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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2223/39869/ABuxtonAG220823.1.mp3
5d29db5ab6d80c540b94f6fe7e7beacc
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Title
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Buxton, Alan George
A G Buxton
Description
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An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Alan Buxton (- 2023, Royal Australian Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator in 617 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2022-08-23
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Buxton, AG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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JH: Hello. This is John Horsburgh. I’m here today in Northern Sydney. It’s the 23rd of August 2022 and I have the pleasure of interviewing Alan Buxton here for the IBCC Archives. Good afternoon, Alan.
AB: Good afternoon, John.
JH: Thanks. Thanks for making the time and we’ve just had a brief chat and I think we’re in for an interesting interview here. Why don’t we start off Alan by telling me where you hail from, a bit about your childhood and maybe a bit about your parents?
AB: Yes.
JH: Let’s start. Let’s start there.
AB: I was born in Parramatta on the 4th of December 1920.
JH: You’re an Eels supporter then, are you? Parramatta Eels.
AB: Well, I should be but I —
JH: Yeah.
AB: I’m not all that, you know feisty about different teams you know.
JH: Yes.
AB: Having a favourite team and that sort of thing.
JH: Yes. So did you grow up in Parramatta?
AB: I grew up, yeah my, my, my grandfather owned the Royal Hotel on the corner of Church Street and the Great Western Highway and my father worked in the hotel when he left school. He went to King’s School at Parramatta and he worked for his dad and we lived in Campbell Street, Parramatta. That wasn’t that far away from the —
JH: Yeah.
AB: From the hotel. And my other grandfather, my mother’s father he was the, he was close by at the hotel and he was a produce merchant.
JH: Yes.
AB: His name was William Walter Webb. I, I attended when I was five years of age Parramatta Public School. A little primary school and when I did start there the custom was in those days you had to write with your right hand. If you didn’t write with your right, if you picked up the pen or your slate pencil thing with your left hand teachers would come along and rap you over your knuckles with a ruler. But my mother was a bit sharp and she got a doctor’s letter to stay that I was a left hander and I wasn’t to be made to write right handed. And she produced that to the headmaster and I never ever got a hit on the knuckles because of that letter that my mother submitted to the Head. Lived in Parramatta until I was about six years of age and my dad, we moved to central Concord when my dad got a job as a vacuum salesman. The Electrolux. And he used to go around to the various houses selling Electrolux machines to, you know the various housewives which was pretty good. He was doing very well. It was quite a, you know it was an innovation and he made, he was quite comfortable. He decided he would open up a [unclear] shop.
JH: What’s that?
AB: Well, it’s now they call them a delicatessen.
JH: Oh yes, okay.
AB: And that, this was in Concord West.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And —
JH: Which is now Homebush I think.
AB: Hmmn?
JH: Near Homebush.
AB: Yeah. That’s right.
JH: Yes. I know.
AB: We were going quite, it was going quite well until the depression started and when people then didn’t have the money to be able to buy delicacies from a [unclear] shop or to have afternoon tea or morning teas at the tables because money was so tight and he went broke. And that was when in 1930 and we had a tough time during the depression years. Dad didn’t have, have a job and eventually the war started and then my dad joined up as soon as war started. Joined up the Army again after having served in the First World War.
JH: In the First World War. Yes.
AB: And he put his age back. He was, in 1939 he was forty two.
JH: Yes.
AB: And he said he was thirty four because you had, in those days you had to be over eighteen and under thirty five to get into the Army. When my dad joined up I thought to myself well I’ll join up too. So I, I went and oh prior to that I had seen an advertisement in the paper that the RAF were requiring volunteers for aircrew and there was a five year training course. So I applied for that and I got interviewed. I did tests. English, maths and I managed to pass all those subjects but when I got to the medical they knocked me back. They said, ‘You’re not fit for flying duties.’ Which was the requirement in those days.
JH: Not because you were left handed I hope.
AB: It wasn’t because I was left-handed. They told me that I, my depth perception wasn’t good enough. I wouldn’t be able to land the aircraft safely. So that was before the war started. It was around about, around about the, towards the end of 1938, early ’39. And then when war started I got a call up by the RAAF and I went through the same rigmarole. Did the tests and the result was I wasn’t fit for flying duties.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Which was the requirement in those days. In the early days. So I said to them, they said, ‘Well, you can come in as ground crew and you might be able to remuster.’ And I said, ‘Oh no. I won’t do that.’ I said, ‘I’ll join the Army instead.’
JH: Yes.
AB: So I went in to the Army.
JH: So Alan what did your father say when he, he found out that you’d joined the Army? Did he know about it?
AB: Well, I I put my age up from nineteen to twenty one and of course you didn’t have to produce your father’s mother’s written permission to join you see. So —
JH: Yeah.
AB: So, he was a bit upset about that but he said, ‘Well, what am I going to do with you son?’ He said, ‘If they put you in the infantry I’m going to tell them how old you are.’ He’s remembering the infantry of the —
JH: First World War.
AB : First World War. How crook it was. Anyhow, when I was inducted into the Survey Regiment he thought well that’s a good idea.
JH: Yes.
AB: You’re not going to be stuck in the in the trenches. He was thinking that’s what it was going to be like. And I, I trained in various camps in Australia. Eventually we went to the Middle East.
JH: By ship I presume.
AB: Hmmn?
JH: By ship.
AB: Oh yes. We —
JH: Yes.
AB: I went [laughs] by yeah by, we went to the Middle East by the first trip that the Queen Elizabeth had done as a troop ship.
JH: Yes.
AB: And when we entered, when, as you enter the ship’s doorway on the side of the ship we were handed a card. Each person got a card and on the card was where you were to be quartered and I got a card which says A deck and then a cabin number.
JH: Yes.
AB: When we eventually found out where this was we went up and got in to, inside this cabin and we had this magnificent cabin my mate, Alan [Sear] and myself and it was a luxurious cabin. We had beds. We had our own toilets and showers, a bathroom in this lovely, this lovely cabin. Anyhow, we went in there and started to unload our our kitbags et cetera and a door opened and in comes Captain Reynolds. Our captain. He said, ‘Oh, you two chaps,’ he said, ‘Repack your goods.’ He said, ‘I’m taking over this cabin.’ So —
JH: It sounded too good to be true in other words.
AB: Hmmn?
JH: It sounded too good to be true.
AB: True. Yeah, he was going to take over.
JH: JH: Yeah.
AB: So we talked amongst ourselves and said, ‘We don’t like the idea of that.’ I said, ‘Why does he get to do that?’ So we went up and found the, the ship’s purser and we told the purser who [pause] what had happened and he, he got upset. He said, ‘I decide where you go. You were given that that cabin.’ He said, ‘You’re going to stay in that cabin.’ And he, he over the loudspeaker he called Captain Reynolds into his office and told Captain Reynolds off and Captain Reynolds he was called along with a lot of other officers down to the bowels of the ship and we were in this lovely cabin on A deck. We were a bit fortunate there on our trip to the Middle East.
JH: So did that involve going up through the Suez Canal?
AB: Yes. We went up —
JH: Yes.
AB: Went up through the Suez Canal and then we, when we got to Port Tewfik we got off the ship and transferred to, to rail and we went by train into Palestine and at a campsite called Hill 95 not very far away from Gaza.
JH: Yes.
AB: We did more training there which was tough because it was so hot during the daytime and we had to do all these route marches all over the place. You know all over the sand and hills.
JH: In the footsteps of the Light Horse.
AB: All that lot. Yes. Like that.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And it was tough going but we as I said we had to [fatten our [unclear] stick our legs up] et cetera and build ourselves up and and then when the, it was in July 1941 they started the problem of going in and fighting the Vichy French. Clearing them out of Lebanon and Syria.
JH: Yes.
AB: And we joined that push and we stayed there up around the top of Syria near near the Turkish border around Homs and Aleppo and those places. We stayed up there until we were, we had to come back to Australia because the Japanese came into the war.
JH: Yes.
AB: And we got we left the Middle East in February and we got back to Australia in April.
JH: Was that ’42?
AB: ’42.
JH: 1942. Or ’41.
AB: Yeah. ’42 that was.
JH: ’42. Yeah.
AB: Then we trained in, went up to Queensland and trained to go to the jungles area up to Papua New Guinea and at that particular time the Air Force was interviewing people from the returned soldiers from the Middle East to ask them whether they’d like to transfer to the Air Force into aircrew.
JH: From what you said before I think you jumped at that didn’t you?
AB: Anyhow, a couple of us were down in Brisbane on leave and we found out all about this so we, we went to one of those offices where there were recruiting the people like [unclear] airmen and we were, went in and did the exams and then again to see whether we were good enough to get into the Air Force as aircrew and they knocked me back. I passed all the exams but when it came to the medical then I was, it was the doctors were checking me over and they, he said, ‘Well, we can’t take you. You’ve got a hernia.’ I said, ‘What’s a hernia?’ He said, ‘Well, you see that lump down there.’ He pointed to a lump down in the groin area. He said, ‘That’s a hernia and we could not have you flying with a hernia.’ So I said, I said, ‘How the hell am I to get into the Air Force? I want to get in, get in there in the early days.’ And so the chap said to me there, he said, ‘Well, the best thing you could do is when you get back to camp you go to the RAP.’ That’s the Regimental Aid Post, ‘Bend yourself over, clutch your groin and tell them you’re in awful pain.’ So I did a bit of good acting. I did that and they whipped me straight in to the hospital. Ipswich. At Ipswich.
JH: Ipswich. Yeah.
AB: The place there. And they operated on me and fixed me up. And when I came out of hospital I was sent down to a convalescent hospital down in Brisbane. And then once I got myself fit fit again I went down to the Air Force people again in Brisbane and I said, ‘Here I am. I haven’t got a hernia anymore.’ So they inspected me. He said, ‘Right,’ he says, ‘We’ll drag you out of the Army.’ So I went out of the Army on the 24th of November ’42 and I went to the Air Force on the 25th of November ’42. I was happy as a larry then.
JH: I bet you were.
AB: I was happy to get into the Air Force and we trained at, at Bradfield Park. That’s where I went to.
JH: Yes.
AB: We were posted to Bradfield Park. We had to do a rookie’s course, you know doing marching around the parade ground and rifle drill, you know with shoulder arms and all this sort of business. Slow arms you know. Blokes roaring out at us. Of course, we were being an ex-soldier we didn’t like this at all you know. Pretty grim. Anyway, we had to put up with it and eventually we were posted to Bradfield Park. We were there, we were already there. We were transferred across to the aircrew section and we were straightaway did our exams there. Once we passed those we then went to, they sent us to Canada and we went to a town in Canada called Edmonton which was number 2 AOS. Air Observer’s School. We, we did our training there and we, when we passed out I was fortunate enough along with four other chaps to be given a commission off course and I became a pilot officer after finishing that course. Then we went. They sent us across to England.
JH: Yes.
AB: And then again there was more training. Sextant training at an AFU, Advanced Flying Unit at Wigtown.
JH: Wigtown in Scotland.
AB: In Scotland.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That was a funny old place because we didn’t understand the people in the town and they didn’t understand us.
JH: Yeah. So, Alan when, when did you arrive in in Scotland? This would be I’m guessing the end of —
AB: Let me think.
JH: During early ’43.
AB: Yeah. It was, it was in [pause] No. ’43. No, I was still training in Canada then.
JH: Okay.
AB: Til, til we got, we got to England early ’44.
JH: Early ’44.
AB: It would be January ’44.
JH: Yeah. Yeah. And you had to run the gauntlet of the U-boats.
AB: Oh yeah.
JH: From Canada.
AB: Yeah. Yeah.
JH: To Scotland. Yeah.
AB: Yeah. They were, you know luckily we were, got through okay.
JH: Yes.
AB: By the time we got to Southampton it was a great sigh of relief that we were still around and they sent us up to, over to Brighton where we stayed for a short while. We were given our vouchers to go to, up to London to get measured up for our officer’s uniforms. And then we got posted to AFU at Wigtown in Scotland.
JH: Yes.
AB: After that we came down and went to our Operational Training Unit at Lichfield and that is where we crewed up.
JH: Yes. I’m always interested in, on how the crewing up happened.
AB: It was very surprising. We were, the whole of the intake with all these trainees and we had to go down to to a big hangar. We went in there and there were all these blokes in there. All these fellas getting around. Sergeants and pilot officers and et cetera and other blokes you know. Flight lieutenants. And we were then, we were told we had to crew up and that was a bit of a sort of sort of a thing. How are we going to do that? You know. So anyhow, a fellow came out. A pilot came across to me. Saw me standing there and he said, ‘My name’s Howard Gavin.’ He said, ‘How would you like to be my navigator?’ I looked him over and I said, ‘I certainly would.’ It turned out that he had already done his first tour of operations in the Middle East on on an Australian squadron, you know. Flying Wellingtons. And I imagined we were going to train on Wellingtons I thought well, this is a good idea. I’ll say yes. So then we went around and he went up looking for his bomb aimer and then at each bloke you know. That’s how we crewed up. It was fine.
JH: So, tell me were you looking for the badge they wore?
AB: Oh yes. The pilot. We were looking for —
JH: Yeah.
AB: We were looking to see you know if you were a navigator or whether you were —
JH: Yeah.
AB: A wireless air gunner.
JH: Yes.
AB: Or a tail gunner. A gunner.
JH: Okay. So how long did this, this process take? This crewing up.
AB: Oh, about an hour.
JH: Okay. I had the impression it kind of lasted for half a day [laughs]
AB: Oh, it didn’t take that long.
JH: Okay. Yeah.
AB: Well, my, no.
JH: Yeah.
AB: It might have happened like that for some people.
JH: Yes. Yeah.
AB: We were just a bit, a bit lucky.
JH: Yeah. So once you’d crewed up, you got your crew you then left the hangar.
AB: That’s right.
JH: To go and get a cup of coffee or something.
AB: We went.
JH: And get to know each other. Yeah.
AB: Have afternoon tea.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And you went to the, went to the mess hall of course and had a beer.
JH: Yes.
AB: And the, for our bomb aimer he couldn’t come with us because we were where the officers were and he was, he was a sergeant. So he went, he went off to the sergeant’s mess.
JH: Yes.
AB: So it was a bit, you know. A bit cruel.
JH: Yes. So, then you, then you, so you had your crew and then you were waiting to see where you were going to be posted. To which squadron.
AB: No, not then. That would be at at that place at the OTU.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And you trained there and you did your training.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And then you, in Wellingtons. Then when you finished that training course you went to the Heavy Conversion Unit.
JH: Yeah.
AB: At Winthorpe. That’s where I had all the problem with the with the aircraft. One of our final trips under the instruction of an English flying instructor.
JH: Tell me what happened.
AB: And that’s where, well we went across, this was in 24th of September, forty⸻, ’44. We were doing our, we did many trips night flying, daylight flying in the, in the Stirling and we’d been over to the coast of Holland and we came, this was actually night time.
JH: In a Stirling.
AB: In a Stirling. And we had to fly this course and eventually we, as we came back towards base in England which was at, at Winthorpe.
JH: Winthorpe.
AB: The engine started to catch on fire. So they feathered one and then another one would go out.
JH: This was over the North Sea still.
AB: Over the North Sea. Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And we were proceeding along there and then the next one went. So we had one engine and the skipper, the instructor, he was a flight lieutenant he said, ‘We’re going to have to ditch.’ Well, we knew what ditching meant. It wasn’t too pleasant because the chances were pretty slim of you surviving. The North Sea’s pretty cold and you had to make sure you got out and your lifeboat pumped up. You know. They pumped them up.
JH: If you were going to ditch was the wireless operator able to give their position or were they not allowed to give your position if you were going to ditch?
AB: Well, I’d already told the skipper.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That where we were when he —
JH: Yeah.
AB: Gave the instruction and I said to him, ‘We’re not that far away from the coast of England.’
JH: Yes.
AB: ‘And I think we’ll be able to get there, be able to land, turn around and aim the plane out towards the sea.’
JH: Yes.
AB: And we were able to do it ourselves. I looked at where we were at the time. I took a fix and we were on the Gee box and you could get a very accurate fix.
JH: Yeah. Because you wouldn’t want to —
AB: He did.
JH: Want to land on a beach would you? Yeah.
AB: He took notice of what I said.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And we, he took it back over the coast. We made the coast of England. Went for a little while, a few minutes and then turned around a hundred and eighty degrees and gave the order to bale out.
JH: What height were you then?
AB: Two thousand feet.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That was where we had trouble deciding how to get out of the hatch [laughs] both the bomb aimer and myself and eventually I talked the bomb aimer into going first. Which he did do and he was unable to tumble out because of the hatch way and he went out feet first, dropped down and went facing, facing the front of the aircraft and the slipstream got him and smashed his head into the hatchway.
JH: He recovered enough to pull his rip cord.
AB: Yeah. Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: He did do.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And then I decided because he went forward and split the front of his head open.
JH: Yeah. He went out feet first.
AB: He went out feet first.
JH: Yeah.
AB: So I decided I’m not going to get my head smashed like that when I bale. I’ll face the back of the plane to drop out.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Feet first. And of course, the slipstream got me as well and knocked me out in the back of the head. The back of my head was split open and I was unconscious until I heard a voice telling me to open the rip, pull the rip cord. The D ring. The D ring. Pull the D ring which I did do and I had the parachute opened up and I had two swings and I got laid down beautifully right into a potato patch.
JH: How high do you think you were when you, when you jumped out?
AB: About a thousand feet.
JH: Yeah, and but this voice you heard. Tell me about that.
AB: It’s, I heard this voice telling me to [pause] and later on I was, I was on leave down in Okehampton at a couple’s place, an elderly couple and she was a Medium. And we decided to be entertained by joining in the using you know the glass for the table.
JH: A séance. Yeah.
AB: A, yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: They were playing around with that glass on the table which was incredible. You could feel the electricity current there. It was a very strange feeling. Powerful it was. And we were sending messages and then we sent a message to ask my grandfather whether he was around. And eventually we had, a couple of days later we had a séance where she went into a trance and when she went into the trance she changed her position. She she spread her legs like that, put her hands on her knees like that and that’s how my grandfather always sat and I asked him to speak. I wanted to talk to him.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And he told me that he was with me a short while ago when I got out of the aircraft. Now, they didn’t know that. They had no knowledge of anything of that nature of what happened.
JH: Yeah. Was she speaking in his voice?
AB: She changed her voice. She changed her voice into a different tone tone altogether. Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah, she she sort of changed her voice into a man’s voice.
JH: Yes. Yeah. So it, yeah so it was his voice you heard.
AB: Yeah. Yeah. It was amazing. It was absolutely amazing.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That was incredible.
JH: I bet you’ve thought about that a lot.
AB: I have.
JH: Yeah.
AB: I did. I’ve told a lot of people about it too.
JH: Yes.
AB: Whether it, whether they think I’m stupid or not I don’t know.
JH: Yeah.
AB: But I, I was I was impressed by it.
JH: I know my father he, he really believed in that. That kind of thing.
AB: Yeah.
JH: Wow. So let’s, let’s wind forward Alan. Tell me about your first operation. What was that like?
AB: The first operation. Yes. Well, we, when we finally finished with our Lancaster Finishing School we got posted to 617 Squadron.
JH: A famous squadron.
AB: That’s the one. Yeah. We were very lucky. We were the only ones posted there.
JH: Yes.
AB: And we managed to do very well in our flying. We all got high marks as I said so they sent us to this.
JH: The elite.
AB: Yeah. Sent us to this this squadron and at the time Willie Tait, JB Tait, they used to call him Willie. He was the CO.
JH: Yeah.
AB: A very famous man.
JH: Yes. Of course.
AB: He had four DSOs, two DFCs and a mention in despatches. That was his first award in, and that was when he was in a Fairey Battle. Who would want to be in one of those? Our first operation was very early in in November ’44.
JH: ’44. Yes. Got that.
AB: And it was to the, bomb the Urft Dam. The Urft, U R F T I think it was.
JH: Oh.
AB: U R F T. Urft.
JH: Yeah. Where was that located?
AB: That’s in Germany.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We were, when we got there it was ten tenths cloud. We couldn’t see the target. These, these were daylights and of course we couldn’t see the target. We weren’t allowed to drop our bomb. We had a Tallboy on board, the twelve thousand pound Tallboy and we had to bring that back to base.
JH: So you didn’t have a bouncing type bomb.
AB: No, it was a Tallboy.
JH: Yeah. Okay.
AB: A Tallboy was a terrific machine. It, it used to spin around and had tail fins on it. It would turn around and keep straight and keep keep at an angle you know when it left the aircraft and go, it was a concrete piercing bomb. It would go through the concrete and then explode as it got through. It was a brilliant bomb designed by Barnes Wallis.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And so then we went back and did the Urft Dam again. Again it was ten tenths cloud. So we weren’t too happy because we hadn’t had to drop that bomb. Had to bring it back again.
JH: So you —
AB: And no.
JH: Could you still log it as an operation even though —
AB: Oh yes. Yes.
JH: Yes. It did count. Yeah.
AB: It counted.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
AB: Each time you took off and made the trip it would be counted. Yeah.
JH: And let me ask how many aircraft in that operation?
AB: We had about twenty two.
JH: Twenty two. Yeah. Any support?
AB: No.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Just on our own.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We never had any support.
JH: Yeah.
AB: 617 was, sometimes you’d fly with 9 Squadron.
JH: Yeah.
AB: That would have made a bigger target but a few times they went with a bit, we went after the Tirpitz. 9 going with 617 up there.
JH: Did they link up with the Pathfinders on that sort of raid?
AB: We never had Pathfinders.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We were we were our own Pathfinders.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We didn’t need, didn’t have them.
JH: Yeah.
AB: A Pathfinder.
JH: So did you go back a third time?
AB: No.
JH: Yeah.
AB: They decided that they wouldn’t waste our time.
JH: Okay. What about your next operation?
AB: Oh dear.
JH: Can you remember that?
AB: No. Oh.
JH: That would have been a bombing. Another bombing run.
AB: Yeah. Where yes ah that’s right. We went to Ijmuiden.
JH: Oh.
AB: In Holland.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Ijmuiden. And we, we attacked E-boat pens and submarine pens there.
JH: God. Successful?
AB: Yes. Very.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah. Oh, the bombs were good.
JH: Yeah.
AB: They went through the concrete supports.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And blew up inside you know.
JH: Yeah.
AB: But then, then we went to another one in Holland the same sort of thing. Poortershaven.
JH: Poortershaven.
JH: Poortershaven.
AB: In Holland. Yeah.
AB: Another one.
JH: Another, another port. Yeah.
AB: The same sort of thing.
JH: Yeah.
AB: E-boat pens and submarine pens. Later on, many years later it was in the ‘90s I got a letter from an historian who was at, he was at Poortershaven and he he told us you know in the letter he said there had been intelligence that told them to get the Dutch out of out of the way and warned them. Get the Dutch out of the way as they were going to come over and bomb.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah. And this bloke said, and he said, ‘We commend you. Not one Dutchman got killed.’
JH: That’s amazing.
AB: Yeah. Yeah.
JH: Yeah. That’s incredible attacking those pens because they were real fortresses weren’t they?
AB: Oh yeah. Yeah. They were.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We went up to Bergen as well. Before we went to Bergen they, a group of commandos, Englishmen, red beret blokes came out to our squadron and they were, they trained with us. We were going to drop them. Drop them in the fjord and they had these fabled boats and then they were supposed to be going ashore and attacking the heavy water plants. You know the heavy water plants they had built outside Bergen?
JH: Yes.
AB: The Germans had that.
JH: Yes.
AB: But they decided it was just too risky. They didn’t go ahead with that but we went up and bombed the E-boat submarine pens up there as well. The Germans had them up there as well.
JH: Was this daylight or at night time?
AB: No, we we always left at night time.
JH: Yes.
AB: To get there in the daytime.
JH: Okay.
AB: Because we had to visually sight our target.
JH: Well, you were flying up the fjords I guess towards the target.
AB: But, we, we went up to Lossiemouth to refuel up there.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And then we went off to, flew out to Bergen. We flew just above the deck low flying to get under the radar.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And we then when we got up near Bergen we made height and dropped our bombs on the E-boat —
JH: Yeah.
AB: And submarine pens up there.
JH: By then it was morning. You could see.
AB: Oh yeah.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
AB: Yeah.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah. You always, you were trying to get to your target in daylight.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah, because you had to sight your target and take your photographs.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And if you, if you, if you didn’t drop your bombs where you should do you when you, it meant that when you the next day or when you got back you’d be up doing practice bombing in the Wash.
JH: Yeah. Good incentive.
AB: Hmmn?
JH: Good incentive to be on target.
AB: Yeah, oh yes.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Good. They were very [pause] and we we we did another one which was quite interesting.
JH: Yes.
AB: Berchtesgaden.
JH: I know that place. I’ve been there.
AB: Been there. Yeah. I know, I’ve been there too. I’ve been there on the ground as well. The, that was on ANZAC Day ’45 and our target was the the big shaft. The air shaft.
JH: Yes. Where the lift is going up.
AB: There wasn’t any lift then. That’s where they put it. And we would put our bomb down that shaft. Well, we flew around that for about twenty five minutes and could not find the shaft. And later on, years later when I went to Berchtesgaden.
JH: Yeah.
AB: I walked up beyond the, out to go up in the lift.
JH: You go up in the lift.
AB: Yeah.
JH: And then you can walk.
AB: And then I walked —
JH: Yeah.
AB: Up the hill a bit. Up the mountain.
JH: Yes.
AB: Looked back on where it was all snowy. All snow. And I said no wonder we couldn’t see it because they had, they had camouflage nets and a cover over the top of the shaft. That’s why we couldn’t find it. So we had to bring our bomb back to England again.
JH: Yeah.
AB: On that occasion.
JH: Yes.
AB: That was the last operation that that was done by 617 in Europe.
JH: That was the last. I believe that was the last Bomber Command operation in the second world war. I’m not too quite sure but that may be so. I read that somewhere.
AB: We led, we led, 617 Squadron led a big main force group. Main force. And about four hundred planes came after us. We had the honour of being the first there to⸻
JH: To Berchtesgaden. Yeah.
AB: Different crews had different targets and they were all targeting where these Nazis had their, a resource they used to go down on.
JH: Yeah.
AB: To spend leave in. Yeah. And then main force followed after we we got there and dropped a few more bombs.
JH: Yeah.
AB: On Berchtesgaden. It’s a beautiful town. But later on when I went and saw it.
JH: Yes.
AB: In 1980 it was, you wouldn’t have known it had been, it had been bombed at all.
JH: Yes.
AB: That was happening all around you. I went back to different places where we, where the place had been bombed heavily and they’d reconstructed it so good.
JH: Yes.
AB: Amazing. They did did a remarkable job of reconstructing.
JH: I was there maybe four years ago and I noticed there was absolutely no Nazi insignia anywhere. Even when they were carved in stone. It’s all been removed.
AB: it’s been removed.
JH: Yes.
AB: Yeah.
JH: Yeah. Okay. Well, last operation. So what happened then? You stayed on in the UK.
AB: What they were doing then the Australian, the RAAF people over there decided they would send a squadron out to Okinawa to bomb Japan. So myself and a couple of other members of our crew volunteered to go, to go out to to Okinawa and the squadron was 467 Squadron and that was, that was located in in Metheringham. And that was an enormous contrast to our location in Woodhall Spa while we were on 617 Squadron. The officer’s mess was the magnificent Petwood Hotel.
JH: I’ve been there. The Guy Gibson Bar.
AB: Yeah. That’s right.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah, that was, we were upstairs. Our quarters were upstairs and they had a not not far from the bar was a billiard room. Is that still there?
JH: I’m not quite sure.
AB: They had a billiard room and my wireless operator and myself we were we didn’t drink but we played snooker in there in our spare time between when we went flying.
JH: Yes.
AB: The rest of the crew would get on at the grog but we, being teetotallers we we played snooker all the time and we got quite good at it actually.
JH: And you cleaned them up.
AB: You see when we got there we got good. Yeah. I took to it quite well.
JH: What a lovely place that is.
AB: It’s a beautiful spot isn’t it?
JH: Yeah.
AB: Yeah. They were I’ve got pictures of it on the computer.
JH: I’d like to go back there.
AB: When I went back to England in ’91 and did did a tour of England. Hired a car and drove all over England and Scotland and Wales. I did not go back to Woodhall Spa. I don’t know why I didn’t go back to show Marie, my wife.
JH: You didn’t want to go back or —
AB: I just for some reason or other it didn’t occur to me.
JH: Yeah.
AB: To go back and have a look at it. I can remember it quite clearly. I remember where we slept and who was in the room with us. We had, there were six of us. Six of us in a very big big room. It had a big balcony and there was a couple of blokes slept out on the balcony. It had a roof over it of course. And there were my pilot and myself and there were four English. Well, English men there.
JH: So, so in your crew in 617 how many Australians in the crew?
AB: Six.
JH: Six. One English.
AB: And one English.
JH: Yeah.
AB: An English flight engineer.
JH: Now, Alan so did you get to Japan in the end?
AB: Ah now.
JH: Yes, sorry.
AB: We we we again trained heavily.
JH: Yeah.
AB: On 467 Squadron and incidentally we were quartered in Nissen huts which was quite a contrast [laughs] to the Petwood Hotel. We didn’t have any, didn’t have any priority about good quarters whether you were an officer or not. We were and we had our final embarkation leave and they dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Then they dropped the next one on Nagasaki. We were, then we were stood down and that was, that’s what was in, that was in —
JH: That was a shock for you.
AB: That was in August I think.
JH: Just as well you weren’t over in that area.
AB: Well, in a way yes because probably might not have been here to tell the tale. It was, it was quite in a way we were a little bit sad but then also overjoyed.
JH: Yes.
AB: You know, we were sort of really keen to go and do something to those Japs.
JH: Yeah.
AB: We’d been reading and hearing a lot about what the Japs were doing.
JH: But that meant starting about going home.
AB: Yeah. Well, we left. We came home on the Athlone Castle and we got home around about February ’46. During the war when I came out of the Middle East I got married. I married my sweetheart and, and while I was away in Canada she gave birth to a son. [unclear] it was quite a, I didn’t realise at the time that when I got married that I was going to have a son.
JH: Yes.
AB: While the war was still on.
JH: When you were in [pause] when you were in Canada.
AB: I was in Canada. Yeah.
JH: Yes.
AB: Edmonton. That was on the 3rd of November ’43.
JH: So you hadn’t seen much of him at all.
AB: Hadn’t seen him at all until he was, until February ’46.
JH: Yes.
AB: He didn’t know who I was.
JH: Gosh. Yeah.
AB: I was a stranger. Took a while to get for him to know who I was, you know.
JH: Yes.
AB: Took a long long while.
JH: Yes.
AB: It was a real bad period really.
JH: Yeah.
AB: I I used to get quite annoyed about it, you know.
JH: Yes.
AB: He’d go to his grandfather all the time.
JH: Yes. Yeah.
AB: He wouldn’t come near me.
JH: Yes.
AB: Yeah. But anyhow after the war the war ended we ended up having another three children. Another son in 1948. Then a daughter in ’49.
JH: Yes.
AB: And then another daughter in ’52. So we had —
JH: Four in the family.
AB: Four in the family.
JH: Yeah.
AB: Two boys and two girls and one of the boys is, both boys, the eldest boy when he was about nineteen he joined the the Army.
JH: Yeah.
AB: And he did twenty one years in the Army. He was in Malaya, Borneo and Vietnam and he was, the youngest boy when he turned, I don’t know what it was he had his name pulled out the barrel to go to Vietnam. They had a —
JH: Yes, I know.
AB: Birthday barrel.
JH: Yes.
AB: Yeah. He went to Vietnam and unfortunately he he passed away when he was sixty three. He had cancer.
JH: Oh.
AB: Caused by his term in Vietnam. The Agent Orange. The Yanks dropped all this.
JH: Yes, I know.
AB: You know, Agent Orange and he he eventually he got this cancer and passed away in 2011. And the other boy and he was actually in the infantry. A young fella.
JH: Yes.
AB: The eldest boy had been in there for twenty one years. He was in the signals. So quite a bit of difference. He was mainly around the base area.
JH: Yes. So he wasn’t exposed.
AB: He wasn’t exposed.
JH: To the Agent Orange. Yeah.
AB: He wasn’t exposed as much as his brother was.
JH: Yeah. Well, that’s amazing that this you’ve got three generations in your family in the Army.
AB: Yes. Dad. Dad in both wars. The two boys. My sisters. Both sisters in the Women’s Army. Both my sisters.
JH: The Buxton’s have done their bit. More than done their bit, Alan.
AB: We’ve had a lot of experience in the Services. Yeah.
JH: You must be very proud of them all. Yeah.
AB: Very much so.
JH: Yeah. Yes. And you were telling me before eventually you found your feet career wise and joined Shell.
AB: That’s right and I worked there.
JH: And was that in Sydney or did you have to go —
AB: No. Sydney.
JH: To Melbourne.
AB: I was in the head, in the Sydney office. And then when they decided to build, or enlarge the refinery that John Fell owned in the Clyde. Clyde Refinery —
JH: Yes.
AB: I was transferred out to Clyde Refinery in ‘19⸻ I moved up. I was living at Narrabeen at the time.
JH: Yes.
AB: And I moved up to Eastwick and I got a transfer, a company transfer which was good.
JH: Were you with Shell all your, all your working career.
AB: No, before, before the war I was with Australian [Soaps] for a living.
JH: Yes. Okay.
AB: We can still see it’s Alexandria.
JH: Alexandria. Yes. You see, I know Alexandria well. Yeah.
AB: Well, I was with them until [laughs] and I was I was actually had the honour of being the first bloke to join the Services and when, when I was going out the gate the managing director Mr Harrison, a lovely old Scotsman he came out to me and he handed me an envelope. He said and wished me good luck and when I opened that envelope up he’d given me a ten pound note. I mean I was only getting one pound seventeen and sixpence a week and I ended up with a ten pound note. I thought I was made [laughs] Ten pound.
AB: It would have seemed like the lottery. Yeah.
JH: At the time because when, you know.
AB: Yeah.
JH: My pay was six pence a week.
AB: What a gesture.
JH: Hmmn?
AB: What a gesture.
JH: Oh, I thought it was wonderful. Yeah.
AB: Yeah. Have you still got the ten pound note?
JH: No.
AB: Okay [laughs]
JH: I spent that.
AB: Of course.
JH: I needed it. I didn’t have any —
JH: Yeah.
AB: Any money. Any money much in those days.
JH: Yeah. Well, Alan I can’t get over this interview. It’s really amazing. It’s quite a story. I need to have a lie down, a cup of tea and digest it all.
AB: Do you want a cup of tea now?
JH: Oh, now that sounds a great idea. I didn’t say that [laughs]
AB: Oh, I’ll see what I can.
JH: But yeah, I wouldn’t mind a cup.
AB: I’ll see if I can —
JH: So shall we, shall we wind it up and —
AB: Okay. Go on.
JH: So, I really would like to thank you for, for doing the interview. So, this is for the IBCC.
AB: Yeah.
JH: Veterans Interview Project and I think that that so that interview your your family can, can go in and listen to it or if anyone visits Lincolnshire they can go and listen to it.
AB: Oh right.
JH: The Bomber Command Centre there is quite something. I was there at the opening. And so Alan thanks very much.
AB: I get the information. You know these lads that found the plane, Stuart [McRory] and his brother Bruce on the work that has been done to restoring the Lancaster Just Jane.
JH: Yes.
AB: You know.
JH: Yes. Yeah.
JH: I’ve seen it.
AB: You’ve seen it.
JH: Yeah.
AB: They’re doing that restoration. It’s going on. It’s been going for years with this restoration.
JH: Yeah. Yeah.
AB: They use it. Normally it’s only used for taxi runs.
JH: Yes.
AB: Stuart, Stuart and his brother Bruce they’ve done the taxi ride. They charge fifty pounds to do the taxi ride up and down the runway.
JH: Fantastic. Yeah.
AB: Yeah. And —
JH: Well, on that note Alan I’m going to wind up here. Thanks 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 Alan George Buxton
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
John Horsburgh
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-08-23
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
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01:06:36 Audio Recording
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABuxtonAG220823
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943-11-03
1944-01
1944-09-24
1944-11
1945-04-25
1946-02
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Norway
Queensland
Alberta--Edmonton
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Norway--Bergen
Queensland--Brisbane
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 Australian Air Force
Language
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eng
Description
An account of the resource
Alan was born in Parramatta, Sydney, in Australia. After going to the Middle East with the army, he returned to Australia, when Japan entered the war, and transferred to the RAF in November 1942.
Alan was posted to Bradfield Park for training and then to No. 2 Air Observers’ School in Edmonton, Canada. He was given a commission as a pilot officer and went to the Advanced Flying Unit at RAF Wigtown in Scotland, followed by the Operational Training Unit at RAF Lichfield. Alan describes the process of crewing up. He trained on Wellingtons and then went to the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Winthorpe. Alan describes the night they had to parachute from their Stirling after a trip to the coast of Holland.
After Lancaster Finishing School, Alan was posted to 617 Squadron where the Commanding Officer was J B “Willie” Tait. His first operation in November 1944 was to bomb the Urft Dam in Germany but it was too cloudy to release the 12,000 lb Tallboy bomb on board. A second attempt was also unsuccessful. Alan then refers to two operations in the Netherlands where U-boat pens were bombed. Bergen was another operation. On 25 April 1945, their target was Berchtesgaden, their last operation leading a Main Force Group of 400 aircraft.
Alan then went to 467 Squadron at RAF Metheringham. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they were no longer required to go to Okanawa. Alan returned to Australia in February 1946 and joined Shell company in Sidney.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Coulter
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
467 Squadron
617 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
bale out
bombing
crewing up
Gee
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster Finishing School
love and romance
mess
military living conditions
navigator
observer
Operational Training Unit
RAF Lichfield
RAF Metheringham
RAF Wigtown
RAF Winthorpe
RAF Woodhall Spa
Stirling
submarine
superstition
Tallboy
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/553/8820/PMellorG1501.1.jpg
ec53d3c84b8db787d307d49e498fe698
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/553/8820/AMellorGH160822.1.mp3
7d3219223e8eb485a7c531b5af763278
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
Mellor, Gordon
Gordon Herbert Mellor
G H Mellor
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Mellor, G
Description
An account of the resource
Four oral history interviews with Gordon Mellor (1919 -2018, 929433, 172802 Royal Air Force). He trained in Canada as an observer and served as a navigator with 103 Squadron. He was shot down over Holland in 1942 but evaded capture.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-06
2016-06-07
2016-08-17
2016-08-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GM: Let me see.
CB: Just let me just -
GM: Yes.
CB: Introduce it. So today is, we are reconvening with Gordon and the date is the 22nd of August, in the afternoon and we are just going to pick up from the point where Gordon had been, he had met the priest who was in the area where he’d been walking and he’d taken, the priest had taken him to his own house.
GM: That is correct.
CB: So, over to you Gordon.
GM: Right. Well. The walk to the house that has just been mentioned of course was taken rather late in the day after the curfew so we didn’t meet anybody during that sort of mile, mile and a half walk but on arrival then his housekeeper was still up and we were fast approaching midnight and having received an introduction and I’m not sure what the drink was, I think possibly it was either coffee or something like that, on the other hand coffee keeps you awake but it was then off to bed in the priest’s own home and when I woke up in the morning then he was out on his duties but I was given breakfast and was told that there was one or two things that needed to be dealt with and[that the priest would be back and we would deal with it then. So he did return in due course and he wanted a certain amount of information about what I was and where had I come from and he said that I would have a visitor in the afternoon to keep me entertained. I’m not quite sure what the entertainment was supposed to be other than just talk and that happened indeed. A very nice lady turned up and introduced herself. The priest was out. The housekeeper which we have met already she may well have been somewhere in the house but she wasn’t noticeable at all and I then proceeded to tell the young lady where I’d been and where I was hoping to go which seemed to be very suitable and she made a number of approaches, asking questions and assessing in her own mind whether I was on the level so to speak or was, what also, could also be called a plant. Somebody to find out the information under the guise of being a helper. But this lady was a compatriot and she was a helper so when she went she said, ‘You’ll be hearing from us very shortly,’ and very shortly it proved to be. The priest came back and he said, ‘Well you’re off tonight. Just hold on for a little while,’ and certainly there was a gentleman turned up. I hadn’t seen him before. He hadn’t seen me at any time and we had a word or two and then I was, I must have been given a coat to cover up my battledress outfit and with that done we went out of the house, said goodbye to the priest and walked off down the road to a bus stop. That short period of time passed and a busy bus filled with quite a large number of people pulled up and we got on and couldn’t get away from the entrance at the back of the bus so we stuck there and the bus pulled away with us in a little bit of a crush but it was, it was quite comfortable. Shortly after that we then stopped outside which I would have thought was barracks because there was a little group of some five or six German soldiers obviously catching the bus for an evening out on the town and they crushed in and we being the current residents we sort of backed off as much as we could and give them room to get on. So these five or six soldiers were standing there with us standing at the back and the exit to the bus in front of these soldiers. Well we pulled away for about two hundred, three hundred yards and stopped again and it apparently it was probably the other end of the military area and two officers were waiting there and they then proceeded to get in to the rear of the bus and with the rankers were, which was between us and the officers they pushed back and it became quite a crush there. Fortunately it didn’t last overlong and eventually all of the military people got out at, I presume, a place of entertainment or whatever it was, I couldn’t be sure but suddenly there was a lot of room to stand and carry on with the journey which we did and went into a town. I struggle to think of the name of the town but it was towards the city and it was certainly more, more modern than places we had just left but we pulled up in a place where there was a square of sorts, the bus stop being in the square, and got out. So there was just the helper, the chap who was in charge, so to speak, of me and I followed him out. The bus pulled away and I was given to understand that the previous trip that they’d had a lot more soldiers before them so obviously it was a regular route. And then we walked uphill and I hadn’t got a clue where we were actually going other than it was a rise and the normal city houses on either side and suddenly he stopped. The front wall of the house, the living area and what have you was at the back of the pavement. There was no front garden or access like big doors or anything like that but there was just a single door with one or two steps up to each level because the slope of the ground had increased a bit. Banged on the door and in a very short time it was opened and we were beckoned in. I was introduced to a lady who came and the guide made his farewells and left me standing with the two ladies and he went off and I don’t ever remember seeing him again. He was just one of the helpers on the short distance duties. So I then became the guest of the two ladies and they, yes one I think one of them was American married to a German er to a, sorry to a Belgian medical man and she had lived in that area for quite a number of years so they were well known as residents. I stayed there two or three days and in that time I was taken into a, a shop in a nearby town and they had a studio sort of arrangement there. They took your photograph and you then waited a couple of hours and they had done a print and also I’m not sure where the document came from but it turned out to be sort of an identity document. And whether the chap who I had arrived with had got, had it already or whether they carried a stock of them I don’t know but from that an identity card for me with the necessary stamps and what have you was all done and transaction, money passed hands of course and in actual fact they gave me the amount of money so that I paid for it and it didn’t seem to involve the other people at all but never mind. I put it in my pocket and we left and went back to the flat where I was staying. This was obviously a necessity, you had the document with you because after the evening meal and we listened to a bit of the BBC on the radio and we then went to bed and there was a, you would be up fairly early in the morning and so it proved. I was up early and prepared to travel and they had the meal, I couldn’t tell you what the meal contained any more now but it was very satisfying and there was a knock on the door and in marched a helper. I have a job in visualising. I think it was a man, I’m pretty sure it was and he picked, picked me up and he had brought a long coat, a longish coat, overcoat style thing to put for me to put on because I was still in battledress and off we went having said goodbye and thanks to my people who had looked after me there. From there, now let me have a think. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, my recollection tells me that we went to the railway station and, where we were met by another helper and we travelled into [pause] you’d better hang on for a moment.
[machine pause]
GM: Now let’s see if we can get on.
CB: So you were getting on the train. Where were you going? That was going to Brussels.
GM: Oh wait a minute. Just a moment. This is where it gets complex. Yeah. Ok we were heading for, heading for Brussels. The question is who was I travelling with? Was it this chap or was it a woman? I think it was a chap. Well, ok. Let’s, I’m sure other people are better at it than I am. [pause] I think I’m right.
CB: Ok.
GM: I think, yes I’ll have to condense this a bit.
CB: Ok. So we’re going to Brussels.
GM: Yeah. We’re on the train heading to Brussels and I had, as a companion, somebody I hadn’t met before so we got out short of the main centre in Brussels and we then waited a short while and picked up another local train. More local perhaps than the one we had got off and we travelled the last mile or two within the city and got out. There was no, nobody there that was interested in us. We were just two people travelling and so we, [pause] Yeah. Damn it. Damn it.
CB: ‘Cause presumably you changed trains so that if somebody had been watching you.
GM: Exactly.
CB: They would have expected you to arrive and you didn’t do it.
GM: No. It, [pause] I’m sorry about this.
CB: Don’t worry.
[machine pause]
GM: Local train. This obviously was a ploy which was set up and walking down the platform we were then met by other helpers. Two I think there were together and, no, sorry it was only one, it was only one because I was travelling on my own plus the helper. Yeah, that’s right. Yes. I was handed over from one helper to another and he took me away from the chap I’d been travelling with and we passed down onto a local, I suppose we’d call it generally the underground but there wasn’t a great deal of it underground. It was a city line, I think that would be better term and went a few stations and it was indicated by my companion that we should get off at the station we were now running in to so he got up and I sort of, moments later followed him off on to the platform and down to the end of the track at this particular station. Now, we were met again and again there was a handover and shortly I found myself walking up steps from what we would term underground in London these days to ground level and we walked quite a fair way following the roads, busy city streets virtually. It wasn’t countrified at all and eventually we turned rather quickly and we banged on another door of another house and that was just opened smartly and I was being introduced to new members of a new family. So, we’re in town. You’d better switch off again.
[machine pause]
GM: It was an apartment on the third floor of, now I’m getting mixed up. This is terrible. I’m sorry. I should have done more of my revision. We may have to make a correction.
CB: Ok.
GM: We walked to a place which I was going to stay and it turned out to be a flat on the third, third floor up in the air and there was a husband and wife and I think we were a bit later than they thought. Anyhow, there also turned out to be some children and I saw them and they saw me and we did have a certain amount of chatter going. My French was pretty nil so I didn’t say much and as far as I can recall the meeting with the children was terminated and where they went after that I’m not quite sure but I stayed at this family for a few more hours into the evening until somewhere around about nine or half past when it was dark. Then I was picked up and we took a bus to another part of the city and got out. A short walk and as far as I can remember we then went up to the first floor, first or second floor, it must have been second and my leader or companion had a key and he opened the door of a flat and he introduced me into an empty space other than than the fact that it was furnished. There was nobody there and I was told about the facilities and, bedtime.
[pause]
GM: Now, I have a feeling that I have omitted an important item. Somewhere on the way through the previous places I went to I picked up a companion. I think it was a, the last one, when I first arrived in the, in the town. Anyhow, it turned out to be a Irishman. He also had been on bombing trips and he had come down and been a prisoner of war. Now, he got away from being put out to grass so to speak or put out to work. I think his name was Michael Joyce, offhand. And we were to stay with each other on occasions most of the way back home. In the future that was, of course. I can’t. Anyhow, Mike and I got on well together and eventually after a couple of days and being very well treated by the lady of the house who obviously was well connected and also well interested in helping us. We were then passed on. From here we, now did we? [pause] I’m sorry to be hesitant -
CB: That’s ok.
GM: With the, with the information.
CB: Well we can cut out the hesitations.
GM: Yes.
CB: I’ll just pause it for a mo.
GM: One moment.
[machine pause]
CB: So you and Michael Joyce became inseparable for the rest of your trip. Is that right?
GM: Not, not entirely. We were sort of companions but on occasions they could only take one person in one house or one establishment so we were parted on occasions for overnight stays and the like. It was only a matter of a day or two. I’ve got it all written down in the books.
CB: Yeah. Quite.
GM: Well certainly my memory has slipped on some of this. [pause] We’ve got about as far as Brussels haven’t we? On that train journey.
CB: Yeah. What were the people doing while you were there?
GM: Have I told you that I’ve had a change of clothes?
CB: No.
GM: Ah.
CB: Other than a coat.
GM: Yes.
CB: So what did you do with your uniform? You needed to keep that on didn’t you so you weren’t shot as a spy?
GM: Well no. Some, somewhere, it must have been the people with the young family. Anyhow, somebody had the suit, had my uniform with the intention of using the material to make something smaller presumably from it and I was given a suit, trousers and jacket in place of the uniform trousers and blouson which one wore as part of battledress. So that got rid of the clothes as far as my part, which was a major issue because whilst I was still in uniform, as you say there was a certain safety in it and then of course it was recognisable as being nothing like they were wearing themselves. Oh my goodness me.
CB: So what colour was this suit? Did they do everything in a dark colour?
GM: Yes. Medium grey. Towards the darker side perhaps than the lighter.
CB: And how would they be dressed at that time?
GM: How did they dress? Well they looked the same as everybody else that was walking streets so whatever was commonplace then was -
CB: That would be quite dark clothing would it?
GM: Well I think the men’s suitings varied from a moderate grey to being perhaps a bit darker than usual. Yes. I can’t recall seeing anything other than a sort of a business sort of appearance to people.
CB: Right. Yeah. So they’ve re-kitted you, you’re in Brussels, then what?
GM: Oh yes. Oh yes we arrived in a flat which was unoccupied. Furnished but unoccupied. And I stayed there a couple of days and also I had a companion Michael Joyce with me and we stayed there until arrangements had been made to progress forward out of Belgium where we, I didn’t know but Mike’s probably into France and so this turned out to be so. We travelled a fair distance and when we got to the border there again was a sort of a bit of a shambles there as to where we were going but it was only in our minds, Mike and mine because we weren’t, didn’t have the destination made out to us. It was best that we, the least we knew of the route was perhaps the best so eventually when we re-joined the train service we progressed from our point of staying to the border which turned out to be between Belgium and France. That was more, it was a bit scary one way or another because everybody was ordered off of the train and there was a train load of people all gathered in little groups all along the platform. Well eventually we had to progress through the customs and having had ourselves sort of identified one way or another they wanted to see a card and showed them there as everybody else seemed to be doing and it was just a sort of a sign to progress forward. So we went through the patrols either who were Belgian on one side and French on the other and the train had been pulled through, empty of course other than its operating crew and was waiting in Belgium for us to get on board which we did. I think in actual fact we did get on in the same compartment as we had previously. I have a feeling that was very likely. Anyhow, the train then sort of started off and it was well filled with passengers and we proceeded across country of course to Paris. By that time it was getting fairly well through the day and it was here that we again had a meeting party and I think there was temporarily there was a bit of a problem as to who and where we were actually going to be for sure but we left it to them and then they sort of resolved all the problems of us arriving. Now, I’ve got a feeling I’ve left something out.
CB: Well we can put it in later.
GM: Yes.
CB: So you’re leaving Brussels on the train.
GM: Left Brussels on the train, went through the border controls.
CB: Yeah.
GM: Got back on the train and arrived in Paris. There we were met and at this point after a, yes, a chat so to speak which was done in a sort of low voice and as far away from other people as possible Mike was then taken away with one of Comete’s people and leaving me for somebody else. In this particular case a local man was, had been invited to do this part of it and we went off of the station through a number of roads to another point which, now, I’m not sure whether that came from –
CB: We’ll stop there for a mo.
CB: Back on this. So the pilot, where is the pilot sitting? Up on the front left.
GM: Front left.
CB: Yeah.
GM: Where the window -
CB: Yes. The glazed area. Yeah
GM: Yes. That’s right.
CB: Then there are steps -
GM: Down.
CB: To where?
GM: To a lower level.
CB: Right.
GM: And in that, in that lower level I thought there were three positions.
CB: Ok.
GM: I thought, under the pilot there was a radio operator and in front of him underneath the, virtually underneath where the pilot’s level.
CB: Yes.
GM: There was the navigator.
CB: Yeah. With a table.
GM: With a table and I thought in front of that there was a front gunner.
CB: Yeah.
GM: Now up, behind the pilot there’s got to be a flight engineer.
CB: That’s it. And under the front gunner is the position for bomb aiming. Is that right?
GM: Yes. Ah.
CB: So the bomb aimer was also the front gunner in the Halifax. Is that right?
GM: That worries me a bit.
CB: Ok.
GM: Isn’t this daft? You live with it.
CB: Yeah. Second nature wasn’t it?
GM: And you remember it for a half a century or more.
CB: Yes. So you said the flight engineer is behind the pilot. Right. And he can communicate directly with the pilot as necessary. Then further back you have two other positions.
[pause]
CB: The mid upper gunner. Is that right? And the rear gunner.
GM: Yes. That is evident I think from the outside photos.
CB: Yes.
GM: I’m with you.
CB: Yeah. So we were just trying to resolve the idea of how a second pilot operation might work. Sometimes bomb aimers did have pilot training. Some of them were qualified pilots and qualified navigators.
[pause]
GM: There was, it seems a number of the local changes.
CB: Yeah.
GM: From one particular unit to one somewhere else.
CB: Yeah.
GM: But at the same level.
CB: Yeah.
GM: Well yeah I can believe that.
CB: Ok.
GM: So –
[machine pause]
GM: Sort of set up in the nose of a Halifax.
CB: Was it?
GM: On, on certain mark numbers I imagine.
CB: So as the navigator how often did you have to move from your seat and why?
GM: Good question. Good question. I thought I’d got a sectional display somewhere in the books there with, of the crew positions.
CB: Ok. We’ll look at that. But in practical terms on an operation how often would you actually leave your seat until you had to, and go to the, look at the plumbing.
GM: One would certainly, for certain one would be out of position during take-off and landing.
CB: So you had a specific position to sit in for take-off and landing.
GM: Yes. I think -
CB: And where would that be?
GM: I imagine, I did it dozens and dozens of times, [pause] in the body of the aircraft.
CB: Right. Behind the pilot and the flight engineer.
GM: Yes. Yes, because we also got in and out of the aircraft at that level.
CB: Right.
GM: At certain times or on occasions we got in through the nose.
CB: Did you? Right.
GM: Now this would have been inconvenient.
CB: Yeah.
GM: Inconvenient at the time preparing to take off.
CB: Yeah.
GM: Because where the navigator sat was on a hatch.
CB: Ah.
GM: And that hatch you could pull up and get in and out so that when you made an emergency departure the navigator collapsed his seat back into position on the wall.
CB: Yeah.
GM: The table was here.
CB: Yes. In front of him.
GM: Yeah you took up the seat and dropped it out of the hole and followed it.
CB: Right. So in the sequence of escape in an aircraft in an event of -
GM: Yes.
CB: Needing to abandon.
GM: Yes.
CB: What was the escape sequence for the crew?
GM: Pilot said, ‘Prepare to leave the aircraft,’ and then I would get up, shove the drawings, the plans and all of the maps into, we had an incinerator tube I seem to remember.
CB: Oh.
GM: You could put them in, you could roll up the paper up, put it in, press the button and the electricity would burn whatever you put in.
CB: Oh really. Right.
GM: That was. That was close at hand so that it could be used in an emergency if you had the time or the documents that needed it. Certainly, when it was said, ‘Abandon the aircraft,’ then we would already have been in the, an open situation where you didn’t have to lift up any more bits of floor or anything like that. The way out was already prepared.
CB: Right.
GM: So when they said, ‘Abandon the aircraft,’ the navigator was, as far as I know, the first to go out through the front hole.
CB: Ok.
GM: Because he was, had been sitting on it.
CB: Yeah. Right.
GM: And you were in the way.
CB: Yes. Followed by?
GM: Oh the, now was it the radio operator that was next to him at that level? He would go out and then the second pilot. Now, at the rear of the aircraft of course there also was access and -
CB: Yeah.
GM: Place in the floor and you went out towards, on the, yes if you, with your back to the tail then you would go out on the left hand side. Drop out of that hole which was also was used as an entrance in ordinary usage time.
CB: Right. So you climbed in through the floor both at the front and the back.
GM: Indeed.
CB: Right. Ok.
GM: Well certainly at the rear it was more of a hatch because part of the side came away as well so it made the opening more easy to use.
CB: Right.
GM: But certainly the departure point was there.
CB: So how did the rear gunner get out?
GM: Well as far as I’ve always known it was standard for them to turn the turret so that his back was in line with the side of the aircraft. In other words -
CB: Right.
GM: The hole was back here
CB: Yeah
GM: And as far as I can remember the, he went out the two hatches on the, in the back of the turret.
CB: Yeah.
GM: I don’t know whether they were disposable or not but I think they certainly would open up.
CB: Yeah.
GM: And he would go backwards with his parachute on his chest.
CB: Oh did he? He had to pick up his parachute first did he or was he wearing it all the time?
GM: That raises a question doesn’t it as to the type of parachute he used.
CB: Because on the Lancaster he had to reach back into the body -
GM: Yes.
CB: Into the fuselage.
GM: Yes.
CB: To pick it up. Did he have to do the same on a Halifax or did he sit on the parachute?
GM: I think he had to get, do the same in the Halifax as he did in the Lancaster.
CB: Did he? Right.
GM: That is my impression. Now, [pause] I didn’t fly in Lancasters so –
CB: No.
GM: I’m only going with what I’ve been told but I think where possible there was a storage spot for each crew person.
CB: Yeah.
GM: Close to hand so he could get hold of his parachute himself and clip it on his chest.
CB: So you’re the navigator in the front of the aircraft.
GM: Yes.
CB: You’ve got a folding table because –
GM: Yeah.
CB: You’ve got map work to do.
GM: Yes. A collapsible one. Yeah.
CB: Where is your parachute? You’re not sitting on it are you?
GM: It’s close by.
CB: Right.
GM: Because one had to put it on.
CB: Yeah. So you’re not sitting on it.
GM: And I put it on my chest.
CB: Yeah. So on this fateful day you first put on your parachute did you? And then open the hatch, fold your table, your seat and open the hatch. Was that the sequence?
GM: The only thing that was foldable was my seat.
CB: Right.
GM: And that came out on a collapsible sort of frame -
CB: Yeah.
GM: Or unit from the side of the aircraft.
CB: Right.
GM: The hole was in the floor.
CB: Yes.
GM: Not anywhere else.
CB: Right.
GM: So you sort of went up and down on the floor in that part of the aircraft. I think that’s it.
CB: Yeah. That’s good. So we’ll stop just for a mo.
GM: Yeah.
[machine pause]
GM: The place where I landed.
CB: We’re talking about meeting Germans.
GM: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
GM: Yes. Just in general, no need to record it.
CB: In general terms.
GM: Yes just general terms. So I did come across them on most parts of my travelling.
CB: Yeah. You came across Germans.
GM: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
GM: Yes. Whilst we were staying, yes while I was staying in Paris then they were all over the place.
CB: Right.
GM: Even if I was out on a walk with one of the French people. Oh what was his name? Doesn’t matter.
CB: Yeah.
GM: The residents in the city. Yes he took me out once or twice and we walked streets and what have you and walked up the Champs-Elysees and to some of the other recognised spots and also into a museum and that was, that can all be detailed if you want it at the time and yes but, this was when we stayed in the flat which was unoccupied by anybody else.
CB: Yeah.
GM: But that was short. We got, we did get farmed out to people and the man was very useful and we eventually picked up an early morning train in Paris heading south.
CB: Right.
GM: And the intention was to get to, oh what’s the name of the town? Down close to the Pyrenees.
CB: Yeah. Bordeaux?
GM: Yes. On the way through there yes. And I think, was it St Jean de Luz we stayed in?
CB: Right.
GM: Or lived in. Possibly so. Having got that far then the party of other, a couple or three people I think we made something like four people together started off one afternoon. That’s not quite true I think we had a train journey. Anyhow, we started off and we climbed up in to the Pyrenees and we did it, some bizarre, we did this during part of this during daylight of course and overnight we went up and down up and down and we crossed the actual border which was the centre of the Bidasoa, whatever its pronunciation is, which was a river and from that position we climbed up to a height but on this time on the south banks of the river rather than where we came down which was on the north ones and eventually we dropped down the Pyrenees slopes to the rather level sort of ground which was in Spain. From Spain of course then having sort of made our presence known then the embassy took over and arranged the transfer of the, I think there was three of us to be taken to the capital and that was all done in one long run. I’m not sure how many hours it took but it seemed to be quite a long way and we stayed in the embassy.
CB: It looks as though you went to Saint Sebastian.
GM: Yes.
CB: With Bernard. And then you went to the British consulate in Bilbao who then arranged for you to go Madrid two hundred and fifty miles away.
GM: Very likely. I’m not, I can’t remember how many days we stayed there. We stayed with a couple in their flat in Spain.
CB: Right.
GM: Probably two nights at the most. I could probably check it and as we say we did this long run down to the embassy in Madrid which is, then, did we actually stay there? Yes they did have quarters there and we became companions of some people who were already on the run so to speak.
CB: Yes.
GM: And they were flown away. There was, there was some army people around as well.
CB: Right.
GM: They got away and eventually it became our turn and in the early evening of the last day of October.
CB: 1942.
GM: ’42, yes. We got on to a train and we did at some point that evening we had a meal. Now I’m trying to visualise exactly where we were. Whether we were in the train or other? Don’t remember much. Anyhow, I know we picked up a separate train from previously which run us down overnight to Madrid and, I got that wrong.
CB: Gibraltar.
GM: From, from, this was from Madrid to Gibraltar. Yes.
CB: Yes.
GM: Yes. You’re right. Quite right.
CB: The overnight train.
GM: Overnight train and we were picked up and met at our destination and we were then, yes. We went, we then went down by train also to Gibraltar. We got out on the Spanish side and I think we had a, had the train across on the railway line which ran through Spain across at Gibraltar and through to what was, I think, the only station in Gibraltar. Perhaps there were two train stops. Certainly there was a terminus in the, in the more or less centre of -
CB: Right.
GM: That’s right. I suppose it’s an island isn’t it?
CB: No it isn’t. It’s a -
GM: Yeah. Anyhow, it was a satisfactory termination of the effort to pass across all the necessary spaces to reach Gib and catch the boat on the convenient occasion for us we just waited until we were called but it was only a couple, a couple of nights as far as I can recall.
CB: To be returned to Britain.
GM: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
GM: We then flew back to the UK.
CB: What did you fly in?
GM: Was it a Dakota?
CB: Yeah. When -
GM: I think so.
CB: When you were in Madrid you were in the embassy.
GM: Yes.
CB: What did the air attaché have to say?
GM: ‘Welcome’ [laughs] and he was more interested in identifying us so that he could notify the ongoing people that we were there having escaped and I presume he was he was looking for instructions as to how to get us from Gibraltar to the UK which he did very successfully because we, we flew overnight and landed in Portreath in the early light hours of the following day which was the 1st of November and we had a brief passage through customs in Cornwall and we then went back to the same plane which flew up to, now, somewhere, just west of London?
CB: Northolt. No?
GM: I think not.
CB: Ok I’ll stop there a mo.
[machine pause]
CB: It went to Aldermaston did it?
GM: Possibly. I’ve got it written down.
CB: Yeah. I’ve got it. I’ve got Aldermaston here.
GM: You’ve got Aldermaston there.
CB: Yeah.
GM: Well that’s fair enough.
CB: Yeah.
GM: And there we arrived just after normal meal time. I think more or less 1 o’clock, 2 o’clock in the day and we were fed and then we were transferred to London and we were taken to the headquarters. Now what was the name of the street? Oh my memory is getting terrible.
CB: According to this you went -
GM: Yes, go on.
CB: The Grand Central Hotel.
GM: Could well be.
CB: In Marylebone.
GM: Marylebone. Correct. Yes.
CB: Which was the London transit camp.
GM: Yes. That’s right. And we were greeted by I don’t know if he was a flight sergeant or whether he was a warrant officer. I don’t even know whether there was an officer on duty then. Anyhow, the chap that met us as we walked in wanted to know who we were, what we were and where we, our homes were which was the most interesting and when I said it was Wembley and there we were at Baker Street and it’s just down the other end of the line so to speak. So he said, ‘You can go home till tomorrow. Be back here at,- ’ I wasn’t sure what the time was. 9 o’clock I think and a couple of the other people who had come over with us they were also given instructions but my Irish companion he was bedded at the hotel there. He hadn’t got any relatives close enough to be of any use. So I went home. You can imagine the results but it so happened that it was still the 1st of November and it was still my birthday.
CB: And how old were you that day?
GM: Twenty three.
CB: Right.
GM: I would think.
CB: Yeah.
GM: Twenty three. Yes.
CB: Now what were you wearing? Had you got RAF clothing again or -
GM: Ah.
CB: Because in your escape through France what were you wearing in the end? Were you in a suit all the way of some kind, provided, or were you -
GM: Yes.
CB: What were you -
GM: That suit materialised while I was still in Belgium I think it was.
CB: Right.
GM: And they took, yes, somebody had yes somebody had my RAF blouson and trousers of a, in a typical greeny colour. Or it was a grey green colour or whatever battle dress was made of. I lost that but instead of that of course I got a moderately fitting suit which I still had on when I got home and occasionally I used afterwards and as I say we got shot down on what was it, about somewhere about the 4th of October and I walked in on the 1st of November.
CB: Were they expecting you to arrive? Had you forewarned them?
GM: Yes. My mum, I’d already sent a telegram from Gibraltar home and she was notified by Air Ministry as well ‘cause they were well up on their knowledge of where we were.
CB: Yeah.
GM: There’s no doubt about that.
CB: Right. Now, this companion of yours was he from another squadron or was he from something completely different?
GM: What was his name? The Irishman?
CB: Yeah.
GM: No. We, we only met in extremis so to speak on the way down to Gibraltar. In actual fact I think it was somewhere shortly after Paris or whatever. Anyhow, it was fairly early on that I met Michael Joyce. That was his name.
CB: Yeah.
GM: And we stayed together to a degree. Sometimes apart sometimes in the same buildings and we certainly got down to Gibraltar together and let’s see, what was his rank? Flight sergeant. I was a flight sergeant at the time. Yes.
CB: What crew member was he?
GM: Ah you ask some nasty questions my friend.
CB: I know. It’s bad isn’t it?
GM: Yes.
CB: But you get another sweet if you answer correctly.
GM: What was his job?
CB: He wasn’t a flight engineer like you was he?
GM: I was a navigator.
CB: Sorry, a navigator like you.
GM: No. Mike. [pause] Oh my goodness me. That’s a rotten question.
CB: Yes. I’ll give you a different one. In the way down you’re doing everything together so what are your feelings as you are on the escape route and you’re together in hostile territory? What did you feel about that?
GM: I’m not entirely sure. I was, I was always happy to tackle things as a single person but it, when we had to do things together then I was quite willing to adapt to those conditions. So I don’t think it made much, made much of an impression on me whether I was working with him or he was acting on his own or I was acting on my own. I think both of us were fairly quick on adapting to changing circumstances.
CB: Yeah.
GM: It didn’t worry me at all to be, to operate on my own. I did quite a bit of walking from one place to another and in the early days of course I did the first three or four nights as a single figure.
CB: Yes. So you get over the Pyrenees. You’re out of immediate German danger. How did you feel about that? What sort of feeling did you have?
GM: Oh. Yeah.
CB: When you both got over in to Spain.
GM: Oh gave a sort of heartfelt but quiet sort of, ‘Yes. This is it. You made it.’
CB: Yeah.
GM: There was a certain exultation on my part of having a sort of a smooth way across Europe and I fooled the Germans at it at the same time.
CB: So was it a mixture of triumph and relief or something different?
GM: Yeah. Well the exact moment that one got over was rather obscure as to exactly where it was that it was the river the Bidasoa the that we had to cross down the valley which is the boundary between Spain and France so in actual fact having got across that river then one was technically in Belgium er not Belgium -
CB: Spain.
GM: Spain.
CB: Yeah.
GM: Yeah. The Pyrenees were scattered with people one way or another who seemed to have a reason for being there and I don’t think at the time we realised exactly when we could say when we were in one country or the other. It was just a continuation across, across the high ground.
CB: And of course Spain was a fascist country then so how was it -
GM: We rather thought they might have been, yeah. I would have thought they might have tried to please the German presence.
CB: Yeah.
GM: Actually I think amongst a certain range of people it was just the reverse but there we are.
CB: Because it was Basque country there of course.
GM: Indeed. Yes.
CB: So that was anti-establishment wasn’t it?
GM: Yes.
CB: Still is.
GM: Yes. I imagine so. I haven’t been over there for years now but I have made several trips there since the wartime period.
CB: So just moving on from there you’re back home, you’ve been told to report the next morning from Wembley back to the hotel.
GM: Yes indeed.
CB: In Marylebone.
GM: That is correct.
CB: So then what?
GM: We were, there was a special interview I think, that latter part of that day to acquaint us with our situation and answer questions and to only be told that with the amount of knowledge that we carried with ourselves and people in the other countries who were trying to help us that we sort of them owed them a debt, general impression, which I agreed with and then to sort of map out what we would do for the remainder of the, our membership of the RAF and I sort of was aware of some of the ways in which I could proceed. The thing is they said, ‘You can’t go back on ops again with the amount of knowledge that you have of the help that you found available.’ They didn’t say for how long. I got the impression that it was, yes for a period anyhow but I was aware that there was what they called the SN course, The staff navigators course at, up in the Midlands and so I said, ‘Well if we’re going to be posted to do something then I’d like to do that course.’ It was on, a rather special course on navigation and the like so they said, ‘Right,’ and then they said, ‘Of course that is a bit in the future. We’ve already got some people ahead of you on the list but we’ll do it as soon as you can.’ And in the June of ’43, June of ‘43 which was, let’s see, seven, eight or nine months wait then I was posted up into Scotland and one or two other places and in July ‘43 then got married and on the, just before that happened I found out that I was going to be posted from the aerodrome near [pause] Oh God.
CB: Which part of the country?
GM: Wales.
CB: Oh right. Not St Athan.
GM: No. No. More or less the border between England and, er England, the border, oh this is stupid.
CB: So what purpose was this particular posting?
GM: Oh to be on the teaching staff of the navigation.
CB: Right.
GM: Crikey.
CB: Ok. Well we’ll pick that up in a mo. So then before you started you were then on leave to get married were you?
GM: Yes. Yes. Yes
CB: Where did you go for your honeymoon?
GM: Oh West Wales. As far west as you can get.
CB: The Gower Peninsula.
GM: Not far from it. Yes, the bay goes up in a great big sweep.
CB: Oh Cardigan Bay.
GM: Cardigan Bay up at the top.
CB: Not Aberystwyth.
GM: Yes.
CB: Right.
GM: Yes. Which is a university town.
CB: Yeah.
GM: The university buildings were to agree to be available for the lecturers and what have you that what I was doing was available so after, after that and we got married, we went up north to the Central Navigation School or whatever they called it, at, yes [pause] oh I’m an idiot.
CB: Was that in Scotland or was it in northern England?
[pause]
CB: Ok. We’ll look that one up as well. So at the Central Navigation School that’s when you did your specialist navigation course. Was it?
GM: SN course, yes.
CB: Yes.
GM: Yes, indeed.
CB: Which lasted how long?
GM: Three months.
CB: How many?
GM: Three.
CB: Three months.
GM: Three months.
CB: Right.
GM: And -
CB: So you went to Cranage. Cranage was the -
GM: Yes.
CB: Central Navigation School.
GM: Yes. Indeed.
CB: But it was a three months course.
GM: That’s right.
CB: And then what?
GM: No. That isn’t right. That’s not right. So when did Aberystwyth come in on it?
CB: When you went on honeymoon.
GM: Yes it did. But [pause] I’m an idiot.
[Machine pause]
CB: Just while we, right so after you finished at Cranage on your navigation course you said you went to Wigtown.
GM: Yes.
CB: Which is Galloway.
GM: Yes.
CB: What were you doing there?
GM: That’s where I was part of the lecturing staff and also I spent more time on the arranging of the exercises and what have you.
CB: Right.
GM: There was some lecturing in it but it was mainly to get these chaps airborne.
CB: Yes.
GM: Doing the exercises. So, yes I rather rated as part of the overall staff rather than
CB: Yeah.
GM: Just one particular position.
CB: And how long did you stay there?
GM: Until a short period after war was terminated.
CB: Right.
GM: I think the period was, the immediate period was followed by the sending of military people, British military people to Japan.
CB: Yeah. Tiger Force.
GM: Yes. Yes. I think that took over. They were and then there was in the appropriate time and there was a cessation there and peace was declared so to speak.
CB: August ’45. So -
GM: Yes. So it was a couple of years I had up in -
CB: Yes
GM: Scotland generally.
CB: So with the end of hostilities in World War 2 what happened next for you?
GM: Well, Wigtown, the airfield and what have you there was closed down and I was posted to somewhere in Norfolk.
CB: Which part of Norfolk?
GM: Cardigan Bay is it? No. Wait a minute. Which is Cardigan Bay?
CB: No. That’s in West Wales.
GM: Oh that’s not it. On the east coast.
CB: You don’t mean Coltishall do you?
GM: No. [pause]
CB: We’ll stop a mo.
[machine pause]
CB: So you went to Norfolk with the closure of Wigtown because the war had ended and what did you do there?
GM: Well previously while I was at the aerodrome in Scotland -
CB: Yeah.
GM: My rank had gone up to warrant officer and the chap I was working with said, ‘You can do better than this,’ so I applied for a commission and it was then, that was, that was somebody else’s suggestion and I was supported by the senior officer at -
CB: At Wigtown.
GM: Yes. And I had the necessary introductions and interviews and I was commissioned. PO. And that was early in that two year stay up in Scotland. By the time I came down to after the closure of the camp there and went to the one that we had just been immediately talking about in -
CB: In Norfolk. Yeah.
GM: The Norfolk area. Yes. And I finished up a flight lieutenant.
CB: What was your role there? Were you teaching navigation in Norfolk or were you planning ops or what were you doing?
GM: Oh what did we do? The last weeks. Yes. Oh yes I’d made a study to a fair extent on training for crews on, as far as practical exercises were concerned on navigation so we used to have the whole course or several courses that were run by the station and they used to do exercises on the ground, navigation exercises and we’d feed them with information as to factors and we sort of wrote a scenario or set of circumstances to give the people on the ground the opportunity to resolve their problem, navigational problems and so in actual fact they did a flying exercise except that it was a set procedure on the, on the ground. Sounds a bit rummy but we were able to produce conditions and information so that they could do the navigation exercise in addition to having to do it in the air. I mean there was a big demand for air, air time and part of that air time was giving groups of people, they were full courses in actual fact. These exercises which they could do safely to start with on the ground and then they practised as far as I could tell, at other postings in, with aircraft flying.
CB: Were these squadrons that you were teaching or special courses for navigation?
GM: They were navigational courses.
CB: Right.
GM: You had, I don’t suppose one had more than twenty people in any one course and you would have them for a half day and we had a number of, set number of exercises planned out and we provided as much information that we would expect them to be able to receive during the, an actual flight. So it was an exercise modelled on a flying exercise and the actual airborne flying was taken away and so you fed the course in the half day all the necessary factors that they would need to do if they were doing it in the air.
CB: So they would then go and fly. What aircraft were they flying? I mean were they Lancs?
GM: Ansons I think.
CB: Ansons. Right.
GM: Yes. A good old workhorse that aircraft.
CB: Yeah. With a view to going on to, these were all navigators rather than pilots.
GM: Oh yes. They were all navigators. Yes. They took the course. They went through the varying exercises as we could plan them at ground level.
CB: Right.
GM: And so they got procedures to be familiar with and then they, when they left us they went on a course which tested their application to those features.
CB: Right. So you were doing that for a while. When were you demobbed and where?
GM: I was demobbed as such from Uxbridge and close by.
CB: Did you apply for it?
GM: That’s only just –
CB: Or were you -
GM: No. No
CB: Suddenly told.
GM: No. When we were posted down from Scotland earlier the previous year and we did a job closer down in Norfolk when ones calling up papers came through and gave you a place to take your demob. So you -
CB: Right.
GM: Went down to that place at the declared time and they -
CB: So that’s May 1946.
GM: And gave you the big heave ho.
CB: May 1946.
GM: Yeah.
CB: Now –
GM: Was it May? Was it?
CB: 16th
GM: It was April or May.
CB: Yeah. 16th of May 1946
GM: Yes.
CB: According to that note.
GM: Well that is maybe including -
CB: Terminal leave.
GM: Terminal leave.
CB: Yeah.
GM: And your departure date was the end of that terminal leave.
CB: Yeah. So how did you feel about that after all the rigours of what you’d been through? Flying and escaping.
GM: Feel about it. No. I wasn’t an enthusiast but I thought I should have hated not to have not been part of it. Well I started with navigation and the like. I liked to know where I was and I liked to know where I was going and I think that was a fair guiding light to me pushing in certain directions but having had a very close brush with being terminated whilst I was in Bomber Command I was very thankful to be able to do my bit to progress the hostilities in whichever way they gave me the access to.
CB: You explained that they told you couldn’t go back on to ops. How did you feel about that?
GM: I don’t think anybody said that you can’t, eventually. I got the impression that it was not going to happen. The decision wasn’t mine it was theirs.
[phone ringing]
GM: Oh excuse me a minute.
CB: Yeah.
GM: I’d better find out what it is.
[machine paused]
CB: So you were married in the war.
GM: Yes.
CB: Gordon.
GM: Yes.
CB: And what prompted you to do it during the war and not wait until the end?
GM: Well in nineteen, let me start it was a bit earlier than that.
CB: Ok.
GM: I went to school with a chap and we were more or less together for most of the, that period of schooling to technical college.
CB: Yeah.
GM: And we continued to be friends. Our families got to know each other. I met his sister who was a couple of years older than him.
CB: Yeah.
GM: And she was after, after the war was declared, oh I would say that she was a ballet dancer and -
CB: Yes.
GM: She was in Italy at the time of the declaration of war so she had to get back to the UK. I was in and out of their house a fair bit until we got called up. I’d previously tried to get in to the RAF reserve, volunteer reserve but attending evening classes and things like that four nights a week and the result that I was not particularly fit so I was referred and told to get fit while working five and a half days a week and also doing four evenings of evening classes. It was taking a bit of a long time. So war was declared and the lady in question got herself, with her friends back from Italy to the UK. I got to know her pretty well during the earlier lifetime and so I suppose whenever I came down on leave then we saw each other and in 1943 after my travels we got married in the July ‘43. What point are we trying to make?
CB: Well we’re talking about how you got married in the war.
GM: Oh.
CB: When some people delayed getting married.
GM: Yes. Yes. I can, I can imagine that but also I thought we don’t know how long this is going to be going on.
CB: Right.
GM: I mean we were living so to speak in the forces we were living from day to day.
CB: Yes.
GM: On, as a basis, whether if you were on active service or were in a similar but not so dangerous situation whatever it was, you were still occupied and we didn’t want to wait.
CB: No.
GM: For an unspecified period so we got married in the July ‘43. She was in London in a show and with Tommy Handley and that group of people and so she decided that we’d get married.
CB: Yeah.
GM: So when I got posted up to Scotland then she said, ‘Right. I’m coming up too.’ And we, I got permission to live out and she came up and there was always the chance that she could go back and join another show. Tommy, Tommy Handley was a considerable friend of hers so it ended very happily on the whole. The only problem was medical but that’s not part of the news I spread around.
CB: No. No.
GM: But it was a considerable problem. Considerable problem. After the wartime period when both David and, who died now and Paul, my, who is my remaining son. Yes we were very happy to get two children and but it was a difficult situation. Sort of a, I think she had two or three other pregnancies which didn’t mature.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When did she pass away?
GM: August 1999.
CB: Gosh. A long time ago.
GM: Well, last century.
CB: Yes.
GM: Yeah. No. She was, she was in her nineties anyhow. So -
CB: After the war what did you do then?
GM: Oh well -
CB: You were demobbed so now what?
GM: Yes. I was demobbed I’d already, during the leave, made contact with the chartered surveyors that I was working for in the pre-war period and so I went back there. The wages were not brilliant and I don’t suppose we had a vast amount of savings but we had savings anyhow so instead, working up in Norfolk with the air force my term had come so I got the demob instructions and I took them. Money being what it is well I’m being paid by the air force for my demob my leave period so I had a week’s leave and we got back home. We stayed with my mother. She was living on her own. My father had died during the period of the war and so we started living together there. We’d been living together in various places around the country when, between marriage and the war finishing which was about two years I suppose.
CB: They wouldn’t pay the marriage allowance would they? The air force allowance during the war because you were underage. Under twenty five in other words.
GM: Yes. No. No. Do you know I haven’t really considered the, what happened from the money point of view. We seemed to be, had enough money.
CB: Comfortable.
GM: Comfortable yes. Comfortable. During that period that I was up in Scotland and what have you because at most of that time then we lived together and when I was demobbed then as I say we were living together with, at my mother’s house even though my wife’s parents only lived a ten minute walk away.
CB: Oh right.
GM: So my old school chum was now a brother in law I suppose. Yes.
CB: Yes.
GM: Yes. Well he was brilliant at his job. He was a scientist -
CB: Oh.
GM: From the Natural History Museum.
CB: Oh.
GM: And that he continued as his career until he died.
CB: So you went back to being a surveyor.
GM: Yeah.
CB: What did you, how did that progress for you? Did you stay with your original employers or did you move to something different?
GM: Well I stayed with them and the requirements were that I became a chartered surveyor.
CB: Yeah.
GM: So I started, or had already started the course at Regent Street Polytechnic and I say I was there for varying periods. I think the most I ever spent was four, four nights a week in classes. It’s a bit misty some of those periods but I stayed there and took the exams with the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and the intermediate got through and got to the finals and was and I had an offer to work for somebody else which was London County Council.
CB: Right.
GM: I had applied for a job there. Mainly because the people that were under training at that time of course were the people I’d met on courses elsewhere and I stayed there until, yes, until I got my qualifications and then I changed. Mainly it was the people I knew at Regent Street Polytechnic became my sort of friends and so the job became available which I applied for and got and I was with friends virtually straight away which was socially was yes, an advantage.
CB: So you stayed with London County Council until retirement did you?
GM: That is so.
CB: And when did you retire?
GM: Oh what a horrible question to ask. I was sixty four and I had the sum of that year so now -
CB: I’ve got the answer to that in here. So that was 1973.
GM: Was it? Ok. Right. Well yes I came out in the in the summer of ‘73 and -
CB: Just before your birthday did you?
GM: Something like that.
CB: Yeah.
GM: Yes.
CB: And did you then pick up other things in your retirement or did you have a quiet time?
GM: No. Evening classes I say were, absorbed a lot of my spare time but I became qualified became a chartered surveyor and also I was working for London County Council when the results came out so I was quite happy with that. I was working with people I knew and yes, and in a job which I enjoyed and the outcome was I think fairly reasonable and in my favour.
CB: Yeah. What I meant was after an active life when you come to retirement there can be a vacuum and I wonder what you picked up in your retirement you see.
GM: So, let’s see.
CB: Hobbies.
GM: Yes I I’d been a keen photographer for a long time. I didn’t do it professionally. I did some pictures for people now and again but it was just on a friendly basis and I, yeah, retirement. Oh yes at that time after I finished working for the quantity surveyors as such they from time to time wanted help for additional work. They had regular staff but sometimes the demands on the staff exceeded their people that were available to do it.
CB: Their capacity.
GM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
GM: So on occasion I worked for the same people, on the same as my job and I got paid for my professional help. This went on until demand diminished so I didn’t kill my pleasures of the time with it but I certainly, I fitted it all in.
CB: Yeah. Now having escaped by parachute from an aeroplane that made you a member of the Caterpillar Club. How did that fit into your life as an association?
GM: Well now and again there were events which attracted me I suppose. I was just thinking what else was. Oh yes. The boys were growing up. We’d had two children and I became interested in the scouting movement and the boys were gradually being absorbed in to that movement and I was asked to, if I’d become one of the management committee or whatever it was of the scouting movement. We had a sort of family connection with the movement and I sort of became part of the local troops and so we took part in some of the administration that was related to our area. Yes. It was a, it was a pleasurable time and it occupied a number of events and both the boys were keen scouters so I think it was a reasonable changeover and still gave you that sensation of being wanted.
CB: Yeah. Now in a way, for other people looking in, one of the most cataclysmic times of your life was being shot down and then escaping.
GM: Oh yes been a big factor.
CB: How did you then link which you alluded to earlier with the people who’d helped you return to Britain successfully?
GM: Ah. Well there was an organisation which was set up, I suppose, known as the RAF Escaping Society and I think that was set up around about the end of the war or shortly afterwards and various meetings were attended. Yes. One sort of kept an, kept an interest so that it was like other military or semi military organisations. You had the regular sort of programmes throughout the year of remembering the people of your life, in the past and like any of these organisations like the British Legion which is more or less run on those styles so you had while you were working on civilian occupations then you also maintained the friendships and the relationships as you had done for the six years in the war with other people who were doing the same job as yourself.
CB: Yeah. This is how you link with Air Commodore Charles Clarke?
GM: Yes. I know him and yeah I respect him and we have met from time to time but we’re not social friends.
CB: Right.
GM: As such.
CB: No.
GM: No. He’s Charles Clark. I’m Gordon Mellor and we both live in different areas. We see little of each other but we are sociable with each other and this applies to quite a lot of other people who were in the air force.
CB: Indeed.
GM: You maintain the sort of interest as much as possible but it’s got to take its place in your life.
CB: What about 103 Squadron Association. Was that active?
GM: Yes. Still is. This coming weekend I’m going up there. I am, am I the president? I think I’m the president of the members of the Association. I seem to be in that sort of role. Yes.
CB: The driving force there.
GM: Yes. I think so. Somewhere on the papers it shows. Yes.
CB: Ok.
GM: I’m the President. Yeah.
CB: Good.
GM: Yes and I think one stays there until you -
CB: You feel you’ve had enough.
GM: Fade away.
CB: Yeah.
GM: I’m not even sure you can retire but you never know.
CB: Well there are a number of active members still on all these things?
CB: Yes.
GM: Yeah. They are going down of course in number.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: There’s a number who are, yes. Now they’re getting on quite well. Many of us are in our ninetieth or thereabouts. You have to have been to have been in the wartime period.
CB: Yes. Exactly. Gordon Mellor. Thank you very much indeed. Really interesting.
GM: Thank you for coming. Mucked it up to a certain extent in the latter times because I should have done better really.
CB: Well don’t worry we’ll link it all altogether.
GM: Yes. Ok.
CB: Thank you.
GM: Come back to the subject and we can have a bit of time then I’ll give you better answers than I’ve done it off the cuff I expect.
CB: Ok. That’s fine. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Gordon Mellor. Four
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-22
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMellorGH160822
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Gordon Mellor successfully evaded capture when he baled out of his aircraft and landed in Germany. For several days he walked until he managed to make contact with the Belgian resistance and the Comete line who began the process of guiding him home. He was provided with false documents, a suit and taken by various routes and stayed in various safe houses. He had the experience of sharing a crowded bus with German soldiers and officers. Finally the members of Comete got Gordon across Belgium, France and into Spain from where he was then taken to Gibraltar. He flew back to the UK on his 23rd birthday. He became an instructor training other navigators. After the war Gordon returned to Chartered Surveying.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Belgium
France
Gibraltar
Germany
Great Britain
Spain
France--Paris
Temporal Coverage
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1942-11-01
1943
1946
Format
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02:00:54 audio recording
103 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bale out
de Jongh, Andree (1916 - 2007)
evading
navigator
RAF Wigtown
Resistance
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/553/8818/PMellorG1501.2.jpg
ec53d3c84b8db787d307d49e498fe698
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/553/8818/AMellorG160627.2.mp3
ef968aa3b9b455b4792ca4b2012f76c9
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
Mellor, Gordon
Gordon Herbert Mellor
G H Mellor
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Mellor, G
Description
An account of the resource
Four oral history interviews with Gordon Mellor (1919 -2018, 929433, 172802 Royal Air Force). He trained in Canada as an observer and served as a navigator with 103 Squadron. He was shot down over Holland in 1942 but evaded capture.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-06
2016-06-07
2016-08-17
2016-08-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GR: This is Gary Rushbrooke for the International Bomber Command Centre and today, the 27th of June 2016 I am with Flight Lieutenant Gordon Mellor at his home in Wembley, London. Thank you, Gordon. We’re in Wembley, London. Was you born in London? Are you a —
GM: Oh yes. I —my place of birth was about, I should say, two miles away from here. Also, in Wembley but on the southern borders of the town. Whereas I’m living here in the northwest.
GR: Right. And what year was that Gordon? What year?
GM: Oh that was —
GR: Roughly.
GM: Well there’s nothing rough about it. I can tell you the moment almost. It was 1919. 1st of November being the actual date. And I don’t remember the situation but —
GR: No. [unclear]
GM: My memory does go back to about my second birthday or thereabouts.
GR: That’s incredible. Do you have brothers and sisters?
GM: Oh yes. I had a brother. He, strangely enough, was seventeen years older than me so he was born round about 1920, no, not 1920. 19 —
GR: 01 or 02.
GM: 02 or 03.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Or thereabouts. Yes. But at the same time of the year in actual fact except that he was a few days later than me on the actual date.
GR: In November.
GM: Yes.
GR: So, you grew up in Wembley. Went to school in Wembley.
GM: I did go to school in Wembley until I was about thirteen. My interests were more practical perhaps than other people so I went to a technical college over at Acton at that age and I stayed there virtually three years. And my school friend I found was living within a half a mile of where I lived at that time and we chummed up and carried our relationship forward into the war years and eventually then his sister and I decided to make it a go and we were married during the war years.
GR: Oh right. So, after college, if you was at college in Acton for, what was it, three years?
GM: Well it wasn’t quite, it was a senior school.
GR: Senior school. Yeah.
GM: It wasn’t a college as such. No.
GR: No. And you left there to go and work.
GM: Oh, I had several jobs. Mainly connected with, I suppose, the building industry. My father and brother and other members of the family were all connected with that industry. And what was I going to say? Oh yes, my early experience was in offices of estate agent’s and people who were on the, I can’t say senior side because I was only a youngster then but the prospects were good.
GR: Yeah.
GM: As a surveyor. So, I eventually started work with of firm quantity surveyors in central London. And after the war I returned to that profession and qualified with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
GR: Very good. But obviously you’d started work and war was on the horizon.
GM: Indeed.
GR: I presume in September ‘39 you were still at the chartered surveyors were you? Were you?
GM: Oh yes.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yes. I was working for a private organisation. It’s only in the post-war period that I went into the public service.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And certainly in the last, what —thirty five odd years or so I worked with the Greater London Council.
GR: Right. When war broke out did you sort of decide there and then to join up or —?
GM: Well, I was interested in aircraft from a young person.
GR: Yeah.
GM: It was the ‘in’ interest shall I put it of the boys who lived and went in the same road as I did and also went to the same schools.
GR: Right.
GM: And we did get a strong interest into flying and the RAF in particular.
GR: Right. Was that an interest? Was it, was it Cobham’s Flying Circus or —?
GM: No. No.
GR: No.
HM: It was RAF Hendon.
GR: Which was obviously nearby isn’t it? Yeah.
GM: Yeah. And also there was a private ‘drome as well. My goodness me.
GR: Did you used to go up to Hendon then and watch the aircraft?
GM: Yes. We used, yes, we used to go over to Hendon and get to a position round where you could see what was going on. Although we weren’t on their ground but we were as near as we could get.
GR: To watch it.
GM: To watch what was going on.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And there was also another aerodrome close by where [pause] the name of it escapes me at the moment.
GR: It doesn’t matter. [unclear] So, it was —
GM: De Havilland’s I think had got a factory there, in that area and their aerodrome was also used.
GR: Not London — not London Colney.
GM: No.
GR: There was something there. I think that was the test place. So, it was an easy decision to volunteer for the Royal Air Force.
GM: Oh yes. Yes. Indeed.
GR: Yeah.
GM: It was a main point of interest as far as us lads were concerned in that part of Wembley. Yeah.
GR: And did your friends join up as well?
GM: Yes. They either joined up or called up.
GR: Yeah.
GM: In the early days of war. But they went to army or navy.
GR: Navy yeah. So, so can you remember where you joined up? Were you one of the ones who went to St John’s Wood and —?
GM: Where did —?
GR: Did you mention earlier you did some training at Uxbridge. No?
GM: Yes I, yes, my first real connection was when I was called up in 1940.
GR: Right.
GM: Early in ‘40 and I reported to RAF Hendon as many other youngsters did and that’s where we started.
GR: Yeah. Which was quite fitting considering you lived nearby.
GM: Yes. Yes.
GR: That’s quite good isn’t it? So, yeah.
GM: Riding on the train and then out to where Hendon Aerodrome was. Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Did you do your training in this country? Or was you sent abroad?
GM: Yes. In actual fact there was a bit of a blockage in the training period and we were drafted out to various places. When I say we, there was about forty of us who were all called up together. And we were then posted out to various places and I was sent to [pause] Yeah. I haven’t thought about this for a long time.
GR: No. It doesn’t matter. ‘Cause what did you decide to train as? It wasn’t a pilot was it? It was a —
GM: No. I —
GR: Navigator.
GM: I was keen on the navigation. So I, yes, I volunteered for that and I was accepted for that purpose. Yes.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And —oh dear. Oh dear.
GR: It doesn’t matter. Obviously training. You know, I’ve spoken to a lot of veterans and I think training followed the same —
GM: Pattern.
GR: Pattern all the way through.
GM: Yes. Yeah. We had as I say, several months on general duties.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Because there was, seemed to be a bit of a blockage. More volunteers than they could cope with.
GR: Cope with.
GM: So we joined up and we did general duties in many ways.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And in my case then I was posted up to Norfolk and I was on ground defence for quite a time.
GR: Oh right.
GM: And during that time, of course, you did pick up a lot of general knowledge about living in the air force and it was all good useful stuff.
GR: Yeah. Good. So, training, yeah ran its usual pattern when you started. And then —
GM: Yes. I suppose so.
GR: Where did you get posted to?
GM: The first real training as far as flying was concerned was at Aberystwyth which was an ITW.
GR: Yeah.
GR: And we did the course there and a bit more because there was still something of a blockage.
GR: Yeah. Right.
GM: And from there we then were posted to the Midlands as a short stopping off place and then by boat.
GR: Yeah.
GM: We went via [pause] where did we go? Reykjavik in Iceland and then through to the east coast of Canada.
GR: Right.
GM: Once there then things got moving and we finished up at Port Albert which was a training aerodrome in Ontario. About a hundred and forty miles to the west of the main cities.
GR: Yes.
GM: In that area.
GR: Yeah. Yeah. So, I presume life in Canada was slightly different to life in Britain.
GM: Well. Yes.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yes. It was. It was somewhat freer I think.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And of course, not having to cope with the blackout. That was quite an interesting period.
GR: How long did you spend in Canada, Gordon?
GM: About seven months I think.
GR: Seven months. Yeah.
GM: There was the basic navigation course which was twelve weeks. We then had a week’s leave and then we did a four weeks course [pause] to follow on the navigation.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And having completed that successfully as a group, we’d all been together since we arrived in Canada, we then went to bombing and gunnery school.
GR: Right.
GM: In another part of Ontario. By the Lakes. And we spent at least six weeks there. I have a feeling we overran a little bit.
GR: Yeah.
GM: But then it was time which you received your promotion as a sergeant and we had parade and this happened. There were a number of, a group of, I think it was about forty of us all together in two main, sort of, groups. And some of the [pause] in each group were granted immediate commissions and the others became NCOs.
GR: Right.
GM: Having got the passing out parade done then we were given tickets and travel paraphernalia and told to arrive in the east coast of Canada. We arrived close by and embarked to come back to the UK.
GR: Right.
GM: So, yes, I thought that we were treated very adequately. Being — having jumped from, what rank was I [pause] oh dear. Oh dear. Something below corporal up to sergeant.
GR: Leading aircraft — LAC1?
GM: Leading aircraftsman. How right you are. This is dragging me into the part that I —
GR: Seventy five years of, yeah, remembering.
GM: Yeah. Yes.
GR: LAC2. LAC1 and then you probably went to sergeant.
GM: I did. Yeah.
GR: And then flight sergeant.
GM: Then flight sergeant.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And then yes. Warrant officer.
GR: Yeah.
GM: By that time, it was a couple of years. Three years on.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And from warrant officer I was commissioned.
GR: Yeah. So, before you got to the rank of warrant officer you were back in the UK.
GM: Oh yeah.
GR: Did you get posted direct to a squadron or was it a Heavy Conversion Unit?
GM: No. It was an extension of our flying experience. Mainly to get experience in flying in blackout conditions.
GR: Oh yeah.
GM: Because in Canada all the lights were on.
GR: Yes.
GM: So, as you soon as you got into the UK air then it was black.
GR: And of course navigation would be quite reasonable with all the lights on and if you knew where cities and towns were.
GM: Well yes. Indeed. There was no problem at all.
GR: Yeah. So, pitch black England.
GM: It was. Yeah. Well, of course you were young and adventurous so you attacked the problem with vigour and got used to it.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Which is what one had to. So, Lichfield was the place that I went to to get the flying experience in the dark.
GR: And was you with a crew then? Did you have your own pilot or —? Was it —?
GM: Shortly after that then we did crew up.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And there seemed to be quite a number of Australian pilots running parallel with us. Most of the navigators, I think, were British. May have been one —oh yes there was an odd one or two Australians as well I think. And just a way of processing us for making up the numbers from other groups of navigators at the same stage as we were. And so, we went to Lichfield and whilst we were climatizing ourselves to blackouts in general then of course we were gaining experience as a crew because we were given the opportunity to arrange, sort of, the membership of the crew during social hours.
GR: So, this was on Wellingtons. So —
GM: It was on Wellingtons.
GR: Was there about —was there five of you? I think it is on a Wellington. Yeah.
GM: Yes. I think it was five at that time.
GR: Yeah. Yeah. Because you would have had your air gunners with you as well. With you at that time.
GM: Oh yes. Indeed.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yeah. It was largely done by meeting each other in the mess or during working hours. They had a flight headquarters and also during flying. You got to know who the people you got on well with and it didn’t take very long to get a crew together.
GR: To get together. Yeah. So where did things move on from training? I believe you were —I wouldn’t say rushed but you —
GM: No. We weren’t rushed. We did well.
GR: Yeah.
GM: In actual fact that post-training period abroad, we did broaden our skills quite considerably with the experience we were getting flying around. And we did eventually do a first raid on enemy territory. It was sort of a single effort in which we flew as a crew on our first operation.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And it was a comparatively easy operation.
GR: Yeah. Did they give you something like leaflet dropping or mine laying? Or something like that as a —?
GM: Oh yes. We dropped leaflets on this particular occasion.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: It wasn’t — they weren’t a great deal on this occasion but at least we felt we were doing something towards the war effort.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Yes.
GR: And that’s while you was at the Operational Training Unit.
GM: That’s right. Yes. Having done that single initial trip.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Within days it was postings were announced. And I think we all were all sent home on leave for a week or something like that. When we came back then the postings took effect. We went to the squadron.
GR: Yeah. And that was 103. Yeah. 103 at Elsham Wolds.
GM: Yes.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yes.
GR: And I believe, was your first operation then the thousand bomber raid?
GM: Oh yes. The first thousand bomber raid. As far as I can recall.
GR: Yeah.
GM: I think it was the very first one.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Where did we go to?
GR: I’m trying to remember. Would that be Cologne?
GM: Yes. It would be.
GR: Essen.
GM: It would have been.
GR: Cologne or Essen.
GM: I think it was Cologne.
GR: Cologne.
GM: Yes. Yes.
GR: And I think that was in a Wellington wasn’t it so —?
GM: Yes. That was in a Wellington.
GR: Yeah.
GM: We had converted from flying Ansons in the early days at IT. ITW. Yes.
GR: Yeah. Initial training. Yeah.
GM: Whatever it was.
GR: Yeah.
GM: When we got back from Canada that we then converted on to.
GR: Yeah. And obviously, I mean, I know you then converted from the Wellington on to the Halifax.
GM: Yes. Indeed.
GR: Heavy bomber.
GM: That was in the summer of 1942.
GR: Yeah. So, and then leading on to what obviously was an eventful night. How many operations did you actually fly Gordon? Can you remember? Roughly.
GM: I think I was on my eighteenth.
GR: Eighteenth.
GM: Yes
GR: Yeah.
GM: I was looking forward to getting, going towards the end. We had thirty to do.
GR: Thirty. Yes. Yeah.
GM: And it wasn’t to be.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Which was a great pity.
GR: And those eighteen were with the same crew? Were you —
GM: Oh yes.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yes. Yes.
GR: So, I don’t know whether you can tell us a little about yeah, obviously I know you were attacked by a German night fighter.
GM: Well what it really boils down to — the raid followed the usual pattern and except that when we came out of the target run and dropped the bombs and we were turned away for the return trip back home and we were jumped by this German fighter.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And he just hung around in the background so — I didn’t see him. I was in the front of the aircraft so, but from the rear gunner and the other people who could look backwards he stayed probably something like five hundred yards behind us. He didn’t do anything that was aggressive or anything like. He just sort of sat there. And we did, with the captain making up his mind then, we did talk about what we should do and eventually we said, ‘Well let’s try and scare him off.’ Bad decision. Because we opened up on him from the four gun turret in the, at the rear and also there was a turret —
GR: Mid-upper.
GM: Mid-upper turret. Yes. And that amounted to six machine guns in all. Four with the rear gunner and two mid-upper. And that annoyed the [laughs] chap who was following us I’ve no doubt because having received a blast from our gunners he then opened up and he must have been very good because he really gave us, I think it was —I think four bursts I think we experienced and in that time he set the two inboard engines on fire. He also hit the rear gunner and he missed the rest of us by very small margins because you could see the tracers going past.
GR: And through —
GM: And through.
GR: The machine. Yeah.
GM: Yeah. Yeah. And it set the two engines so named so, we were burned and the pilot put us into a dive to get to a lower level and we were flying at about twelve thousand feet I suppose. Certainly, no more. We found that to be a relatively good level to make an attack and, on this occasion, it didn’t pay off out, pay off in our favour as it had done in the past. So, we were shot down, in plain English. And got down to quite low levels before the order was given to abandon aircraft. And I, in the front of the aircraft was standing on the escape hatch. So all we had to do really was to move ourselves. That’s the radio operator, the front gunner and myself. And just behind and above us was the pilot and his —
GR: Flight engineer.
GM: Flight engineer.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yeah
GR: Was you the first out?
GM: Yes. I was standing on the escape hatch. And they were, having made the decision, the general impression was get out. Don’t hold anybody up.
GR: Yeah.
GM: So, I got the trap door up and I dropped to sitting on the side of the aperture with my legs dangling and I knew the others were anxious to get into that position so I slid my rear end off the edge of the opening and I was sucked out by the slipstream. And I didn’t pull my cord of the parachute until I was well away from the aircraft. And probably somebody else would have got out in the same time. And I eventually did do so but I wasn’t in the air very long. Just time to look around and there was the light and somehow or other it seemed to be yellowy to me. I don’t know what colour the night was there but I’ve got this yellow feeling in my memory so perhaps it was from the flares or something like that burning as the aircraft got closer to the ground and the fire took greater hold. Anyhow, I pulled the rip cord and came to a jarring stop almost, I suppose. And within a very short period — seconds it seemed, so it probably was that I found myself crashing through the branches of a tree. And I was left swinging with the parachute and the harness stretched out above me spread over the foliage of the branches of the tree.
GR: Yeah.
GM: So, I couldn’t touch the ground so I thought well I’ve got to do something. So I twisted the knob on the release on the parachute harness and the straps sort of sprang apart and I was free to drop — which I did. To my surprise I fell about a foot. No more. I mean, if you can imagine.
GR: Yeah.
GM: You pulled the cord and as soon as you were in motion then you stopped.
GR: You were bracing yourself for a bad fall.
GM: Indeed.
GR: And you dropped twelve inches.
GM: Yeah.
GR: Good.
GM: It couldn’t have been more. It was so quick. And so, I got myself out of the tree and dogs were barking around and I could see there was a building close by which I thought, well, sounds like this might be bit of a farm. In that style. I dumped my harness and what have you there. It was largely still attached to the silk of the parachute which was stuck up in the tree and I left it there. It was no good. I wasn’t going to be able to pull it down. It would make too much row in any case. I did try but I gave up when I heard the creaking and the crashing and the scratching on the branches. So, I walked my way down to the, what I thought might be a road and having got through the hedge it proved to be a road going, yes, downhill. Not very steep. So, naturally, I took the road down. I didn’t go up and I found that I was walking, from the observation of the North Star, I found that I was walking more or less in a northerly direction and as I felt then at the moment then that was the wrong way to go ‘cause I would only be walking to a coast.
GR: Was you in France Gordon? Or in Belgium? You know, when you landed.
GM: When I landed.
GR: Yeah.
GM: I was in, on the border of Belgium and Holland.
GR: Belgium and Holland. Right. Yeah.
GM: So, it was about as far as where you could get without being in Germany I suppose.
GR: Yeah.
GM: So, anyhow, I thought well it’s no good staying here. You’ve got to find somewhere to hide for daylight and it was still before midnight. So, I walked off and having made the discovery that I was heading to the north I turned on the first immediate turning and went up a road to the west and I did see where the aircraft had crashed. Having been left. So, I thought —right, well south is going to be over that way so I went that way and continued to do so for the rest of the night.
GR: So, you walked through the night.
GM: Yeah. I don’t know how many miles I travelled.
GR: Yeah.
GM: But I walked through the odd village certainly.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And the odd dog did bark.
GR: So, in the morning as the light’s coming up did you meet anybody or decide you had to get some sleep?
GM: Yeah, well I was still on the road. I was going, from my observations, then I realised I was no longer travelling to the south. I was travelling to the, what’s, south, east, west —
GR: West.
GM: I was travelling to the west along the road and I thought well there’s houses there. I wonder what is around the back somewhere. It was beginning to get light so, I turned off the road into a field path. And eventually I found a copse on the farm and I got myself in and got in to the undergrowth so that I was hidden although there was a road close by. Or a path of some sort close by. And went to sleep. I woke up mid-morning or thereabouts and I could hear people moving about in the field and I found I was in this copse on the side of a rise and there was men working above me in the field there and there was people passing along the road which was in front of this copse in which I was hiding. So, I just kept out of sight as best I could for the morning. The same in the afternoon. I examined what I’d got in my pockets which was edible. There wasn’t much. A few little bits of chocolate and what have you and I stayed there until the farm began to close down for the night and the light was well on its way to disappearing. Leaving it dark. So I just got up and I’d seen the traffic in the roads close by so I went, turned around, turned across the grass that wasn’t very long. Yes, it was grass of the field. Went through the hedge and down the road. Heading more or less in a southerly direction. And I proceeded where the road was going west and south and I took a variety of roads passing through whatever built up areas there were. And there were a few villages. Not big. That one could walk through.
GR: So, did you walk through the night again?
GM: Oh yeah.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yes. I walked through the night. In the early part of the night when I went past a group of houses very often there was a coffee shop or a beer place or whatever it was where people had gathered for their evening’s entertainment. I was being tempted to go and find out whether there was any help there but I resisted that and carried on until I had to find another hiding place on the following morning. And this was repeated. Staying hidden as best as possible in the hiding place which I’d chosen in the dark actually. And as soon as it got anywhere near dark I was on my way.
GR: How long did you do this for before you came into contact with anybody?
GM: Well I saw people. People came.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Did come fairly close to me without seeing me.
GR: Yeah.
GM: When I was hidden in the bushes and things like that. I think it was about the fifth day.
GR: Fifth day.
GM: Fourth or fifth day and I —
GR: And did somebody approach you or did you approach them?
GM: No. No. What happened was I’d been staying in the middle of a village. In the bombed house. Or an empty house anyhow. It wasn’t in very good nick. I imagined from what I could see that it was a bombed-like. During the daytime there in this particular place the shops across the road and on either side and what have you was, were mixed. In some cases, there were shops and there was living quarters there as well. Houses and flats. And people were going about their normal daily business.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And I, up on the first floor occasionally poked my head up and looked out of the windows and I could see these people dressed normally and carrying shopping bags and things like that and they went. They went. The scariest part of it was at lunchtime the kids were out of school and I don’t know whether they had their lunches at school or whether they had them at home but there was a number of them about and two or three of them came into the house in which I was on the first floor. And they messed around a bit as kids do in an empty place and they started coming up the stairs and then something happened. I don’t know what happened but it took their attention. Perhaps their playtime had gone and they didn’t get right up to the top of the stairs so, I was left on the first floor there unmolested. And I just stayed on there until it started to get dark. I can’t tell you what time it was that it got dark but this was October.
GR: Yeah.
GM: So, evenings were getting dark fairly early and the number of people out on the street of course diminished as soon as it came what would have been, in the old days, lighting up time.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And the streets became largely vacant so I took a chance. Went downstairs and got the general direction in my own mind to go south and west and I got out of the old bombed house on to the main road. I just walked through. Eventually I got out of the town and I took where my fancy took me. In actual fact, I was aware of what the countryside was like and whether I was on open ground or whether I was passing through places where there was copses of trees and what have you but I stayed on the road as much as possible. It was easy walking.
GR: Yeah.
GM: That’s what I did. And I had to find, at the beginning of the next day before it got light I had to find a hiding place each time. And the countryside was quite interesting. It was quite hilly and I did come to a river. Wait a minute. No [pause] I’m not too sure where that was. I certainly came to the odd railway so I had to walk along the ordinary road and went across the railway bridge to get to the other side. There were people about. A bit. But it was as good as being, walking on your own.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yeah. It was, it was quite good. So, I walked overnight for the first four or five nights and got away with it.
GR: Got away with it. So again, when did you meet somebody or how did you meet somebody —
GM: Yeah.
GR: Who was involved with either the resistance or helpers?
GM: Well, I stayed in one town as I say.
GR: Yeah.
GM: I think that was probably the last one. Anyhow, I walked from that last town and eventually having sort of just taken the general south-westerly direction I found myself in fairly open country and of course it had started to rain. It had been dry all the time previously. And I got pretty wet. Ok. What do I do now? And it was no good sort of getting under a tree or anything like that.
GR: No.
GM: ‘Cause the summer foliage was disappearing fast and the branches were fairly clear of leaves. So, I thought well I’ll have to go back to the old place where I’d stayed the previous night which was a bit of a problem because it was some miles. Anyhow, I did go back and I came into a village and you needed a map because it affects the story to a certain extent. Anyhow, I got, I passed one of the villages which I’d come through and I saw a house on the other side of the road. There were houses around.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: And I was walking down the main street. There was nobody about and looking across the road I could see there was a light in this house. It was surprising because most of the lighting was so subdued that you really couldn’t make any use of it. In any case it would have given one’s position away quite easily. Anyhow, I was in the middle of this village and I was quite amazed to see so much light from it. Anyhow, that was only for a short while but the house was still there and I thought there’s somebody obviously living there. And it took me some time to make up my mind but I thought I’m soaking wet.
GR: Wet, tired and hungry.
GM: Indeed. Indeed. Greater pusher to making up your mind.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And so, I went and knocked on the front door and there was no response from the door but the window flung out from the first floor. And just one question, ‘qui est la?’ Who is there? So, I tried to explain my position to this face up at the window. And I don’t know what he said but obviously sort of —wait. So, I just stood there and I heard him thundering downstairs so he’d still got his shoes on and this was about 8 o’clock in the evening I suppose. From my general recollection. And the door was flung open. And I think I said something rather crass like, ‘Je suis Anglais,’ or something like that. And he looked me up and down. Didn’t say anything. Just beckoned me in.
GR: Just beckoned you in.
GM: And I then followed him into a back room and he put the lights on. He gave me a good looking over and his wife then came downstairs. Whether they’d been going to bed or whether they’d got an upstairs room I don’t know. And so there we were. They sort of, I think they started to dry me off to a certain extent and they also had a, what we call a boiler, a solid fuel fire of sorts.
GR: Yeah. Fire.
GM: And so I’m sort of sat close by to that and his wife, as I say, came down and I tried to explain who I was. I showed them my uniform and the flying and the badge and they were very friendly. Anyhow, it wasn’t long before there was a knock on the door and in came a local priest. So, they’d got a message through to him pretty smartish. Mind you it was — the timing was such that it was now in time which nobody should be about except those who were in authority.
GR: Yeah. Curfew.
GM: There was a curfew.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And this man was the local priest. He’d got some English. He’d got a good lot of English. Anyhow, he understood what was what and his main words that he said was, ‘You come with me.’ So, I thought, well, ‘Great. And by that time the rain had finished and it was dry outside. Well I say dry. It wasn’t raining.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And having thanked the man and his wife for the help I came away with the priest and went and stayed at his establishment which was some walk away. And he was living there with his housekeeper and she was still up so it couldn’t have been so very late. So, she just sort of said hello, so to speak, and accepted that I was one of the opposition to the Germans. They had me in there and I don’t know — they gave me a drink I think. I don’t know whether it was hot or cold now. And a bed. That was the first bed I’d been in for some time. it was typical continental.
GR: Yeah.
GM: One of these great puffed up ones.
GR: It was a bed.
GM: It was a bed.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And it was in the warm. In the dry. And they were friends.
GR: And did you find out later were they part of the resistance or were they just somebody — did they put you in —?
GM: Oh, they were in the know.
GR: They were in the know.
GM: They were in the know. How active they were I don’t know but they certainly —
GR: You wouldn’t have known at the time but obviously you were at the beginning of the Comete line.
GM: Yes.
GR: To be passed all the way down.
GM: It may not have been actual Comete people but people who were associated with them.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And yes, I was then [pause] I made the contacts and went on and eventually with the result that I got in with Comete but it was no joyride having found them.
GR: No. No.
GM: As a matter of fact it was downright dangerous in places.
GR: Yeah. Because at the time I presume the Germans knew that something was, they knew airmen were getting down.
GM: Oh yes.
GR: They would have known of an existence of some sort of resistance movement moving them. How, can you remember how long you were actually from being shot down to getting through the Pyrenees how long were you —?
GM: Oh, three weeks or thereabouts.
GR: Three weeks.
GM: Yeah. Yes.
GR: And obviously you and your helpers would have been living on your wits all the time. Like you said it was dangerous.
GM: Yes, well I eventually —
GR: Probably more dangerous for the helpers.
GM: Oh certainly.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Certainly. Yes.
GR: As long as you still had your RAF dog tags you had some sort of security.
GM: Yes. Yes indeed.
GR: Yeah.
GM: But I did take other badges and things off so there was nothing to show for it. And then of course, the priest lent me one of his overall coats. I don’t know whether — he wasn’t as big as me but, so where he got the coat I don’t know but it certainly fitted really well. And I eventually got through to Brussels. From Brussels I got through to Paris. I got from Paris down to St Jean de Luz and from there through the Pyrenees. That was a long run. I don’t know how many miles. Thirty odd. And the —
GR: And this would have been the end of October. Probably the beginning of November.
GM: Yes.
GR: So winter was on its way.
GM: It was the end of October.
GR: Yeah.
GM: It was —I got down to the Pyrenees. I think it was the 19th of October. And got across and I then went down. Yes. Yes I eventually got down to — what’s the capital of Spain?
GR: Madrid.
GM: Madrid.
GR: Madrid.
GM: Yes. Eventually they, on the grapevine, they were told in Madrid that I was up there on their side of the border and so they sent a car up to take me down to the British embassy.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And arrangements were then made and we went from the embassy two or three days later and we then finished up in Gibraltar and they sort of were pretty careful about finding out you were on the level.
GR: Yes.
GM: And so, I then went down to the Rock of Gibraltar and eventually, a couple of days later I flew to the UK.
GR: So, you flew back. You didn’t — yeah.
GM: Yes.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And that was [pause] how many days are there in October? Thirty one.
GR: Thirty one.
GM: Well that was the night of the 31st of October and we landed down in Cornwall to book in and do whatever official things had to be done and then we were flown up to, now, an aerodrome near London.
GR: Croydon.
GM: No.
GR: Not Hendon.
GM: No. No.
GR: Uxbridge.
GM: No. Further out.
GR: Northolt.
GM: Further out. Anyhow —
GR: Yeah.
GM: We got a train in.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And reported in to whatever place it was. Up in town. Yes.
GR: And then I presume —
GM: I’m sorry. This is getting a bit —
GR: No. Gordon it isn’t and your memory’s very very good. And I presume you were then debriefed.
GM: We came up. We landed in the UK and then we, then came in to, towards central London.
GR: Yeah.
GM: We then, I was with other people. Then there was three, I think, of us. We hadn’t been in our escapes with each other at all. It was just whoever was [pause] happened to be, due to come, return back to the UK.
GR: Yes.
GM: On that particular day. Anyhow, as I say we landed on the first of November and we got, we then, with several hiccups we got up to London and Baker Street. It was a hotel which is still there.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And went in. And it had been taken over by the air force, and booked in and in the next couple of minutes we were asked a question. The question is, ‘Where do you live?’ And I said, ‘Well, my family live in Wembley’. He said, ‘That’s just down the road by train.’ So he said, ‘Right. You can go home tonight.’ So, I don’t know what — oh they gave me a pass, I think. Travel. Yeah. Anyhow, I got on the train in Baker Street along through to Wembley Central and I walked down the old road. The estate. Sort of. Which had been there for quite some time and I turned down the road, our road —Douglas Avenue after travelling down the Ealing Road which does lead one to Ealing still and I banged on the front door. Gave my mother nearly a heart attack I think. She already knew I was ok.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And so, I went in and I was home. And the 1st of November is my birthday.
GR: So, you was home for your birthday.
GM: Indeed. Well, the last couple of hours of it.
GR: So from taking off you spent what, four weeks. Got back four weeks later.
GM: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yes. About the 4th or the 5th of October.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And I walked into home. Thousands of miles away I suppose you could say.
GR: Round trip.
GM: Round trip.
GR: A wonderful birthday present.
GM: Indeed.
GR: Going back to the crew, Gordon.
GM: Yes.
GR: If you don’t mind. I know your rear gunner didn’t make it.
GM: No. He didn’t.
GR: The other five members. Did they evade or were they taken prisoner of war?
GM: No. They were — those that were injured —
GR: Yeah.
GM: Were taken to hospital and they then became POWs.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And the others who were just banged about a bit the same as myself —
GR: Yeah.
GM: They were taken prisoner.
GR: They were taken prisoner as well. Yeah. So out of the crew you were the only one who managed to get back.
GM: Indeed. Indeed.
GR: Yeah.
GM: It was a great pity but —
GR: And the rest of them had to wait until 1945.
GM: I’m afraid so.
GR: Yeah. So what happened to you Gordon? After you were back and you’d had your leave and obviously the end of the war would have been still two years away.
GM: Oh yes this was, what, ‘42 .
GR: ’42. Yeah. So —
GM: Running into ‘43. Yeah. I had Christmas at home.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yeah.
GR: ‘Cause I know they had a rule about not letting you fly again or fly over.
GM: It depended on your experience I think.
GR: Yeah.
GM: But I had, in actual fact, in that four weeks and I’d got to know the identity of a lot of people.
GR: Yeah. Which was good.
GM: So, there was no question of going back on ops again.
GR: No. So did you, what did you actually do for those two years. Did you —
GM: Oh. Well, yes, after the interrogation, the next day.
GR: Yeah.
GM: After I’d been home I had to go back to this old hotel at Baker Street and went through the debriefing and they said, ‘What do you want to do?’ So, I said, ‘Well I would like to do SN course in navigation.’ Staff navigator. And so they said, ‘Well, that’s alright. We can fix that.’ And sure enough they did. I was posted away from London to Cheltenham. The aerodrome at Cheltenham. Or nearby. And I was on the staff there as an instructor until July ‘43. That’s right. July ‘43 and in that time, I was an instructor in —
GR: Navigation.
GM: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And I then took the advanced course which was very interesting.
GR: Yeah.
GM: It was a good course. And I then was posted, after that, to [pause] now where did I go to?
GR: Again, as an instructor or —
GM: Oh yes.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Yes. Yes. I was posted up to Scotland. That’s right. And strangely the place where I got posted to was Wigtown.
GR: Wigtown. Yeah. I know Wigtown.
GM: And the chap I was working, that I was sent up to work with was Len [unclear] he was a flight [unclear] officer. Flight lieutenant.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Was he? Yeah. He was flight lieutenant. He was, certainly he was a regular officer and navigation specialist so I worked with him to start with and, well it all turned out very well.
GR: Yeah.
GM: Finishing up, as you say, as a flight lieutenant.
GR: Yeah. And so, I’ll pull to a close. Where was you on VE day? So 8th of May 1945. Was you still up in Scotland instructing? Where was you when you were told the war had finished?
GM: 8th of May.
GR: 1945.
GM: ‘45. I was at Wigtown.
GR: You were still up in Wigtown in Scotland. Yeah.
GM: Yes. I stayed on with the flying training. Still continued.
GR: Yeah.
GM: The air force didn’t suddenly sort of pack it all in and go home. It carried on very much as it had before. And eventually they were closing down the advanced, was it the Advanced Navigation School?
GR: Yeah.
GM: Something. Anyhow, the camp was going to be decommissioned by the sounds of things until something else was found for it to be used for and we came down south and I [pause] There was somebody who was the nav senior instructor who I’d known and met and he put a request in, I think. For me to go to where he was.
GR: Yeah. And obviously by the time you finished your service in the Royal Air Force.
GM: Yeah.
GR: You came back to Wembley.
GM: Yes. Indeed.
GR: And this house we’re sat in. How long have you lived here now Gordon?
GM: Oh, about forty five, forty six years.
GR: Forty five. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: And we had another house before this for twelve years.
GR: Yeah.
GM: The other side of Wembley.
GR: Yeah.
GM: And on the same road as where my parents lived and where I grew up.
GR: So apart from a six year sojourn in the Royal Air Force.
GM: I’ve lived in Wembley.
GR: You’re here in Wembley and we’re still in Wembley.
GM: Yeah.
GR: And I have to say, Gordon. I really appreciate what you’ve just talked about. It was absolutely wonderful. Thank you.
GM: I’m sorry to not be —
GR: Do not say sorry.
GM: More.
GR: No. I mean I —
GM: I haven’t thought about some parts of this at all.
GR: Yeah. I mean I knew your story obviously from past experiences and some of the books you’ve appeared in. And I know you’ve got your book coming out in September which is going to be eagerly awaited. But no —that was wonderful. Thank you.
GM: Oh well, you’re very kind.
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 Gordon Mellor. Two
Creator
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Gary Rushbrooke
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-06-27
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMellorG160627
Conforms To
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Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Gordon Mellor grew up in London and was interested in aviation. He volunteered for the Air Force and trained as a navigator in Canada. On his return to the UK he and his crew were posted to 103 Squadron at Elsham Wolds and his first operation was the thousand bomber operation against Cologne. On his eighteenth operation they were attacked by a night fighter. Gordon baled out and landed in a tree. When he had freed himself and landed on the ground, he set off to walk, by tracking the North Star, towards the general direction of Spain. He hid in a number of places during the daylight until after a few days he was inspired to knock on a door. He found he was in Belgium with people who started the process that would lead to him being escorted through an escape line from Belgium to Paris and then through the Pyrenees to Spain. He was taken to Gibraltar and flown home. After debriefing he was told he could go home and he knocked on his own home door on his birthday four weeks after his escape and evasion began.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Belgium
Canada
Gibraltar
Great Britain
Spain
England--Lincolnshire
France--Paris
France
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1942-10-04
1942-11-01
1945
Format
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01:09:16 audio recording
103 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
briefing
de Jongh, Andree (1916 - 2007)
debriefing
evading
Halifax
navigator
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Wigtown
Resistance
shot down
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/338/3502/PTaylorGH1601.1.jpg
4df1ff0eed98f30b3435401903bcaca0
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/338/3502/ATaylorGH160831.1.mp3
c7fd63bc5f7766f359632f5517aecd77
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Taylor, Gerald
Gerald Herbert Taylor
Gerald H Taylor
G H Taylor
G Taylor
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Gerald Herbert Taylor (1924 - 2016, 1607305 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-31
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Taylor, GH
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: Is that ok? Right I’ll start. My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Wednesday the 31st of August 2016 and we’re in Maidenhead with Gerry Taylor who is going to tell us about his days in Bomber Command. So Gerry what are your first recollections of life with the family?
GT: The seaside really. Being born in Bournemouth I now know and have known for many years how lucky I was being born there because it gave — and also obviously the fact that my father had a car. Which is those days was, I suppose, more uncommon at the beginning. He worked for commercial traveller — as a commercial traveller and the area manager for the south of England for Crosse and Blackwell. Started his work up in Soho in London and got promoted to the job in Bournemouth as the area representative. So he covered the area of the New Forest.
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
CB: So we had to stop for the phone but the father was an area representative for Crosse and Blackwell.
GT: Promotion to this but it involved moving to Bournemouth and having a car to take around the New Forest area. He covered, I think, an area say between Devon and all of Hampshire. And [pause] yes the first recollection, I’ve backtracked really a bit, but about cars. They apparently they took him outdoors to teach him how to drive. He had a little old Morris. And the man who showed him sort of sat him in the car and drove him up and down the road in Soho a little bit. And that’s it. He said bye bye. And that was his tuition. That’s all he got to drive from there to Bournemouth. To find the way and everything. So, he always used to joke about he never passed a test in his eighty five years. And I won’t say he never did anything wrong. He didn’t seem to to me but anyway. So that was a great advantage in Bournemouth as well because he loved the sea and swimming and he spent as much time as possible being able to swim. He used to get up early. Before seven. Down to the beach and took me down most times. I think I was probably a big disappointment because —
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
GT: I go some morning without a sound but —
CB: Yes. So we were just talking about the swimming. So you did a lot of swimming as well.
GT: He used to swim long distances and between the two piers Boscombe and Bournemouth Pier. But I was a bit of a disappointment because I didn’t like cold water. I loved swimming but it gets too cold. It did in the mornings. So, and he was so lucky to be able to do that. And we had a beach hut which we spent as much time as possible in the school holidays and all other times. So it was really and I didn’t even appreciate it I suppose until later in life how lucky I was. And it made for a huge amount of enjoyment from my point of view and I always loved the seaside particularly. I’m sure it comes from that. Schooling was all in Bournemouth. I can remember the very first school was a little primary school. I don’t know if it would be called that now. It was close to my home in Winton. That’s the earliest one I can remember. I don’t think it was a — Brianston. No. That wasn’t the name of the school. It will come to me. But it was a very small thing. Thirty or forty little, little boys prior to going to the larger school which was a collegiate school, which is in West Bournemouth. A place called [pause] well naturally it was near south — Westbourne. That’s right. Westbourne, which was a district of it. And it was a good school. I enjoyed that. And from there I went to a more senior school at the age of around about eleven. To Bournemouth, or as it was then called, Bournemouth School for Boys. And there was also one for girl’s which was a very good school. My sister went there. But I did enjoy school — looking back on most of it. I didn’t work as hard as I ought to have done. I know that now. Whereas my sister was working away and I was — she was held up as a — I should be working like her which is true. But I didn’t like it at the time. Anyway, my most enjoyable thing at school really was the Boy Scouts I think. I went all through the ranks and levels up to troop leader and really was keen on it. And went to camps in the summer which was another nice addition you could do with that sort of thing. Boy Scouts may have been mocked a bit but I didn’t find that. I didn’t understand it really and even now I don’t. But it all changed so much I suppose. But certainly the Boy Scouts was a great thing which I enjoyed and the school was very supportive of it. And later on when after the war broke out they also had an ATC section and a Cadet Corps. I can’t think — what was it called? Cadet Corps. But they had, they were pre-army people and so I joined that as well which was quite active. And, I don’t know, I suppose I joined it with a young kid’s version of wanting to do something. I can remember clearly on Armistice Days I used to stand. Occasionally it was me. It was others at other times. Stand for the Armistice Ceremony in front of the Memorial with your rifle sort of reversed and stand the whole five minutes or whatever it was. Might have been longer really. To stay there whilst service was going on. Which was quite a thing you could remember and all part of my interesting joint thing. I can remember, and that was all still while I was at the school. I enjoyed playing football mostly. I played a bit of rugby. Not hockey. Football was the big enjoyment of my life and we played other schools. I wasn’t that good. I think I was in the second eleven. I played once or twice in the first eleven. Which was, of course a big excitement in my life when it happened. In the sports side of it was very good. There was a lot of things to join and take part if you wanted. I just concentrated really on — did a lot with the Scouts mostly. And when the war was declared I went to this, sort of — backtrack. I went to the Bournemouth Boy’s School around about ’39. I can’t, to be honest, remember. It might have been. It was probably before that I’m sorry because I remember yes it was. It was before it. I can’t remember the date but I remember I was at a Scout camp near Bournemouth for a weekend. A short camp. And that was when they declared war. Whilst I was at the camp. And I won’t say it was excited. It was sort of awe inspiring thing. The fact that we were at war and my parents remembered the First World War. My father was in France in 1914 and he was an Old Contemptible. One of the originals who was there, excuse me, he was there for the famous football match. I don’t know if that was the one they all talk about but he certainly said there was a kicking about of footballs. Which, whilst he was alive it hadn’t gained its notoriety as it has now. But it was very interesting to know that he was part of that. And then he was wounded at one stage. I’m not sure if it was Ypres or not but he was wounded and came back to the UK. He was a sergeant in the — a drill sergeant at Aldershot. Which always surprised me because he wasn’t a particularly noisy man which as drill sergeant, you more or less have to be. I mean he could raise his voice but to be a drill sergeant at Aldershot was quite a thing. You needed a very powerful voice which was always rather intriguing to me. So that was a separate thing if I backtracked on to because of the war and knowing when I was at school. Excuse me. I left school at [pause] muddled straight up in to the joining the RAF.
CB: Well the war started when you were fifteen.
GT: ’42. It must have been early ’42. And I volunteered. I wanted to volunteer. My mother was highly anti-volunteering for it at that stage, ‘No need to do it now.’ One of my things I know, I remember, I always felt I don’t want to be told what to do by going into some army thing. I would like to go in to the air force because I was much more interested in planes because I lived very close to Hurn and was often cycling over to Hurn and watched the planes taking off. It was always of more interest regardless of the war itself. It was just the aviation side I guess. But eventually I persuaded my father to take me to a recruiting office one lunchtime ad we signed up. He pointed out there were, that I should think very carefully about it all but he didn’t try to deter me. He just said, ‘Be aware of what you’re signing.’ And so I signed up for aircrew but I was immediately put on [pause] not retirement [pause]
CB: Deferred.
GT: Deferred service. That’s the word. I’m sorry. So in 1942 when I signed up I went on to deferred service. At the same time, or roughly the same time I got a job at the school. I was a laboratory assistant in the physics laboratory and I also covered the chemistry laboratory because they didn’t have anybody. But basically I was laboratory assistant at the physics laboratory which was employed by the Bournemouth Council. So I got a ninety five percent — ninety five pence pay packet each week. I think it was a pound I think before my tax and things removed. It was about ninety five pence which I remember I carefully gave my mother something towards housekeeping and stashed away a few pennies which in those days bought bars of chocolate. So it was all a sort of growing up process. But I thoroughly, I enjoyed school. Things like physics and chemistry and the practical sides of the things. And I suppose if you enjoy it you’re possibly better at it. And if you don’t enjoy it which I definitely liked being there. And I was quite good at keeping the place tidy and getting things ready for experiments. So it was a good feeling of being a young lad and suddenly becoming an adult in the school and gave you some kudos. Still could be a member of the Scouts because it was all running at the same time so I stayed on with that. And it was almost a year when I was on, whilst I was on deferred service until I got my papers for calling up in early ’43. When I should have mentioned that after I signed up the initial papers at the recruiting office in Bournemouth I went up for the interviews at Oxford. The aircrew interviews. Aircrew. It wasn’t the reception centre but it was the interview place and we had a night. Stayed the night at Oxford. Most of us, of course, it was the first time we’d been away from home. We were in this Clarendon Laboratory. An enormous place. All I ever remember is masses and masses of beds in the place and you found your bed in the middle of it and it was listening. A night of noises from men. All very unusual. Almost everybody would have felt the same I know. But had the usual interviews there. And I, it was a two day process. I’m trying to think of where else there was attached to it. Just constant interviews really. Of asking about different things. I wanted to be a pilot. I imagined myself as a pilot I suppose and I, because of my attachment to the ATC at the school and the army OTC, Officer Training Corps, I got a trip in a Whitley. I think they took four or five of us from the school. Recruiting things. Army and the air force one and we had a trip in the back of this Whitley. There were windows of course. No comforts and we flew quite low. Floating around over Bournemouth and the area and it was exciting but I constantly felt airsick. And by the end of this hour’s flight, I suppose, a little less than that maybe, I thought to myself whatever have I done. Signed up for the air force and I was nothing but airsick. It was absolutely terrible. So it was, that was of course quite a worry. I thought I’d done the wrong thing and that was all still part of the school life really which continued until the calling up time. Just side-tracking a bit my father lost a lot of his access to the sea because they closed off lots of roads to the front. But I suppose he knew most of the people who were officials down there by that number of years he’d lived and the amount of swimming he did. So, believe it or not at the end of one row of barbed wire and some other obstruction in the water just a few feet out in the bay there was a space left for [pause] I’m trying to think exactly where it was near. Near to Durley Chine it was and you could still walk along the promenade there but he had this space where he crept through the barbed wire and had a good swim. Which was all very helpful I should think to the Germans [laughs] if they [laughs] but it was all, would have been quite hopeless really. The amount of defences they could put up really by that time. They were in shore and right on the cliffs of Bournemouth. He joined the home, he was the first in the LDE the Local Defence Volunteers and transferred to the Home Guard and he was a lieutenant in the Home Guard during the war. Whilst I was at school, part of the, being part of the staff of the school I took part in the shifts which covered the night shift and fire watch. And more than the masters I used to be able to patrol around the roofs which had warping areas. You could climb on to the roof to get to the school clock on the top. Yours truly was, I wouldn’t say was allowed, I went up there two or three times to fix the hands of the clock which slipped and that sort of thing. Although it was allowed it wasn’t officially approved of course. Health and safety not being anything that was heard of. But as far as I was concerned it was just a boy climbing up a roof. Not too steep a one. And fire watch was quite interesting. Well, very interesting. We also used to see the blaze of the sky from the fires of Southampton which is thirty miles away across the New Forest. But when there were big raids on Southampton we saw all the lights in the sky. And my house in Bournemouth was then a three storey old house on a raised part in Talbot Heath and I had a little balcony outside the window. And when there were raids on I used to climb through the window and just stand there — to my mother’s fury, ‘Get inside.’ And they were all sitting under the stairs [laughs] in the so-called air raid shelter but I used to watch the air raids. Not very safe but also you could see Southampton razed and occasionally see landmines coming down. And I can remember one moonlit night seeing a parachute. There was a bomb went off. It would have been a couple of miles away I suppose. But I cycled past the school on the way to the, my school working and this possibly was where the landmine hit because it hit. It destroyed one of the schools, or half of it, on the way. So that was just from my point of view an interesting thing to have seen. And I can recall seeing, in a daylight raid, seeing a fighter, German fighter shot down. A little bit further out towards the west of Bournemouth and I guessed the area. I cycled over there as soon as the all clear from the air raids went. And it was a German fighter and I collected a bit of scrap metal and something else to take home which had a disgusting smell about it. I don’t know what it was. But apparently it was always associated with crash, crashes and it must have sprayed oil or something over the fields. A nasty smell really. Anyway, they were kept in a greenhouse for a while. My parents, I hate to say my father didn’t mind really. I think he understood. But my mother disapproved of my nipping out at all. Which really was quite right. But I was forever nipping out and having a look. Seeing what was going on during air raids. But my grandmother who had come to live with us from Redhill when her husband died, my grandfather, she was under the stairs. My mother. And there was room for me and my sister and my father if he was there. So that was the, really I think the end of the school time and I went up to —
[Recording paused]
CB: Ok. So we’re restarting. So you’re now called up. So what happened then?
GT: Yes. When I got my call up papers it was to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground which was a place known as ACRC. It’s the Air Crew Reception Centre and it was based in London. The best way I can describe it — very near to London Zoo. In that area of London. And we were all based in different hotels around Regent’s Park which had been commandeered. So we were in a room of, I think, three or four men. And all my room and most of them were about the same. All the way up along Regent’s Park Road. But that was purely part of the living side of the accommodation side. We went to lots of other places for training. So I did it but it was an amazing experience for all of us. For most of them being the first full time of being away from work. From home. Which reminds me if I could backtrack there to when I was, went for interview in Oxford. My hope had been to be a pilot but the officer said that there weren’t any training vacancies for pilots at that time but they were desperately in need of air observers. And you are just the sort that would make [laughs] make a good air observer. Now, this might have just been a load of flannel or it might have been true. Whether to do with — I quite believe they were short of pilots but whether they had suitable people for navigators I don’t know. I say navigators. That’s wrong, it was called, at that time it was an air observer and they had an O for the wings. So I accepted this without a murmur really. Disappointed but that’s what I was accepted as. An air observer under training. The — added to that at some stage I suppose within the first year the name was changed to navigator. So I was no longer an air observer. I was a navigator under training. But to go on to ACRC in London I was there about three weeks I think and we had training in various, well-known places from these hotels. Early morning was something like a 6 o’clock start. And we formed up in flights which we’d been, I suppose, arbitrarily put into and we marched from the hotel along the road to the zoo, London Zoo where we ate our meals inside the zoo. And the long columns still in the darkness and the front one and the back one had to carry back, aircrew person had to carry a lamp. A red lantern. And it was all quite amazing to sort of walk along the road at that time of the night. Then cross the little bridge into London Zoo and have our feed there. And back again to whatever training place we’d got. We had things like the Wigmore Hall which was commandeered by the RAF and probably the other forces as well to show films and lectures. But because it was big and there were several bits to it they could show big films. Most memorable of all the experiences I think to us was the showing of the anti-VD films. So they, they put these —
CB: We’ve all had that.
GT: Hundreds of us in there and put the most gruesome, I think they were American films showing the very worst part when I think about it. And I think I have to say it quite probably put a lot of people off. Exactly what it was supposed to do. And it was quite horrible really but anyway it put people off for quite a long time so put it that way. So they become a bit more hardened to life. And we not only got things like that to try and keep you on the straight and narrow so you were fit for things and not in a sort of hospital or a ward somewhere with it. We also had a very strong additive to the tea which made it taste disgusting but it dampened down your ardour evidently. And that went on all the time we were there and some of the early postings and after a while either you got used to it or they stopped doing it.
CB: That was Bromide in tea.
GT: If you were able to fly I’m quite sure you were old enough to do what you wanted then. But we went to, I can’t remember, inside Lord’s we went to several things which was a very interesting experience to think you were actually in the buildings of Lord’s to these lectures on various items. Mostly I suppose it would be administrative and drill type items. Physical drill that we would be doing rather than more intimate stuff to do with the technical side of the flying. And it was to get you in to a shape where you were part of a cohesive group really. Lots of drill there. We had a drill sergeant was, or a sergeant rather, was allocated to each flight as we were broken up into — it was called flights at that stage. And we had a sergeant took us for the drill and marched us up and down around the Lord’s area. And generally that took part of that side of it. But the amount of drill we did there was really limited I suppose by the amount of space you could march around London in without getting into other people’s way. But generally the three weeks was really, you were not allowed out until the last week. So the first two weeks you were incarcerated in this place and we had a canteen area which most people gravitated to. Or you could just go to your room at night and that was it. No going out. We were — the first episode outwards was very exciting. To go out with your white flash on and walk out. I recall the first time I had to salute an officer which was one of the first things we were taught was that you saluted officers. I recall getting very close to this officer and being concerned as to how I was going to salute him and made a real mess of it I suppose. I think he laughed out loud at my salute but he saluted back. And it was, the beginning of that was you were in the forces and that was just one of the outward things. You soon got used to that and being in uniform was, wasn’t uncomfortable at all because every valid person, or able person was in some form of uniform. And so about three weeks went quite quickly. I can’t recall any other things of that particular area. And then we were split up. If you were still regarded as suitable for air crew they were weeding some people out who I think they thought possibly weren’t warranting training what they wanted and they had to accept a lower, lower thing really. But the ones who were going further or had the opportunity to further themselves into aircrew were split up into initial, what they called Initial Training Wings. We were a flight at this time and then split up all over the place and it would depend on wherever they had vacancies. And we had different courses at each wing and most of these were or seemed to be in nice holiday places where there were lots of hotels that could accommodate the forces. Particularly the RAF who did a lot of training in this way. In the, it was called the ITW. The Initial Training Wing and that’s where you received a lot more admin and drilling and further information on the basics without getting too far into the more technical side of the operations. A huge amount, it seemed, of drilling. Walking up and down. My ITW was in Scarborough and it was, we were based in the Grand Hotel which they’d taken over. And that’s right on the front at Scarborough and was an amazing place in its day. But to see it with nothing but air force people running about inside must have been a bit of a horror to those who really knew it. But we did a lot of drilling along the seafronts and up and down the hollows of roads around the sea. Which was good for training because we did a lot of marching up hill. And the sergeants got to know us quite well really with their usual remarks about training and what they ought to be doing.
[Recording paused]
We still looked upon the sergeants or the NCOs as some, a different breed. And I recall we used to take our shirts to, you could send them to the camp laundry or whatever you called it and you’d get them all back nicely but if you sent them to the Chinese laundries of which there were loads of them proliferated around these centres of RAF and, I expect the army as well. You got a fantastic wash and your collars, which were loose collars in those days, they came back like little sheets of cardboard but looked exceptionally smart but they were very nasty to wear. When you folded them over you had a sharp starched edge which really made your skin sore. So people were walking around with little red necks until you got used to it all and softened them up a bit. I remember one night we were out, a little group of us put our laundry in to the little local Chinese and a voice over our shoulder said, ‘So this is what you do in your spare time is it?’ And this was our drill sergeant. He’d never spoken to us, as I say, an off-duty human. But we were all very surprised to find that that he was sort of human beings too. Which was quite good and quite funny really. He chatted to us for a while but that was our first free contact with a permanent RAF person, I suppose. And we had competitions between the different flights in drill. Which was quite good because we got very very keen on it and we, my particular flight got very good at it and got very good at the drilling. The American drill which, I can’t recall the name of it but you had, went through a long, long series of manoeuvres without any orders being given at all. It has a word to it but it’s an American invention. You just started off and you went through and you followed the instructions you learned and they used to have competitions between the different wings.
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
GT: So anyway, we won one of these competitions which was all very gratifying. And we did some classroom work which was all very basic but it was certainly leading towards being in an aircraft and flying and what outer extraneous things affected you. Like the weather. Very, very basic things. Talking about the weather and how it affected you and other types of thing which affected the flying of aircraft that were all very basic but things we didn’t know about at all. And a reasonable amount of class work doing that and we also learned a lot of — the drill was at another section which was kept to itself really. We learned small arms shooting. There was a range up on the hills above Scarborough. A shooting range. And we used to go, not often but quite regularly up there to learn to manipulate sten guns, Bren guns. Particularly sten guns and fire them both on the range. And then hand guns. I can’t remember what weapon it was, a revolver on the range to see and actually shooting at a targets. And we learned the mechanics of a sten gun because that was something we would or could come into contact with on an airfield. And we learned to take it apart and know every single nut and bolt of the thing, and that’s the sort of thing I enjoyed. So I got very good at dismantling and naming sten guns and becoming top in speed in getting them undone and put back together again. But it was the sort of thing that somehow seemed useless. What on earth are you doing that for because basically we might not see them. We would see them again obviously but not come into contact with use. But all part of the same thing. And we did skeet shooting quite a bit which was again part of observation in the sky and that fed back in to the fact that one of the other things we learned in the classrooms was aircraft recognition. And there were various ways of teaching us. Slowly learning well that’s a Junkers 88 from little cards. And we used to get these flash jack slides quicker and quicker and you had to jot down what they were. Again, eventually it ended up in little competitions to see if you could get them in time. And the cut down time was two or three seconds you’d get given to see some fighter which would flash across and you’d think you’d hardly had time to imagine what it was. But it was, it taught you which we did get into that in greater detail in further training. But most of, well all of the stuff was relevant to your future existence. But it seemed at the time why are we learning this and not getting on with learning with, in our case being navigators. But it was, in fact, part of it and in addition to doing that the ITW, the training wings held you as a group before going on to the further training which was more likely to be overseas. They had a scheme, a massive scheme organised. The Overseas Training Scheme which had a lot of training facilities for pilots and navigators in — Canada and America and South Africa were the main ones. I’m trying to think. And there were some in the UK but a smaller number for various obvious reasons it was sensible to train out of an operational dangerous place. So we then, from ITW, got [pause] let me get this right, we were posted to, I’m not sure at that stage we knew it was overseas or not because we went to Harrogate. Posted to Harrogate. Not knowing exactly what we were doing but the rumour was we were going to go overseas. And obviously we didn’t know then. We worked it out from later years there was a hold up. In other words there might have been a shipping hold up. There might not have been the ships to take us. From Harrogate we were just floating about in, again in hotels. With minimal training. And we went from there to Ludlow in Cheshire. I think it was Cheshire. Shropshire. Shropshire. I’m sorry. In Shropshire where we lived in tents and we had about five weeks there I think. And what we did there was really [laughs] well it was a waste of time but that was what it was designed to do. When we got there we had to — one of two things. We either built a drain with pipes etcetera along a route that was already there and we either built it, made it a bit longer. All part of a drainage system and sewerage system which they were laying up. Now, the next group that came in after we went — their task was more likely to be take up this building it, or this construction area that we’d done, take it all up and pack it away so that it wasn’t there. So it was just a waste of time really but it was what we were doing. And wandering around Ludlow I think. It was quite strict but it was just under tents it wasn’t very enjoyable really. And we were allowed out in to Ludlow which had one of the highest percentages of pubs in the UK I think. But that was occupied best part of a month at Ludlow and then we were back again to Harrogate. And from Harrogate one night we went by train to Glasgow. We didn’t know any of the destinations to start with. But Glasgow — we knew once we got near it because one of the trainees was Glaswegian who lived right down near the Clyde and knew it all intimately. So we got down there after a night on the train and shunting. Waiting. Kept waiting. Eventually, we got down to the docks and boarded a boat, or a ship. Whichever it was. We didn’t know where it was going or what the boat was. I think that was about a stage following, that’s right continuously on from, back from Harrogate into, back into Harrogate. Sorry into Harrogate for holding for a couple of days and then on to the train up to Glasgow, then onto the ship. The ship sailed, and it was alone. It didn’t have any escort at all. We then learned that it was the, or what became the Queen Elizabeth the 1st. It hadn’t been named. It was the first of the very very big ones and it was very fast. Thirty five odd knots which could outrun any of the German destroyers and submarines. So we crossed the Atlantic from Glasgow right down to the Caribbean Sargasso Sea where we knew where we were then simply because of all the seaweed stuff. We had no escort at all but we zigzagged the entire way across the Atlantic. Quite an experience really. And we also were taking back a large group of American soldiers. They were on board on a different deck. But the first time we’d ever seen live American soldiers. And massive great rooms in which we slept in hammocks. And also the long long tables I can remember where the food used to slide along when it was rough. It would slide right down to one end if somebody didn’t stop it. But it was all an amazing experience. I didn’t like sleeping in a hammock. I don’t think I ever got comfortable and spent quite a lot of time being seasick. I think I did get less seasick as the voyage went on. And it was really fairly boring. We had films which were all relative to our future training and flying and I suppose various sports activities which we could, I don’t say volunteer, you had to do something. You chose which one you did. I could always recall one thing. At night we saw on the horizon, in the distance, a light. Masses of people up on deck and we watched this thing and we thought goodness me. It’s getting brighter and brighter. And I don’t know, recall when it was but it was enough to see it was a very highly illuminated ship. It was a hospital ship. We found out eventually, again on its own and illuminated to indicate, indicate that it was a hospital ship. So —
[Recording paused]
CB: Ok.
GT: Yeah. So generally fairly boring really. The thing had not a lot to it. I think most of us were concerned or very interested to what the future would be. The food on board was obviously supplied by, or most of it, from America because it was food lots and lots of us hadn’t come in to contact with and it was quite good really. Nothing really to complain about on the whole. And anyway, down to the Sargasso Sea and then turned back upwards. North westwards we’d be sailing to — New York we found was the destination. We didn’t know before but we glided in one morning. Beautiful sunny morning. I can remember seeing the Statue of Liberty going up to one of the docks in the Hudson River I believe it was the Hudson. And as I can recall how fascinating it was standing at the, on the deck looking out over New York early morning. Peering down at the dock from the huge height of this ship. And we carried on from there each of us individually not knowing what we were going to do. We got off the ship onto a train and the train took us up along through New England up to Canada. To Halifax. I’m sorry — to Nova Scotia. And we went through the New England states at the best time of the year to watch the trees’ colours. And it was just a phenomenal trip. Open mouthed in amazement we were. Apart from the American train being a great interest in itself. And when we got up to, it was Halifax we went to in Canada spent I think three or four days or nights there and then we got on to a train for a four day journey across Canada to Rivers. I don’t honestly remember whether I knew where we were going but this train was non-stop. I thought it was going across to the far side of Canada and our group was going to get off at Rivers which is about a hundred miles west of Winnipeg. Right bang in the middle of Canada. And at this Rivers — a very large airfield and it was a central training place for the Canadian Air Force and we got off there and then spent some six months or so training as a, to be a navigator. The amazing thing really about, I think that struck us first of all was the flatness of everything. The prairies. This was right in the middle of the prairies and they were just flat. We did a lot, quite a lot of classroom training to start with. Relevant to flying before we actually were allowed flying. We did our training, the navigators, in Ansons which had a couple, possibly three trainees in the back with a desk to work from in the rear half of the aircraft. Possibly two. I think it was, not very often three but certainly two and you had a navigation table where you were now learning the very basics of navigation flying. And it’s a very uncomfortable old aircraft but it’s quite good for observation outside and being a very flat country that was a help to you in that. In the way of training. You could see a long long way across the prairies. You would be able to navigate down the railway line which we say which went exactly east west and had various silos at places so there was very little detail on the ground which was the way we were navigating in these days. Observational navigation really. And lots of our exercises were along the Canadian/American border. Lots and lots of stuff was at night time. Again, that was much easier than it would have been elsewhere because it was still very flat and there were lights on of course in what cities that there were. There was supposed to be. They hadn’t shut off their lights yet. And Rivers itself was, strictly was a Canadian Air Force station and it was run much like an American one which is quite understandable because they were next door to each other and they were very much cooperating in their training and living. But they’d got enough space to take on and train a lot of people from the UK. And it was number, this was Number 1 Central Navigation School and it was 1 CNS which was where we were for the next six or eight months. We had a lot of sport. Particularly things like basketball and the indoor sports which I thoroughly enjoying doing. Outdoor was limited. Certainly in the winter by the weather. And it was all definitely indoors then. We had a great time when we had leave for weekends which we used to get. Possibly about once a month you’d get two or three days off for the weekends. So most of us went in to Winnipeg and we, through an organisation the Canadians had set up you could ask to go and stay with a family and they sort of adopted you which was very nice. I had a nice family and I went to stay with them always and they took me to learn ice skating and things like that. Or perhaps took me out to see some local thing of interest. I don’t know. All sorts of things. It was very interesting. But they were very good. And it also depended, I suppose on how much you wanted to integrate and see what, what they were doing. But it was also quite fascinating in Winnipeg itself to have all the shops open and everything else. And the massive great shops in Winnipeg. And I remember walking down the street just browsing in a shop window one day when somebody thumped me on the shoulder and said, ‘You’ve got frostbite.’ We had those hats on with little flaps on which pulled down. Which made sense there but which were not properly used in most places. But I was taken inside the big shop there. Immediately bustled in there and they, the shop keepers, shop assistants took over the care of me and whipped me into the first aid place straight away and apparently my ears were sort of second degree frostbite because they went blue and black. And if it had gone further on it goes to the stage where your lobe or you ear is actually frozen solid. Then you’ve got a problem because you’re quite probably going to lose that bit of your ear. And there were quite a lot of people around with little misshapen ears where they’d got frostbite. So after this they made me wait quite a while before going out and gave me various instructions of what to do when getting back to the camp. To go to the sickbay and treat it further. But it they said, ‘Do not ignore it. It will be quite serious if you don’t just take care of it and treat it.’ So that was a thing I did. From then on I was very very wary of not getting too cold. I knew I was cold but I didn’t realise just how cold it was. And that was, they responded very very quickly to this because they were all so used to it of course, or the possibility of it. And all in all it lasted years. I wrote letters to these people. Our friendship, somehow, it died off, and I don’t know quite why now, never could quite decide whether his mother and father of the family died or what happened. Years later during the war but our letters sort of eventually ceased. But we were great friends and it was very nice to have it. And it was about six, seven, eight months I was there roughly. I can’t be too sure and then eventually you passed out or either you did pass out as a navigator qualified or you, you failed. Sometimes you failed on just a short amount or small amount of study which they might give you to resit after another bit of training. But I passed and then that meant that you were on the return list for going back to the UK. Which in turn meant a train back to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Another four days. And then getting on a boat there. A day or two there. I can remember lots and lots of ships in the sea at Halifax. We were on the Empress of Scotland. Which we eventually ended up in [pause] wait a minute [pause]
CB: Can we just take a pause on that?
[Recording paused]
CB: So you talked about when you qualified as a navigator. What was the process that happened then?
GT: Well I think the, it must have been a series of marks you got over exams in different courses. I can’t remember them all but certainly the different courses I can clearly remember would be meteorology and aviation and how it affected weather or how weather affected you, the aircraft, and the performance etcetera. And the ability to operate in bad weather. That would be under meteorology. There was, wireless was another thing we had to do and we did do this. In part, I remember with wireless operators who were people who were training to be wireless operators but they went on to a much higher standard in the way of speed. But we, I think we were all required to get up to something like twenty words per minute in Morse code. And whereas a wireless operator would be up around seventy if he was a good one. And eventually yes that would be much much faster than we could be. But there was — wireless was another group. Map reading. There was a map reading construction. We learned quite a lot about the way different types of map locators and other maps were constructed and made. Why they, why one type of map was better for you if you were flying in a certain area or a certain way. So that was a series of, series of lectures. And, of course, with all these you had an exam at the end of it on which you were marked. You had, I said about a signals one.
CB: Astro navigation.
GT: We had astro a lot. Strict navigation was split into dead reckoning as they called it. DR which was dead reckoning which was calculating in your head using different pieces of information you got from [unclear] compass or speed that the pilot would give you and you had to calculate from these using your charts the information you needed to give to the pilot. The idea of the navigator was to produce [pause] produce the route that the aircraft would fly to get to a target at a certain time. You had initial information given to you. If you were going to go on a bombing raid you had a load of information given to you by the Met Office, probably more than anything else. And then you were given the route and the name of the target or whatever the target was. And you went — I think I’m jumping ahead here. This is really, it did, you did this in practice yes. So in practice we were given the target and you separated from the rest of the crews and you went to, say the navigation room and you had your charts with you and all the other information. And incidentally the navigator would always be recognised as being a navigator as he was always carrying loads of baggage. One was a sextant. At least one. May have two. A navigation bag which was full of books. And so you had two or three things plus your parachute to carry around with you. And you put your chart out on a table and you had a table to work on. And you would go and trawl or plot it as they called it. Your track from A to the target. A — the starting point, B — the target. But you went via a host of other places for various reasons either because you were told to at the briefing for various reasons which could be to say avoid you going over heavily defended area or fortified town or something.
CB: So this was all marked for you. This was all marked as part of your qualification. So we’re talking about the marking and the qualification.
GT: Yes.
CB: And then you qualified for your brevet?
GT: Yes. I’m sorry I’ve just —
CB: That’s ok. I’ll stop for a mo
[Recording paused]
CB: So you passed all the tests?
GT: Yeah.
CB: And then you got your brevet?
GT: Yeah.
CB: So, what, what happened then?
GT: Yeah [pause] I’m trying to think if I could give an order of things. I don’t think I can. I think I’ll start off [pause] So when you had or had not passed your course I can clearly remember that I was elated to pass the final thing which obviously meant that I now had my wings as it was called. But I also remember a young, little Scots lad, very small, very small boy. Whether he had a chip on his shoulder about being so small I don’t know but he was very touchy. But unfortunately he failed. He just could not get particular bits of his course and he was quite distraught about it, and another couple. So those people went back to the UK really. And they asked the rest of us, knew that we would shortly be going back but the first thing you did was, we were given the time for parade which was a good big parade of all the people on your particular course, and we were called out simply by names. Alphabetically as I remember it because I know I was always down at the end of it and it stayed that way with T. And you were called out and marched out and given a wing. A navigator’s wing which it now was. And congratulated and then passed on to whatever was going to happen. As far as you were concerned you just didn’t know but it wasn’t very long before we were advised we were going to be posted after that back to UK. And we obviously had a few days. Possibly a week maybe when you really weren’t doing very much you were floating about. And there wasn’t a great amount you could do out in Rivers. It wasn’t a big place in itself other than it was a huge farming area. So it was just a relaxing period prior to going back to the UK to start learning what navigation really was like. All we’d done up ‘til this stage was our own manual mental navigation without the help of outside things other than a compass or an airspeed indicator and that type of information. So we got the wings and waited a few days before the journey back to the UK and all the people on this course were from the UK so returned. Returned back. I believe some of the pilots split off in to different things for other reasons and went to different places. But that was separate. Ours all stayed together and went back to UK like that.
CB: What was the rank of the person?
GT: No. Nothing to do with the rank.
CB: No. Who gave you the brevet? [pause] The reviewing officer?
GT: Sorry?
CB: The reviewing officer.
GT: Well I don’t know whether if it was a wing commander or higher. I can’t remember whether it was a wing commander or a flight lieutenant but it would have been the senior man of The Central Navigation School. Because they had then to treat all these others as, not necessarily officers. It wasn’t to do with the rank whether you got the wings or anything to do anything else. It was purely the learning you learned in exactly the same way as those who later got promoted through their aptitude or because they showed aptitude that would make a good officer as far as they were concerned. The actual promotions were not done in Winnipeg.
CB: Right.
GT: Or in Rivers rather.
CB: What rank were you in training?
GT: Sergeant. I was then, after you got your wings you immediately were promoted to a sergeant.
CB: Right. Ok.
GT: And that was so until you got reviewed back in UK. Either after passing more courses or you showed that —
[Recording passed]
GT: Everything else. It was just we went there —
CB: So re-capping. Earlier you spoke about coming back from Nova Scotia on the Empress of Scotland.
GT: Yes.
CB: So where did you go from there?
GT: We arrived [pause] — yes, we went more or less directly I suppose but in a convoy more or less this time so it was a slightly different thing. But we ended up in Glasgow. At [pause] no I do beg your pardon. Sorry. Stupid me. I’m sorry, we didn’t go to Glasgow. That was going outwards. I ended up in Liverpool, I’m sorry. We docked at Liverpool and another train journey followed to Harrogate. Back to the same holding area as we were beforehand. And I can’t recall how long we were there. It wouldn’t have been very long. Sort of something like a week or so to maybe a bit more before we were all posted out to various stations which was the next line in training. And they were called OTUs which was Operational Training Units and I went to Abingdon as my OTU and that had a sub unit. An airfield about five, four or five miles away called Stanton Harcourt where we did most of the flying from. The head office part of it. And certain of the training was done at Abingdon but the vast majority at Stanton Harcourt and are now flying on Wellingtons which to us was a much bigger aeroplane. An operational type aeroplane and the first time we had become involved with an actual operational aeroplane.
CB: So when you got to Abingdon then you were individuals when you got there.
GT: Yes.
CB: So how did you crew up?
GT: Well we were all, yes, in expectation. We still were mostly with our friends from the course. But during this time the first part of it was, a few days to crew up with six other people to form a crew. And that basically was a system of the pilots were all, they knew they were pilots and they were really to get a crew together. And it was really done by either somebody’s individual qualifications making them stand out or, for some reason but obviously there weren’t very many of that, of those people because we were all just ordinary, ordinary bodies being trained. And so the group of gunners were one group which was treated separately. Engineers, pilots, wireless operators and navigator. And basically what it was — I think they had gatherings of different groups of people. They put, shall we say a lot of air gunners in which was quite easy to match up air gunners because they had no qualifications to know who or what but you can click with somebody. Which was good enough if the pilot wanted it to be and they built up their crew like that. The closest person to the pilot I suppose is the navigator from an operational point of view. But in operating the aircraft point of view was the engineer. So if you got on very well with somebody, you liked them, you immediately said, ‘Would you like to join my crew?’ Which, that was it. Either they’d say, ‘I’ve already got somebody,’ or, ‘No thank you.’ And gradually we, we got together with the crews. And I think I’d already met the wireless operator who I liked and we were chattering and finding we definitely liked each other which was good and the two gunners. One we had met and already met somebody so those two went together and had no other reason not to join us. So that was as haphazard as that. We all seemed to get on alright. The captain, or rather the pilot turned out to be a bit of a shock because he was a squadron leader and it was a squadron leader who was a full time air force. He was RAF permanent. That was it. And quite a lot older at the ripe old age, I expect, of about thirty, thirty five. I think he was. And an RAF man is all one can say. A serviceman properly. So he might and so might all the other ones who were permanent have thought what a rabble rousing lot these young people are because we’d be ten years younger than they were and certainly not instilled with the discipline that they had. But he seemed alright and he asked me if I, what he had obviously watched, I do remember him being there when we had done some test about aircraft recognition and I was fastest in the whole thing in identifying. That may have been the reason he thought, ‘Oh he seems to be reasonably sharp.’ But he asked me anyway and I said yes. I’d like to join. He was quite a bit more formal than the others. And it was rather strange in a way whereas the others would all mooch off together he would probably go back to the officer’s mess as he would normally do as his normal life in the air force. And he had, I don’t know where he did it but he joined up with somebody he liked as his flight engineer. Another officer. An Irishman.
[Doorbell rings]
GT: Shall I stop?
CB: Keep going. Keep going.
GT: So the [pause] so, sorry out of this what sounds like a muddle which in some ways it was because it was generally letting people get together and finding their own way which was a good basis for starting with seven people who have got to stay together for the rest of the war. So our seven people were picked that way. And we had, he was full time as I say. RAF officer. The Irishman engineer. Two gunners who, one was from just outside Newcastle, the other was from Leicester. The wireless operator was from London and quite a cockney voice. And that was it. Seven of us.
CB: The bomb aimer. The bomb aimer.
GT: The bomb aimer. Oh sorry. Bomb aimer. Cockney bomb aimer and he, I have to say it was wondering around with the navigators really. They were the closest in training side to what the navigator learned and so we were quite close in that part of the knowledge. They went into the bombing side of it more deeply obviously. And so that’s how the seven crew formed. And I’m not quite sure how long we were in Abingdon. But not too long we moved over to Stanton Harcourt to finally get to grips with an aeroplane. We now had the Wellingtons there so we were getting ready to be trained on that. Which again split us up a bit because pilots took their specialist training on it as did all the others. And the navigators were, the training would have been the same whether it was a Wellington or a Lancaster or whatever it might have been. But the individual learning for individual aircraft was obviously more important for the pilot and the engineer. The others would have got used to any aircraft and flown any. So that was the stage of our real training to start off towards operational flying. And we, I don’t recall the total length of time we were at Stanton Harcourt but say it was about six months but that’s an approximation. And the next step would have been the, what was called the HCU which was the Heavy Conversion Unit. There was only one thing I can remember that was really quite funny, or in a nasty way it was funny. At Stanton Harcourt we were doing an exercise once one day. And the bomb aimer had been practicing dropping a bomb over the ranges and was down in the nose of the Wellington and he had to climb or crawl underneath the captain and the flight engineer to get back into his position for landing, which he did. And then the flight engineer, what had happened, the door came open. The front hatch came open where the bomb aimer had been or was. And after landing, as they were taxiing in, I think, the flight engineer said to the skipper, ‘I think the bomb aimer has fallen out,’ and they seriously thought that the bomb aimer has fallen out. And he said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that before landing?’ And he said, ‘Well I didn’t want to worry you.’ [laughs] But the full time air force mess, probably the full time pilot but it was a while before they realised he’d done this crawling underneath and they hadn’t noticed in the busyness of getting ready on the, to get to land. So it was quite funny at the time yet it wasn’t. And his sextant had fallen out and some other book that belonged to the air force and he was charged with losing RAF property. And it was on, that lasted with him for months afterwards it came through They were still after either these to be returned. I don’t recall whether he had to pay eventually or not but certainly he was quoted as being responsible for their loss. Because he’d left the, obviously didn’t locked the hatch properly in the time he was there. Or whoever was there rather didn’t lock it. So it was a semi-funny but it could have been a tragedy.
CB: Yeah.
GT: If it had happened.
CB: The sanctions were there as a way of —
GT: Sorry.
CB: The sanctions were there as a way of making a point weren’t they? Rather than it being important to pay.
GT: That’s right. Yeah.
CB: I think I’m right in saying that the engineer joined you at the HCU.
GT: Sorry?
CB: The engineer would have joined you at the HCU.
GT: Yes.
CB: So where was the HCU?
GT: The HCU was at indholme. We’d moved.
CB: And how did they, how did the captain, the pilot, select. Yeah. Go on.
GT: I’ll have to stop here.
CB: Yeah. I’ll stop for a mo.
GT: Yes.
[recording paused]
CB: We’re just, we’re just going to do a recap now. Yeah Go on.
GT: Yeah. Sorry about this. A sorting centre.
CB: Yeah.
GT: Went there. Wasn’t there very long before I and my great friend, as a navigator paralleled me and we were both posted to Ouston, near Newcastle. It’s O U S T O N.
CB: Yeah.
GT: I can’t remember the name of the unit but it was training or going to be trained for flying on Mosquitoes which was a great delight to us. It was what we had wanted to do. And it was an introduction really to the, purely to the work that would be required. Not for learning how to be a navigator or anything but learning how to operate, or operate the work that the Mosquito was doing. And it was the very early days of the night interception radar. Which as far as a navigator was concerned it consisted of two fairly small screens to look at. And to cut it short basically I was not quick enough in identifying the blip of an aircraft coming sharply towards us from the side. I couldn’t identify it from the grass on the screen quickly enough so it got too close to us. It could have shot us down which was the last thing we wanted. Why I don’t know but I just wasn’t, it was a case of seconds really but that would have been enough time for a fighter to get too close to us. And so I failed that part of it and although I was ok on the other sorts of it, it meant I couldn’t follow on the final posting off to a squadron which he did get and it was operating as a night interception Mosquito. So I was given a posting temporarily to Wigtown in Scotland which was another training. But it was a flying training station and I did some flying navigator training, navigational training rather. Flying from Wigtown around various exercises up and down the Irish Sea and over parts of the UK. Which was very different to anything I’d done before. But it was a temporary solution and we knew this that we were there for only a while. The biggest thing of interest was I think really it was terrible weather one night when masses of the aircraft returned to a foggy UK. And they had to divert from the east coast up to places like Wigtown on the west coast of Scotland. And in the morning we got up and went to breakfast and saw all these aircraft parked there and they were the various Halifaxes and Lancs, possibly Stirlings. I don’t remember that but we went to one aircraft, a Halifax, and half the tail was shot off and it really shook us up. You know they’d really had a tough time. And this was the first operational damage that we saw. So it was quite an eye opener. But that was part of that happening. That wasn’t our training. But that lasted for a few months before we got back again to Harrogate enroute down to the Operational Training Unit at Abingdon and Stanton Harcourt.
CB: What were you flying at Wigtown?
GT: It was, again it was Ansons, back to Ansons. I’m not sure whether I did one flight — no I didn’t. I don’t think so. It was all Ansons. A different mark of Anson. But it was nevertheless the same old aircraft.
CB: Good. I think we’ll stop there and reconvene another time.
GT: Sorry it was —
CB: Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ATaylorGH160831
PTaylorGH1601
Title
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Interview with Gerald Taylor
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:33:24 audio recording
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2016-08-31
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Gerald (Gerry) was part of the Air Training Corps and Officers’ Training Corps before the war. He volunteered for aircrew in 1942, was interviewed in Oxford and was put on deferred service. Gerry was accepted as an air observer. He was called up in early 1943 and went to the Air Crew Reception Centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground. He was sent to an Initial Training Wing in Scarborough, before being posted to Harrogate and Ludlow while waiting for further training overseas.</p>
<p>Gerry sailed to New York and then on to Nova Scotia and Rivers in Canada where he spent six months training to be a navigator at the Number One Central Navigation School. Gerry describes how two or three navigators trained in the back of an Anson with a navigation table. He lists the different subjects they studied, the equipment they required and how they would plot a chart.</p>
<p>On his return to the UK, Gerry was sent to Harrogate and then posted to an Operational Training Unit at RAF Abingdon and its satellite RAF Stanton Harcourt. He was flying on Wellingtons. Gerry explains how they crewed up there. He then went to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Lindholme.</p>
<p>Gerry discusses his posting to RAF Ouston for training on Mosquitos, however he failed the night interception radar part. He was posted temporarily to RAF Wigtown for some navigational training before returning to RAF Abingdon.</p>
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Oxfordshire
England--Lincolshire
Scotland--Dumfries and Galloway
Canada
Manitoba
Manitoba--Rivers
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
crewing up
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
navigator
observer
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Stanton Harcourt
RAF Wigtown
recruitment
training
Wellington