Not far from Delhi.
IL: Right.
AP: And we were, worked in the electroplating shop because there was no radar. Radar had finished then. The electroplating shop. They still used to electroplate bearings for engines which were no longer needed or anything else. We didn’t do any use.
IL: Yes.
AP: Walked about. But we used to get, well the camp they used to go into Lucknow or Kanpur and buy cheap tea sets. Metal tea sets. You know. Electric. Cheap electroplated and they would bring them to us and we would electric plate them again. RAF silver. About a quarter of an inch thick we’d put on.
IL: Yeah.
AP: I remember the silver came in great plates. They’d come and they’d say, ‘Would you mind doing this for us?’ So we used to electroplate their teapots and various things. We used to play badminton outside in the, in the heat. Nobody told you the sun was dangerous. I enjoyed that. We had a swimming pool there which was great. And on the whole — oh, and we went up to, I’ve been to the hills. We went three times because the heat in, in oh dear me the heat in the pre-monsoon was a hundred and twenty. You just didn’t go out. You, you stayed under the punkah. The fan. You closed the shutters and you just stayed there. And you got prickly heat. My friend the other year, it was a hot summer here. She went to the doctor with a bit of a rash and he said, ‘Oh, you’ve got prickly heat.’ Well, she hadn’t got prickly heat because if you get prickly you know about it. Your pores all go septic and everything. It’s not nice at all. But we went up to the hills three times. I’ve been to Darjeeling, Ranikhet and Nainital. The most interesting one was the, when we went up to, well Darjeeling on the little railway which goes, you know. Very good. But it was just pre the end of 194 — let me get this right. Six. It was just pre-Independence. And we, to get to Darjeeling we had to leave Kanpur go to Calcutta overnight on the train. The air conditioning was a huge block of ice in the middle of the compartment which was about two feet cubed when you set off and by the time you got to Calcutta it shrunk to about [unclear] cube size [laughs] We changed trains and went up to Darjeeling. Had a holiday there. But when we came back through Calcutta to go back to the base all troops going through Calcutta had to stay. It didn’t matter whether you were Navy, Air Force or whatever. You were, stay there because there were riots going on in Calcutta. And they were riots. Believe me. Every night we used to go out on the on the lorries to patrol the streets. You’d walk around the block and when you came, in a circle sort of thing and there would be bodies stabbed in the streets. In the gutters. We had a Lee, I had a Lee Enfield rifle. First World War vintage and I always remember I was standing at this street corner and this Indian came up to me. He looked about a hundred but he was probably forty and a big long beard. He said, ‘You have not got bullets for that gun.’ I said, I said, ‘I have.’ But we hadn’t [laughs] I wouldn’t have shot them anyway because I really liked the Indian people. They were great. And that was my, well they weren’t, they weren’t antagonistic to us. It was the Muslims and the Hindus of course in those days. They were at each other’s throats. And it really was. There were millions slaughtered in that time.
IL: Oh absolutely. So were you, were you demobbed in India? Or did you —
AP: No. No.
IL: Brought back from.
AP: I came back in 194 — left in the late 1946. I came back on the Corfu ship and we weren’t in hammocks this time. We had little bunks. But going through the Biscay it must have been the biggest storm they’d had in years. I remember the waves looked to me tremendous but I wasn’t sick at all. But I think ninety nine percent couldn’t even keep down water. Anyway, eventually got back to Southampton and went to [pause] where was it? Somewhere near London. An old Air Force base. And it was the, 1947 was the coldest winter that’s ever been. So coming from the heat of India even in the winter to that was pretty rough. It really was cold. In fact where I live now when I was demobbed Bilton is a village three miles out of Hull. It was cut off for three days. The snow was so deep there was nothing got through at all. The snow was six foot deep. And I was demobbed, Finningley I think, somewhere there I think. I think it was Finningley which is now Robin Hood Airport.
IL: Yeah. Absolutely. Doncaster.
AP: Yeah.
IL: Yeah.
AP: And, and that was the end of my, my war. Which —
IL: So, so how long did it take from coming back from India to be demobbed? Were you still, or did you come straight up to Finningley or —
AP: It was just a matter of weeks.
IL: Right.
AP: Yes. Yeah.
IL: It must have been a frustrating, was it a frustrating time? You know.
AP: How?
IL: Because although obviously you enjoyed India. You know, I think I would find it, I think personally I would find it frustrating that you know, you’d signed up for the duration of the war and then there was almost like another.
AP: Well. Yes.
IL: Eighteen months, two years after.
AP: Yes. But I suppose it was understandable really because having thousands, thousands being put on the employment market there would have been — what would they have done?
IL: True. True.
AP: They had, they had to do it sort of slowly I think.
IL: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. We had a demob number depending on your length of service and your age. And I think mine was 48 and every time this list would come out who were going to be demobbed? You looked to see if you were on it [laughs] And eventually it came up.
IL: Right.
AP: And you went and got your demob suit and all the rest of it and that was it. And then I went back to me, oh I had a, to the BOCM. On the laboratory side. And then I applied for teacher training.
IL: Right.
AP: And in those days there was a one year teacher’s course which was quite short. And I was accepted for that. Went to Lancaster Training College for a year. Although it was only a year we used to work pretty long hours. There were no holidays. We started early in the morning. You finished about ten at night. I can’t say it did much good for me really because teaching is by experience and observing a good teacher.
IL: Yeah.
AP: Rather than being told all about Plato and all the rest of it. It didn’t work that much, but I didn’t like it very much but anyway I passed out and I came to Hull and I taught in Hull for thirty three years.
IL: So what did you teach?
AP: I was a primary school teacher.
IL: Right.
AP: Everything [laughs] Yes. Everything. I started at a place in Hull called Stoneferry which was a really lovely school. I had a little garden at the back. We used to have little plots for the, had three kids on one plot. I was there for ten years. And then I got in those days what was called a graded post and I moved to Thanet School which is not far from where I live now. And I, I had a craft post there because I was pretty good with my hands. And then after twenty years I applied for deputy and I got the deputy of Craven Street School. Well, Williamson Street School. And that closed and we moved to Craven Street School. So I finished my career as deputy head of Craven Street School.
IL: Gosh.
AP: And I left school at fifteen.
IL: That’s pretty, pretty good isn’t it?
AP: I still think you can teach yourself more by yourself than listening to people.
IL: Absolutely. Absolutely.
AP: And that, that’s really my, my story. I’m sorry if its —
IL: No. It’s been fascinating. It’s been fascinating. I’m just going to stop and then we’ll have a little
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 Arthur Pocklington
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ian Locker
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-15
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
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
APocklingtonAC171115
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:44:25 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
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
India
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
India--Darjeeling
India--Kanpur (District)
India--Kolkata
Description
An account of the resource
Arthur Pocklington grew up in Hull and was hoping to join the RAF as aircrew but failed the medical. He trained as a mechanic servicing the radar equipment on the aircraft. He served at RAF Scampton, RAF Dunholme Lodge and RAF Strubby before being posted overseas. He finished his service at RAF Kanpur, India.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1946
44 Squadron
619 Squadron
civil defence
demobilisation
Gee
ground personnel
H2S
Home Guard
radar
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Scampton
RAF Strubby
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/505/8403/PDavisSL1501.1.jpg
6e4096e9e41fc641ba50790df8c92499
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/505/8403/ADavisSL151202.1.mp3
19415213e173ef5ffc6150fd7b822399
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
Davis, Sidney Lawrence
S L Davis
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Davis, SL
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Sidney Davis. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 617, 619 and 9 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
SLD: I’m Laurie Davis. I was a wireless operator in 619 squadron based at Strubby in Lincolnshire. I joined at Lords Cricket Ground at 10 o’clock in the morning on the 17th of May and found out that evening, when I went to St John’s Wood, the billet, that it was the morning that 617 returned from the Dambusters raid which brought back memories at the end of my squadron career but like all air crew we did our training. I was a wireless op and eventually I found myself at Silverstone and we went into a massive room and we were just told that you would come out the other end as a six man crew and this was somewhat flabbergasting but I wandered around and coming towards me was a chap, sergeant, we were all sergeants in those days, with wings up and we looked at one another and I said, ‘Are you with anyone?’ And he said, ‘No.’ And we introduced ourselves. Johnny Taylor from Bristol. And we wandered around and we found a chap, a navigator Jack [?] he came from Bath. We joined up. We thought, well, we’re halfway there and then we saw a chap with his B brevvy up. A bomb aimer. And he was Norman [?] a Londoner. Came from Potters Bar. So we were almost there. We thought we only wanted a couple of gunners now and we saw these two chaps coming along together. Compared with me being just twenty they were mature men to say the least but probably they were only in their mid-thirties but it turned out they were both married. Joe Crossland turned out to be the mid upper gunner. He was from Wakefield and Tommy [Klines] who was the rear gunner, he was from Warrington. So we all joined up finished up the other end of this room with a cup of tea or a coffee and it was then that the skipper as we called him, Johnny, John Taylor, said, ‘We’ll call you Red,’ because at that time I had bright red hair. So the rest of my time with that enjoyable crew was I called Red. We moved on there for a couple of weeks, three weeks I think, on Wellingtons. A noisy, rattly old thing and then we went on to Syerston on to Stirlings. Again, just familiarisation and that and that was then we picked up another member of the crew. An engineer and he came from St Helen’s and I must admit he’s the one fellow that I can’t recall a name all the time and to this day I still try to find out his surname and Christian name. Anyway, we then went on to Lancasters and to conversion and then finished going on to 619 squadron in Strubby at Lincolnshire and we did some flying around for a week and lo and behold we knew that to go on operations the pilot always went with an experienced crew and that caused a bit of sensitive humour because there was always some wit thrown in and Johnny Taylor came back from his office one morning and said, ‘I’m flying tonight with a crew,’ so we joked we’d sort out all his personal possessions and share them out if he didn’t come back because we knew that sometimes that’s what happened, unfortunately. So later in the afternoon I get a call to go to the wireless office to be told that I was flying with him and of course that caused more humour and we went off and with Flying Officer Whitely, a senior there and, believe it or not, it was the longest trip I did of the twelve raids. We went to Dresden. Nine hours twenty minutes and quite something in my memory to see the vastness of the fires as a first time on there because when you finished and the pilot and bomb aimer were doing a run up to the target, about a mile and a half or two miles away, my job was to stand up in the astrodome and keep a lookout above mainly because as I found out on the other raids you saw aircraft on other raids with their bomb doors open above you left and right so interrupting the bomb aimer who was calling to the pilot, ‘Steady. Left. Left. Steady. Left,’ I would say, ‘Johnny, there’s one at 11 o’clock’ or, ‘one at 2 o’clock,’ and he’d try and move over to save the bombs coming down through us. It was successful, that Dresden trip and we came back and we were very privileged and lucky to get through eleven more as a crew.
[machine paused]
MJ: It’s on.
SLD: Having, having experienced, pilot and I, our first raid which was horrendous as has proved over the years with Dresden we settled down to training flights and then successfully got through eleven more. One, one that again focusses in my mind of how lucky you are to be here today is we went to an oil refinery called Harburg just outside of Hamburg and as I experienced on the Dresden raid you flew in some two miles away with a straight course for the bomb aimer and the pilot but on this occasion all I could see over the target was a series of ten and fifteen searchlights and we were a mile or so away but I remember at least three aircraft were caught in the lights, hit by the barrage and exploded into a ball and down they went. And I can think, think now to myself thinking well I hope they don’t pick us up before we’ve got rid of ours but we managed to get through, drop the bombs and come out the other side and that’s the hairiest one I would think apart from the Dresden. The dramatic scenes of fire. But the raids, we were lucky and successful and as I say we did eleven as a crew. Twelve in all and they were great colleagues. When the European war finished we were switched to Waddington. 617. And we were involved in what they called Dodge and Exodus and that was flying POWs, our POWs from Italy, Naples and Bari back to England and we used to take twenty four soldiers out, sitting in the fuselage and fly them out and then do a return trip and the humorous part was, I suppose it’s humorous at our age of twenty, twenty one, I was still not twenty one but on the way back they wanted to go in to the mid upper turret so we used to say, I think we used to say, ‘Don’t go around one side more than twenty times otherwise it’ll unscrew,’ but they loved to and to see the patchwork quilt that was England really. They would go up forward by the navigator, the engineer or the bomb aimer and see it so the joy on their faces was worth every second of those flights, being POWs for years and came back. And then towards the end of ‘45 we’d been waiting to fly out to India as nine, with 9 squadron as part of the Tiger Force intending to bomb Japan from the isle of Okinawa where the Americans had made two runways. One for them and one for us. Anyway, it got postponed night after night. We went for a few drinks into Lincoln, came back and the whole station was alight. We said, ‘What’s happened?’ He said, ‘You’re taking off at 4 o’clock,’ and this was about 12 o’clock [laughs] so we packed all our gear, pouring with rain, and flew off to Tobruk then to Cairo and then Karachi and then down to a place called Digri just outside of Calcutta and we were there for a few months practicing different types of bombing and that with 9 squadron and of course the Japs surrendered so we came back. We landed at St Mawgan and we were given a rail pass and four days to get back to Waddington and that was the end of our crew as a unit flying. I was posted to Woodbridge in Suffolk where I found myself as a warrant officer looking after, with twelve men, three hundred polish chaps who were waiting to go home and I’d only stayed there about six months and I was posted to RAF in Germany, Bad Eilsen and stayed out there for just over a year at Signals Headquarters but to me the experiences that I had before and the company with friends was just a holiday really because I was very active in running and football and cricket and that’s what I toured around with the RAF team and we won the RAF Inter-Services, well the British Forces Inter-Services football match at Cologne stadium. Again, as a highlight because it was the army that was going to win the final. They had every army person there, senior level, we beat them and the whole reception afterwards went down like a lead balloon.
[machine pause]
SLD: Right. Laurie Davis, otherwise Red, from there, from the 619 squadron. When I left the Germany in November ‘47 I’ve kept in touch with various groups through my son and until this year I’ve done six marches at the cenotaph on Armistice Day but this year there was insufficient members to march so they didn’t lay a wreath on behalf of Bomber Command but on the 31st of October I meet up with the squadron and adjoining that group was a bomb aimer, Joe Dutton, he’s treasurer and secretary of 619 and we meet there and have a meal and go over and have a look at the statue and lay a wreath and it always amazes me that people that look at it and say, ‘Why are people raising their hand above their eyes?’ And I said to several, ‘When you came back off a raid three or 4 o’clock in the morning and left your aircraft and waiting in the layby waiting to be picked up to go for debriefing and then you hear in the darkness another flight coming in and you just automatically put your hand up to look, see, ‘Oh I wonder who this has made it back again with us?’ And that’s it and that is the feeling that goes on that you were lucky and you respect the fact that you’ve made it back and I was talking to Joe Dutton only in October that, I think I said to him that if we weren’t going on a raid tonight we’d probably go into the village and have a drink and I said here it is seventy one years ago and we’re lucky to be able to do that. Just mentioning something people often said, ‘Didn’t you feel anything of bombing the targets?’ And I go back to fifteen and a half years of age in Portsmouth when they had the biggest raid, the 10th of January 1941, fire watching with my dad outside the house and experience this whistle and continuous whistle and getting closer and closer. Little did I know that it was a bomb and then everything went black, covered in dust and our house had disappeared and that for me thinks, not apportioning blame but they did start it and Plymouth and London and Portsmouth and Southampton but it’s one of those and I’m very grateful and fortunate to have gone through the friendship and association throughout with that crew. Yeah.
MJ: On behalf of the International Bomber Command I’d like to thank Laurie Davis at his home in Portsmouth for his recording. Otherwise known as Red. May he travel on well. 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 Sidney Lawrence Davis
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mick Jeffery
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-02
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ADavisSL151202, PDavisSL1501
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:15:46 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Laurie Davis trained as a wireless operator and first went to RAF Silverstone where crews were formed. Because of his bright red hair, he was then known as ‘Red’. The crew worked on Wellingtons for a few weeks and then Stirlings at RAF Syerston. They then went on to Lancasters and to conversion and finished going on to 619 Squadron based at RAF Strubby in Lincolnshire. Their first operation was on Dresden, the next operation was to an oil refinery just outside Hamburg. At least three aircraft got caught in the searchlights, were hit by the barrage and exploded into a ball. The crew did twelve operations together. Towards the end of 1945 they flew out to India with 9 Squadron as part of the Tiger Force; with 617 Squadron (RAF Waddington) he took part in operations Dodge and Exodus. Laurie was posted to RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk as a warrant officer. After about six months he was posted in Germany. He then toured round with the RAF team for football and cricket, winning the British Forces Inter-Services football match at Cologne stadium. Since leaving Germany in November 1947 he has kept in touch with various groups and has done six marches at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day. He meets up with the squadron every October when they laid a wreath.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Oxfordshire
India
Germany
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
1947-11
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
619 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
RAF Silverstone
RAF Strubby
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Woodbridge
searchlight
sport
Stirling
Tiger force
training
Wellington
wireless operator