1
25
148
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/38/267/MRadacichM[Ser -DoB]-170110-100001.jpg
301f29ad0941117923bc59fcb5cb791e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/38/267/MRadacichM[Ser -DoB]-170110-100002.jpg
239f7a64cab0dabbbaacf077663e5e5e
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
Radacich, Maurizio
M Radacich
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. The collection consists of propaganda, civil defence material, documents and correspondence related to the bombing war in the Italian theatre. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Maurizio Radacich and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Radacich, M
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Churchill canta :
[underlined]“Avanti soldati cristiani!”[/underlined]
Roosevelt prega all’inizio dell'invasione:
“Dio onnipotente, i nostri figli, orgoglio della nostra nazione, hanno iniziato in questo giorno una strenua impresa, la lotta per la difesa della nostra Repubblica, della nostra religione, della nostra civiltà e per liberare un'umanità sofferente. Dio onnipotente, essi avranno bisogno della Tua benedizione perché il loro cammino sarà lungo e duro. Il nemico è possente e noi che siamo a casa al di qua dell'oceano possiamo aiutarli solo nel pensiero e con la preghiera, rinnovando rinnovandoTi in quest'ora la nostra fede. Dio onnipotente, sia fatta la Tua volontà”.
Il 6 giugno ebbe inizio la strenuo impresa di cui parlò il presidente degli Stati Uniti
Il 10 giugno anche Trieste, come già tante altre città d'Europa, veniva bombardata alla cieca dagli americani. Case operaie, chiese ed ospedali venivano ridotte [sic] in macerie e in cenere.
Al di là dell’oceano è facile preparare in soffici e comode poltrone, fra un banchetto e l'altro, lontani da ogni pericolo. Questi plutocrati che senza alcuno scrupolo spingono il fior fiore dei loro popoli verso la morte, sono come i farisei della Bibbia, giacché dicono: “Signore, io Ti ringrazio di non essere come come gli altri”. Essi danno ordini di bombardare gli abitati e gli uomini pacifici e pregano.
Trucidano donne e bambini innocenti - e pregano.
Ma Dio li punirà e li caccerà dal tempio, ove essi danzano attorno al vitello d'oro.
Vincerà la causa giusta propugnata dalle truppe germaniche.
Non vinceranno certo i pescecani e i parassiti che succhiano il sangue ai popoli oppressi, trasformandolo in grosse speculazioni di borsa. Vinceranno invece i propugnatori di un nuovo ordine di giustizio sociale.
L'ORA DECISIVA È SCOCCATA. ORA OGNUNO DEVE SAPERE DOVE È IL SUO POSTO.
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
Chiesa della B.V. delle Grazie mutilata nel bombardamento anglo-americano del 10-06-44
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Propaganda
Bombing, Aerial
Description
An account of the resource
Following the destruction of a church in Trieste, the leaflet contrasts the horrors of unrestricted bombing warfare with the hypocrisy of Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. They describe themselves as devoutly religious despite ordering the killing of women and children from the safety of their comfortable homes.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One leaflet
Language
A language of the resource
ita
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Photograph
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Italy
Italy--Trieste
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-06-10
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MRadacichM[Ser'#-DoB]-170110-10
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.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
United States Army Air Force
bombing of Trieste (10 June 1944)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
home front
propaganda
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/84/756/MCluettAV120946-150515-180001.1.jpg
60b67df59c6078676a72c7f294b0421e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/84/756/MCluettAV120946-150515-180002.1.jpg
48eef72c5039f514621733c4d5af01d2
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
Cluett, Albert Victor
Albert Victor Cluett
A V Cluett
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
68 items. The collection concerns Leading Aircraftman Albert Victor Cluett (1209046, Royal Air Force). After training in 1941/42 as an armourer, he was posted to 50 Squadron at RAF Swinderby and then RAF Skellingthorpe. The collections consists his official Royal Air Force documents, armourer training notebooks, photographs of colleagues, aircraft and locations as well as propaganda items, books in German and Dutch and items of memorabilia.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Albert Victor Cluett's daughter Pat Brown and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cluett, AV
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[aerial photograph]
Die Gebäude sind entweder gänzlich vernichtet oder derart ausgebrannt, dass nur noch leere Mauern stehen, durch deren Fensterhöhlen das Licht weisse Punkte in die Schatten der Fassaden zeichnet.
Die Fronten rücken näher
Die Nachte warden länger
Die Starke der RAF wächst von Tag zu Tag
Die Luftwaffe ist hilfios
Die deutschen Städte sind wehrlos
Jeder Industriestadt droht das Schicksal Hamburgs
Jede Nacht rückt der Zeiger der Vernichtung weiter
Es ist nur eine Frage der Zeit
Der Krieg ist verloren
Hitler kann ihn nur noch verlangern
Er kämpft, um Zeit zu gewinnen
Zeit zur Vernichtung Deutschlands
[page break]
[aerial photograph]
“Wir warden von nun an Deutschland in immer grösserem Masstab mit Bomben belegen, Monat für Monat, Jahr für Jahr, bis das Naziregime entweder von uns ausgerottet ist, oder – besser noch – bis ihm das deutsche Volk selbst den Garaus macht.”
Churchill, 14. Juli 1941.
DAS WAR HAMBURG
Teil einer Luftaufnahme nach den Angriffen der RAF Der rotumrandete Bildausschnitt ist umseitig in Vergrösserung wiedergegeben.
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
Das war Hamburg
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Bombing, Aerial
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Propaganda leaflet featuring an aerial vertical photograph of Hamburg after a Royal Air Force operation. Buildings are either completely destroyed or gutted, light falling through the gaping windows. Text describes fronts closing in, the Royal Air Force growing stronger from day to day, and German towns being defenceless and Luftwaffe helpless. The leaflet quotes a Winston Churchill's speech announcing the escalation of bombing war over Germany.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Language
A language of the resource
deu
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MCluettAV120946-150515-180001, MCluettAV120946-150515-180002
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Hamburg
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One colour leaflet
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Steve Baldwin
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Geolocated (cumulative polygon)
aerial photograph
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
propaganda
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/84/757/MCluettAV120946-150515-180001.2.jpg
f26e502d236b5c9ecb000303d7b22e71
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/84/757/MCluettAV120946-150515-180002.2.jpg
4dabba59d2b4315c38ccdadbf24a7615
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
Cluett, Albert Victor
Albert Victor Cluett
A V Cluett
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
68 items. The collection concerns Leading Aircraftman Albert Victor Cluett (1209046, Royal Air Force). After training in 1941/42 as an armourer, he was posted to 50 Squadron at RAF Swinderby and then RAF Skellingthorpe. The collections consists his official Royal Air Force documents, armourer training notebooks, photographs of colleagues, aircraft and locations as well as propaganda items, books in German and Dutch and items of memorabilia.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Albert Victor Cluett's daughter Pat Brown and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cluett, AV
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TRÄUME UND TATSACHEN
Unter den deutschen Soldaten, die sich Mitte Mai in Tunis ergaben, gab es zwei grosse Gruppen. Die eine Gruppe sah den Krieg als für Deutschland verloren an. Die andere glaubte noch an den Endsieg. Und wenn man fragte, worauf diese Optimisten ihre Hoffnung gründeten, erhielt man immer dieselbe Antwort:
“In diesem Sommer warden wir mit [indecipherable] letzten gewaltigen Offensive Russland endgültig aus dem Kriege herausschlager. Die U-Boote warden uns solange den Rücken freihalten. Und dann, wenn wir Russland erst einmal los sind, warden wir unsere ganze Kraft für den Westen und Süden frei haben!”
Das waren die Träume von Mitte Mai. Was sind die Tatsachen drei Monate später, Mitte August?
Die “letzte gewaltige Offensine” im Osten ist vorüber. Sie begann am 5. Juli mit einem Aufgebot von 15 Panzer-divisionen und 14 Infanteriedivisionen auf beiden Flanken des Kurskbogens, südlich von Orel und nördlich von Bielgorod. Zwei Wochen später war sie zusammengebrochen, und die deutschen Stossarmeen waren, nach einem schweren Aderlass, zurück in ihren Ausgangsstellungen. Weitere zwei Wochen später waren Orel und Bielgorod in russischer Hand. Und jetzt, Mitte August, sind die Russen auf breiter Front im Angriff. Charkov ist gefallen, und an der gesamten Zentralfront, von westlich Wjasma bis tief in die Nordukraine, rollt die russische Dampfwalze vorwärts.
Die deutschen Armeen im Osten führen verzweifelte Abwehrkämpfe. Ihre Widerstandskraft ist noch nicht gebrochen, aber ihre Reihen sind gelichtet, es fehlt an Nachschub und Material, ult sie gehen täglich 5 bis 10 Kilometer zurück. Die schlacht im Osten geht weiter – mit den Russen im Vormarsch. Eins steht fest: Die Hoffnung, Russland aus dem Kriegherauszuschlagen. ist begraben.
Und die andere Hoffnung, dass die U-Boote Deutschland im Westen den Rücken freihalten würden?
G.67
Als die Optimisten unter den tunesischen Gefangenen diese Hoffnung äusserten, war, ihnen unbekannt, die grösste U-Boot-Offensive dieses Krieges schon im Gange – und im Zusammenbrechen. Im Mai 1943 begann das grosse U-Bootsterben. In den drei Monaten Mai, Juni und Juli sind mehr als 90 U-Boote versenkt worden. Die alliierten Schiffsverluste sind derart zurückgegangen,dass der Nettozewachs der alliierten Handelstonnage – das heist, der Überschuss der Neubauten über die Versenkungen – fürdie ersten 7 Monate des Jahres 1943 über 3 Millionen Tonnen beträgt. Und zugleich wächst die Zahl der U-Bootjäger – Zerstörer, Flugzeugträger, Korvetten, Fregatten, Kanonenboote, Torpedoflugzeuge, Jageflugzeuge und Langstreckenbomber – von Tag zu Tag. Die Sterblichkeit in der deutschen U-Bootwaffe – 20 Prozent – ist jetzt schon die höchste in allen Waffengattungen aller kriegführenden Länder. Die Aufgabe der U-Boote wird täglich unlösbarer, ihre Lage täglich hoffnungsloser.
Alles das ist kein Wunder. Ein Wunder wäre es, wenn e sanders wäre. Es entspricht der einfachen Mathematik des Krieges. 80 Millionen Deutsche – selbst mit der Hilfe von 12 Millionen ausländischer Zwangsarbeiter – können unmöglich auf die Dauer gegen die 400 Millionen Briten, Amerikaner und Russen aufkommen; weder in der Produktion noch im Kampf. Erfolge konnten sie nur haben, solange ihre Gegner unvorbereitet und ungerüstet waren. Das ist jetzt vorbei. Die Kriegsmaschinen Amerikas, Russlands und des britischen Weltreichs laufen auf vollen Touren. Schon jetzt übertrifft die alliierte Kriegsproduktion die Grossdeutschlands um das Fünffache. Die Überlegenheit der alliierten Streitkräfte an allen Fronten, zu Lande, zur See und in der Luft, wachst mit jedem Tag, den der Krieg weitergeht. Mit jedem Tag, den der Krieg weitergeht, wird Deutschlands Lage schlimmer.
Sizilien ist verloren. Mussolini ist gestürzt. Das italienische Volk verlangt Frieden. Die Achse RomBerlin ist gebrochen, die deutsche Südflanke aufgerissen, und es fehlt an Truppen, die Lücke zu stopfen.
Und dabei ist bisher erst ein geringer Teil der britisch-amerikanischen Armeen eingesetzt worden. Im ganzen Mittelmeerraum stehen weitere Armeen sprungbereit. Noch grössere Armeen stehen in England. “Bevor die Blätter fallen”, hat Churchill erklärt, “warden grosse Schlachten geschlagen warden: im Mittelmeer – und anderswo.”
In Deutschland selbst ist die Luftverteidigung im Zusammenbrechen. Während der letzten Wochen sind die Verluste der R.A.F. bei ihren grossen Luftangriffen von annähernd 5 Prozent auf rund 3 Prozent zurückgegangen. Die Wucht dieser Angriffe steigert sich von Monat zu Monat. Die Nächte warden länger, und mit ihren wächst der Angriffsbereich der R.A.F. jede Woche um 100 km. Von Süden rückt eine zweite Luftmacht näher. Am 14. August erfolgte der erste Grossangriff auf Wiener-Neustadt. Die Luftwaffe ist hilflos. Die deutschen Jindustriestädte sind wehrlos.
Das waren die Tatsachen. Goebbels kann um sie herumreden, aber niemand kann sie aus der Welt schaffen. Ganz Deutschland ist in der Lage einer eingekesselten Armee. Die Wahl heist: Kapitulation – oder Vernichtung. Tunis – oder Stalingrad. Palermo – oder Hamburg. Leben oder Tod.
Den Alliierten liegt nichts an eurer Verichtung. Churchill hat erklärt:
“Wir, die Vereinten Nationen, verlangen von den Nazis, den Faschisten und den japanischen Tyrannen bedingungslose Übergabe. Das heist, dass ihre Widerstandskraft vollständig gebrochen warden muss, und dass sie sich rückhaltlos unserer Gerechtigkeit und Gnade anvertrauen müssen. Das heist fernerhin, dass wir alle die weitschauenden Massnahmen treffen müssen, die nötig sind, um zu verhindern, dass die Welt aufs neue durch ihre Intrigen und wilden Friedensbrüche in Jammer und Elend gestürzt wird. Es heisst nicht, und es kann nimmermehr heissen, dass wir unsere siegreichen Waffen durch Unmenschlichkeit oder Rachelust beflecken warden. Wir planen eine Welt,in der alle Völker Glieder einer Familie sind, und allen der Weg offensteht zu Leben, Freiheit und Menschenglück.”
Das ist die Aussicht, wenn ihr kapituliert: Ein neuer Anfang, ein neues Leben, ein neues Deutschland in einem neuen Europa. Und die Aussicht, wenn ihr weiterkämpft? Fragt die Überlebenden von Stalingrad. Fragt die Überlebenden von Hamburg.
Der Krieg ist für Deuschland verloren. An euch liegt es, zu entscheiden, wieviele ihn überleben. An dir liegt es, zu entscheiden, ob du ihn überlebst.
Euer Schicksal liegt in eurer Hand.
DENKT ODER STERBT!
[page break]
[photograph]
WOZU?
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
Träume und Tatsachen
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Description
An account of the resource
The leaflet provides an overview of the strategic situation around mid-1943 pointing out that the tide has turned in favour of the allied, victory is inevitable and fighting futile. Provides evidence of the overwhelming superiority of the allies on land, sea and in the air. Stresses how Royal Air Force operations are getting more and more effective over time, a situation compounded by dwindling Luftwaffe defences. Explains that allies have no lust for vengeance and call for immediate capitulation, explaining that surrender would lead to a future of peace. A photograph of a dead soldier is captioned 'Wozu?'
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MCluettAV120946-150515-200001, MCluettAV120946-150515-200002
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Wehrmacht
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One leaflet
Language
A language of the resource
deu
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Photograph
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Steve Baldwin
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
propaganda
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/119/1215/PThomasWH1501.2.jpg
745fc204912c7bac71a5523c73801932
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/119/1215/AThomasWH150711.1.mp3
b0bbf81f2421a7d15357a2b007230236
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BB: Ok Bill.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Thank you for allowing me to come into your home and interview you. It’s a real pleasure to meet with a veteran like yourself.
WT: I’ll give you, I’ll give you the bill later on.
BB: Thank you very much. Ok. What’s your birthday date?
WT: 28th January 1922.
BB: And place of birth?
WT: Redruth in Cornwall.
BB: Redruth. And did you go to school there as well?
WT: Yes I did.
BB: And you did your school certificate and all that kind of thing.
WT: I did.
BB: Ok. When did you, did you volunteer to join the RAF or were you conscripted and then decide for aircrew?
WT: Volunteered because as I said I’ve got that thing all written out. We had, in 1938 they started a flight of the Air Defence Cadet Corp.
BB: Yeah
WT: I joined that because our headmaster was an ex-fighter pilot in the First World War. And then I left school to start work so I couldn’t carry on with the flight but I managed to find the town flight and joined them
BB: And what was your pre-war occupation?
WT: In local government.
BB: Ok.
WT: On the health department side.
BB: And what attracted you to wanting to volunteer for aircrew?
WT: I think it, it was our headmaster who was, as I say, he was a fighter pilot.
BB: The ex RAF sea pilot. Yes.
WT: Ex RAF.
BB: Yeah. Good. He encouraged you to do that.
WT: Not only do that when I, when I was working, walking down past his house, as I had to, I heard, ‘Thomas. Why haven’t you joined the ATC?’ I said, ‘Well,’ ‘It’s the school.’ ‘There’s one down the end of your road. I’ll see you tomorrow night at three.’
BB: Good. So you, you volunteered for aircrew. You obviously went for air crew selection.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And they obviously graded you as, as a bomb aimer or did you go for a particular -
WT: I wanted to be a pilot.
BB: Right. And what happened with that that you couldn’t be. Were they oversubscribed or they just needed bomb aimers?
WT: No well I came out from doing the stuff. I went up to Sywell.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Tiger Moths.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Well I got twelve and a bit hours in but I never saw it
BB: And then you were scrubbed.
WT: Well I could take off. I could do everything in the air
BB: But the landing was a problem.
WT: Landing was a problem. On the little mini run, place -
BB: Yes.
WT: We had.
BB: Yes
WT: But the big one I could get in at. The chief flying instructor
BB: Right.
WT: Took me on a check and he said, ‘I’ll try my best but I don’t know what I can do,’ but he couldn’t.
BB: Anyway, so you were remustered as a bomb aimer.
WT: No. As a NavB.
BB: Oh as a Nav oh as a NavB. Ok. Right.
Other: Excuse me for just a second. Turn it off and press that to start again. Hold that down to this constant.
BB: Ok.
Other: Ok, right.
BB: So -
Other: I want to go and check on my dog.
BB: Ok. So -
Other: I’d better check on the dog in the car.
BB: Ok.
WT: Oh alright my dear.
BB: A NavB.
Do you want me to get up?
BB: A navigator bracket bomb aimer ok. Now, was that the half brevet with the B on it?
WT: No the old-
BB: Oh as the old observer. Ok.
WT: Oh yes.
BB: The flying O.
WT: That’s what I got.
BB: Right.
WT: ‘cause I went to Canada. Eventually.
BB: Oh you went, part of the old Empire Training School.
WT: I did. And I did my bomb aiming and gunnery. And then to oh I’ve forgotten what it’s called now - L’Ancienne-Lorette. And I did my navigation training there. I must have come out fairly well because I got granted a commission.
BB: Right.
WT: So the first six, we never knew which ones out of thirty two were commissioned and then I went to Prince Edward Island and we did three or four weeks special training there to go out over the sea. Navigation and all that. So -
BB: Ok.
WT: That finished.
BB: Right.
WT: Back to Moncton and that was the holding unit.
BB: Yeah.
WT: There for ages waiting to go back to England and eventually doing so. I had come over to Canada on the Queen Elizabeth.
BB: Wow.
WT: Came back on the Aquitania.
BB: Which of course had been converted to a trooper so it wasn’t very luxurious.
WT: Luxurious oh it was luxurious enough.
BB: It was enough, still luxurious.
WT: oh it was alright. And then down to the holding unit waiting to be, go somewhere. We were pushed here there and everywhere and eventually back again and told we were then going to Scotland to something, I said, ‘What is that for? Bomb aimers.
BB: Bomber aimer.
WT: So they converted us from that to bomb aiming.
BB: I see. Right. And so what time, at what date did you actually go, finish that training?
WT: Oh I can do it.
BB: Ok.
WT: Do it from here. [?]
BB: Roughly.
WT: Monckton. Harrogate. Oh back to England in November ’43.
BB: November ‘43 so -
WT: And then to Harrogate.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And then we were at Sidmouth, back to Harrogate again and eventually up to Wigtown.
BB: Oh.
WT: That was April ’44.
BB: Ok and you joined so your OTU where you crewed up. Where was that?
WT: That was down at Castle Donington in May.
BB: Castle.
WT: ’44.
BB: And was that? When my uncle was flying for 9th squadron at Bardney, an Australian pilot he did his OTU at Kinloss.
WT: Ah huh.
BB: And they threw them in to a big hangar and all the navs and the pilots and the air gunners and the bomb aimers were all in this big hangar and they virtually crewed up until they found their own crew.
WT: This is what we did.
BB: Good. So it seemed to have been an RAF -
WT: That was the way of doing it. Yes.
BB: Programme.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And it was, it was very good because each crew kind of found the people they kind of trusted to fly with and they’d ask questions like, to the pilot particularly, ‘Were you alright on your course?’ ‘What were you?’ ‘Oh I was above average.’ ‘You’ll do.’ And it was usually the navigator that found the pilot.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And once they’d got those two, ‘oh I met a bomb aimer over there. A guy I liked.’
WT: This was the way we did it.
BB: And that was exactly the same -
WT: We did it the same way.
BB: That you did it.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Ok and so you were all taking each other on trust at that stage.
WT: Sure and then we went on from there to Prangtoft sorry, Sandtoft.
BB: Sandtoft.
WT: And then Hemswell for Lanc finishing school and then I did what, I was transferred then from there to 166 at Kirmington and 166 squadron was there and we were the 3rd flight. AB. I think it was C flight. And they -
BB: And what were they flying at the time? Lancs?
WT: Well that was Lancs.
BB: Lancs. Yeah.
WT: And what they did was they they nearly burst C flight ready and then we went back actually down to Scampton.
BB: Right.
WT: As 153.
BB: Ok.
WT: And we were the first aircraft to land at Scampton ’cause they had just put the stuff in. We were the first aircraft to land there. In A Able which was somebody else’s kite anyway.
BB: Yes.
WT: But er yeah we went along the runway the lads were all waving. He said, ‘There’s mine’
BB: Now, when my uncle was on 9 squadron in ’43 of course. This was a bit later on in the war. The pilot i.e. my uncle and his navigator flew a second observer, a second crew. They went with a regular crew on a raid.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Who were about to finish their tour so the pilot and the navigator flew on that raid as supernumerary just to see what it was like.
WT: Only one. It was only the pilot went from our -
BB: Ok. Right.
WT: ‘cause he -
BB: They still did that in that place by the time you -
WT: Yes.
BB: Yeah.
WT: They did one trip.
BB: Yeah. As a spare bod. And -
WT: That’s right.
BB: They came back.
WT: That’s right.
BB: And then got their own crew.
WT: That’s right.
BB: Was the air, was the Lancaster you had on 153 a brand new one or was it, had it been recycled?
WT: Well -
BB: From another crew?
WT: Well it was one of the, it was one of the -
BB: One of them.
WT: In fact we didn’t get I Item until about four or five and then it was regular hours.
BB: Ok.
WT: Flying. That’s what it says up there.
BB: Yeah my uncle did much the same thing. He did, he did it seemed to be a Bomber Command practice.
WT: Yeah.
BB: That they got the pilot and the nav to fly these initial sorties.
WT: Ahum.
BB: And then they were given a gash not gash but spare Lancs or –
WT; Yeah.
BB: To fly one or two trips.
WT: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: And then their own brand shiny new Lancaster arrived from the factory and they had that for the whole of the rest of their tour. My uncle’s Lancaster was called Spirit of Russia and it finished the war with a hundred and nine ops.
WT: Did it?
BB: And so it was lucky. But anyway we’re not talking about my uncle we’re talking about.
WT: Thomas.
BB: So there you are on ops.
WT: Yeah and we -
BB: With your scratch crew. Yeah.
WT: Yes and we carried on right up until well we did one on the 3rd of February ’45. No sorry the 7th of March ’45. And on the 8th we did a grand loop.
BB: Ah.
WT: Our pilot passed out.
BB: Oh.
WT: We think it was a fit and we were on our way to Castle.
BB: Ah.
WT: And we came out and [wing co Piley?] said, ‘You’ll be flying tonight’ and we said, ‘Not [so and so] likely until we know what’s happened to the skipper.’ He said, ‘You’ll be on a charge.’ I said, ‘I’ll see you there. Sir’ and left it at that.
BB: So, what, the was pilot was
WT: He -
BB: Obviously written off.
WT: Yes he was pretty.
BB: Wrtten off.
WT: He was gone. By that time they’d taken him away. By the time we’d got gathered together and he came back, tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘It’s alright. The spare crew are going.’ so I saw him in the mess.
BB: He didn’t give you a spare pilot to fly that night.
WT: No. Well he wanted us to fly.
BB: Fly. So you didn’t do that.
WT: We didn’t go. No. We just didn’t. It was -
BB: That was your last trip?
WT: No.
BB: No.
WT: So what happened then, Bruce went into hospital and eventually they realised he wasn’t coming out. They sent us home on leave and brought us back and I can’t remember whether they gave us three weeks or anyway we came back again and we did our last three with a Canadian no an Aussie pilot who’d lost his crew and had three to do.
BB: Right. Ok that -
WT: So he did three.
BB: That was usually the way.
WT: We thought we should have done one more so what we did was twenty nine and a half ‘cause we had an abortion in the middle of it.
BB: Right. Right. Ok and I gather that rather unfairly French targets counted for half.
WT: No.
BB: At that time of the war.
WT: No.
BB: No.
WT: No.
BB: No.
WT: In fact the first one was Fort [Frederick Heinrich] just on the Dutch coast.
BB: Oh right. Ok.
WT: But that was a full.
BB: Ok.
WT: That was full.
BB: Yeah.
WT: They were all full.
BB: Yeah.
WT: ‘Cause we didn’t do very many French ones.
BB: No. Not at that stage. No.
WT: No. We were going out.
BB: No. No. Right.
WT: Including Dresden.
BB: Yes. Now what was you’re, ok we’ll get to Dresden later.
WT: Yes.
BB: ‘Cause it’s been quite controversial and everybody sees that as the bad thing that Bomber Command did. Um what what’s your opinion of that?
WT: My opinion is as I’ve said to many people we bombed Dresden because we, one, we were told to. But it turns out afterwards that Mr Churchill was given from the Russians three, three targets that needed to be hit, Dresden and two others. I don’t know which they were. And he was given to us, he gave them to Bomber Harris and said, ‘There’s the three. You do them whenever you think right.’ And we went on the Dresden -
BB: Yeah.
WT: Trip.
BB: Yeah Churchill gave them to Portal who was chief of the air staff.
WT: Yes and he -
BB: And Portal gave them to Harris.
WT: Yeah and Harris, Harris sent them.
BB: Just did what he was told basically.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah [?]
WT: But Harris said to us, you know, we didn’t, he chose them.
BB: Yes.
WT: He chose Dresden. Ten hours twenty that was.
BB: Yes it was a long trip.
WT: It was. And it was the best bonfire night I’ve ever seen.
BB: Yes it did. It was rather grand.
WT: But -
BB: As far as the crews were concerned –
WT: I found out afterwards and I’ve got the book saying -
BB: Yes.
WT: That Dresden was a target. It was full of troops. They were making very small arms stuff.
BB: Yeah.
WT: For submarines and things like that all scattered all over the place.
BB: Yeah it was a -
WT: So -
BB: Legitimate target.
WT: A legitimate target.
BB: Legitimate target. Yes. So that was Dresden and I think in the post war my own opinion and this is my own opinion and you know Churchill wanted to stand in the Conservative government. Labour were coming up and what we understand of labour it’s now called Labour it was a socialist government coming up and he wanted to back away from the actual how effective Bomber Command had been and um and more or less threw Harris to, to the wolves.
WT: And washed his hands.
BB: And washed his hands of it. But he did the same with Dowding after the Battle of Britain so there we go it says something about the great Churchill doesn’t it?
WT: No. I don’t, don’t respect him.
BB: No.
WT: Anymore.
BB: Anyway -
WT: Sorry.
BB: Enough of that.
WT: Go on.
BB: No. No. It’s ok but I saw Dresden on your bookcase and I thought I’d ask about it.
WT: I got it there.
BB: Now getting back to the crew.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And how you all trusted each other and had to rely on each other.
WT: Yeah.
BB: What, were there any, I mean were you scared?
WT: No.
BB: You weren’t scared.
WT: Never scared.
BB: Ok. Funny I’ve heard this a lot from Bomber Command crews. They weren’t, they were apprehensive but they weren’t particularly scared.
WT: No. We just went in and did it.
BB: And did it. Yeah ok. Now we’ve read a lot, or I’ve read a lot, there’s been a lot of post-war um study on LMF issues.
WT: Yes.
BB: Lack of moral fibre issues. In your time in Bomber Command did you ever come across anything of that sort?
WT: I think there was one. One night that I never found out true there was three of us three kites on a set of pads.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Or whatever you call them.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And we did a run up and then we used to come outside -
BB: Yeah.
WT: For a smoke or whatever knowing that the signal would go up, get in your kites, and there was a pilot on one of those things and I didn’t know him sat in the hedge smoking a cigarette and there was a little bit of a kafuffle and three staff cars came down and he went with them. Now, that was the bloke who had refused to go that night. When we got back everything was hushed.
BB: Was he commissioned?
WT: Yes.
BB: Yeah.
WT: We didn’t, I don’t know what had happened to him. I didn’t know the guy.
BB: He was just posted. That was it. Gone.
WT: It was just, he was just taken off. Yeah.
BB: Yeah ok. What year would that be roughly? Roughly. Doesn’t have to be exact.
WT: I can’t remember. It was certainly in ’44.
BB: Ok.
WT: ’45 I mean.
BB: ’45.
WT: The beginning of ’45.
BB: Because, coming back to my late uncle’s crew his rear gunner um Sergeant Clegg had been a pre-war warrant officer but had been busted down to sergeant many times for doing nasty things, naughty things I should say. I won’t go into details.
WT: Right. No.
BB: But he was always in and out of Sheffield. You know what Sheffield was?
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah. He was always in and out of Sheffield and that’s another place that doesn’t have much publicity. It was the air crew rehabilitation centre or whatever they wanted to call it.
WT: Ahum.
BB: But I only found this out by looking at the form 500, 540.
WT: 540.
BB: Yeah and it had all the missions for my uncle and the crews and you’d see Sergeant Clegg and then you’d see three or four trips no Sergeant Clegg some other gash gunner had gone in and I asked some survivors on my late uncle’s crew what about Clegg? At first they were all very protective and then they said well actually Clegg was a bit of a lad and he got into trouble with drink and women and was always been sent to Sheffield but in in the air he was a perfect rigger just I mean you know my uncle trusted him implicitly and when he was at Sheffield my uncle felt really, really uncomfortable with this gash gunner sitting at the back who he didn’t know. But you know he got, he got through his tour unfortunately my uncle but was killed instructing.
WT: Our wireless op he was, he was an Australian and he was a silly B really and he drank like old boots so when he got in the kite he would do everything he had to do but Jack, our navigator was a great guy ‘cause he knew there was a group, a message to come. I’ve forgotten was it half hourly -
BB: Yeah.
WT: Quarter hourly.
BB: Half hourly.
WT: He’d give Digger a kick.
BB: Usually the weather and, yeah.
WT: We’d could usually hear, ‘Digger wake up you silly B.’ And he’d be, ‘Oh oh alright,’ he says and he never missed, he had everything down, he never missed a thing. He knew exactly where we were going.
BB: Yeah. That’s great. My uncle’s navigator was the old man of the crew. He was -
WT: Yeah.
BB: He was thirty two.
WT: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: He’d been a postmaster in the Isle of Man and had volunteered to be a navigator because he was very good at maths but he was the old man of the crew and the rest of the crew called him Pop. Because the average age on, the average age on my uncle’s crew was what nineteen, twenty.
WT: Ahum.
BB: My uncle himself he was twenty one when he was killed. And that’s having done thirty trips.
WT: I was, I got I was twenty one in Canada. While I was in Canada.
BB: Yeah.
WT: I got deferred service so so such a long time.
BB: Yeah.
WT: In fact I registered as I had to do.
BB: Was that because you were local government job that was deferred?
WT: No nothing to do with that at all. ‘cause they were happy.
BB: It wasn’t a reserved occupation or anything.
WT: No it wasn’t.
BB: No.
WT: It wasn’t reserved. What happened was I signed on as we had to do and I said look here’s my number. Oh yes well that’s ok. Three weeks later I got called up for the army and [noise off] that’s somebody downstairs.
BB: Oh right.
WT: Don’t take any notice of that. And I got called up for the army and I managed to get out of that with a big brigadier somebody that we well knew. He rang them up and he said silly B. He told you what was happening because they were going to come and fetch me.
BB: Yeah.
WT: So that worked out alright.
BB: Good.
WT: Because, you know it didn’t always go right.
BB: No.
WT: I was lucky.
BB: So there were, there were evidence of LMF when you were on the squadron.
WT: Just that one.
BB: Just that one.
WT: Just that I know of.
BB: Yeah. Exactly. Just that you know of. And he was commissioned.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah. I’ve heard other stories where had it been a sergeant air crew Harris was so worried about this kind of thing that we would call it post-traumatic stress disorder.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Today um they were, they were lined up in front of the whole squadron, stripped of their chevrons.
WT: That’s right.
BB: And their brevets taken off. Which was very very harsh but it did get the message. And other aircrews I’ve spoken to they were more scared of that happening to them.
WT: That they -
BB: Then facing the Germans.
WT: So that kept them going.
BB: And I suppose that was Harris’ view. You can either be scared of me or you can be scared of them.
WT: Sure.
BB: Make your choice.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Um but it now the Americans had a completely different attitude to it in the 8th air force and they were flying daylight raids.
WT: Ahum.
BB: As you know. So there was a different thing. The other commands, coastal, fighter, transport they had their, it wasn’t so prevalent.
WT: No.
BB: In those commands. But it’s, it’s, it’s an issue that is very interesting academically and the Sheffield thing. So that might be something that might be an aspect of the Bomber Command research.
WT: [?]
BB: No I’m just saying but you knew of it, it happened on your squadron and that was -
WT: That’s it.
BB: Quietly posted away.
WT: Didn’t take no notice of it.
BB: Yes, that’s right. I mean, you know, a very good friend of my father’s, a chap called Musgrave who was a pathfinder, a pre-war fitter when the heavies came in he volunteered to be a flight engineer, went to St Athan, came out with [E] joined his crew at the Heavy Conversion Unit and went on and did his thing but he did ninety three ops at the end and I said to him once, sadly he’s no longer with us but I have his log books and he said, ‘Well, you know we were dead anyway after four,’ four to five ops in that tour no statistically, statistically -
WT: I know. Yes.
BB: Dead. So let’s go.
WT: I’m going to empty that.
BB: Oh I’m sorry. Right.
WT: Are you going to switch it off or not? Whichever you want to do.
BB: No I’ll just.
WT: I’ll run.
BB: No don’t run. Take your time.
WT: No. No.
BB: Take your time.
WT: It’s only two minutes.
BB: Yeah.
[Pause]
BB: Ok.
WT: Sorry about that.
BB: No, don’t be. No, it’s fine.
WT: You can’t stop it you see.
BB: No. I know you can’t. Thank you very much.
WT: You know.
BB: So that’s great.
WT: You know.
BB: That’s great.
That’s great. Sure
BB: We’ve covered why you wanted to join, you joined, you got re-mustered from pilot to bomb aimer sorry NavB er went to Canada for your initial training.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And then came back to the Heavy Conversion Unit. Lancaster finishing school.
WT: Right.
BB: And went to the OTU and got your crew.
WT: Yes. That’s right.
BB: And you did your, you did your trip. Was it twenty nine do you remember? You told me.
WT: We did twenty nine. I always say one was a half.
BB: Ok.
WT: We got out one night and we had an engine go.
BB: A boomerang.
WT: And she wasn’t very, we weren’t very happy but we carried on for a while and then another one started to go sick so we turned -
BB: Now -
WT: So we turned and came back.
BB: Yeah.
WT: That was about -
BB: What mission, what sortie was that?
WT: That was about the 8th of February.
BB: 8th of, yeah.
WT: Politz I think it was called.
BB: 8th of February 45.
WT: Hmmn?
BB: 8th of February 45. Yeah.
WT: Yes.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And er when we got back somebody said, ‘Why didn’t you go on?’ And he had a few rings there and I said, ‘Sir look out on the pan. There’s an aircraft out there. It’s got two good engines. One is alright I think. The other one’s rough.’ I said, ‘There’s seven of us here.’
BB: What did the flight engineer think about it? He must have made the judgement on that?
WT: No, he had -
BB: The captain.
WT: He had to shut it down. It was -
BB: Yeah.
WT: So I said, ‘And you’ve got the seven of us are here are ready to go again.’ I said, ‘We didn’t go over and get a VC and lose your aircraft for you.’ Cause that -
BB: What did he say to that?
WT: So he said, ‘Well forget it.’ I said, ‘just as well [stress] sir.’
BB: Station commander?
WT: Hmmn?
BB: Was that the station commander?
WT: Yeah. No. It was the er -
BB: Squadron commander?
WT: No. It was the station commander. He happened to be there, yes.
BB: Yeah. Station master as they used to call them.
WT: They usually had four rings.
BB: Yeah. Group captain. Yes.
WT: There was the AOC there. He was there. He was great ‘cause I was friendly with his WAAF lady.
BB: Yeah.
WT: I used we used very friendly just chatted and all that and had a drink and I was saying good night to her outside his house one night and suddenly he tapped me on the shoulder, he was coming in. He said, ‘Don’t keep her up all night because she’s got to get me breakfast in the morning.’ He said, ‘This isn’t a -
BB: Yeah, but they knew what was going on.
WT: He knew.
BB: They loved their aircrew. Yeah.
WT: He was happy.
BB: Now -
WT: I’ve done a whole lot screed on me.
BB: I’ll look at that later.
WT: Yeah that’s what I wanted to -
BB: One other thing I wanted to mention to you because -
WT: Yeah.
BB: Bomber Command had a high instance of venereal disease. VD.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And it was, it was a big a big issue because crews were getting sick and having to go to Halton and all these other hospitals and Harris had a view of it that, ‘cause the chief medical officer in Bomber Command went to see him about it, right. Went to see Harris
WT: Ahum.
BB: To, you know, tell him, you know, it’s got to stop and he said, ‘If my old lags want to have a bit of fun let them have it because they could be dead tomorrow. Now get out of my office.’ He said something like that. But I mean did you, were you aware of any of that?
WT: No. No.
BB: Were there any kind of big posters?
WT: No it was -
BB: Or lectures?
WT: No. It was a good squadron as far as that was concerned. No. We had good fun. We had this -
BB: Yeah
WT: We did a lot of that.
BB: Right. But less of the other.
WT: As far as I’m concerned.
BB: Apparently it was a big problem in Bomber Command but probably in certain areas.
WT: We, we were lucky. I was lucky. I think we had a good squadron there.
BB: Yeah.
WT: They really were. I didn’t know all of them or anything.
BB: No. No, of course.
WT: I didn’t get to know them.
BB: No. No. No. You didn’t.
WT: No.
BB: And I suppose there was the usual horror story in the morning when you went in for breakfast and there were blank chairs. Guys didn’t come back.
WT: Yeah but then I mean people weren’t in because I was lucky I was in the mess lower ground floor. All I had to do was come out of my room turn left and right and there was the dining room.
BB: Right.
WT: So I was dead lucky. Well the bar well there was no bar because it was a peacetime mess.
BB: Sure.
WT: I mean we had to go down a little alleyway.
BB: Sure.
WT: And get served in the trap hatch as we called it.
BB: Right.
WT: The [corps?] was very good.
BB: Now inter relationships within the crew between commissioned and non-commissioned crew members? Any, now you flew as a crew and that was it but of course when you landed you went to your separate messes.
WT: Yes well the, Bruce and I were in -
BB: The other mess, officer’s mess.
WT: The other -
BB: Sergeant’s mess.
WT: Five were together in a house.
BB: In a house ok they were billeted in a house.
WT: One of the wartime houses they were in.
BB: Ok. Ok. Right. I’ve heard a lot of stories where they couldn’t mix formally on base so they went to the local pub and the crew got out all together.
WT: Well you couldn’t do it on base.
BB: No. I know.
WT: You couldn’t be walking -
BB: No. I know.
WT: Around chatting.
BB: No but I meant there was the officer’s mess and the sergeants mess.
WT: They couldn’t mix them up. No.
BB: So they went off base to do it. At least that’s what my uncle did.
WT: The only time we, the only time we mixed was the pre-ops meal.
Interview: Yeah.
WT: And usually that was the sergeant’s mess because it was bigger because of their numbers so we could join them there for the meal.
BB: That’s right.
WT: ‘We had our pre-op meal there altogether.
BB: Because you were one of the privileged guys in the Lancasters. PNB pilot/navigator/bombardier. They were the three main crew PNB and they were recruited -
WT: Ahum.
BB: You know as slightly more rigorously selected and recruited more rigorously than let’s say the gunners because you had the, had to have the education to do those jobs.
WT: Oh you did. Yes.
BB: And you had to have the right characteristics.
WT: Yeah.
BB: So -
WT: I had my London General School Certificate.
BB: Well that’s right. That’s right um well that was, that was good. Let’s see, course you came, I mean I’m not, the time you got into the squadron -
WT: Yeah.
BB: It was late ‘43 or early ’44?
WT: Do you know my memory.
BB: Yeah.
WT: It’s the age.
BB: It’s ok.
WT: Alright. My first op was on the 15th of October ‘44.
BB: ’44. So the war was, the war was still there. And -
WT: Oh yes.
BB: Still brutal.
WT: Oh yes.
BB: Bombers were still being lost.
WT: Yes.
BB: Right up to the last day.
WT: Yeah. Yeah.
BB: But was there any feeling of it can’t be long now or did you think it was just going to go on and on until it stopped. I mean did you have any sense that we were winning?
WT: No.
BB: And doing all that stuff?
WT: We were, as I said.
BB: D-day had finished of course.
WT: No, no, yeah it didn’t. D day, D-day, D-day was over, yes.
BB: Yes.
WT: When I was at OTU.
BB: Yeah but there was still, you know -
WT: Yes.
BB: Still the fighting.
WT: Oh yes well we were the old line.
BB: Still bombing.
WT: The line went further -
BB: Yes.
WT: And further back.
BB: Yes, that’s right.
WT: But there was still a line.
BB: Oh a lot of day -
WT: There was.
BB: Yeah. And did you go on any daylights? Because there were a lot of daylight raids coming in
WT: We did, we did the odd daylights. We did one, two, three. About three. No four. I think there were four -
BB: Four daylights and at that stage of the war was the Luftwaffe still effective or were they -.
WT: Hang on. The last one we did was in April.
BB: April.
WT: ‘45.
BB: Ok.
WT: That was at Nordhausen. Wherever that was.
BB: Nordhausen ok but the um but the Luftwaffe by that stage was essentially gone. I mean no fuel, and losses had been high.
WT: They were up in the air.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And I spotted and -
BB: Did you ever see any of the new jets? ME262 or -
WT: I was going to say because I spotted some one night when we were out and we couldn’t understand. We thought they were rockets and they seemed to be going straight up and this happened a couple of times. It was more over Holland.
BB: Oh the V2s coming off.
WT: No. It was, it was the -
BB: Oh the exhaust from the -
WT: New jets.
BB: The new jets. Oh ok.
WT: The new jets no the V2s had finished by that time.
BB: You didn’t, you didn’t
WT: But we, I reported it but didn’t know anything.
BB: Yeah.
WT: I just said I didn’t know what they were.
BB: Yeah ok.
WT: So that was up to them. I, I didn’t know what they were.
BB: No.
WT: Until after the war. I found out.
BB: Yes. Yes and the German night fighters were still around, prowling around um did you, did you at that time they had Junkers 88s and Messerschmitt’s 110s with the Schräge Musik. Upward firing guns.
WT: Yeah. That was yeah.
BB: When they started to appear crews would just see this massive explosion in the sky and -
WT: Ahum.
BB: Thought they’d been hit by flak. They hadn’t, they hadn’t realised that they were getting under the -
WT: No.
BB: The belly and er it took a long time for Bomber Command to actually tell the crews -
WT: Yeah.
BB: About it.
WT: We knew about it.
BB: You knew about it but it, it was a very effective night fighter technique and -
WT: We only, we used to see searchlights in the sky.
BB: Yes.
WT: And there was the old master one.
BB: Yes.
WT: The red one.
BB: Yes and that was the radar and if that locked on to you the radar guided one -
WT: That was radar but one of them was coming towards us and I was screaming to Bruce and he said give me an idea of timing and I said, ‘Now,’ and what we did then we went straight through it.
BB: Yeah.
WT: As quick we could and he went like this and he disappeared.
BB: Yeah.
WT: So in other words he’d he’ll find somebody else.
Instructor: Yeah he’d find somebody else and ‘cause once you’d been combed that was it.
WT: We did it twice.
BB: More or less. Did it twice.
WT: That happened twice.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Ahum.
BB: That was it to get out.
WT: We didn’t get fired at.
BB: Well it happened to my uncle once and he actually put the aircraft straight down the path of the searchlight as best he could.
WT: The front gunner.
BB: With the front gunner blazing like mad.
WT: I would that’s right.
BB: And quick get out of the way and that ‘cause they changed that but it was -
WT: No. But we were, we were lucky.
BB: The [line was still] well ok with the advance of the allies but the German night fighter force went on quite effectively until more or less the end were constrained by fuel at the end and losses.
WT: It was.
BB: And losses of course. But what would between the flak and the night fighters and collisions and all that sort of thing what would you say was the main, the main fear? Night fighters?
WT: I don’t think we had fear.
BB: No.
WT: I’m sorry if -
BB: You put it away.
WT: It sounds big headed but -
BB: No, no, no.
WT: I don’t. I don’t think.
BB: No. I’m not I’m not. Yeah.
WT: We knew we had a job to do. If we didn’t do it -
BB: Ok. I’ll put it -
WT: We were in trouble.
BB: I’ll put it I’ll put it another way.
WT: Yeah. Go on.
BB: When you had the intelligence briefing.
WT: Yeah.
BB: At the brief.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Obviously they briefed you on night fighter tactics
WT: Yeah
Instructor: And where the flak concentrations -
WT: Yeah.
BB: Were and your route was planned.
WT: Yeah.
BB: To avoid these things and you had Window ah Window.
WT: Window.
BB: Were you dropping Window at that stage as a regular thing?
WT: All the way. All the way we could.
BB: And you had Boozer giving you the electronic aid that latched on to the night fighter radar.
WT: I didn’t do anything about that.
BB: Ok. That must have been with the wireless op.
WT: Wireless op had that.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Because he had, he had a little book.
BB: Yeah. That’s right because the Germans countered that by finding the frequency and all the -
WT: That’s right.
Instructor: And all the rest of it.
WT: That’s right.
BB: Everything like that. It went back and forth I think on the -
WT: Yeah he had that on his table.
BB: Yes. Ok. Rebecca and Boozer and all this stuff.
WT: Yeah we had [?]
BB: Yeah but window was quite effective, yeah.
WT: We did that religiously.
BB: Yes.
WT: I was glad to get rid of it mind.
BB: Yes.
WT: Get in the blooming way.
BB: Now the, my uncle’s wireless operator, he was the warmest guy on the Lanc. Everybody else was cold but he was the warmest behind his little curtain.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Um so he was either too hot or too cold but usually hot.
WT: I was happy.
BB: You were alright in your -
WT: I was alright.
BB: Your place.
WT: Where I was.
Instructor: Could you, you were usually you were at the front of course.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah and I mean for take-off you weren’t there you were probably back -
WT: For take-off we had an arrangement. When we were on OTU -
BB: Yeah.
WT: They trained the, what do you call it, to take off with Bruce?
BB: Yeah.
WT: What’s the, God -
BB: Flight engineer.
WT: Flight engineer. Sorry, I’ve got amnesia.
BB: It’s alright.
WT: No the flight engineer he trained, he was trained to take off and land so -
BB: Yes. That’s right.
WT: Fine. Instead of me being down in the nose which was a bad place to be -
BB: Yeah, Yeah.
WT: I’d be sitting on the engineer’s seat and there were two red wheels and those were the fuel.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And they said to me if I ever saw a red light come up.
BB: Scream.
WT: Do that.
BB: Turn it off.
WT: No turn them both off.
Instructor: Yeah.
WT: And that’s what I did until he poked me in the back and he said, ‘I’ve finished Bob, now’ and I’d say, ‘Cheers.’ and I’d go back to my office. We did that. I came up to landing the same way.
BB: Right. Now again I’m sorry to go back again to my uncle’s crew because it’s, it’s not him we’re talking about but they were representative. His bomb aimer, every time they were approaching the target, the whole crew would get on you know well the captain would say, ‘Try and make it one run this time will you?’ ‘Cause you know, ‘Sorry I’ve got to go around again boss. You know it was like it was never did so it was -
WT: Never did one more round. We went in every time.
BB: Excellent. Excellent.
WT: ‘cause I think it was a question of where you were.
BB: Yes, I understand. In the bomber stream. Yes.
WT: You know, in the stream. But I never had to once.
BB: Because you know the Germans were great at having dummy markers and flares.
WT: Sure.
BB: And changing the, trying to get a feel for the aiming point and, you know.
WT: And the whole thing when you worked it out the whole cross wind.
BB: Yes. Yes.
WT: You could pick it up
Instructor: Yes,
WT: Ages before you
BB: Right.
WT: And I’d get Bruce to change so that we had a good direction.
BB: Right. Ok.
WT: And he was very good ‘cause he just used the pedals to to do
BB: [the rudder bar] yes that’s right to correct the [yaw] My uncle’s bomb aimer only went around I think twice on one target but it was, it was, it was an important one. Um ‘cause my uncle went to Peenemunde. He did the Peenemunde raid. Well he was lucky. He was in the first wave. The diversion raids had, there were no night fighters because -
WT: No.
BB: They had, they weren’t there.
WT: They were somewhere else.
BB: They were somewhere else.
WT: Yeah.
BB: But the guys in the third wave-
WT: They copped it didn’t they?
BB: They copped it. Yeah. But of course they weren’t told what it was for.
WT: We were very, very lucky. I really think we were.
BB: I think luck had a big part to play whether you survived your tour or not
WT: I think so.
BB: And that yes as well
WT: Yes.
BB: That and a great crew and a competent crew.
WT: Well our navigator was red hot.
BB: Yeah.
WT: ‘cause one day Bruce said to him, ‘Jack, why don’t you let Bill take over?’ And before I could say anything he said, Bill you don’t mind or Bobs they used to call me. ‘Bobs you don’t mind but I’d rather be responsible myself for what’s happening.’ I said, ‘I’d rather you did.’ And he did. And he didn’t want me to help with the Gee. He did it all himself.
BB: No. Yeah. Yeah.
WT: He wanted to do it all himself. No, he did it all himself.
BB: Yeah. My uncle’s navigator too. He had all these aids.
WT: Yeah.
BB: But he liked to do it himself and used Gee as a backup you know and -
WT: You know Jack was a good navigator.
Instructor: Yeah.
WT: In fact I contacted him after the war. He was over in er, on the east, west coast somewhere and I had a couple of words with him, He got taken ill and died just like that within nine months of my knowing him.
BB: Oh dear.
WT: There’s one of our crew left still here. Harry the rear gunner. He’s down in Yorkshire.
BB: Oh right I must get his -
WT: He’s not a hundred percent.
BB: No.
WT: At the moment.
BB: No.
WT: And we have a reunion of 153 but it’s got that about there’s only about two members.
BB: No.
WT: That go. It’s all the associate members.
BB: I know.
WT: But they meet every year down in err oh down the road -
BB: Scampton oh in Yorkshire. No in -
WT: Lincoln.
BB: Lincoln. Scampton, Waddington.
WT: No. In Lincoln itself.
BB: Oh Lincoln. Ok
WT: In a pub, in a, in a hotel
BB: Yes.
WT: And go to BBMF.
BB: Yes.
WT: And BBMF -
BB: Yes
WT: Bring them in.
BB: Yeah it’s great. I’ve been there.
WT: They are very much with us.
BB: I had the very great privilege of flying in the BBMF Lancaster.
WT: Did you?
BB: Yeah I was on duty as a reservist and briefing and debriefing crews. Modern crews.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And they said do you want, do you want a flight? And I said yeah. They said, ‘There’s Jacko Jackson over there.’
WT: Ah.
BB: ‘He’s the captain.’ He said, ‘Go and see Jacko.’
WT: Yeah.
BB: And he’ll fix you up and I went across and I said, I was a flying officer at the time and I said, ‘Good morning sir.’ And he said, ‘Yeah. I know about you. You’re coming with me on a one hour flip around in the Lanc.’ We were doing a test, air test of something so
WT: Ahum.
BB: It was wonderful and I told him about my uncle and all that and I went to every position except the rear gunner position.
WT: Yeah.
BB: They wouldn’t let you in there but I went mid upper gunner, I went down the bomb aimer and it was the bomb aimer’s place. It was, it was great but you get a sense of how that main spar going across could be a real hindrance if you had to get out.
WT: I’ve got some photographs I don’t know where they are now of our people in that one going over the main spar.
BB: With all the kit on?
WT: No. Well we didn’t have that. We used to throw that down over the top but there’s one of the ladies, she took over as the squadron scribe, association scribe and I still keep in touch with her and there’s one of her looking over the top and all I could see was her backside so it appeared on the thing
Instructor: Yeah.
WT: Guess who?
BB: Guess who. Because you either went out the main door at the back.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Or you went out the bomb aimers hatch at the top.
WT: Hatch.
BB: Yeah and when that, if that’s in a spin or you know it was difficult but it was difficult getting out of the Lancaster but it was quite difficult when those things -
WT: Sure.
BB: When they caught you.
WT: I say, you know, we were so lucky.
BB: Yeah.
WT: So lucky.
BB: Yeah. So did all your crew that you trained with and flew with survive the war?
WT: Yes we all survived.
BB: All survived.
WT: Together yes we all survived together and after that we were dispersed to various place
BB: Of course. Yes.
WT: I went one way, somebody went, Harry funnily enough he was a sergeant he was sent to India and he was in the post office out there somewhere and they dropped him to corporal.
BB: Yeah. That happened a lot.
WT: Terrible that was. I couldn’t understand that.
BB: Wartime temporary. Now you’re a corporal. Yes.
WT: Yeah.
Instructor: That’s right. Yeah. And err in your own case when the war finished when did you actually leave the air force? Was it ‘46 sometime or -
WT: Yeah. I think, ohI can’t remember offhand.
BB: Well just vaguely?
WT: It’s in my in -
BB: Logbook?
WT: No. It’s in my script somewhere.
BB: Oh ok. Well anyway it was most. Most were let loose by 1947.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah. Most.
WT: Where did I put my scribe script?
BB: Oh don’t worry about it but where
WT: Oh, here it is in my hand.
BB: What did they have you do in that time?
WT: Oh.
BB: Were you supernumerary somewhere or were you -
WT: No they wanted, wanted us to train as something and I trained as an equipment officer.
BB: Right ok so the whole surplus aircrew thing.
WT: Yes.
BB: Because of the war
WT: Yeah.
Instructor: They said you can go home, you’re a good bloke, you’re commissioned we need you blah blah blah but you got to remuster as something else.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And, and -
WT: And I was told that’s what I was going to be. I did a course for six weeks on equipment. Got sent to RAF Strubby.
BB: Oh I know where -
WT: Which had been -
BB: Strubby is in Lincolnshire.
WT: Coldest place on earth. Was shut down and it was ready to be everything taken out.
BB: Right.
WT: And I had a few bods there to do that and we had trucks coming out
BB: Taking -
WT: Getting rid of stuff and so on.
BB: That’s right
WT: And I had another guy ‘cause I was attached to some maintenance unit over on the coast and they sent a guy to help me Frank Wilkes bless him a brummy and we worked together and we both got our going off together so we, we, we went off down to London to get our -
BB: Right got your demob suit and out you went.
WT: I didn’t want a hat so he put his, he put my hat that I would have on. I took it outside and I gave it to - [laughs]
BB: So, ok. So you were demobbed.
WT: Yeah.
BB: After all of that. Having gone through that having gone through all that with Bomber Command being demobbed, done your trips with all the trials and tribulations and terror of what could have happened. What did you do then?
WT: I went back to my job.
BB: You went back to your job.
WT: It was reserved. I joined the health department of the Cornwall County Council in September ‘39, no August ’39.
BB: Yeah.
WT: So I was there then until I joined up but my job was held for me, my, while I was only on my two bob or whatever it was a week my pay was made up.
BB: Right.
WT: But as soon as I got more that stopped and I had to go in and pay the, pay the difference
BB: And obviously you rebuilt your life.
WT: Yeah.
BB: After that and here we are and well done.
WT: My wife, my wife was -
BB: I was going to ask about that.
WT: She was -
BB: Did you meet her in the RAF?
WT: No I met her in, at work.
BB: At work.
WT: I remember it was -
BB: Post war work.
WT: Yeah. The uniform did it.
BB: Ah the uniform did it.
WT: So what I would -
BB: It still had the pull of the air crew.
WT: Well I always went up in my full uniform.
BB: Of course you did.
WT: And it was funny when we had that grand loop.
BB: Yeah.
WT: I went home on leave. I went up to see somebody and I went in see the boss ‘cause I was his favourite. He was the first boy post boy he’d ever appointed ‘cause he was new.
BB: Ah.
WT: Dr Curnow and
BB: Curnow?
WT: Curnow same as Cornwall
BB: Yeah.
WT: Curnow.
BB: Yeah.
WT: C u r n o w.
BB: Yes I had, one of my medical officers was from Cornwall. His name was Curnow.
WT: Yeah. He, he stayed there all the time. For a long, long time and he said to me, when I’d finished I went back, and there was a brr brr and his secretary said that, ‘Yes he is.’ She said, ‘He says go in.’ He said, ‘Sit down. Have you finished?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Hold your hands out.’ He said, ‘You couldn’t do that last time you were here,’ he said, ‘You had the twitch.‘
BB: I was going to come to that
WT: [?] yeah
BB: This chap Musgrave I was telling you about. The guy that did the ninety three trips. He had a permanent twitch. It was sort of –
WT: Ahum.
BB: Like that.
WT: No. No.
BB: But he had a twitch and everybody knew you know he had been
WT: Yeah.
BB: Bomber command but he was very, not because he was boasting about it they just knew that he got out. He finished the war with DFC, DFM and God knows else what but he’d been a pre-war guy but he had a twitch and I asked him once where he got it. How it started. And he said he’d had a crash and er he survived. One or two guys didn’t and that affected him.
WT: That was, that was from when it started because he had said he hadn’t noticed it before.
BB: Yeah.
WT: He was a good chief was Doc Curnow.
BB: So
WT: I was his boy.
BB: Yeah. So these things did have a knock on, knock on affect.
WT: Sure.
BB: Now, the, and then you had all that post war thing you know getting a job, getting married, a family and all of that. Most of the Bomber Command people that I have met and indeed other wartime aircrew not just Bomber Command they never, ever talked about it for years and years. Never.
WT: I agree.
BB: And some of them really still are reticent to talk um either it’s too painful for them one way or another.
WT: I don’t know.
BB: Or it’s just that was that was a bit of my life I’ve now put it in a cupboard.
WT: That was me.
BB: And get on with life.
WT: For a long, long time.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Until eventually I joined you know the Aircrew Association and so on
BB: Yes. That’s right.
WT: Especially when I came up here.
BB: Well I mean you guys were young and you’d gone through such a lot.
WT: Ahum.
BB: And it was very hectic and life was for today.
WT: Yes.
BB: Tomorrow you didn’t know if it was going to happen.
WT: I was, I was getting, I was married.
BB: Yeah. You had responsibilities.
WT: And we had our -
BB: And other things took priority over all of that.
WT: Yes, there were.
BB: And then of course there was this post war denial about Bomber Command.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And what they did and all the rest of it. How did that make you feel? Did it make you feel angry? Did it make you feel what the hell did we do it all for?
WT: I could have killed Churchill. Easily. You know, without any argument.
BB: Because of what he did.
WT: Because of Bomber Harris.
BB: I mean they called him Butch.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Because you know but he he loved his crews and -
WT: He was, he came to Scampton once and he was great.
BB: And they loved him
WT: Yeah.
BB: Despite you know sending them off every night knowing that x number of Lancaster’s wouldn’t come back or Halifaxes or whatever. But that’s how he got his name Butch, Butcher.
WT: Yes.
BB: Butcher Harris but they seemed to get on with him.
WT: Yeah.
BB: They seemed to like, you know, his manner.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And his we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that.
WT: The one person on the squadron the squadron we didn’t like was the four ringer.
BB: The group captain.
WT: The group. He was not a nice fellow at all. We didn’t like him a bit and he used to come in to get his fags so we’d push him to the top of the queue so he could get the hell out.
BB: Did he ever fly? Did he ever go off?
WT: Yes he did a few.
BB: Yeah.
WT: He did one or two.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And he was, fortunately not with us but the AOC was there. He was -
BB: Was that Cochrane? Or Saunby?
WT: I don’t know what he was called.
BB: Yeah.
WT: He was a lovely fellow.
BB: Yeah.
WT: He had his own little [?]
BB: Yeah.
WT: In fact his WAAF
BB: Driver.
WT: No.
BB: His PA.
WT: No. Looked after him.
BB: Oh right.
WT: Looked after him. I got courting with her a bit.
BB: Ahh.
WT: Nothing like, nothing
BB: Nothing like going for the top.
WT: Untoward and one night we were saying goodnight and suddenly there was this tap on my shoulder, ‘Hurry up, don’t keep her up all night. She’s got to get my breakfast in the morning.’
BB: The morning. You said, ‘Yes sir.’
WT: Now who would have said that?
BB: They knew and, they knew and they let the guys get on with it.
WT: I saw her afterwards.
BB: In that respect.
WT: And she said that he laughed his head off.
BB: Oh that’s great. That’s great.
WT: They were a good lot.
BB: And now you’ve got your grandchildren, great grandchildren.
WT: Great grandchildren.
BB: And you’re going to be giving them your logbook and one thing and another.
WT: Paul my grandson. I’ve got a grandson and a granddaughter. Paul is supposed to inherit all my stuff.
BB: Yes.
WT: Which he will do.
BB: Yes. Good.
WT: But in the meantime.
BB: I hope you’ve written that down in a will or something?
WT: I don’t. My son knows.
BB: Ok.
WT: He knows. He’s as good as gold but Paul sorry my oldest grandson, great grandson Jack is very keen on Lancasters ‘cause they live in Lancaster.
BB: Yes of course.
WT: And he knows all about that so Jack has got lots of stuff to do with Lancasters and I said I’ve got all these books I don’t know whether I ought to be getting rid of them sometime. Pete said to me, that’s my son, the other day, ‘Dad don’t do anything until August. Jack’s coming up. He’s mad on the Lancaster’s and things, he’s got stuff all over the place so, in his room.’ so there’s four Lancaster – one, two, three, four, five books.
BB: Yeah.
WT: But you know
BB: Garbett and Goulding books.
WT: Yeah I met him and one other there and he’ll have those whatever happens. What, what about the others in the bottom lot I don’t know ‘cause the top one is all Cornwall but they’re spoken for one way or another.
BB: I have four hundred such books and I do a lot of research and I write occasionally in Flypast and other magazines um and they’re just for my own research. I mean, for example you said you were 153 I went to the books oh yes but now coming back to the controversial issue of medals.
WT: Sorry.
BB: Did you have to apply for your medals or did they come through the post eventually to you?
WT: I had to apply for them.
BB: You had to apply for them. And when did you apply for them
WT: Lord knows. I can’t remember.
BB: Yeah because they ok they had a lot to get through.
WT: No. That’s not true. I, I when I was an equipment officer before while I was still under training a bit with another thing.
BB: Yeah.
WT: I was asked to go up the headquarters somewhere and I took the logbook with me and I went through about my medals then and then I said, ‘Yes but I want the Air Crew Europe.’ ‘Well you can’t have it.’ ‘Well I said I don’t want any more.’ I went to go out and they pushed me back in again and they insisted that I had to have these four.
BB: Right, so now the, I had a very, my father knew another very nice man and his name was Slim Summerville. He had been a pre-war regular but he was a wireless operator I gather on Whitleys the one’s that flew like that -
WT: Ahum.
BB: And he hated them. But then he was shot down in November 1940 in France he made a crash landing. All the crew got out, sorry Holland, all the crew got out still fly, they flew in their number ones. Odd. But anyway they were all sitting around, standing around this aircraft trying to get it to burn and they couldn’t burn it. The Germans came. November ‘40 Battle of Britain had just finished. There they were. This Luftwaffe feldwebel came to them and said, ‘look we’ve got nowhere to put you but this Dutch, this Dutch farmer will look after you, we’ll put one of our guards there promise you won’t try and escape.’ ‘We can’t do that,’ they said but, ‘Never mind you go there.’ A month they were in this farmhouse having a life, they thought this is alright. This is ok. And then things got, they were then they were sent back in to Germany and they were sent towards the east. They were part of the great march but and he finished the war all the rest of it. When he was ill he came, I went to see him and he said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘Bruce I never claimed my medals because I didn’t think I’d have very many being a POW but I’d like to pass them on to my grandchild.’ So I said, ‘Well ok.’ He said, ‘I can’t give you my logbook because it was when I was taken prisoner it was all lost and whatever.’ So I had to go to the National Archive in Kew and reconstruct his logbook and I took all this stuff and I said right your entitled to the Aircrew Europe, you’ve done, you’ve done all these missions between the qualifying dates of the -
WT: Yes sure.
BB: Award. Why, they said he wasn’t entitled to it. That he was only going to get the ‘39 to ‘45 star, the defence medal and a war medal. That’s all he was going to get.
WT: Oooh there’s one -
BB: Because he was -
WT: There’s one missing there really.
BB: So -
WT: France and Germany.
BB: Yeah but he was a POW. He wasn’t there.
WT: But did he -
BB: So -
WT: But he’d been doing work.
BB: Yeah but he was captured in 1940. So anyway so I went back and I said no you did x number of missions on the Whitleys you’re entitled to the Air Crew Europe so he said, ‘Well you write. I’ll give you permission and you write.’ So I wrote back to them first to air historical branch then to RAF records and they sent, they said, ‘Yes you’re right.’ So they reissued it. But with, but with the Air Crew Europe and I had them mounted for him and I took them to the hospital to see him in hospital and I pinned them to his pillow and he died three hours later. But he was so happy -
WT: Lovely.
BB: To have got them.
WT: Of course he was.
BB: Yeah. And he said -
WT: I’ve got mine here somewhere.
BB: All the rest was rubbish but Air Crew Europe’s the one so I am going to take your fight up.
WT: No.
BB: If I can do it for him, I can do it for you.
WT: Oh, there’s no point.
BB: Yes there is.
WT: I shouldn’t bother.
BB: Your grandchildren need it. I understand how you feel but if you’re entitled to it why don’t you take it?
WT: I’ve got them somewhere. I thought I had them there.
BB: Let’s have a look. Oh there they are. Right.
WT: They’re a replacement ‘cause I lost mine.
BB: Did you?
WT: And I lost the -
BB: What happened?
WT: Hmmn?
BB: What happened?
WT: I don’t know it was -
BB: They were all issued unnamed.
WT: It was in a move.
BB: They were all issued unnamed.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Now you see if I get you the Air Crew Europe. Right. Just say, let’s just say no this annoys me with the the whole medal thing you did all of that. Now I know you’re very proud and, and, and you don’t particularly want it but you earned it and this parsimonious government took their bloody time in giving you the Bomber Command clasp which I, did you ever claim it?
WT: No.
BB: Right.
WT: Yes I got that.
BB: Right.
WT: Yes.
BB: You need to sew that on.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Now, if I get you the Air Crew Europe if by chance we’re successful they’ll probably give you the Air Crew Europe with the France and Germany clasp.
WT: Ahum.
BB: ‘cause you couldn’t have both.
WT: Ahum.
BB: So you have to give that one back.
WT: I think the other one’s still there ‘cause I always said I can’t sew so
BB: So what I’m saying is they’ll probably take that one probably ask you to return that one.
WT: I’m not fussed about it you know.
BB: I’m just going through the procedure.
WT: I know.
BB: And um they that’s what they would do. Um but it is such a prestigious, it was only it was the only thing of the stars that I’ve talked to with the guys before that meant anything was the Air Crew, Air Crew Europe whether your coastal, bomber or whatever -
WT: Yes. Exactly.
BB: It was. Because they didn’t get a medal. That was only medal they actually got that was you know air force.
WT: I got mine. Those are replacements.
BB: Yes.
WT: Because -
BB: Exactly I’ll take a photo of those later.
WT: In transferring -
BB: Well -
WT: Something got lost and we never found them. I didn’t, I didn’t -
BB: Let me put it this way let me see what I can do and if I can do it you’ll take it. Right? You’ll take it if I can get it for you.
WT: Alright.
BB: Fine. Good.
WT: You’ve won.
BB: I feel very strongly about that ’cause you know medals are very emotive things even today.
WT: I won’t argue with you.
BB: No. Good. Ok well I’m going to stop the interview now. I think we’ve covered all the ground. Is there anything else you’d like to say that I may have forgotten?
WT: No.
BB: To ask?
WT: [If you]
BB: Are these your target pictures?
WT: Target pictures.
BB: Yeah.
WT: We were allowed to have those as the crew, the crew -
BB: Now -
WT: Took some as well.
BB: The other thing that used to get people a bit jumpy, ‘Have you got the flash skip? I’ve got to go around again.’ And, ‘Oh go on then.’
WT: No.
BB: Because a lot of crews were really ‘cause that was flying straight and level for a bit of a time to get that flash picture and if you missed it the first time you had to go back and at debriefing as you know once they processed the film -
WT: [?] that’s right.
BB: You were kind of ticked in the box that it was ok.
WT: The problem was the bottom of those it was -
BB: Yeah.
WT: A job to read
BB: Yeah.
WT: Very difficult to read
BB: It is.
WT: All the stuff.
BB: It is but -
WT: But the one there the first one Fort [Frederick Heindricks].
BB: Yeah.
WT: That was an aiming point.
BB: Yeah.
WT: So I was told.
BB: Right.
WT: You could see the smoke coming away.
BB: How, we hear a lot about the pathfinders and the marking and all these different marking techniques. Were they, were they good? I mean were they -
WT: They were good as far as we were concerned. We would come up and every now and again they would say please you know bomb on so and so -
BB: Yeah they had the master bomber saying forget that that’s a spoof yeah go to -
WT: That’s right.
BB: Bomb on the greens.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Bomb on the greens. That kind of thing.
WT: Yeah. We had that.
BB: Yeah and because so -
WT: And that, that’s they’re all the same
BB: Oh ground zero.
WT: That’s, no that that’s Dresden.
BB: That’s what I’m saying ground zero at Dresden
WT: I wouldn’t know. With, you can see the modern building.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And the one that’s been destroyed.
BB: Yes.
WT: A friend of mine he lives here in Morpeth and they went over to Dresden and he came back he said, ‘Bill I thought I’d take a photograph. This is what you did you B.’
BB: Well yeah tough it was a legitimate target.
WT: Oh yeah as far as I was concerned it was.
BB: Thank you very much. They’re very interesting.
WT: Yes, I, those are, you know, to me, the crew had some you know.
BB: Yeah.
WT: So -
BB: My uncle had some and they used to put them in their logbook.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Because the pilot’s logbooks were different as you know.
WT: Yeah.
BB: They were slightly bigger.
WT: Yeah well they were. That’s why mine is a bit of a mess and just written on. You know, scrolled
BB: I’ll have a look at that later. So I’m going to stop the interview now. Are you happy with that?
WT: Yes you -
BB: Ok.
WT: I don’t know if you saw those. That’s my doings. That’s, that’s how I got to know you.
BB: That’s all the stuff.
WT: And that was the newsletter. Yes.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And that’s, yeah, that’s ok.
BB: And there’s your medals back.
WT: Oh there’s, ok.
BB: Give those back to you there.
Yeah oh don’t worry about that. Oh yes that’s the Bomber Command clasp in there.
BB: Oh yes well let’s have a look, you’ve got to sew that on haven’t you?
WT: Well yes I said my daughter and grand daughter.
BB: Well why don’t you. Is it still in it’s envelope? Let me just take a picture of that ‘cause that’s you. That’s-
WT: You can undo that clip better than I can.
BB: That’s very nice.
WT: That’s what it should be.
BB: About bloody time too.
WT: I think -
BB: I was -
WT: I, I hated the thing actually it should have been a blooming thing like the other people had.
BB: Yeah. I was I was privileged in being selected to be an usher at the Bomber Command memorial opening in London.
WT: Lovely.
BB: And I was in my squadron leader stuff and all my own medals on and it was great and I was given, I was given six, three Australian, three New Zealand, three Australian and three New Zealand air crew to look after. To host.
WT: [?]
BB: Yeah and they were all of your vintage, your age, you know, now.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And they’d come all the way from Australia and New Zealand for free business class with [doorbell] New Zealand sorry
WT: That could be your wife.
BB: Could be my wife.
WT: Oh she’ll be, open the door.
BB: Oh I can get that for you sorry.
WT: No that’s alright. It could be somebody else. Hello.
Other: Hello.
WT: I’ve got someone with me. We thought it was his wife.
Other: Oh a parcel for me.
WT: Oh yes darling.
Other: That’s why I came. That’s very kind of you, Bill.
WT: That’s alright.
Other: Thank you very much indeed.
WT: I’ll keep the sixpence you’ll, I’ll send you the bill.
Other: Sixpence and you’ll send me the bill.
WT: We do things for one another.
BB: Yeah of course you do.
WT: Only around the corner. She’s a dear.
BB: Well done for that.
WT: When I came home last time from hospital I weren’t all that brilliant and she was doing shopping, she was insisting on doing my laundry and all that and I said -
BB: So -
WT: So I took a parcel in for her today.
BB: Right so -
WT: Where’s that going in there wasn’t it
BB: It’s with your medals yeah. Yeah yeah. So I’m with these guys and we’re all sitting them all down and I was getting and it was a pretty hot day and one of the Australians said ‘cause my name’s Bruce you see.
WT: Yeah.
BB: ‘Here, Brucie go and get us a beer mate.’ So I went and got them the beer and they ate this up and, ‘Here, I’m pretty hungry mate. Got any sandwiches?’ And we were going away and they said, ‘Look mate it’s getting hot here when’s this thing going to you know finish?’ I said, ‘Well, you know, the royals are going to be there. The Queen’s going to open it and so on and Prince Charles and Camilla will come and see you.’ ‘Right. Right. Ok.’ So this went on and the RAF BBMF Lancaster flew down and dropped these poppies but it got it wrong got it, slightly, slightly off track and all the poppies ended up in Piccadilly all over the place and -
WT: That’s one of them,
BB: Yes. Yes I know. I recognised that,
WT: Yeah.
BB: And this Australian looked up and he said, ‘Oh Christ the navig, the navs all wrong you know’ and, you know, ‘I suppose you can’t get the people these days’ and all that sort of talk, you know. Anyway I sent one of my little one of my helpers, one of my guys in our squadron, a corporal. I said, ‘Go and pick up as many of those as you can get.’
WT: Sure.
BB: And he met a policemen, this guy, with his helmet -
WT: Yeah.
BB: Just doing this you see and the policeman kept some in his pocket and he gave the rest to this guy so he gave each one of these guys one of the poppies and that was great but this Australian who was really quite vocal, nice bloke but he had with him a group captain Royal Australian Air Force from the embassy must have been the air attaché standing maybe just about there and you’re the guy right and he said, ‘Brucie, look when the royals come down can I ask when I’m going to get my’ dot dot ‘medal because I’m getting old and I’m going to fall of my perch mate and I’d rather like it.’ And I said, ‘Well you could but I don’t think it would be, you know, polite.’ He said, ‘[Dot dot] polite mate I’ve been waiting a long time.’ And then the group captain came across and said, ‘Look I’ve told you about that. That’s my job. Leave that to me.’ You know. Blah. ‘Well you’d better hurry up mate.’ And that was the end of that conversation and of course you get your, get the clasp.
WT: Oh dear.
BB: But it all went it all went it all went very well and every time I’m in London and I’ll be there next week I always get one of those British Legion wooden little wooden crosses.
WT: Yes.
BB: With the poppy on.
WT: Yeah.
BB: And I take my uncle’s crew and -
WT: Put their names down
BB: Just the one name. So my uncle first, then the bomb aimer, then and I put them all down and I look at the little little book they’ve got there.
WT: Yeah
BB: And its people write things down.
WT: Yeah
BB: And there’s obviously flowers. There’s things that gets me is this little one flower and an old plastic see through bag or
WT: Yeah.
BB: Something. With, ‘To Uncle George’ killed blah blah blah blah and you think gosh, you know and it’s such a focus that place for everybody to come and do stuff.
WT: Standing there with tears streaming down my eyes that day
BB: Yeah. Yeah.
WT: I couldn’t even -
BB: And I said to the Ben Fund people
WT: I shouted once, ‘Excuse me I’ve got to go to the toilet. Don’t do anything.’ [laughs]
BB: And I said to the Ben Fund guys who run it you know I hope someone collects all this stuff and takes it away.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Because -
WT: Sure.
BB: You should do a book after five years or something with all the, ‘cause they leave copies of pictures.
WT: Sure.
BB: And crew pictures and -
WT: Yeah.
BB: You know, it’s a great archive there just on its own.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
WT: One of their associate members who’s a bit of a B really but he rang up and said Bill I’ve got a poppy that came falling down. Did you want one? And he sent it up to me.
BB: Oh excellent.
WT: So that’s why I popped it on there.
BB: Yeah.
WT: And it keeps falling down but it fell behind one day so I put it there -
BB: I think -
WT: So it doesn’t go anywhere else.
BB: I think –
And by the way that -
BB: Yes.
WT: Is as good a representation of a lot of us coming off -
BB: Ops.
WT: Off ops yes.
BB: I’ll take a picture of that.
WT: The actual depth of that thing.
BB: Yeah. I’ll take a picture of that but -
WT: It’s terrific.
BB: I think I have at home a programme from that day. I’ll send it to you. From the Bomber memorial.
WT: I was here then.
BB: Yes I know but I’ve got -
WT: Yeah.
BB: You know I think I’ve got a number of spares. I will send it to you.
WT: But I would love to have been there.
BB: Well it was such a privilege.
WT: Two or three of our members were there.
BB: Yeah it was a privilege to be there and, and
WT: ‘cause we had a, I started a help doing it with Johnny [Johns?] on, who by the way has written a lovely book on our stuff. Did I have that out? No I didn’t
BB: That’s ok well I’ve got a feeling -
WT: That is
BB: Ok.
WT: That’s on.
BB: 153.
WT: That is done. Is on the internet somewhere or something.
BB: Is it?
Yeah.
BB: I’ll try and find it when I go back.
WT: Johnny’s done it. He’s got -
BB: When was that written? Let’s have a look
WT: Just inside is by the date its a few years ago. I don’t know if
BB: Oh here we are. April 1998.
WT: Yeah Johnny was one of the pilots that came just after when the war was more or less finished. He started just when we were just finishing the war but he became the chairman of our Association.
BB: Yes. How lovely.
WT: It’s a terrific book because it’s got -
BB: It’s a lovely book.
WT: You know you can see when everybody did everything.
BB: Yeah it was a lovely book. And it’s, it’s -
BB: It’s terrific.
BB: I have one similar for 9 squadron but not in so much detail.
WT: That, that has got every op was done and who was on it and everything else.
BB: Yes.
WT: And about all these tables.
BB: Has anybody got all these for the national -
WT: And the aircraft.
BB: We would have got these for the national archive.
WT: Oh no. No he -
BB: Logbooks.
WT: He was down there. He used to go down and, and -
BB: Yes at the archive.
WT: Yeah, he’d go down there.
BB: Oh I was down. It’s a great place to be it really is.
WT: He lived down in York way.
BB: Yeah.
WT: No he didn’t Salisbury sorry it was Salisbury ‘cause his daughter, one of his daughter is still there.
BB: Yes, That’s lovely.
WT: He used to come regularly to our dos.
BB: And you were on C flight yeah.
WT: Hmmn?
BB: C flight.
WT: No A.
BB: A flight. Ok.
WT: I was A flight. Yeah.
BB: A flight. Ok.
WT: Yeah there was -
BB: Sorry.
WT: You will see our crew there somewhere.
BB: Yes. I’m just looking for it here.
WT: Bruce Potter at the top.
BB: Potter’s crew eh.
WT: Did you not see it?
BB: Yeah hold on.
WT: He was on A flight.
BB: Potter.
WT: Almost where you had your thumb there.
BB: Potter.
WT: Is it over that side somewhere?
BB: Oh here he is. Potter. There we are.
WT: Yeah.
BB: I’ll take a note of that.
WT: His name was Bruce.
10859
BB: Well he’s got an Australian name mate.
WT: Certainly has, yes mate.
BB: Except mine’s more Scottish than Australian. In fact one of my objectives for this when I was down here my uncle who was the Australian he married my mother’s sister ‘cause I was born in Gainsborough which is Bomber Command Hemswell not too far from Hemswell.
WT: Yes, Hemswell. Yeah.
BB: And my brother was born in Newark and my, this Australian pilot was courting my mother’s sister while he was on ops but he wouldn’t marry her while he was on ops ‘cause he didn’t feel, he’d had so many young ladies coming to the mess after their husband’s had died and he wouldn’t do it. He said he would marry her when he’d finished ops but he was killed instructing and they were only married four months but my cousin was born you know shortly thereafter well you know nine months later basically and so he, he was born in the place where I was brought up by my grandmother at Coldstream in Berwickshire and the family claimed, the family claimed the body.
WT: Oh yeah.
BB: And he was brought up by train to Cornhill station and lay overnight in the family house and my grandfather had, was a commander of the local home guard having been an old soldier and he wanted to open the coffin ‘cause it lay in the front room with a flag on it and my mother was a nurse and my mother said I don’t think we should do that ‘cause he was burnt. She knew he had been burnt and so they didn’t do it. They said let’s just remember him.
WT: As we thought he was.
BB: As we was and when the guys came up from, from the RAF station he was at for the funeral his widow, my aunt, said I’d like his watch or his flying jacket please. Sorry all we’ve got is this this and which you’ll get from the committee of adjustment and they’ll send to you and all the rest but so when you go to this little Scottish cemetery you’ll see this Australian AF war grave.
WT: Right.
BB: That’s him.
WT: That’s him. Well I never.
BB: But he was only twenty one and the last time his mother saw him was when he was seventeen and a half to leave, leave Australia to come home come here.
WT: Yeah.
BB: You know.
WT: Yeah.
BB: It was just one of those awful things.
WT: What are you trying to do there?
BB: He had finished his, he had finished his, his ops and was screened and funny you know the crew all got together you know.
WT: Ah huh.
BB: And they said, ‘We’ll go on pathfinders. We’re safer on pathfinders than we are instructing.’ And that was the view and he said, ‘No, I can’t. I’ve got to, I want to get married and I’m not going to that.’ but if he had done that he probably would have been alright.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Exactly.
BB: There we go. It wasn’t to be I suppose. These things are always -
WT: Yeah.
BB: Sad.
WT: Sent to, sent to try us.
BB: They are. Well Bill thanks very much.
WT: That’s alright my friend.
BB: And I’ll be back I’m sure if I’m down this way again. It’s so lovely to talk to you.
WT: Yeah.
BB: There’s all your bits.
WT: Yeah. You’ve got, you’ve got the medals.
BB: I’ve got that picture you leant me and I’ll send that back when I get home tonight and I’ve got -
WT: You didn’t, you didn’t take the medals.
BB: No. No.
WT: No.
BB: No you’ve got them. Better check I don’t want you to, there they are in the bag
WT: That’s alright, they’re in the bag.
BB: They are in your just check please just check. No, no, no I haven’t got them. There they are
WT: I don’t know why, yeah they’re there such as they are.
BB: Well we’ll try and change that.
WT: I’m never bothered about medals.
BB: No. Well a lot of people don’t but the gran
WT: I’m not a medal man.
BB: No. A lot of people weren’t but you know there’s things like grandchildren who, who -
WT: Well. Paul -
BB: You’ve got, you’ve got your grandchildren now.
WT: My grandson.
BB: Who you would obviously like.
WT: They’re down in Salisbury at the moment I’m hoping they’re going to move a bit nearer but he’s interested but his nephew bless him is he’s only seven and a half at the moment.
BB: Yeah.
WT: But there’s a photograph of him up there. Jack. He’s very, very keen on it. Very keen.
BB: Well so he should be. It’s a great honour that you’ve done this.
WT: There’s the office.
BB: There’s the office, that’s right.
WT: These were, these were taken from the just, what is she called the one over, Just Jane over there in, we used to go down there a lot to the Panton Brothers where they’ve got the aircraft that taxies around.
BB: Yeah. Ok what have I got to do here now?
WT: [yawn] excuse me. This is all to do with the Lincolnshire arrangement that going, the spire’s gone up hasn’t it?
BB: Not yet. No, no, no, not -
WT: Oh I thought they’d already lifted it because our lot were down on oh a month and a half ago to their, to the reunion and that was the day when it was going to be delivered. They moved, had to move away because time was going on they’d only just got down the road and they saw it going back up.
BB: Right.
WT: Just coming. So they couldn’t do anything about it.
BB: No.
WT: I thought they said they put it up that night. Erected it.
BB: What? The spire?
WT: Yeah.
BB: In Lincoln?
WT: Yeah.
BB: Well to tell you the truth it might have done but I haven’t heard of it yet but -
WT: Well I thought that’s what they it had happened. They brought that in and the lorries or whatever was carrying it were going to get it upright for them to to anchor it down or whatever. I don’t know. Because they are going to build a great big wall around it aren’t t they with the name of the people who died
BB: Yes
WT: Or were killed. So [they’ll have old Giffords?] down on that one bless him. My room-mate.
BB: Oh God. There’s more bumph here.
WT: Cost you more money now.
BB: Yeah. Yeah. Right so we’d better get on with the paperwork. Let me just have a look at it
WT: Oh I thought you’d done it.
BB: No I’ve just been reading it here so we’ll better get on with it. Won’t be a minute. I think I’ll just call my wife up I’m a bit worried about her. See where she is
WT: I was going to say from my bedroom you can probably see the car.
BB: So when’s your next medical people coming in. When, when do they come in, every day to see you?
WT: No. No. No Wednesday is the day when everything normally happens.
BB: Yeah.
WT: At the moment I’ve got ear trouble but I’m off for another week but on Wednesday they come in to change your leg bag and do all kinds of things so I have to watch it but I’m alright I’m off for the next week or two I’m not doing too badly.
BB: Hi Jeannie. It’s me. I’m finished with Bill. I wonder if you could come back to to look at this documentation. It might need a witness. I’m not sure. Ok I’ll call you later. Or you can give me a call now. Thanks bye.
WT: Oh you’ve left her a message have you?
BB: Yeah she’s -
WT: Oh.
BB: She’s probably walking the dog.
WT: Stay where you are I think I can see the car from here.
BB: Ok thanks.
From the bedroom.
[pause]
WT: No the trees are in the way. I said the tree is in the way.
BB: Oh its William [Headley] Thomas isn’t it?
WT: [Headley].
BB: Oh that’s worth, that’s worthy of a photograph.
WT: Oh I don’t know I was just going to show you that. They were taken more or less the same time. You see what she’s wearing?
BB: Yes.
WT: A new pair of wings.
BB: Oh that’s lovely. May I take a picture of that one?
WT: Oh, go on. You don’t want that man.
BB: Yes I do. You’re, now that, now that you’ve been interviewed my dear boy you are now part of the national archive.
WT: Don’t.
BB: You are going to be in the Bomber Command archive.
WT: Am I?
BB: Yeah, you are.
WT: I thought, I thought it was the Lincolnshire.
BB: Yeah but it’s going to the University of Lincoln.
WT: Yeah.
BB: Yeah.
WT: Yeah.
BB: But that’s why we’ve got to sign this other stuff.
WT: While you’re doing that it’s happened again this damned bag.
BB: Oh I’m sorry.
WT: No it’s alright ‘cause it just happens like that I have a big bag to put on the end of it at night thank God.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Bill Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Bill had joined the Air Defence Cadet Corps and Air Training Corps. He volunteered as a pilot in the Royal Air Force and flew Tiger Moths at RAF Sywell but was re-mustered as a navigator. Bill went to Canada as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, where he did bomb aiming, gunnery and navigation training. He was offered a commission and did some special training on Prince Edward Island before going to the holding unit at Moncton.
Bill returned to Scotland and converted to bomb aiming. He crewed up at RAF Castle Donington and went to RAF Sandtoft and RAF Hemswell to the Lancaster Finishing School. Bill was transferred to 166 Squadron at RAF Kirmington, flying Lancasters. They then went to RAF Scampton as 153 Squadron. Bill conducted 29 operations and one which was aborted because of engine problems. Bill then trained as an equipment officer, being sent to RAF Strubby. He then demobilised and returned to his job in local government.
The interview discusses relationships between commissioned and non-commissioned crew, Bill’s thoughts on Dresden, Bomber Command and Arthur Harris, and the awarding of medals.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AThomasWH150711
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Canada
Alberta
Ontario
Ontario--Toronto
Prince Edward Island
Québec
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Harrogate
England--Hastings
England--Lancashire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--London
England--Manchester
England--Northamptonshire
England--Redruth
England--Sussex
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Wigtown
Wales--Aberystwyth
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
New Brunswick
New Brunswick--Moncton
United States
New York (State)
New York (State)--New York
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-11
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bruce Blanche
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:19:53 audio recording
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
153 Squadron
166 Squadron
aerial photograph
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crewing up
ground personnel
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
memorial
observer
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
promotion
RAF Bicester
RAF Castle Donington
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kirmington
RAF Sandtoft
RAF Scampton
RAF Strubby
RAF Sywell
target photograph
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/129/1282/MFlowersHJ[Ser -DoB]-160630-010001.jpg
790ab2392af246da44ba0f665a12afd9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/129/1282/MFlowersHJ[Ser -DoB]-160630-010002.jpg
4813109d8c652615e02d11e1e1602107
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
Flowers, James
H J Flowers
Horrace James Flowers
Harry James Flowers
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. The collection concerns the wartime experiences of Flight Sergeant Horace James Flowers, a rear gunner with 50 Squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe. The collection consists of one oral history interview, a propaganda leaflet and nine photographs. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by James Flowers and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Flowers, HJ
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
THE REAL GERMAN
THE ECONOMIC LEAGUE 1941
War Series No. 23
Anyone who has followed the trend of German propaganda since the outbreak of war will have noticed all along that the Nazis have sought to pretend that their war is not a war against the British people, but, to quote their words, “against the plutocratic gang led by Churchill”. They have also pretended that they do not desire to destroy the British Empire, but only to eliminate British influence from Europe. It is evident that even in this country some people have been misled by this propaganda. The “why not make peace now?” propaganda of the Peace Pledge Union, and the still sometimes-heard voice with its plea “the Germans really aren’t such bad people” is evidence of it. So is the activity of the Reds. But now the mask is off. The chief editor of the Volkischer Beobachter, Goebbel’s own newspaper, has declared:-
“Germany is now prepared to cause the final defeat of England, and is determined to have a formidable Day of Judgment not only on Churchill and his followers, but on the British nation. We will bring to England a revolution of blood and tears which as a punishment will reduce the British population to degradation and poverty.”
We ask you to read these words carefully, and then to read them again. If you know any members of Communist organisations, of the Peace Pledge Union and any other pacifist groups, who are directly or indirectly assisting the enemy cause, ask them to read these words as well and ponder on what they mean. Show them also to any of your mates who are given to absenteeism, to taking it easy on the job.
BRITAIN’S FATE
Dr. Ley, the Nazi Minister of Labour, has told us what Britain’s fate would be if Germany won:-
“It is a fight for the destruction of England, the leadership of the world, and the domination of our race. If there be a God and a Providence, then must He give to the higher race higher rights.”
(Leipziger Neuste Nachrichten, 9.2.40.)
In another speech Ley disclosed the rate the Nazis have in store for a defeated Britain. He said:-
“England must be destroyed, and become once more that unknown green island that she was centuries ago.” (Angriff, 20.12.39)
Let us consider this statement side by side with one from the official Nazi organ, Wirtschaftsdienst, on 4th November, 1940:-
“World trade will be directed by Germany, who will make suitable arrangements with Norway for the use of Norway’s merchant fleet. Norway may be allowed to sell wood and pulp overseas with Grossraum support. Only such industries will be permitted for which Norway has natural qualifications. Norwegian water-power, once it is fully developed, will supply the German electro-thermic and other industries.”
Now let us re-write this extract in the light of the absolute and concrete evidence the Economic League has of the Nazi plans for the exploitation of Britain:-
“World trade will be directed by Germany, who will make suitable arrangements with Britain for the use of Britain’s merchant fleet. Britain may be allowed to sell agricultural products abroad with Grossraum support. Only such industries, i.e., agriculture and coal-mining, will be permitted, for which Britain has natural qualifications. The British coal industry will supply the German iron and steel and other industries.”
This isn’t exaggeration. It is plain, sober fact.
What would happen to the British standard of living? Substitute the words British and Britain for Dutch and Norway, and Britons for Poles, in the following extracts, and you will get the answer:-
“The standard of living of the Dutch people must be lowered if the conquered country is to supply Germany with food.” (Der Deutsche Volkswirt, 17.5.40.)
“Norway will be adjusted to the continental price level, wages will be reduced, and Norway will no longer be allowed a higher standard of living than the continental countries.” (Wirtshaftsdienst, 4.11.40.)
“A lower race needs less room, less clothing, less food and less culture than a higher race. The German cannot live under the same conditions as the Pole.” (Angriff, 31.1.40.)
“We must make the Pole feel that we are masters, and he must work for us. If he meets a German on the pavement, the Pole must step aside.” (Litzmannstaedter Zeitung, 25.10.40.)
What would this mean? The present state of Holland, Norway and Poland under German subjection provides the answer.
A LETTER FROM POLAND
Now read the following letter, recently smuggled out of Poland, written by a well-educated woman who before the invasion managed a large estate:-
“Forgive the scribble, but an opportunity has come to let you have a letter, so I have sat down straight to write it from the rough work which I have to do now. But my hands are shaking, and besides I am sitting low and writing on my knees. We haven’t any table, and we sit on our beds, for we haven’t any chairs either. It makes life very difficult when you haven’t got anything, or anything to cook with. Fuel is difficult, too. You may have heard that we are living in the forest, in a hut which is more like a shed; there are great cracks in the walls. You can guess that it is very difficult to get warm enough even to be able to take off our overcoats for a little while. All our anxiety is to get food for the children. Our means are coming to an end and we don’t know what will happen then. We continually console ourselves with the thought that spring and summer are near; there will be berries and so on, and it is always easier to manage then. At present all our efforts are concentrated on filling the children’s bellies. We are selling what is left of our wardrobe; our coats, clothing and boots, and that will help for a while … but I don’t dare to think what will happen after … The children are a continual anxiety, they haven’t anything even to read, and of course are not getting any education. They help as best they can in our present life, they fetch water, collect brushwood for fires, help in the cleaning, and so on. I have to do everything, and in particular I do all the fetching and carrying; that is safer for me to do than any of the others, for I am over forty. At times the journey is very hard, recently I had to go to the town, five kilometres, and the snowdrifts were so deep that I hardly got there. I always return home dreading that I shall not find them all there. The older boys are already as tall as their father, though they are still so young, and with the continually increasing forced deportations we never know how long we shall have them with us. That is the worst of all, this everlasting threat hanging over us. And Marysia also is fifteen and … she is very good-looking. And such terrible things are happening. And there are other dangers and fears. There has been a new wave of general deportations and it is again getting near here. Shall we be able to escape it?”
Imagine your family in this condition, and remember that the Germans have declared quite openly that Poland would be a paradise compared with what they would make of a defeated Britain. Remember the Nazis’ aim as expressed in their own words. To “reduce the British population to degradation and poverty.” That applies to every man, woman and child in this island.
OUR TASK
The fighting man in the front line, the worker, employer and employee in the factory, the woman in the home, the civil defence army at its posts of duty, each and all of us are fighting for our lives. We are fighting to lift a dark and evil shadow from the face of Europe. We are fighting so that our children and our children’s children can breathe the sweet air of freedom. We cannot rest on our arms for a single moment until Nazi Germany is defeated. Let us be very proud of the job or work we have got to do. Let us do that job with a determination, thoroughness and energy never before excelled. Let us give of our best every moment, every hour, of the day. Let us prove ourselves worthy of Britain’s “finest hour.”
Don’t waste this Leaflet. Pass it on.
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
The Real German. War series 23
Description
An account of the resource
British propaganda leaflet starts by describing trend in German propaganda that they are not trying to destroy the British Empire but are fighting the Churchill plutocratic gang, Continues with quotes from German ministers and publications concerning German plans for control of world trade. Goes on to quote a letter smuggled from Poland describing their difficult experiences after German invasion. Concludes with exhortation to all British people to exert maximum effort.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
The Economic League
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One leaflet
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MFlowersHJ[Ser#-DoB]-160630-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
propaganda
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/142/1358/AYoungF160720.2.mp3
f72baecf6c3b846bc283a66409b06707
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
Young, Fred
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview and a photograph of Fred Young DFM (1583354 Royal Air Force).
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Fred Young and catalogued by by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Young, F
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: Okay, we’ll start. This is Andrew Sadler interviewing Fred Young in his home in Offenham in Worcestershire on Wednesday, July 20th, 2016. Fred thank you very much for allowing me to interview on behalf of the Lincolnshire Bomber Command Archive this morning.
FY: Right.
AS: Can I start by asking you about your early life where you were born and when?
FY: Yes, I was born in Birmingham, I spent most of my life down in London, and I’ve been all round the place, continent, everywhere.
AS: Did you have, did you have any of your family involved in World War One, was your father for example?
FY: No my father wasn’t but his brothers were.
AS: And did have any bearing on you becoming going into the RAF in the Second World War.
FY: No, when the, when the war started in ’39 my Uncle Ern who I’ve got a photograph of in there was on The Somme. Anyway he lived in London he rushed over to my father and said, ‘Don’t ever let Freddie get in the army’. [laughs] So I went in the Air Force.
AS: So you volunteered for the Air Force?
FY: Oh yes, yeah VER yeah.
AS: And can you tell me about how you enlisted in the Air Force?
FY: Well I, I [sneezes] I was in a protected job at the time so the only thing I could get into to get into the services was air aircrew.
AS: What job were you in?
FY: I was an accountant in, in the railway up in Somers it’s in Birmingham anyway.
AS: And how old were you then?
FY: I was seventeen, I went in at seventeen put my age on a year and called up in ’41, up to Warrington. I, I was a frail person I couldn’t carry a kit bag to save my life and we had to march from Padigate Recruiting Centre in, in Warrington to the railway station I had a job carrying it so did many others because we weren’t used to manual work like that. And then, then after that was pure training I was posted to Blackpool to do foot slogging and that was I think it was eight weeks there and I stayed in Blackpool ‘cos I went down to Padgate the engineering side of the business and that’s where I learnt my trade in engineering. You can’t better the RAF for training you up, wonderful. We were there quite a long time and then suddenly they cleared Blackpool, because um they sealed Blackpool off because the army were going, had a free town, and they were going out to the Middle East to Al Conlek [?] So we had to get out and we went down to Melksham. We went to a camp in Melksham where the everyone had turned it down the Americans, the Army, the Navy ‘cos it was a Navy area, but the RAF accepted it. We were up to our ankles in water most of the time in the huts. And then we came back again to Blackpool and I remember it well because we were all on parade in the Blackpool football pitch in their stadium, and they were calling out the names of those who were going to go on, ‘cos we were all mixed up, and those who were going to the Far East, and there was quite a lot going to the Far East, but all those in aircrew training carried on down on to the engineering side and they moved down to South Wales to, to finish off aircraft. I, I was down there tuning in the engineering side ‘cos it was not only engines it was air frames, electrics and everything else, it was very good training area. And then we came, we had exams every week and I failed the electrics, I could never get my head round electrics, everything else I was perfect on so I had to drop out and have another week, and all my friends then all went on. I passed the next week now all my friends went on to Halifaxes and instinctually they were all shot down. I went on the Lancasters, so I carried on, on my training on the Lancasters there. That was quite a thing we were pretty well exhausted mentally after all that period of training, ‘cos we never had leave you were constant all the while and eventually they sent us to a training centre keep fit area and they put us through keep fit to get us back to normal if you like, yes. And that was good ‘cos it did got rid of all the fuzziness and then I was a flight engineer. So then we went to stations in 5 Group, am, am trying to remember where it was now, but we went to the, oh Winthorpe, we went to Winthorpe that’s right and there we picked up a crew now the crew had been together on Wellingtons most of the time and I joined them there. So it was getting to know each other and I was the youngest and obviously called “Youngster” it was my nickname right the way through service. So from there we, we did training on Stirlings, and then we did training on Lancasters. I found out that was the worst period of the time really, well I don’t know if you know Newark there’s a church there got a red light on the top because it’s quite near the main runway and we are doing a night final exam flying and we are going up to Hel, Heligoland, and we took off but we didn’t take off, we were going down the runway we had a flight lieutenant who’d just come from America he was an instructor in America, Pilot, and we were two thirds of the way down the runway and we were just going to lift off and he cut all the, all the switches so we crashed to the other end of the runway. We went in the nose, the nose went in the whole distance up to the cockpit. I don’t know what happened to him he was reported obviously, we got away with that one, which was a good sign. Now we had our problems with the navigator, on the next trip we found ourselves over Hull in an air raid at night when we should have been down in Devon, he’d taken reciprocal courses so he was dumped straight away and we got a new one, Hugh. Now Hugh was a British BOAC, Overseas Airways yeah on the Pacific Airline, and he was a navigator there, so he was a good navigator, because they didn’t have radar or anything and he navigated across the Pacific, and he was brilliant, anyway that was Hugh and he joined us. Off we went to 57 Squadron and East Kirkby, they just moved from Scampton where 617 were and they moved there. We then went to, we were there about a week, and then we were called up with as battle stations is on battle and they just put a notice up and there was all the names of the people who were going. And went to the briefing and it was Berlin, which is quite shaky for the first op but we did eleven of them so we got away with it. [laughs] But we were a good crew, we were all rehearsed we did practice an awful lot, we never used Christian names in the air we were always referred to navigator or bomb aimer or so on. And after, we did quite a few initially of the Berlin raids and then we went to Magdeburg. From Magdeburg we went to Hanover and we were working our way round Northern Europe I suppose. ‘Cos you know, I mean they probably told you, we did, you never went straight to a target you went all round the Baltic or down over Switzerland and up, and then we went down to Leipzig and we were held at Leipzig because the pathfinders hadn’t arrived they were shot down and the back-up hadn’t arrived so we were there twenty minutes going round and round Leipzig, and of course people were getting shot down by their fighters. [interference on recording] And then anyway we went through that okay and carried on, we were it was quite a flat tour really. And then we went to oh, trying to think, it was on the Baltic coast, and that was where we had a near mid-air collision. Normally you come out of the target area and you turn to port this chap turned to starboard and came straight at us, because of the angles he obviously climbed out of the way, we went the other way but we got his slipstream and he blew us down into a spin. We spun round going down from twenty three thousand feet and we finally pulled out at three thousand feet we were fighting it. The bomb aimer was complaining ‘cos he was, he was wedged onto the roof of his cabin at the font [laughs] with gravity holding him in there. But we were spinning down we got it straight, ‘cos engineers sat in the Lancaster were always sat next to him, and I, he always let me fly over the seas you know so obviously I’d get a feel of the aircraft, so we were fighting it together, I was on one side of the control column and he was pulling it back and I was pushing it forward like, and so eventually it came up. I asked the navigator what speed we were doing, he said, ‘You went off the clock I couldn’t tell’ [laughs] so we don’t know what it was.’ Anyway Hugh was navigator leader and when we got back to East Kirkby he went to navigation centre, checked all the logs and he found that it was one of our aircraft squadron that nearly hit us, and he of course the language was quite out of this world apparently, I don’t know but they didn’t speak to each other again much. [laughs] Because he, I mean he came out and you know could have caused two fatals, our own and his, and he could have gone down as well. But that was um, there we got, then we had the of course Nuremburg, this is where our navigator was brilliant he, he navigated there and he, there were two targets they’d built a dummy town, did you know that?
AS: No.
FY: They built another town on the other side and people were bombing that because it was the first one they were coming to, and Hugh said, ‘No you’re wrong’, there was a bit of a thing going backwards and forwards and in the end we, we accepted Hugh ‘cos he was unbelievable. We bombed the other one which was the target that was why we lost so many people, they were being shot down on the way across the coast going in and on the way back they were shooting them down over the aerodromes they didn’t count those. The, the JU88’s were coming at the back following the crew that the teams in and shooting them down on the approach. That was something that was kept quiet. But anyway we had that, we had, going, going back again to the, to Berlins they introduced the new flying boot, it was a boot that you could, you could cut the top off it had a knife inside, you cut the top off so you could walk if you got shot down, and the rear gunner always wanted to keep up to date with things and he had them you see, but when you got in your, well I call them his huge outfit, looks like the Pirelli man you know, all balled up. He forced his feet into the boot forgetting he hadn’t got the electrics in his boots because they were ordinary boots for other, other members. He got on the way to Berlin, he got frostbite in his feet and he was, he was crying out, but we said to the nav you know, ‘Where are we?’ and he said ‘We were two thirds from the target there’s no point in turning round and going back there.’ So we continued to the target and all the way back [coughs] and when we landed the medical team were waiting for us and they took him and I think he lost both feet all because he wanted those boots on. Then we got another rear gunner who, who was, his crew was shot down, he was ill and he and somebody else went in his place and they got shot down, so he was spare as they say so we had him, a bit disjointed this but I say as I am remembering it. We went through I say after Nuremburg we got back and we thought you know ninety-six aircraft that’s quite a lot of men and we well thought it’ll be an easy one next then and Mr. Butcher we called him and he sent us to Essen of all places which is in the middle of the Ruhr which is highly defended, so we thought that’s a good one you know you’ve sent us into the slaughterhouse and then back again into another one. So we had that and we went through that all right obviously ‘cos I’m here. We went down to Munich and the route took us down south and Hugh said, ‘Shall we go across Switzerland on the way in?’ ‘cos we aim there and come up and yeah so we did that unfortunately we were so, what’s the word, taken aback by the snow and the twinkling lights of the, of the chalets in the mountains in there a J88 came up and took a piece out of us [laughs] ‘cos we weren’t concentrating and then we found out that it happens to be the J88 training pupils there it was just lucky we had a pupil and not a, not a professional [laughs] otherwise he would have taken us out completely no doubt about it, but they came right across the top and opened the canon [?] and that woke us up again so then we went straight up to Munich. The other one is the Frankfurt we, we, we did Frankfurt run that wasn’t too bad really it’s just a long haul. And then we had the Navy in one day they came and they wanted the RAF to drop mines in the Baltic, and when they told us where it was it was up in Konigsberg right up on the Russian side. Apparently there was a lot of German transport and things in the bay in Konigsberg Bay, Dancing Bay, and they wanted us to mine across the whole lot to stop them getting out until the Navy got there, that was a twelve hour flight so we had overload tanks on in the fuselage and that was quite a long haul that, we did it we dropped all the mines on the drop there was only two squadrons on that there was 57 and 630 the rest of 5 Group weren’t in on it. Then finished the first tour on Maligny Camp, I don’t know if you’ve read anything about Maligny Camp, it’s where it was a big French camp, tank and the Germans took it over obviously and this is where they serviced all the tanks coming back from Russia. And they were building up a division there hundreds of tanks, and repairing them, preparing them for the second front, repel the second front. And we were called in to bomb, we had to bomb at five thousand feet because it was moonlight, we had to, it was, it was quite complicated action really. We were the first to bomb we bombed two minutes past midnight and we got through, unfortunately because 57 squadron went first the Yorkshire squadrons who followed us got caught with all the fighters and the Ack Ack so they took quite a hammering, crashing, but after the war when I went to Maligny the people there had no resentment to us because not one bomb fell outside of the camp. There was a lot of French people killed but they were killed through falling aircraft, and if those tanks, Panzers, had been released on the second front there wouldn’t have been one because it was an absolute division, hundreds, and we did wipe them out completely so, that was the last one of my first tour. And then I went on to training command instructor [coughs] which I found very worrying [coughs] [laughs] you’ve got to have a lot of nerve, a lot of nerve.
AS: So you did one tour and then went into training?
FY: Yeah, I went in as an instructor. And then I got, I said look, I was on Stirlings and Lancasters instructing, which was the pilots used to you know like circuits and bumps, the pilot, the instructor pilot he’d leave the aircraft and leave me with the other pilot so I was in charge sort of thing we did all sorts of funny things. We got I had a Stirling and I was in the second pilot’s seat [coughs] and we were coming in to land at night and he was way off and I kept kicking the rudder to get him back on to get the lights, the green lights, but what I was getting amber and red [coughing] which meant we were all over the place. When we landed and we were told to report because they obviously saw it from the control tower just switching back like this, and, and I had to report and tell them what I saw, made and they sent this pilot for a medical and he was colour blind, can you believe it? Colour blind he was from America, he’d been instructing in America, well being all lit up in America they didn’t have any problems with lights with colours, but anyway I don’t know what happened to him he disappeared. And it was getting, it was getting a bit dicey and then we had at Winthorpe this was, the two main runways at Winthorpe and the other aerodrome were parallel, on to each other, there were two aircraft two Stirlings on night fighter exercise and about twenty odd air gunners in each one, and the one aircraft was taking off and the other one got into trouble and landed on top of the other one so it was absolute mess. It’s in my book all this, and he said I rushed up to the station and the WAFS there, I just don’t understand the WAFS, the medical WAFS, they were going to each one and they’re all charred you know getting their documents off them, but I don’t know how they did it, I still don’t understand it because the smell was terrible, I mean it was like pork, horrible smell all these poor lads they were all young gunners, air gunners. So anyway just after that I was posted back on to ops, ‘cos I asked for it, and they put me on to 8 Group Pathfinders down at Oakington in Cambridgeshire. Now they, that was good I enjoyed that, second tour. I can’t, I was, first op on pathfinders you’re, you’re, you’re supporters you go in first and drop flares and then the master bomber would follow you in and pick the spots. Now we don’t carry a bomb aimer on that op, and the engineer does it I had to go down and I did that dropping on the target area so that it lit up then we went round we came round again and went through again, always went through the target twice, and then we came back. And then the next one we were visual markers VM, now that new bomb by visual on a bomb site, and you did so many of those if you were any good then they moved you up to primary visual, primary er you, you bombed by radar anyway, the navigator did the bombing, he, he pressed the buttons and everything and he had the target on his screen and that’s when we marked that, used to go through right the way round and then go through again and keep doing that until the target finished. Then we had nothing really happened after that of any consequence, I was at, I finished I was a warrant officer, I turned a commission, all commissioned crew except me I was a warrant officer, and I refused a commission, but when I went back to squadron when the war ended, well just a couple of days before the war ended, a station commander asked me to, would I fly with him and we were going down to Africa, so I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll go down with you.’ So as an engineer to go down to Castel Benito like Tripoli so he was away two days I don’t know where he went and then we flew back. After that I was his engineer I always flew with the station commander, and he had put me in for a commission and I said, ‘No, I’m nearly demobbed, I shall, I shall be going out.’ I mean I’ve got to sign on you know, I mean I’d done five years I think it was like everything else you think oh I’ve got to get out of this now I’ve had enough, which I did. And I was demobbed, I went to Birmingham, back to Birmingham, incidentally I don’t like Birmingham [laughs] and I got an engineering job obviously ‘cos I’m an engineer, and they opened sales and I went into the sales side. The, one of the directors called me in, in Aston it was, called me in and he said, ‘We’re opening an office in London on sales, would you like to go back?’ I said, ‘Yes please.’ So I went back to London and while I was down there that’s when I got married to my wife and she was Birmingham so she had to make a change. She came down and I was mishmashing around, I hadn’t, mentally I didn’t know what I wanted really, I kept getting letters from the Air Ministry, I’ve still got them somewhere, asking me to go back in with the, with the rank I had left, and I, I, I said, I wrote back in the end saying no I don’t want to go back now I’m just getting used to being out. However, they sent me three letters from the Air Ministry wanting me back but on a short term you know, I wish I’d have taken it now obviously but I didn’t. The other one was I had applied to British Airways, British European Airways, yeah the European side [coughs] and they sent me forms which I filled in, they said, ‘Yes you’re what we want, you’ll have to come down and have an exam.’ Now you’ve got to bear in mind this is 1945 so I sent in the requisition and then they sent back and they said, ‘Well send us the cheque for seventy-six pound to pay for your exam’, I hadn’t got seven let along seventy-six pounds in those days so I had to turn it down because you know I mean there was no guarantee I was going to pass, ‘cos don’t know what the exams going to be like. So that was a game, ‘cos years later out with Hugh, the navigator, he was a British Airways navigator, a pilot, captain, and he said he always looked for me, he said ‘I was sure you were going to come in, sure’ he said, ‘But we never saw you.’ He emigrated to Nova Scotia, and I used to go over there ooh about two or three times a year and stay with him, my wife and I did, and we used to talk it out, we used to go into his den and go into all the various charts he’d got and yeah it was quite interesting. But anyway from there I was in engineering I didn’t know what I was any good at really apart from flying, and then I got a job with a sales company who got a contract to sell spring pressing, I hadn’t a clue on me, I went straight away to night school and checked it all out, it was a Yorkshire firm [coughs] and I found out that they were for some reason, they were halfway to bankruptcy. I used to go up there and it was a small factory and it clicked that was it I, I, I found my knew everything about spring pressing I could sell it and this, that, and the other and I stayed there, stayed there for forty odd years. Then I semi-retired, I did, I was in London based in London, I, I wouldn’t go to Yorkshire but I was based in London, and er, I used to go up there once a month for about a week or two days but then I was usually on the Continent flying out to the Continent, to the, to the French office, the German office and don’t forget there was East Germany then in those days, we had the Communists. I used to go down to Leipzig regularly a Communist area, Warsaw, I used to go all over the Eastern Bloc, it’s you get to know people, different types, I met a woman in a Keller in Berlin, East Berlin and on the, ‘cos you know they opened like a door, and we went in sitting down at the table and anyway she, she said in her English [unclear] and she said, ‘Oh I was from Berlin, I came from Berlin, West Berlin, I got stuck over here we should have never gone to war’, she said. [laughs] Which I thought was yeah, she said, ‘I said we’re all Saxons’, she said, ‘We’re Saxons.’ [laughs] So there wasn’t any animosity there at all. The same with Holland, we did food dropping in Holland, we had to mark the fields out where they were going to drop the food, so we were in first, we was on Pathfinders. The German Army Station there were all in the square all on parade, I can’t remember which one, which place it was now. Anyway we flew across there and our rear gunner said, ‘Can I have one burst?’ [laughs] ‘’Cos they were all lined up for me’, he said. [laughs] I said, ‘No we are on a peace, they’ve given us peace.’ So we followed on and then the light, the thing came on, [interference on recording] there was a chap on a bike and he was waving to us madly as we were coming towards him and of course the bomb doors opened with the marker which is like a bomb and he just fell off his bike you see he thought it was a bomb. Anyway we did all that properly and then we went down to the canals and there was a Dutch boat, you know sail boat and we went right down in front of him and slipstreamed and trailed all the way back [laughs] and they were shaking their fist at us, yeah that’s a bit of humour in it. That was, that was, that one it’s strange on the Second Front they left Holland they didn’t you know free Holland till later, because they flooded all the dykes had been opened, but they were starving [coughs], eating, they were eating rats and all sorts. So it was a mishmash really. So I say when I came out I went into engineering and from there when I semi-retired I moved to Ledbury. So I got a phone call from a competitor I, I used to deal with and he was a, he was the managing director of Solfis [?] and he’d retired and he said ‘I’ve got a company down in Sussex, now I’m gonna retire properly’ he said, ‘But my son’s going to take over, I want you to come down and look after him.’ I said, ‘No you know I’ve had enough.’ And he said, ‘I’ll give you “x” thousand pounds in cash’, and I did the main contract, he said, ‘Come down for six months.’ So I did I went down, I drove down from Ledbury every week and I, they made me a director there I finished up Solfis [?] as managing director and then I was there twenty years nearly. I was seventy when I retired from there, yeah. So you know, jolly good, I was I tell you I had a good life, you see I had my big arguments see with my wife it’s always money, the jobs you do but you don’t get paid for them, because I liked work I didn’t like money came secondary when a load of contracts came up I wasn’t bothered as long as we got the contracts and I signed it. And but that backfired on me when I was seventy you did sign a contract when you retire at seventy so I had to that was in April I remember that. So we, we’d already moved to Sussex from Ledbury so my wife wanted to go back to the Midlands and so we got up here. Now I’m not a gardener, I don’t like gardening, the only reason we had gardeners down in Sussex [background noise] and my wife loves sitting in the garden so I thought as long as we’ve got a green patch to sit in we’d be all right, so I got the stamp type of garden here, which is, even now I can’t look after it ‘cos I’m not interested in gardening doesn’t interest me one bit. [coughs] And from there I went in to Trevor, I met Trevor down the road, the British Legion, he was the chairman of the branch here and he got me involved in the British Legion. I did quite a lot in the British Legion here and then I went into County, I was County Treasurer, I was County Treasurer for about seven or eight years, and then my wife was very ill I just couldn’t spend the time going round to all the different branches and that. And so I retired from there but I kept up the branch here, but then again Trevor and I, he’s ninety on Thursday, we’re going to lunch on Thursday, he’s ninety, I’m ninety-two, he’s a youngster to me so we’re going to dinner. [laughs]
AS: So when you were offered a commission and you refused it that was because you’d have had to sign in to stay for a longer period?
FY: Yeah, yeah, oh yes. I mean you gotta sign in for a period, because then of course you got to remember people were being demobbed left, right and centre, you know particularly the officers side and they, they wanted a stopgap they wanted people in between for ten years just until they got the new people coming through.
AS: So when you did, you did one tour, am I right in thinking that if you did one tour you were then like exempt from doing any further combat?
FY: Oh yes, yes that was the end but I carried on.
AS: So why did you want to go back?
FY: Because I was nervous of being an instructor. [laughs]
AS: You thought that was more dangerous than being shot down by the Germans?
FY: Yes, yes definitely. [laughs] And, I, I thoroughly enjoyed it, I mean I wasn’t, I never, you know on Dresden people, I was talking about Dresden, they want to read the book on Dresden. It was the, it was the centre of the Nazi in Southern Germany, they had two concentration camps on the outskirts of Dresden, they had prisoner of war camps, they were manufacturing Messerschmitt parts for canopies in one instance. So there was quite a lot in Dresden, and though it was the near the end of the war but the Russians were knocking on the door and they wanted you know an easy way in which is what we had to do for them. But it’s, it’s I went to Chemnitz that night which is about oh a hundred miles north of Dresden and we bombed Chemnitz, no nobody said a word about that we were unopposed all the way [laughs] so not a word about that. There’s one or two like that we went to Beirut in Germany that was the only time I felt not sad. I had a South African captain pilot he was South African Army and he wanted to go do an op, so my, my pilot said, ‘Here take my place then you’ve got a team here you’re all right.’ So we were master bomber that night ‘cos the bomb aimer goes, er, there was six hundred aircraft, he called the first three hundred in, it was undefended we almost wiped it off the map, then he called the other three hundred, which he needn’t have done ‘cos we’d already done it, then you know I thought that was wrong, that was the only time I thought it was wrong, the rest of it I’d, I’d no pity. I mean on the first tour [coughs], I’m gonna use some bad language now, [laughs] on the first tour Smithy the pilot the moment I locked the wheels up he said, ‘Right you bastards here we come.’ And he always said that except for once and that was time we nearly crashed. [laughs] So he kept on saying it [laughs], the crew said, ‘You didn’t say it, you didn’t say it’ you see so we did, ‘cos we were only young [laughs], I mean I was twenty when I came out.
AS: So when you were flight engineer on the Lancaster what was your duties when the plane was up?
FY: Oh well I, responsible for everything really up front, the bomb sight, all the fuel make sure the fuel was being used correctly, the throttles right, you know rev counter, the whole bag of tricks really, the I mean the pilot was only a chauffeur [laughs] all he did was point it in the right direction and that’s it, that’s what the navigator used to say. [laughs] [coughs] And the bomb aimer usually was asleep I used to have to kick Alf and wake him up at the target he always used to nod off on the front nothing for him to see in the dark is there [laughs] till we got to the target. Yeah he was good the bomb aimer. But we, I thought I’d go in Transport Command and so I applied at the end of the war and I was sent up to York training but I wasn’t there long because the station commander sent for me to go back he wouldn’t, wouldn’t let me finish that course, laughs] ‘cos he wanted me to stay with him down down at Oakington but we’d moved upward by then. I think the only reason he liked me was because I used to run the football team and he always wanted to play football [laughs], yeah he was, I liked him he was nice.
AS: Did you say you trained on Halifaxes as well?
FY: No, I on Holtons [?], that was when I went to go on Transport Command, it was a Holton [?] they were a converted Halifax, but apart from that I was on Stirlings and Lancasters. I did a small tour on at the time rather on Manchesters which is a deathmell they was, twin engine Lancaster, that had terrible engines kept failing on people all sorts that’s when they dropped them and brought in the Lancaster with four engines yeah. Then it went on to Lincolns, never flew a Lincoln but I went on a course for Lincolns I never, I never flew one [coughs] it’s only a blown up Lancaster.
AS: And what was the chief advantage of the Lancaster?
FY: Oh its, its bomb bay, I mean the amount, we, we take to Berlin twenty thousand, twenty-three thousand pounds, a Mosquito would take four thousand pound bomber, the Americans would take three and a half thousand on a, on a Fortress, they didn’t carry much, they looked rather good on the films when you see all these but they were only five hundred pounders coming out. We had four thousand pound cookie, thousand pounders, we had banks of incendiaries, and sometimes we had two thousand pounders although one stuck it wouldn’t go we had to try and shake it off. It, it, to me it was, it was using the word it was a darling, it, it you were in love with it. It’s the only place if you go up to East Kirkby on their, their anniversary day when they have dinners, I’ve given those up now, but they, the Battle of Britain Lanc always came over and everybody there was taking photos and the men were crying, I was so moved it, it, it’s an aircraft you can’t explain. I mean it would fly on one engine you lose eight hundred feet a minute on one engine, it definitely fly on two I mean ‘cos we, we demonstrated that to America when the Americans came over the hierarchy wanted to go into a Lanc we took them up and he said this American whoever he was I don’t know who he was, and he said, ‘Will it fly on three?’, so we feathered one, ‘Fly on two’, so we feathered one, he said, ‘You can’t fly without an engine?’ I said, ‘No we’re losing eight hundred feet a minute so we better make up our minds about what you want to do next?’ [laughs] So we upped air and got them, got them all working again. But er yeah it was, there was always an amusing part was we used to have a lot of American aircraft land at East Kirkby and Oakington, mainly Oakington, and they were lost they wouldn’t know where the aerodrome was they got lost, there was Whirlwinds, Fortresses, all sorts really used to land there. We used to oh here we go again, but they used to always ask us to go to their aerodrome you see for a, for a drink yeah. So coming back from a daylight trip once and this Mustang pulled up alongside us and he flashed ‘Can I join you?’ And then we Morse Coded back to him ‘Yes’ and he followed us all the way to the UK, then he waggled his wings and he went away. And then we got a phone call to the mess asked us over to his place for a drink [laughs], he said he was completely lost [laughs] but it I mean they’d no navigation you know, it was a fighter with overload tanks. Are you all right?
Other: Yes I’m fine.
AS: So did you find it easy or difficult when you actually were demobbed, when you came back to civilian life?
FY: Yes.
AS: ‘Cos you said you were only twenty at that point.
FY: Yes difficult because you haven’t got a youth, my book is “Where Did My Youth Go?” it’s, it’s finished now it’s on sale. But it was the gap you came out, your suits were up here right, you’d grown so much, you couldn’t believe you’d grown so much. We were allowed after the second front we could have civilian clothes if we wanted so I sent for my suit I couldn’t get in to it, you don’t realise the difference between you know a seventeen year old and a twenty year old. But apart from that yes, it’s, it’s a muddled, muddled world, ‘cos the, quite an upheaval of course because of the you know Atlee was in power in those days, and then I’ve forgotten who followed him oh Churchill, and then somebody else followed him. But I know I’ve still got my passport when I used to go over to East Germany and all I could take was twenty-five pound, I always had to arrange with the German customer to pay for my hotel out there then I’d pay his hotel at this side when he came over. So like the Poles, just the same for the Poles from Warsaw, they used to come over every six months sign the contracts and I’d fly out to Warsaw and sign the contracts that side for the next six months, [coughs], we did an awful lot of business with them. The beauty of that was like East Germany and Poland in particular factories don’t order through people like us they go to a central purchasing bureau and they order the stuff from us, so the orders were absolutely huge without having to go round to the factories you see, we we, we spent two or three million pound each time we go over and we’d have to do that we’d have to go all round the different factories to get it but in Poland they did it themselves for you, it’s different now they’re all split up again now you see. The same in Berlin, East Berlin it was the same there, that was on the it was in a broken down old house on the second floor and the bottom part was derelict didn’t looked like it was going to stand, but on the next floor was the whole of purchasing for East, East Berlin, for East Germany. Amazing things that went on over the, you all thought we had a wonderful time travelling here, there and everywhere, but we didn’t. [laughs]
AS: What’s your feeling of the way the Bomber Command were treated and after the war?
FY: Terrible. Churchill put us on one side, I mean I was decorated, I got a DFM in that time, which was whitewashed you know, nobody, nobody bothered. That is why I think you see Bomber Command is so connected now and joined together because we were so badly abused, everybody else got, Churchill never mentioned Bomber Command once in his speeches, he mentioned the Army, the Navy, everybody except Bomber Command. ‘Cos he, he, he’s the one that sent us there, he got Harris, Air Marshall Harris to do these jobs, and then the moment we did the Dresden job [interference on recording] he pulled out, and yet he was the one who sent us to Dresden, Harris didn’t want to do it. If you read Harris’ book he said it was the worst decision he ever made.
AS: Yeah I have read it actually. Well thank you very much Fred, is there anything else that you want to add?
FY: Ah, memory now isn’t it [laughs] it’s thinking.
AS: Can you tell me about your book?
FY: Yeah, I mean it’s called “Where Did My Youth Go?” And it starts off before the war, not before the war when the war started, I think I was fourteen year old, I left school at fourteen. I was a messenger on ARP and I was a messenger all the way through during the Blitz in ’40 in 1940, we were bombed out there in London, we were told we had to find accommodation with relatives, of course all my father’s brothers and sisters they all lived in Birmingham so we got on to them and they found accommodation for my mother. We couldn’t go because we had to get, in those days you couldn’t change your job just like that you had to get permission from the Government, so we were waiting for that to come through so we couldn’t go up to Birmingham, and we were transferred to a company in the same situation as you. Well like I was on the railways at the time at St. Pancras in the accounts so naturally I was sent back to Moore Street Station [coughs] in Birmingham. So anyway we were, while we were waiting all this the air raids were still going off and my mother sent a telegram, ‘I’ve got a house, I’m trying to get furniture together’ ‘cos we lost all the furniture when we were bombed. Then we got, two days later we got another telegram saying, ‘Don’t come it’s been bombed.’ [laughs] So my mother was an absolute [unclear] she was, she made me go in the Air Force really, I mean I got my revenge there, but she, I, she was in a terrible state when we got there, her nerves, she was pale, oh terrible. Anyway then we got the Birmingham Blitz started when we got back, when we got there. And so I joined the the First Aid and Rescue Squad down in Walsall Heath. Went to the BSA and they were flooded you know all those people were killed in the floods with the bomb. We had the cinema where everybody was sitting there looking at the screen and they were all dead from the blast, all sorts of things that we dealt with on that. Birmingham took quite a hammering it did really, you know. I was, some of the lads there they rescue people, I mean they’d go into you know all sorts of situations and not think about the danger of it they’d do it. So that was, then obviously when the Blitz stopped, things didn’t get back to normal but you got back a bit more of your life you know. It’s you know that’s when it develops from there Moore Street, but I had carbuncles on my neck through no sleep because I was on rescue all night and in the day I was at work, never slept. That’s a lie I did sleep for you know about quarter of an hour or so but during the day I nod off but then you get called out yes, but that’s what kept you going. But it’s, it’s you know terrible and that was because I was run down, I mean the doctor obviously said that, he said, ‘You were absolutely wrung out there was nothing left, and that’s what your body’s doing it’s getting its own back on you’, I said, ‘Thanks very much.’ [laughs] But apart from that, as I say you can’t actually answer that, the question about the reaction after, now I can’t tell you that’s a difficult one really. I used to like dancing, I used to do a lot of dancing, ballroom dancing of course. I used to see all my relatives I’d never seen in Birmingham, meet them all. I had, oh yeah, I was at a wedding. Yeah my cousin down in London, Margaret, she married a Canadian airman, and I never got on with my aunt she always, always talked me down because her daughter was brilliant, and she was good, but I had it stuffed down my throat for about twenty years, I should think how good she was. Anyway it came to the situation where the wedding, and the chap who she married, the Canadian, brought his best man another Canadian and he kept calling me sir you see, and my aunt said, ‘No, no that’s Fred, Freddie, call him Freddie.’ So he said, ‘Oh can’t do that he’s an officer.’ So I got my own back on her, ’cos it took the wind out of her sails. [laughs].
AS: Right well we’ll switch the machine off then and then get you to sign the form if that’s all right.
FY: That’s okay yes. Was it two hours? Oh my.
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 Fred Young
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Andrew Sadler
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-20
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:07:42 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AYoungF160720
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Fred Young volunteered for the Royal Air Force at seventeen and flew operations as a flight engineer with 57 Squadron from RAF East Kirkby. He recounts his experiences on several operations including Berlin, Magdeburg, Leipzig, Essen, Munich, Dresden, and Mailly le Camp. After his first tour he became an instructor before returning to operations, with 8 Group Pathfinders at RAF Oakington. After the war he returned to Birmingham and took up an engineering position before moving into sales and settling in London. He retired at 70 and returned to the Midlands taking up an active role in the British Legion, and writing a book “Where Did My Youth Go?” recounting his experiences during the war years.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
France--Mailly-le-Camp
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Essen
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Munich
France
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jackie Simpson
5 Group
57 Squadron
8 Group
aircrew
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
demobilisation
Distinguished Flying Medal
flight engineer
Lancaster
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Melksham
RAF Oakington
RAF Padgate
RAF Winthorpe
Stirling
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/143/1366/AHawkinsDH151001.1.mp3
8b754798beb1912e8757ed38a3b0d408
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
Hawkins, Des
Des Hawkins
Desmond Hawkins
D H Hawkins
D Hawkins
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Desmond Howard Hawkins DFC (158602 Royal Air Force), one photograph, a diagram and notes about his service. Des Hawkins volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1941. He trained as a navigator in Canada and flew 47 operations in Lancasters with 44, 625 and 630 Squadrons from RAF Waddington, RAF Dunholme Lodge, RAF East Kirkby and RAF Kirmington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Des Hawkins and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hawkins, DH
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IL: So we’re now talking. So this is — it’s Ian Locker conducting an interview with Des Hawkins at his home in Melksham. It’s the first of October 2015 and the time is about 3 o’clock. So Des, tell us a little bit about your early life and how you came to be in Bomber Command during the war.
DH: Well, it’s fairly simple. At my age at a rather special grammar school I was attending at Bradford-on-Avon, known as Fitzmaurice Grammar School, and we were very well-educated, supremely [emphasis] well-educated but, above all, we were naturally patriotic in those days, and when war came along I thought, ‘Right, the schoolboy’s aim is always to drive an engine locomotive.’ It had to be changed to, ‘ I want to fly?’. So I volunteered and eventually, in 1941, called to interview where we had very intensive medical examinations, and problems to solve, and be interviewed. I wasn’t particularly helpful when it came to the interviewing board. I didn’t think much of them and I don’t think they thought much of me actually but the fact is when they asked me why I wanted to join the Royal Air Force I said, ‘Well, that’s simple. I want to fly, obviously,’ and adding the word “obviously” put a bit of criticism into the questionaire and they suitably looked down a bit. [Background noise] Is it off?
IL: It’s switched on. It’s just you have quite a slightly quiet voice so I’m getting the recording level a bit higher.
DH: Oh, I see.
IL: But that’s fine.
DH: Well, the next question they asked me was, ‘ Have you any relations in the Royal Air Force?’ And I said, ‘Oh yes. Wing Commander A L Grice NC.’ Now that stunned them a bit because NC, as you know, is an army decoration basically and he had been a captain in the Great War, and had wing commander status in the last war, simply because he was a very positive research man. He had all the skills to conduct the sort of matters that needed to be put forward during wartime and at that point they all smiled, got up, came round the table and shook me by hand. They said it would normally be eighteen months you’ll be called up in — you were given a little badge, RAFER, and told to go back to civvy life but you’re sworn in, sworn in the Air Force, but you’re in civvies and they said, ‘Because you have someone in the RAF already, instead of waiting eighteen months you will wait only three months’, and that was the way it turned out. Thereupon, I was posted overseas, to Canada, down to the United States under the Arnold Scheme, the illegal [emphasis] scheme where we weren’t allowed to wear uniforms but they provided the RAF with flying training. But we had to wear lounge suits to settle the matters created by the Neutrality Acts but we were kicked out there. It wasn’t a very successful scheme. Even if you didn’t have your blankets, your sheets, at the corners of exactly forty-five degrees you were washed out. You got de-merits and when you had enough de-merits, like coming in under the fence at night like we did, you were washed out of the course. That happened to me and I went back to Canada where I decided that I’d no longer wait for a pilot’s course. I would be a navigator. I had all the satisfactory education necessary and that’s the way it transpired. Back to England and then they lost us at Bournemouth for about three months. They had to dump us somewhere, where we bathed and filled The Norfolk Hotel nightly, and had a whale of a time. And then they eventually caught up and I went to OTU at North Luffenham in Stamford, Stamford near Oakham, up that way, to be trained on operational training, rather different from just flying. Flying at night, in total blackness of course. Absolutely opposite to what it was like on the other side of the pond, and after that we then — we crewed up then. We selected each other for members of a particular crew. We then went to a conversion course from Wellingtons to Lancasters.
IL: So had you ever flown on that, Wellingtons, when —?
DH: Oh yes but not until we got to OTU. You had to learn to fly them there and do the night training there.
IL: So you learnt as a crew?
DH: Oh yes, absolutely. That was the idea, to weld together a fluid, effortless, satisfactory working group.
IL: Right.
DH: Then we had an intermediate stage before we flew the Lancs, we were flying Manchesters, because the layout of the Manchester, althought only two engines, was the same as in the Lancaster. It was easier for pilots. Then we were posted to number 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron which was the first squadron ever to have Lancasters off the production line. Althought that was some while before I joined them.
IL: Gosh.
DL: There afterwards, after a tour of operations, I went as anb instructor to OTU Chipping Warden in Oxfordshire. It was nearly as dangerous to be an instructor on the OTU as it was flying on operations [laugh]. At least that’s the view I formed. Ultimately, of course, time went by, the second front happened. I wasn’t involved with bombing operations then. I went back after [emphasis] the second front was opened to 625 Squadron and completed sixteen trips, not quite allowing me to complete a second tour, of twenty this time instead of thirty, simply because the war ended. And I can only say that’s a broad statement, chronology of events that happened.
IL: So your first, your first tour, you did thirty operations?
DH: Yes, that was the requirement.
IL: OK, tell me a little bit about — tell me a little bit about what happened on a tour of operations. Tell me about the places you visited. Tell me about the first tour.
DH: Well, that list I’ve given you has got it. Not that one. One of the others. Didn’t I give it to you? Didn’t I give you —
IL: It’s here.
DH: Oh yes, yes, the others. Now there are a number of people around who would say, ‘Forty-six? I’ve done ninety.’ But of course they couldn’t have done it unless they were in at the start of the war. Well, they didn’t contribute very much because very often, because they couldn’t find the targets on the continent so easily and, of course, many of the support second front trips were very small, maybe an hour and a half ,and some people have counted those as whole operations. You can knock up a fair number like that but if you look at my [emphasis] list you will see here that, whilst the first are all the Ruhr, measuring five or six hours each time, but when it got down to a bit later in that, when the winter came along, these hours were going up, 7.30, 7.55, ‘cause they were long trips, right, and then you can see here three Berlins. The shortest was 5.50. There was special reasons for that, the weather was thoroughly dud . None of the defences couldn’t get off the ground so we went the shortest way rather than the long way round. But here you see, on this second tour, these places: Misburg [?], Zeitz, Pölitz, Chemnitz.
IL: All much more East Germany.
DH: Yes. 8.25 hours. And there is one on here, we were at the very maximum, 10.55, a low level operational on a transformer station in Italy but because the night hours were insufficient to come back over enemy territory, too dangerous, we went on to land in North Africa, deliberately, it was planned that way, and then when we could get back (although the weather was bad for a week or so) we bombed Leghorn on the way back and taking off from where we were, in North Africa, Blida. And then again, so these all were fairly long trips.
IL: Absolutely.
DH: It’s not like a fighter pilot, going up for a maximum of half an hour and landing because he was either out of petrol, munitions or both. We couldn’t. The moment we entered over the continent the Germans were after us all the way out to the target and all the way back. It was a very, very, harassing situation altogether and very, very wearing, to such an extent that, when I first went to 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron they said, ‘You won’t be on operations for a couple of days. Get used to flying around the countryside, Lincoln countryside, see where we are.’ And we did that but at night, of course, there were empty beds, increasingly every night, and I suddenly realised there was absolutely no future in this at all. I wasn’t going to live more that two or three trips. That was my opinion and hence, postwar, when I came to write that book, that’s where the title “No Future” comes from.
IL: Absolutley. So, how did —? Just sort of describe that sort of —? How you came to terms with that sort of —? How does someone come to terms with ‒?
DH: Danger?
IL: With fatalism, you know —?
DH: You get used to it. It comes under a well-known phrase in the RAF, “getting flak-happy”. If you get a lot thrown up at you and you get through it to start with, and you always get through, so you acheive some kind of strange kind of optimism and the view that, ‘Whoever’s going to get shot down it won’t be me, it will be the other chap’.
IL: Right.
DH: Fatalism, yes, but rather a strange kind of optimism as well.
IL: And did you ever feel frightened? Did you ever — you know?
DH: Yes, yes. This North African trip we bombed Reggio there satisfactorily but we passed over an unknown defended area on the Italian coast, going across to Sardinia [?] across the Mediterranean, and they chewed us up a bit and on that occasion the pilot was throwing the airplane around like nobody’s business and all my navigational instruments slid off the table onto the floor, and the one moment that they slid onto the floor and I bent down to pick them up there was a horrid grafting bang right beside me or behind me, and shocked to find there was a great big hole in the fuselage. My own instrument board in front of me was smashed. If I had been in normal posture, sitting up at my table, it’d have taken my head off at the neck so that was the reason to be shocked. But having got over it I realised I’d got a guardian angel somewhere and forever after that I seized to worry about anything.
IL: Amazing. So how — how did you — you know? Obviously you mentioned earlier when you were chatting about that people couldn’t, you know, navigators, aimers, people couldn’t find targets and things in the early days of the war. What was different for when you were there? What were the improvements?
DH: 1943 when I went on the squadron they had already experienced Mark 1 GEE, a system of fixing your position on the ground by radar.
IL: Right.
DH: It was very unreliable and you often had to kick it to get it to work even but by the time I got on the squadron we got Mark 2 GEE which was much more reliable and useful. It helped us fix our position before we got to the enemy coast so we could recalculate as navigators the real [emphasis] wind velocity —
IL: Yeah.
DH: — and speed, and we were then able to adjust the forecast winds accordingly from there onwards, to give us more of a chance to get further into Germany accurately. And then, of course, later that year there was a new thing came along called H2S which gave you a plan of the ground. Rays were transmitted from the dome at the rear of the Lancaster under the — just under, near the mid-upper turret there’s a bulge. It transmitted from there, hit the ground, sent back pulses which would put a blip on your screen or a number of towns, must a blip. No names on them of course but in conjunction with dead reckoning navigation we were mostly able to decide which town that would be. In the Ruhr there were so many towns. That was where the problem was. You couldn’t tell which was which, right, because it was like one big industrial blob. But it did have its drawbacks. We went down to obstensibly to go to Pilsen, in Czechoslokavia, and we bombed and there was tremendous fires, a marvellous thing, suitable for the occasion, so to speak, but it turned out not to be Pilsen at all. It was this place here. Where the devil is it? Oh, I can’t find it. Pölitz.
IL: Oh, Pölitiz. Yeah.
DH: Pölitz. It seemed we’d done a wonderful job, nobody knew it was there, or at least all the armaments and that that were there. We did a good trick but we never found Pilsen. Why? Because it was the topography of woodland and hills and that masked the fact that Pilsen was there. So nothing’s perfect.
IL: No, absolutely.
DH: But it helped.
IL: Yeah.
DH: Considerably.
IL: So how, in terms of — when you were briefed on targets, what were you — what were the targets, you know? We’ll talk again about Dresden, you know, aftermath and things like that but were you always —? Did you think you were targeting always — it was, sort of, you were always targeting industrial complexes? Or was there ever a realisation that this was —
DH: They were mostly, as far as I know, industrial complexes and the fact that a lot of people got killed at the same time was unfortunate because they lived near their working space. So if their factory got blown up so does some of the people that lived around that area. It’s inevitable in war. You can’t do much else about that.
IL: OK, tell me a bit about some of the people who were part of your crew.
DH: Well, Burness is the star. A New Zealander who was a first [emphasis] class pilot. Considering the amount, small [emphasis] amount, of training you had before you had before you got onto operations, he was a first class pilot but he couldn’t accept anything that wasn’t acceptable. He was a shrewd, shrewd fellow but also quite a hard one. He once — we were doing some air-firing off Skegness on one occasion, practising, and he swept in over the coast and went right over a group of naval cadets on the forecourt and they all had to fall down, as they claimed they’d had been knocked down. We were pretty well at nought feet. Now he did that and when we got back there’d already been a complaint. Now they’d picked up the squadron letters but they hadn’t picked up the aircraft [emphasis] letter but the Squadron Leader Shorthouse, who was the flight commander then, said, ‘Bernie,’ he said, ‘That was you. The Navy is complaining,’ and he said, ‘Well, what’s the matter?’ He said, ‘They were forced to fall to save their lives, to fall to the ground to escape this aircraft coming in fast and furious over the top of them.’ He said, ‘Damn bad discipline, that!’ [Laugh] But he couldn’t be broke. He fell out with the group captain and he wouldn’t be told. He was strong, a first class pilot, but he knew that he had to defer to me. On one occasion we went down to one of these long trips, seven or eight hours, the weather was dirt, and it was the time when they broadcast from home, Meteology broadcast, revised winds, as they calculated them, but I said to him one day, I said, ‘They broadcast winds saying we’ve got to use seventy-five miles an hour.’ I said, ‘That’s rubbish. They’re a hundred and fifty miles. I know I got a proper fix.’ He said, ‘Well, what are you asking me for? You’re the bloody navigator!’ So I ignored the broadcast winds and went round. We found the target. There wasn’t much activity but it was the target. And we came back, hardly any aircraft anywhere. Usually you used to get a slip-stream, from an aircraft in front of you, absolutely nothing. We were an hour back before the next aircraft in Bomber Command simply because we hadn’t gone all over Germany, right, by false wind forecasts? And the group captain said to Bernie, he said, ‘You haven’t been to the target Burness.’ Because bear in mind they didn’t like each other. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘Come on chaps,’ he said, ‘ We’re going to get something to eat and go to bed.’ So we did. There was a hell-of-a shemozzle the next day because they hadn’t got any intelligence report from us. Right? So was the aircraft missing? Where’s the intelligence report? So it had to be explained and when asked by the commander at base, Scampton it was, ‘Why didn’t you go to briefing? Why didn’t you deliver an intelligence report?’ Bernie said, ‘Well, we hadn’t been to the target according to what the group captain, Sir, so no intelligence report was possible.’ That caused a storm. The offending officer was court-martialled as a result of it because we were able — . They back-tracked all my plots, couldn’t find anything wrong with it. They checked the engine consumption to see if we’d flogged the engines to get home quickly, nothing wrong with that. But above all things, the absolute wonder if the moment, we’d got an aiming point photograph of the target, which was taken automatically when the bombs went down and it wasn’t a good night but there wasn’t too much fire and flame, which very often obscured what could otherwise be a decent photograph, right, so we were totally exonerated, absolutley and completely, and the officer concerned was treated as he should have been treated. I believe he was court-martialled and sent to the middle east, taken down to wing commander but that’s a little bit private that bit , but I don’t care, I’m passed caring now anyway. But these were the sort of things that had to be contended with on some occasions. I never suffered like some did, any harsh reaction after I stopped operations, and when I went back to civvy life and worked for a good many years until I retired, only then did it come and smack me right in the face, all of a sudden I got all sorts of think-back feelings, I forget what the word is, looking back.
IL: Post traumatic stress.
DH: Post traumatic stress and that was terrible. And I thought, ‘Well the only thing I can do is put it down on paper,’ and that’s when I wrote that book after I retired from my civil job after the war.
IL: So what did you do as a job after the war?
DH: I was at Lloyds of London.
IL: Oh right.
DH: Yeah and er, but that didn’t solve the problem in itself because I started getting calls from the BBC to talk on radio, because we lived in Cornwall then. I’d retired and then they started asking me to do after dinner speeches. That didn’t relieve it, not a bit. Until the book was published, properly, it got around, all of a sudden it died away. I haven’t had anything since, just like that. Something spurred it, I don’t know quite what it was. Such are the frailties of human nature, one way or another.
IL: So what sort of things were happening to you just at the time when, you know —?
DH: Well, what sort of things why I might have been affected? Well, it’s quite something when you see an aircraft shot down in flames on your starboard beam or on —, you see one explode in the air right in front of you, all that kind of thing, you saw it so often and you began to think, ‘I’m going to get that one of these days.’ But we didn’t.
IL: So were there any other interesting people on your crew?
DH: Er, they all had their own facets, most notable I think is probably the popsies they chased in their off duty hours.
IL: This is the sort of thing we need to talk about.
DH: Yeah, but they were, of course, integrated thoroughly. They knew what to do and did it well and we didn’t — we weren’t completely ousted [?]. We did shoot down two or three night fighters which was quite something because you rarely saw a night fighter in total darkness, he saw you first . He could see your exhaust fumes from four engines. That told the Germans it was an English bomber so he could come up underneath and fire up. You couldn’t see underneath, right, so you just had to keep out of the way and that kind of thing.
IL: So would you have seen night fighters on most of the night missions?
DH: Yes, yeah.
IL: Gosh. Mm.
DH: Not in its full shape.
IL: No.
DH: But it was there, you knew it was there, and later in the war they did develop a radar thing operated by the radar operator, though I can’t think of it now, which showed if you were being trailed by an airplane, put it like that. But probably the most interesting thing about it all to me was how I got my commission.
IL: Yes, please tell me about it.
DH: Is that worth listening to?
IL: Yes, of course.
DH: Well, in those days, when you qualified in your particular trade, say navigator or pilot, you were made a sergeant, only a sergeant, and we took our sergeant’s rank to squadrons, and eventually to flight sergeant, but by then a number of the crews, straight from training, without experience, were coming in as commissioned ranks. They started commissioning by er, during, after training. We missed all that and it kind of rose up one night at a briefing, 44 Squadron, when Wing Commander Nettleton VC was briefing us for an operation and, like he always said, he drew attention by to the most senior crew by way of saying, ‘Look, if they’ve survived, why shouldn’t you?’ Right, now when they said “Flight Sergeant Burness” there was a lot of the new bods who looked up in a bit of astonishment, ‘Flight Sergeant Burness will lead the squadron tonight.’ It didn’t mean anything because you went indepentently. But sitting at the table, as it happened, were one or two of the big-wigs from Scampton, seeing how we were conducting our briefing, I suppose, or rather our management was. There were one or two covert chaps down the table when he said this. The next morning we were called to — yeah, the wing commander’s office. He said, ‘Do you want a commission?’ ‘Do you want a commission?’ We’d never thought about it really. He said, ‘Right.’ We did sort of hesitate for a moment because we thought well it won’t make much difference to the pay, though the mess bills would be bigger. He said, ‘Right, get into Lincoln. It’s been arranged with the tailors. You’re back in the mess, the officer’s mess, by tonight. You should be clothed properly in your new uniforms.’ And I think I —. The pilot didn’t achieve that because it had to go through the New Zealand Air Force pattern. So I had to attend at the mess that night and I wasn’t very happy about it, of course, but there it happened. And it made it easier for me when I went as an instructer, you know, it was a bit more listening went on, and it showed that whilst the operational features were first class, they were well planned, the administration wasn’t so good. Now why should they forget about those people, or were they hoping they’d all get wiped out before they needed to commission them, right?
IL: I suppose that’s true of a lot of them. Didn’t they? We talked about earlier about the lack of recognition that Bomber Command had. Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on — put your thoughts on tape.
DH: I’ve already said some, haven’t I? But that wasn’t on tape.
IL: But that wasn’t on tape.
DH: Well, it was my view we had Winston Churchill, as good a commander as he was during wartime, he was responsible for not giving Bomber Command the proper credit for its acheivements because he hoped to be the first peace-time Prime Minister, and he didn’t want to go looking for that position thought of as a warmonger or anything like that. Political, it was. So Arthur Harris, head of Bomber Command, got blamed for hitting the wrong targets, like Dresden, for example. Well, of course, it was never his decision. It had to come from the top. He, Arthur Harris, wasn’t allowed to bomb who he felt he should do. He had a pattern [?] from the Air Council and the Prime Minister. So we all thought in my area, although he’d been a good war commander, he let us down at the end because it should have been recognised that Bomber Command did, as it was expected to do, pretty well win the war because our troops and the American troops, being conscripts, were not up to the standard of the German army. They didn’t have much chance of getting on to the French [unclear] unless they were helped very very considerably indeed, and of course they were by Bomber Command, because we bombed all his supplies, so he couldn’t bring his troops up to — force us back into the sea as would in [unclear] have happened and he says, ‘my few.’ I’m firm about that. I’ve thought about it a lot and so, of course, he didn’t get his seat, as the Prime Minister. I would think all Bomber Command voted against him. Right, now then, what else was there to add to that do you think?
IL: Whatever. You were talking about Dresden as a target. That it wasn’t the innocent target that has been portrayed.
DH: No, it wasn’t.
IL: And you also mentioned, you know, your experiences of arguing with people on the radio. These are all useful things.
DH: Er, yes. Well, Dresden, of course, wasn’t the classic [emphasis] city that people like to think of it, as solely classic, and it’s a shame to break the buildings downs, but it housed the centre of the German Eastern command for fighting the Russians, and also had started making precision instruments that had been knocked out of the Ruhr by Bommber Command, and they built them down in Desden where it was thought it might be safe and also at Yalta, as I remember, this President Roosevelt, Josef Stalin and Churchill agreed to help the Russians and that was put in place by the Royal Air Force under the command of Winston Churchill, to bomb Dresden. So there isn’t much argument about this. That’s what happened but no one likes to think they couldn’t be stopped, like some of the people came on the radio after the war saying, ‘The war was nearly over. Why did we have to smash Dresden?’ Well, of course, it wasn’t known at that time that the war was nearly over. It collapsed rather sooner than expected and, in any case, her view, of this particular woman I’m thinking of, wouldn’t have been respected by those who lived in London with V2s falling all around them and smashing them to bits. So it was well justified and I think that’s about as much as I’d like to say about that, right?
IL: OK, but you’ve had some recognition recently.
DH: Oh, you mean the clasp. Well, yes, I was publicly presented with that by Air Vice Marshall Pat O’Reilly, retired, in the King’s Arms Hotel, Melksham. I didn’t really want to attend but the RAF Association thought I wasn’t doing the proper thing by opting out so I went along and, well, it was a social occasion which happened with a severe background to it, of course. It was a late [emphasis] recognition of Bomber Command without achieving much in the way of expense and that was, had a lot to do with it.
IL: Have you been to the new Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park?
DH: No. I’ve thought of it. I’ve been a very busy man actually. I haven’t really had time to do much. You’ve caught me at a time now when I’m tolerably free. I could go up tomorrow I suppose.
IL: You say you’ve been a busy man. What sort of things have you done after the war then Des, as well as obviously working?
DH: Well, a lot of book work. I did do some work for a City of London organisation after the war, by post. I done it for a fair few years. I’ve given it up now. It was taking up too much of my time and —. But in general mobility is not as good as it used to be though I get about alright. But I’m now more thinking where am I going to get a good meal next and which pub shall I go to?
IL: Sounds good to me.
DH: Yeah, well I find, and it’s not so silly as it sounds, but I go and I join a group of us oldies. We indulge in intelligent conversation over lunch and, in my humble view, that’s the only thing that’s really left for very elderly people. You can’t do much except use your brains, be friendly with people, discuss perhaps the situation in the world today, try and fight it’s battles without much success because the younger ones aren’t listening, right, or can’t listen, one or the other. And so we enjoy our food while putting the world to rights, in theory.
IL: What —? Tell us a little bit about how you socialised during the war. What sort of — what was the social life like between operations?
DH: At the bar. Briefly, that’s about it. Occasionally we would wallop off into Lincoln but you always did the same thing there. You went into The Snake Pit as they called The Saracen’s Head in Lincoln. It was known as The Snake Pit ‘cause it was thought there were more German spies in there than anywhere else in the country and so you could only have a drink. You didn’t drink too much generally but you did rather absorb a bit of it. It wasn’t bad. You didn’t do much except for one thing, one good thing, we used to get week’s leave every six weeks, phenominal, until it started getting down to three weeks because so many people in front of you had not come back from ops, you moved up the rosta. So we were getting a lot of leave by way of easing the situation.
IL: How did you cope with not — the people, how did you cope with people not returning? People that you — or were these people you didn’t know or you were just socialising with your crew or was this something that you just accepted?
DH: You accept it very quickly because you knew it’s inevitable, that this sort of thing will happen. The losses in — the worst part of the war in Bomber Command was ’43, ’44, as you know, were pretty fantastic. Of over 75,000 employed, 56,000 were fatal, er, casualties, and that doesn’t augur for a particularly friendly future. So you just have to accept it. ‘There’s a war on,’ was an old expression we used to use. It can be used in many circumstances, ‘There’s a war on.’
IL: Right, can you stop for a second?
DH: At the end of the war as the war ceased all our aeroplanes were grounded so there was nothing to do, utter boredom, ONUE [?] by the bucketful and one got fed up with getting up in the morning, breakfasting, walking down to the flights to see if there was anything, walking back because there was nothing, day after day. There was only one way to handle this, to get released. But of course, if you were relatively young, you were the later ones to be released. They asked, it was a combination of age and service, actually, carried out and so I, like most others, got released as soon as I could, went into Civvy Street, got going, but even in the City of London, the pay was pretty poor, and it was not as much as I needed. I’d been earning more in the services and so I rejoined the RAFVR, I resigned my emergency commsission and took on a reconstituted commission but I had to go in at a lower rank. So, instead of flight lieutenant, as I was, it was flying officer. But that was reinstituted, your original substantive rank, was reinstituted about a year later. And I did four years flying around at weekends, on Anson aircraft, of all things, and for a fortnight during the summer months, for which you duly got a day’s pay plus flying pay, which was substantial, which helped me with my reintroduction to civil life. And then at the end of that four years I felt I’d truly had enough and resigned again, finally, but before that I was granted, because I’d done all of that, I was granted my substantive rank of flight lieutenant for life. End of story.
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 Desmond Hawkins
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:46:44 audio recording
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ian Locker
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-01
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHawkinsDH151001
Description
An account of the resource
Desmond Hawkins volunteered for the Royal Air Force and became a navigator. After training on Wellingtons and Manchesters, he flew Lancasters for 44 Squadron and completed a tour of operations. He was commissioned as flight lieutenant and after the tour was posted to an Operational Training Unit at RAF Chipping Warden as an instructor. He then completed a further sixteen operations with 625 Squadron. He talks about the development of radar. He also mentions some of the operations to the Ruhr, Berlin, Italy and Czechoslovakia as well as a particularly long flight that led to landing in Blida, North Africa. Then carrying out a bombing operation from there on Leghorn, where his aircraft was attacked and damaged. After the war he went to work in the City of London but rejoined the Royal Air Force for four years. He wrote a book called 'No Future'.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
Great Britain
Italy
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
Germany--Berlin
Italy--Livorno
North Africa
Slovakia
Czech Republic
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1943
44 Squadron
625 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
coping mechanism
Gee
grief
H2S
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Lancaster
Manchester
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
radar
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/150/1571/PBellinghamPF1602.2.jpg
249a7f80083ee604a3acfc4b9e41b2c6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/150/1571/ABellinghamPF161121.2.mp3
927964b5233017d1c89457d142da31c4
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
Bellingham, Peter
Peter F Bellingham
Peter Bellingham
P F Bellingham
P Bellingham
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Peter Frederick Bellingham (b. 1923, 1391638 Royal Air Force), a photograph and his log book. Peter Bellingham trained in South Africa as a bomb aimer and flew 30 Special Operations Executive operations in Halifaxes and Stirlings with 138 Squadron from RAF Tempsford.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Peter Bellingham and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bellingham, PF
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: And it’s now rolling. So my name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 21st of November 2016, and we’re in Whitfield near Brackley speaking with Peter Bellingham about his life and times before, during and after the RAF. So, what are your earliest recollections, Peter?
PB: Well, I was born in Charlton in London, SC18, at three – believe it or not I can remember, 3 Kinveachy Gardens [CB laughs], and I left when I was three years old. My parents bought a house in Welling in Kent. In those days it was in Kent, I believe it’s part of Greater London now, and it was very, very agricultural. We were part of a large estate, but our house actually overlooked a farm and you could not, not see another house at the rear. My father was at Siemens [emphasis] the electrical company, and he unfortunately died when he was fifty, just before when he was going to be made a director of Siemens. He had a very – he was in the First World War in the artillery, in the Territorials, and he stopped in the Territorials and was commissioned, and then he joined the Home Guard and ended up as a Lieutenant Colonel, Honorary Lieutenant Colonel after the war. In fact he led the parade of the Home Guard at the march past of the Victory Parade in London. Unfortunately he developed a brain tumour, they don’t know why, but it killed him in 1947 when he was fifty. That’s really enough about my parents. My mother carried on, she never married again, and she died when she was about eighty, I can’t honestly remember off hand. I went to school in Welling in Kent, which was in Kent then, and I spent the last two years at a Iris [?] technical college. I was destined to be an engineer because [laughs] I was good with my hands, and that, in my father’s view made me an engineer. But unfortunately, I left school in July of 1939, sixteen years old, and war broke out on the September. It wasn’t my fault incidentally [GG laughs] and I really, I was going to be a student of engineer, but all of those things stopped in the war, and I never got round to doing it, but I went into the Post Office Engineers for a short while. And I remember the Blitz very well, from the outskirts, and I remember walking home one afternoon, late afternoon, and watching the first daylight raid on London, and seeing all the fires from, on a wide arc, ooh something like about forty-five degrees I expect, and then making a resolution that I was going to be a Spitfire pilot. I didn’t as I say, I joined the Post Office Engineers as a makeshift job really, and in 1941, I’m not sure exactly when, but the government or the Air Ministry decided that they would recruit pilots and observers who had reached the age of seventeen and a quarter [CB laughs] and then they would attest them and then send them back in civvy street and call them up when they were ready for them. I was a bit over the seventeen and a quarter mark, but I did volunteer and went to Adastal House I think it was, in London, where I was – I didn’t have to move to London, I travelled to London each day for three days, and I did my attestation there. That was very simple for anyone just left school, mathematic test, intelligence test, and an essay on a choice of subjects, which I chose the importance of Gibraltar, a medical and I was duly accepted into the RAFVR, RAFVR [emphasis], as a pilot under training. Was given a little lapel badge RAFVR and a number 1391635AC2, pilot under training and sent home to be called up [emphasis] when necessary, when ready. In the beginning year, I’m not sure as, I think it was January of forty-two I was called up and went to Aircrew Receiving Centre, I think it was Number 1 Aircrew Receiving Centre, headquarters was at Lourdes Cricket Ground, and we were there for just short of three weeks. We ate and dined in the zoo [emphasis] [GG laughs] and we lived in the high class hotels [CB laughs, clears throat] overlooking, or near St Johns, in St Johnswood, very near the Lourdes Cricket Ground. But of course, instead of one bedroom for one person or two, there was about ten or twenty in it [laughs] but we slopped around there for nearly three weeks, and we were in flights of thirty, and then on the Thursday of the third week we were paraded out, and we were assigned to ITW, initial training wings. There was about ten or twelve of us that was left standing with nowhere to go and Corporal Speller, I remember his name [CB laughs], Corporal Speller, probably even an acting corporal [laughs] and he said ‘look,’ he said, ‘I’m not allowed to tell you this,’ but he said ‘you’re going to Southern Rhodesia, but don’t tell anyone I’ve told you.’ So sure enough, we were sent home to report to Blackpool on the Monday at the beginning of the fourth week in the Air Force. We did a bit of square bashing and getting inoculated and one thing and another at Blackpool, and then after a little while we were shifted up to Liverpool and kitted out – I can’t remember whether we were kitted out at Liverpool or whether we were kitted out at Blackpool, but we kitted out with tropical kit and had ATT and TAB injections and blood tests and whatnot, and then we were told by a very, very gnarled group captain that just because we’d got our tropical kit ‘means that you’re going to the tropics, it’s all done to fool the enemy’ [emphasis] [CB laughs]. So eventually after a week or two of medicals and one thing and another, we went off to Liverpool where we were stuffed almost into a boat, and we wallowed around for a week [emphasis]. After a week we sailed up to Scotland [emphasis], I’m not sure where, where we formed a huge convoy, and we left after about a week, and we headed north-west, more north I think than west, and it got very, very cold, and we began to think the group captain was right and we were going off to America or Iceland or somewhere [laughs] but we gradually turned south and we ended up after a while at Freetown. Incidentally, the convoy I counted I think it was over seventy ships, it was a huge [emphasis] convoy. In the middle were the troop ships, so there were all the Empress boats, the Empress of India, the Empress of Australia. I was in a uni, a Union Castle liner, the Arundel Castle, and that was pretty grim. We had a mess room, which I suppose there must have been about thirty people in, and then above the tables we had our hammocks which we strung. Well, as I say, we arrived – I could, I counted, did I say I counted about seventy ships [emphasis] I think it was. Huge [emphasis] convoy, the aircraft carriers and all sort of things, and lots of crumps [?] in the night and various rumours that floated around, and we arrived at Freetown. I can’t remember whether it was Sierra Leone but its Freetown [emphasis] and we were there for a week. It was jolly hot, and then we went off again south, and we ended up at Cape Town after about six weeks [emphasis]. And we spent a couple of nights at, days, nights, at Cape Town, and then we took a wonderful [emphasis] train journey up through the Hex River Mountains, to Southern Rhodesia in Bulawayo. We went to ITW I think it was, Initial Training Wing, which was completely different from other ones in Canada and England, in that you did six months at Bulawayo just on the ground course and went up to the wings exams, and I graduated from there. Had a wonderful holiday at Victoria Falls and then went up to EFTS, Elementary Flying Training School which was at Belvedere, which I think is now Harare [?] Airport. But it was the main airport in Salisbury in those days. But unfortunately I didn’t make the grade as a pilot – the old story you know, that they either had to ban everyone else from the air or ban me [CB laughs] so they banned me, but I, I did, I was very disappointed when I failed my, my flying. And then I was called in front of somebody and they said ‘but we have a marvellous new category. They’re splitting the observers into navigators and air bombers, and as an air bomber, you will continue your flying lessons and you will end up with a double wings brevy with a B in instead of RAF, and you will be the second pilot.’ So I thought that sounded good so I said ‘yes.’ So I went down to South Africa and went to East London, I can’t remember the name of the school. It was groundwork, very, very simple because I’d done it all before it was very simple stuff. And then went to Port Elizabeth, that was 42 Air Squadron, it’s all in here [bangs hand on something, presumably his book]. And then graduated as an air bomber [emphasis]. It was a bit early in those days for air bombers, and we were presented with the old O [emphasis] brevy, and we didn’t get that changed until we got back to England. Well we messed about in Cape Town which was a wonderful holiday, and then we sailed for England in the Moritania [?], and whereas coming out we took about six weeks, I think we took about ten days to get back to England. Very, very wonderful. I will say that when I was at East London I think it was – Port Elizabeth I think it was, I’m not sure where it was – anyway we, it was very much like a peacetime. We never did any work at weekends and we used to spend a lot of time at the sea. Beautiful surfing, without a surf board, we didn’t have a surf board in those days, and they had a boom [?] across the bay, a shark boom, which was supported by a big steel metal cable, and we used to, flew out to this cable and have a rest and then swim back. And this was I think for me the most scariest time for me in the war. I’d swam out once to this cable, by myself, and I was sort of hanging on resting and there was three fins, so I thought ‘oh my God I’ll get back inside.’ So I swam back inside and to my horror I found these three fins were circling me [laughs]. Course they were dolphins, but to me they weren’t dolphins [CB laughs] they were sharks [laughs]. And I swam like hell and clambered up the beach, and that was I think that was one of the most, if not the [emphasis] most scary time in the war believe, believe it or not. So anyway, we graduated, came back to England, went to Harrogate to wait for our kit, the CO of the unit there was Squadron Leader Legames [?], the English and Kent wicket keeper, and then we went off to Millom AFU. I don’t remember the number. The AFU is Advanced Flying Unit I think, I don’t remember what it was called. Millom is just opposite Coniston, and we had a lovely month or six months there, but we could get into Coniston in the Lake District there, beautiful. And it was there that unfortunately I found out that my brother was shot down, eventually became a prisoner of war. But then from three we went to Number 11 OTU, operational training unit at Westcott, with a satellite at Oakley. And I will just mention, you probably are aware but I’ll just mention, that’s where the individual aircrew, apart from the engineer, were pushed into big hangar or room, and told to sort yourself out and become air, a, a crew. And someone came up to me and said ‘are you crewed up yet?’ and I said ‘no,’ and they said ‘well come and meet who we’ve got.’ And there was a pilot, who was ancient [emphasis], he was about thirty-two [both laugh] and he seemed a very decent chap, and the others, so we were crewed up with a pilot, navigator, air-bomber, wireless operator, and two gunners. Six is that? Is that six?
CB: Mhm.
PB: Should be anyway. And, so we bombed around there, and did our flying training. We had several episodes. We had one particular episode where as we came into land, the Wellington, the radial Wellington was subject to pushing out flames from the engines – it was a radial engine. And this time we decided that it was more than usual and that the engine was on fire. So he called, the pilot called up and we were told to land on the runway and come to a halt and switch everything off and we’ll be sorted out. Well we were sitting there thinking ‘oh thank god we’ve made a nice safe landing on one engine,’ and there was a great war [emphasis], roar, and [laughs] Wellington [?] took off and sailed overhead. We found out afterwards that it was an instructor pilot thank God and we dived out of the aircraft but before we could get very far away the blooming Spitfire took off [laughs]. The wing commander and the squadron leader ops [?] whatever he was called, they came flying [emphasis] out and they, they blew their top and they said ‘you knew very well that it pushes out flame,’ and we said ‘well no it was more than that, it was the engine was on fire, and you press the gravendor [?] switches and you know, that kills the engine and ruins it.’ So anyway he said, more or less, ‘I’ll have your guts for garters [laughs] if you, you’re wrong’ and we weren’t wrong, but I should imagine someone really got called over the coals for it, because obviously the caravan that they have at the end of the runway which gives you a green light to takeoff, and the flying control weren’t in control [emphasis], and we never heard anything so we presumed it was on fire. Well we’re convicted it was on fire. Another little episode we had – we had many a sort of scrape with single engine landings and what thing or another. It was notorious [emphasis], the Wellington at an OTU, officers, operation training unit, for accidents. But one of them which was damned nearly my demise, was that some boffin at Air Ministry decided that it would be a good idea for air crew to have a sort of maintenance exercise, so if they were shot down in the middle of Berlin they could patch up their aircraft and takeoff. It’s a wonderful idea but absolutely useless I think [CB laughs]. Anyway, one very, very foggy day, we were sent out to, what do they call them now, the dispersal units, and there was this Wellington and we went round and did our job. I finished mine, and I went round to the rear gunner, and of course the Wellington rear turret was right on the ground, I mean the aircraft in those days did three point landings, they didn’t have tricycle things. And the two guns were sticking out, and I was leaning against this machine gun, a Browning, right into my ribs, and I suddenly thought ‘well that’s not a very bright thing to do.’ So I moved across and because it’s all open at the back, and I had the two guns either side of my ribs, and I was just about to speak to the rear gunner and the damn thing went off [both laugh]. There was a huge whine [emphasis] as the bullet travelled and we knew we were somewhere around the houses, and we thought ‘my God.’ And the mechanic saw the machine gun is if there’s one up the spout, if the breech goes forward it goes off bang and that’s it, and someone had obviously left one up the spout, which is a thing you shouldn’t do. But we kept very quiet and no one was reported killed [laughs] so we thought we were alright [CB laughs]. Eventually we were messed around a bit, I won’t say where we went, I can’t honestly remember, but we ended up at 17 HCU, a higher conversion unit at Stradishall, and there we converted to Stirlings [emphasis] which was a great thrill, wonderful aircraft to me. And the very, very remarkable, not remarkable, memorable [emphasis] thing of that place was we were, took off once on some night trip, and – I can’t remember now, perhaps it wasn’t night. But anyway, took off and one of the wheels, the tyres burst, and the distance on the ground to the cabin was about twenty-six feet I think on a Stirling. You’re nodding, I think, I think that’s right. Anyway, we were fortune with the squadron leader, the flight commander and instructor, and he said ‘well that’s it,’ he said ‘we’ve got to do a belly landing’ he said, ‘we can’t land because if you try to land on one wheel, you’ll just, as your speed decreases to about eighty you would just drop a wing and you’d cartwheel and that would be the end of that.’ So we went to Woodbridge –
CB: Mm.
PB: Have you heard of Woodbridge? Woodbridge was a particularly designed aerodrome. I think, I think [emphasis] it was about a quarter of a mile wide and about four miles long. Now that’s probably an exaggeration but it was a huge [emphasis] airstrip basically, and it was designed for shot up aircrafts to come and land on it, you know if they got people who were injured, or the aircraft. So we were told to go and land at Woodbridge and go get rid of our fuel. So we bummed [?] around and dropped our load of fuel and then we went in. And I say, fortunately we were with a, with a squadron leader and he did a wonderful belly landing, and of course the danger is that if the props are milling around, or even the sparks, and ‘poof,’ you know, you go up like anything. But I can remember seeing a blood wagon one side and a fire engine on the other. Whether or not they operated the fire engine I can’t remember, but anyway we came out and we were okay, it was wonderful [emphasis]. So eventually, we were to be sent to a squadron. Now, as I said my, my pilot was a, I think he was a journalist but his father was the equivalent of an MP, and he had a lot of clout and he was a great mate of the High Commissioner, would his name be Fraser? Memory’s – but anyway, he came back from, from a leave once, a weekend or something, and he said ‘ooh’ he said ‘I’ve met an old friend of mine that’s just finished a tour of operations with a special duty squadron.’ Now he said ‘I can’t, he won’t tell me what it’s all about but,’ he said ‘for God’s sake try and get on that squadron. It’s 138 Squadron.’ So as I say, this chap had a certain clout and he came back and he said ‘how do you feel?’ And we said ‘oh yes, anything’s better than the bluming’ old coffin run or whatever you’d call it,’ so sure enough we got posted to 138 Squadron [emphasis]. Well we had a wonderful welcome, Wing Commander Burnett, he was a Canadian, and there was another crew with us, and he paraded us, well we went into his room and he said ‘well,’ he said ‘I’ll be honest with you’ he said ‘the sooner I can send you back the better, because’ he said [laughs] ‘I don’t want Stirling pilots, we operate Halifaxes,’ but he said ‘don’t mose around or anything and keep your head on the ground.’ And he called us in the next day and said ‘well I’ve been told that I’ve got to accept you because we’re going to transfer to Stirlings’ [CB laughs]. So that was [laughs] quite a start but we did. And we had to do a certain amount of training obviously because it was a different type of operation. The air, mid upper gunner was made a dispatcher. He didn’t get a different brevy but he was called a dispatcher, they did away with the mid upper turret on the Halifax and later on the Stirling, and he was sent on a parachuting course, and I had to go on a map reading course for about a month [emphasis] I think it was. And the pilot had to transfer onto Halifax, which was quite easy really. And we, that’s what we did. Oh, to go back [emphasis], it was quite true to start with that I did do a lot of pilot training, a lot of link [emphasis] work, you know, the link trainer, and on a, on a Halifax I was a second pilot, and on a Stirling that was wonderful – I liked the Stirling that was wonderful. We had great armour plating seats and there was dual control it was really lovely. But later on, the Lancasters of course the engineer was the second pilot, so we started off on ops. I, my first op, the navigator, the bomb aimer and the pilot had to do an op with an experienced crew for the first op so we did those and then we started doing our normal ops. And a very strange thing happened to me, and it was after somewhere around five ops. We used to get bacon and eggs, we were very privileged, we got bacon and eggs before we took off, and I went down after several ops and I began to feel awful. My head felt it was imploding [emphasis]. I can’t describe it but I just couldn’t, I couldn’t, couldn’t do anything. And so I got up and paced around, and then we went out to the aircraft and believe it or not when we got in the aircraft I was perfectly alright. And it happened for two or three ops, and I really don’t know what it was but I think it must have been an anticlimax. My father being in the Great War, and sometimes unbeknown to him I sometimes used to hear some of his stories with his friends, and I had a great worry that I would not be able to make it, and I think it was all to do with that, I don’t know. Unfortunately it only happened a couple, three times and I was alright ever since then, perfectly alright. We had more or less a trouble free, more or less a trouble free tour of operations, and I finished, but I tell you that the squadron, in fact the whole, whole, both squadrons, 161 was the sister squadron, we were very lax in our discipline. We, we didn’t have parades and our type of mission was the fact that there was very rarely more than one aircraft on a target. I think there was sometimes two but I don’t think there were more than that. And believe it or not – well we couldn’t have a general [emphasis] briefing like they do on the films and things, we had individual briefings, and the pilot, navigator and air bomber, they went in and we discussed our route, and we chose our own route [emphasis]. I mean it doesn’t sound possible but we did. We used to say ‘right, well from experience from both us and other crews, we don’t want to go over that place, and we don’t want to go there,’ and we used to choose [emphasis] our own route to the target. And we used to fly low, I mean how low to give you an example was that once the rear gunner said to the pilot, ‘oh skipper, can you please go up a bit, I’m getting absolutely soaked with the slipstream.’ And I can remember going across Denmark once and seeing, I think it was a bungalow I can’t remember exactly, but seeing a house or a bungalow lit and the woman cross over and then the lights went out. That’s, I mean that’s how low we were. And I think that’s really what saved our bacon, being so low, because we were unexpected and too low for the radar and various things. We used to navigate mainly by map reading. Very, very difficult to get fixes whether they were radio or G-fixes, but the ideal thing was bends in rivers of course and woods [emphasis], and the woods on the continent were absolutely perfect [emphasis] on the maps and we used to plop from a corner of a wood to a bend in a river and – so we would arrive and the targets were invariably lights, three lots of lights a hundred metres apart, obviously, you know, downwind. And we would approach and they would signal up and we would – obviously each, each target had a different signal, an A, a B or something, and we used to go in and we used to drop our load and the dispatcher would push the parcels out, whatever they were, at four hundred feet, and if we had any what we called Joes [emphasis], agents onboard, that was six hundred feet, and they jumped with a static line, and the dispatcher used to make sure they went – I don’t know if they used to kick them out the back door or not [GG laughs]. I don’t think they had to they were wonderful people. And that was it. We got shot at once or twice but nothing to worry about. One day we were told that we couldn’t make base, and we’d have to go to Woodbridge, and that was quite an experience because the whole place was covered in fog and they’d brought out a new thing called FIDO, have you heard of FIDO? Basically I think it was cans of fuel [emphasis], kerosene, diesel, something, each side of the runway, and they’d generate so much heat that the fog would lift. Well I think we must have been one of the first crews to do it, because when we went in we were on a Stirling and we had dual control, and when we went in, we went in and obviously we couldn’t see the land but, at that stage, but we were tossed around like a cork in the ocean. I mean one minute there was nothing on the clock and the next minute there was eighty and – anyway we got down and we were okay and that was at Woodbridge and then came back. Erm, we had, as I say, no real discipline [emphasis], no parades, nothing like that, and one day we, we were stood down – I mean the fortune [emphasis] thing as regards us was we only operated I think it was about ten days, ten days either side of full moon for obvious reasons, and this was during the operational period, but we used to do two nights on ops and then one off, and on our night off and the next day we weren’t flying, we took our ground crew out for drinks which we did regularly, and we got a little bit too much to drink. We were all NCOs at the time, the crew, and we went to sleep and then someone came rushing in and said ‘God you’re in trouble, they been tannoying [?] for you from the flights, you’ve got to report to the flights,’ which was almost unheard of. Anyway we, we went down and the Squadron Leader Rothwell, he was as mad [emphasis] as hell, and he said, you know ‘I’ve been looking for you, you’re in front of the wing co.’ And we went in front of the wing commander, who gave us a bit of a ribbing, and said ‘right’ he said, ‘I’m sending you to Sheffield,’ and that was a discipline course of three weeks, and it was where Spitfire, well [emphasis] where fighter pilots who landed with their wheels up – I mean we were far too valuable [emphasis] to get court martialled but we had to be punished [emphasis]. But after about three or four days, we got returned to base, and there we learnt that the whole trouble was that our flight commander, Squadron Leader Rothwell, he was about twenty-two I think, or twenty-three, and he was like a, you know, like a big school boy. And he thought it would be a brilliant idea to post the, we were A flight, B flight commander to the Far East, but unfortunately the Squadron Leader Brogan, he was married and got a little baby and they lived out, probably unofficially, but he was very, very upset, and he did it officially through the Orderly Room. I mean you don’t argue with a squadron leader, or you shouldn’t do [CB laughs] and a lot of friends, and probably the same rank as him said ‘look, you just coming [?] yourself too long, it’s no good it’s gone beyond a joke,’ and they told this Squadron Leader Brogan and they almost, I hear, they almost came to fisticuffs. We didn’t learn this until we got back. Now the reason we got back after three days was [laughs] because Rothwell, he went on an op – now it’s conjecture that he might have taken the op that we should have taken because the squadron leader was only allowed to do so many ops a month and a wing commander so many, and it’s conjecture that he might have taken our place. But anyway he, he went down on his, I think it was about seventy ops he did, seventy, seventy-two, and he went down by hitting the cables of balloons just off the coast of Holland, and he was taken a prisoner of war. And of course he gets to a PW camp, POW camp, and it’s [?] the flight commander [laughs]. My brother [emphasis] was under him but he never, isn’t it coincidence [emphasis], he never –
CB: Phshhh –
PB: Admitted to my brother that I was, you know, on his squadron. But anyway, perhaps it would have been best if wing command, if Squadron Leader Brogan had gone to the Far East because he was appointed CO [phone rings]. Oh, would you excuse me?
CB: I’ll stop it for now. [Tape is paused]. Brogan should have gone to the Far East.
PB: Pardon?
CB: Brogan should have gone to the Far East.
PB: Yes, I think he should have gone to the Far East, because he became wing commander of 161 Squadron and was shot down and killed shortly afterwards. So – and we had a habit of that. We had a – Watson, Squadron Leader Watson was a flight commander, I think it was, he took over from Rothwell, and he was made wing commander of 161 and he was shot down and killed so, it seemed to be a death warrant, going to wing commander 161. So anyway, what happened. So we were commissioned. In fact, our pilot, his commission came through before he actually went to Sheffield and he went to Sheffield as an officer, which was a bit better. My commission came through a couple of months later. What else happened – well we – it was a wonderful squadron, wonderful squadron, and I went through and finished my ops, did thirty ops. Went to France, Denmark, oh we did a trip to Germany, that was a bit out of the ordinary. That was in the Battle of the Bulge, you know, the Ardennes campaign. And our squadron and 161 Squadron were sent off to a just inside Germany to do a spoof attack, and we dropped dummies and fireworks and things to, you know, spoof attacks. So that was, that was, yes, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, went to Norway several times. I think the longest trip I did was ten hours fifty-five minutes. We, we used to take off and go to the target if we could find it, and then we’d come back to Lossiemouth or Kinloss and come back from there. Well them, then in, right at the end of the war, it was March – oh we did about the last op, with others, different [emphasis] targets, to Norway. No I think I must have – my last op was Denmark [emphasis], but anyway in March, I was finished my thirty ops, and the squad – 138 Squadron was, went to onto Lancs, and they retrained on Lancs, but they didn’t, I don’t think they ever did much after that because it was the end of the war. And I came to, up here Turweston. That was 17 OTU. And, well Turweston was the satellite of Silverstone, and I came as in instructor. I took an instructors course, a group instructors course, a Bomber Command’s instructor course and then a bombing leaders course, and saw out my time up here and then at Silverstone. They shut this place down and then I went to Silverstone and I was demobbed in 1946. I had a chance of a short service commission but by that time I’d got engaged to my present wife and I wouldn’t take the risk, I thought ‘do you know, there’s not the huge future for me,’ and I left the Air Force. I went back for a short while into the Post Office but I wasn’t at all happy and I came farming. My father-in-law had quite a large farm in those days, here in Whitfield, Manor Farm, and we got married and I, I worked on the farm. Do you want to know anything more of what I did?
CB: Yeah sure.
PB: Erm –
CB: Because farming’s a pretty varied experience in itself.
PB: Well that was, I thoroughly enjoyed farming – in fact of my son till carries on farming, and his son. I became chairman of the parish, I think mainly because no one else wanted to do it. I became church warden and we, the rector, he retired, and me being church warden, I had to take over the duties of – and I, they, we were priests in charge of Mr Payne at Sareshom [?] and he didn’t want to be, he said ‘I’m not going to be the chairman of the parochial church council’ so I had to be the chairman of the parochial church council, and eventually I, I left being church warden, and I went into Rotary, I became president of Rotary, Brackley, and I’m a [coughs] I’m an honorary member of Brackley Rotary, and I took up golf [emphasis] and I was a member for many years at Buckingham, and then a member at Silverstone, and I’m actually [coughs] an honorary member of Silverstone, and I got two sons. One’s coming up sixty-seven and one’s coming up, what would he be, about sixty-five in October I think. Got four grandchildren, one grandson and three granddaughters, and five great-grandchildren – what have I got? Three, three great-granddaughters and two great-grandsons. And my son, my eldest son still carries on the farm. But unfortunately the HS2 is going to go straight through his house. And my wife unfortunately, about four years ago, she got Alzheimer’s and she’s in a home now. She’s, she’s struggling, put it like that. I’ve got erm [pause] authro, no – what do you call it?
CB: Osteoarthritis?
PB: Arthri - that’s right [pause] osteo – one of bones. Anyway, arthritis in the knees, I’ve had a cataracts operation in the left eye, I've got material, material degeneration in the left eye and bleeding, bleeding in the right eye, and bleeding in the right eye, which I have injects for so [laughs]. You know [laughs] I’m struggling –
CB: And you’re only ninety-three.
PB: Pardon?
CB: And you’re ninety-three.
PB: I’m ninety-three.
CB: Yes [laughs].
PB: I’m ninety-four next birthday, yep. And I think that’s, that’s all –
CB: What kind, what kind of farming was it, arable?
PB: No, no it –
CB: It’s livestock is it?
PB: I had a mixed farm, but my son’s turned it into a very large dairy farm. He’s got five hundred head of cattle and he’s got a milking herd of two hundred cows, but it’s all going to stop I think in a few months time. I don’t know what’s going to happen [coughs]. Which is rather a shame really. My in-laws came here in 1914 [CB laughs] and [wrapper rustles] it was a big farm then, it was about five hundred acres [continued rustling]. But that’s, that’s, I think about it – would you like a sweet?
CB: Thank you.
[Tape paused and restarted. Rustling continues]
PB: Shortly [?] I was –
CB: So where, where did you meet your wife?
PB: Well that’s what I was saying –
CB: Yes –
PB: My wife, Stella –
CB: Yeah –
PB: I, I met her at an officers mess party up at Turweston here, in about April of forty-five, and erm, we hit it off straight away [zipping noise] and we got married in 1947. [Puts something, presumably a sweet, into his mouth.] Sixty-nine years ago, isn’t it?
GG: Mm.
CB: Quite a while.
PB: Pardon?
CB: Quite a while.
PB: Quite a while.
[Tape paused and restarted.]
CB: That’s very useful because it’s covered right through your working life, but going back to 138 Squadron, what were the crew members like, individually?
PB: Erm –
CB: So the pilot was quite old.
PB: What, what my crew –
CB: Yeah, yeah.
PB: - In particular? Well there was one [emphasis] one, erm, odd one, and as I said before – I didn’t mention actually, what I didn’t mention was that when we went to Stradishall [emphasis] to pick up a, to train on a Stirling bomber, we picked up a flight engineer. And he was always [emphasis] the odd one out. He was married, but we know that he had a girl in the village [CB laughs] and he was the odd one out. Otherwise all the other crew we were very close, we used to – right from our Westcott days, our OTU days we used to go out to out to the pub to drinking together and – we did drink too much in the war, there’s no question at all. But another very interesting thing which I might add, was I had a friend there who was a, a Lysander pilot on 161 Squadron, Bob Large. I don’t know whether that name’s cropped up at all.
CB: No.
PB: But Bob Large was an ex-one squadron [?], fighter of, erm, what – Battle of Britain pilot. And his wing commander was a chap called Boxer, who ended up air marshal or very high rank indeed. He’s dead now but he’s very high rank. And he wasn’t terribly popular this Box, Boxer, but Bob Large, he was a very popular chap. Flight Lieutenant Battle of Britain pilot, and he was, erm, what’s the word – framed [emphasis] if you might like to put it, by Boxer because one night when birds were grounded there was no flying at all, Boxer knew that Bob Large had gone off to the pub, local pub, and he put out a tannoy for him, and of course he didn’t turn up, so he court martialed him. And the rules of court martial are the court can’t have people that are on the same squadron on same unit, so the way they got over it, they posted the court, several of the senior officers, to other stations for the court martial. But he was found guilty and the facts were there and he was sentenced to be cashiered [emphasis]. And he told me afterwards – I’ll tell you why, he told me afterwards that he, he told me afterwards that he was the only one as far as he knew that was reprieved [emphasis] by the king, and the king stepped in and said ‘no.’ So he was, he lost two years seniority which was, didn’t mean much at all to him, but I didn’t learn this until after the war, and the reason I learnt this, going back to Peter Westcoombe [?], he invited me to, to Bletchley when they opened an SOE section, and he introduced me to the director who was a woman, I didn’t catch her name, but afterwards I was chatting to her. ‘Oh, my father-in-law was at Tempsford,’ I said ‘oh yes, when was he there?’ such and such. ‘Oh I was there then, what was his name?’ ‘Large.’ I said ‘good gracious me,’ I said ‘I know Bob Large very well, I knew him very well,’ and he gave me his, she gave me her telephone number and I rang him and we had a long conversation and he told me that he, he said ‘I’m sorry,’ but he said ‘I did deserve to be cashiered,’ you know, ‘I knew I was wanted for, I should be available,’ but of course as I said the birds weren’t flying. But anyway, he, he went back and lost his seniority for two years and ended up flying commercially for different people [CB laughs]. But, and he bought back that, what was her name? Violet, Violette Szabo?
CB: Szabo.
PB: He bought her back once –
CB: Mm.
PB: From France. And in this book – you should, I’m not going to let you have this unfortunately, I don’t want this to leave my – but if you, if you want [emphasis] you should be able to get it from the library –
CB: This is “By Moonlight” –
PB: And, erm –
CB: - Is the name of the book.
PB: In there it said that, which is unbelievable [emphasis] but I’ve read it and it said that only two Lysanders were missing on ops in the war. Incredible [emphasis] isn’t it?
CB: Extraordinary.
PB: And one [emphasis] of them was almost certainly shot down by a Mosquito [CB laughs] in mistake for a Fieseler Storch. And you remember, course the last pin point of it, well they knew when it was shot down, but when the Mosquito reported that it had shot down a Fieseler Storch at such and such a place, there was no doubt the Mosquito shot it down. You can’t really blame the Mosquito I suppose, but, yeah.
CB: And it was in the night.
PB: Well there are – if you look at the history of 138 and 161 – 138 in particular, the, the heroes, illustrious people that were associated, it was, they were, the chap that did the Amiens prison break out –
CB: Mm, Pickard.
PB: What was his name?
CB: Pickard. Pickard [emphasis].
PB: Yeah Wing Commander Pickard. He was on, I think it was 138 Squadron.
CB: Mm.
PB: ‘Cause 138 Squadron were started as a flight, and it was the King’s Flight. The group captain, who was still a group captain when I was at Tempsford, was chap called Fielding, Mouse Fielding. And he was the King’s Pilot, and there was all the different squadron officers and people. They were all on, they all wore, they all wore scarlet [laughs] lining to their jackets. And as I say, it started as a flight, it, it really – you really, I’m not going to lend you this because things go astray –
GG: Mm.
PB: But if you can get a copy, then it’s quite interesting reading.
CB: Hmm, mm.
PB: But, erm. It started off as a flight and they flew these two engine things to Poland and places and then gradually they got more sophisticated and they were landing Hudsons as well in the war. That was 138 Squadron, one, one, 161 Squadron I mean. But, and then they split one, 138 and 161 they made, and all the landing people like the Lysanders and the Hudsons were 161, and the heavies were 138.
CB: Now when you arrived at Tempsford, you didn’t know what you were in for –
PB: No –
CB: You said earlier –
PB: No.
CB: But 138 and 131 had a specific –
PB: 161.
CB: 161, sorry – had a specific requirement to re-affirm [emphasis] their –
PB: Well as Churchill said ‘set, set’ er –
CB: Official –
PB: ‘Set France alight.’
CB: Yes but Official Secrets Act you had to go through that again, so what was that? Tell us what that was.
PB: The Official Secrets Act?
CB: No, no. You had to reaffirm it because of what you were doing.
PB: You know I don’t remember that.
CB: Okay.
PB: I don’t remember, but we were, as I say it was very, very laid back, and when the wing commander Burnett said ‘well I’m afraid I’ve got to accept you, I, we’re going to re-master with Stirlings soon,’ so –
CB: Mm, [laughs].
PB: ‘I’ve been told that, you know, I’ve got to accept you.’ And he didn’t say, you know, ‘keep your head down’ or anything, he just said ‘welcome to the squadron.’
CB: Yeah.
PB: And we went our separate ways, we, as I say I had to go on an intensive map reading, low level map reading round England [CB clears throat]. The mid upper gunner was, lost his guns, lost his turret, and he went on a parachute course to Ringwood I think it was. And [pause] it was, looking back it was amazing really how informal [emphasis] it was.
CB: Mm.
PB: And I mean it was unbelievable when you hear about it and when you see these big briefings where, you know, ‘your target for the night is Berlin, urghhhh,’ [CB laughs], I mean we had nothing [emphasis] like that at all. We, we just used to go into a room, pilot, navigator and air bomber [CB clears throat], and they’d say ‘your tar’ – and there again [emphasis] I don’t know whether you realise this, I haven’t mentioned it, but your target was given a code name, and all of France was part of a horse, have you heard that?
CB: No.
PB: Yeah, the – it was Saddle One or Girth Two or Stirrup One or Denmark, I don’t remember what Denmark or Norway were, but they were never anywhere [emphasis], not in my logbook, it’s just Operation France or Operation Denmark, there’s never any mention – there must be some records in the Ministry somewhere of where these targets were.
CB: Mm.
PB: I remember we were in the South of France and that was no problem at all [emphasis]. There was a great big bonfire and we had a thing called S-Phones, which was new to us, and it was a walkie-talkie thing from about fifteen miles, and also it had red and green direction finding onto the target. So we went and dropped our goods, and then this voice said, oh it said ‘when you go back to England, will you look my sister up?’ [CB laughs.] ‘She lives at such and such a place,’ and we said ‘there’s no way we’re gonna look his sister up’ ‘cause if that got out we really would [emphasis] be for it, you know. So I’m afraid his sister never got the message, but erm, it was – I mean we used to drop our, we used to fly [emphasis] and then ascertain with the signal that it was the target and then we’d continue and drop our load and we’d go [emphasis], not because we were frightened but because it would give the enemy a clue if an aircraft was circling around.
CB: Sure.
PB: Erm –
CB: So if you missed a target what did you do?
PB: I’m afraid you just came back.
CB: Right.
PB: I didn’t, I didn’t lose many, I think of the thirty I did I probably didn’t, didn’t make six or something like that.
CB: Mm, so –
PB: I mean several of them were in Norway. I don’t know whether you’ve been to Norway but it’s a lot of snow [emphasis] in Norway –
CB: Mm.
PB: And if you’re given a target in Norway believe you me, it’s very [laughs] it’s very difficult to find.
CB: Identification points are very difficult aren’t they?
PB: Pardon?
CB: Identification points –
PB: Yes.
CB: Are very difficult.
PB: Yes.
CB: So could you just, can we just look at the briefing and how the sortie went? So at the briefing, how would that go?
PB: The debriefing?
CB: No, at the briefing itself, beforehand, so –
PB: Well as I say it was the pilot, navigator and air bomber and the others weren’t really concerned, they were just concerned with their job.
CB: Mm.
PB: And if there was any new things with gunnery or new things with signalling they would be told, but the actual trip, we sometimes had an agent [emphasis] who’d come back and he’d tell you what the business was like, but no, we were told that ‘this is your target, there it is, here’s your maps and which way do you intend to go?’ so you know, we’d say ‘well from past experience and what other crew have told us, it’s no good crossing the coast there, we think we should cross here,’ ‘yes,’ you know, ‘we agree with you,’ ‘and then we’ll go to this bend in the river, or this edge of a forest, road junction, avoid towns of course,’ and we’d get there.
CB: What – how would you plan the heights that you were flying at?
PB: Just low [laughs]. Damn low, as low as you could.
CB: Mm.
PB: And I think that’s what saved us a lot.
CB: Mm.
PB: That’s not on is it?
CB: It is, yeah.
PB: Pardon?
CB: It is now [emphasis], yes.
PB: Oh –
CB: Yeah.
PB: Oh, I won’t say anything more –
CB: What? Well I can stop for a moment.
PB: Well I just mentioned that we had a shortage of crews once –
CB: Yeah.
PB: And you can check it up, but erm, we had a shortage of crews before I got to the squadron, not sure when it was, it was something like, could have been June or something 1944, but they said ‘well obviously the best squadron is to have three aircraft from the Dambusters Squadron,’ and they sent three aircraft that promptly shot [?] the place up, marvellous flying marvellous pilots and everything, and everyone stared in awe, and they parked their aircraft and our ground crew went and said ‘oh no you can’t go in here we’ve got secret equipment,’ great fuss you know, so they said ‘alright, we’ll refuel and here’s your, what you’ve got to do.’ But unfortunately for them out of the three only one got back. And – is that on?
CB: Yeah.
PB: I got my theories and I’ll probably be court martialed [laughs] or something for this –
CB: Not now you won’t [laughs].
PB: [Laughing] I’ve got my theories that the reason that the 617 Squadron lost so many planes on the dam raid and also for a short while afterwards they, they really come, came unstuck was because low level to them was not low level what I call –
CB: Mm.
PB: And I mean the most vulnerable [emphasis] place to be is about three-thousand feet. I’m not saying they flew at three-thousand feet but I think that if they’d have flown a bit lower – I don’t know about this I’m talking a load of rubbish I know, but I think if they’d have flown a bit lower they might have got away with it, you know, but that’s – but they certainly came to us and, and out of the three only one got back.
CB: And what were they doing when they were with you?
PB: Pardon?
CB: What were they doing when they came to you?
PB: Well they’d just done the dam raid –
CB: Yeah but those three [emphasis], what did they, what, what were they doing?
PB: [Pause] what when they came to us?
CB: Yes.
PB: Well they were doing just the normal job that we did, because we were so short of crews we wanted, you know –
CB: So they were dropping supplies as well?
PB: Yes, yes.
CB: Right.
PB: Dropping agents, I don’t know about agents, I don’t think they dropped agents, there’s no mention of agents being killed, but they certainly were dropping supplies –
CB: Mm.
PB: And two of them, whether they were shot down or not I don’t know, but it said that only one returned to base, which, I think Cheshire was the wing commander and he wasn’t very pleased about it, but erm, yeah.
CB: So when you were on your ops then, what was the division of labour? Because you were right out, right out at the front, you were – were you feeding stuff back to the navigator or were you telling the pilot directly where to go?
PB: Erm, I was mainly in the second pilot’s seat, I did my map reading from the second pilot’s seat. And then when we were over the target obviously I was in the nose, but I didn’t have a bomb site, we just flew down the, the lights, bonfires or torches or whatever they were, and dropped, as I say, it was four hundred feet for parcels and the canisters and six hundred feet for agents.
CB: So at what stage from the target would you be moving to the bomb aimers position? How many miles out?
PB: Well when we were probably on the circuit. Just before we went, just before we, we – I made sure if possible that we were at the target and check that I was sure we were on the target I think we got the signal, then I would go into the bomb aimer’s position.
CB: Mm.
PB: But it wasn’t a question of getting anything fixed up. All you did was select the bomb switches and then press the button when the pilot flew down the –
CB: So the stores are all in the bomb bay –
PB: Pardon?
CB: The supplies are all in the bomb bay, and –
PB: Yes, and in the fuselage –
CB: Right.
PB: Packages.
CB: And could you drop the lot at the same time or did you have to have a sequence?
PB: Well there was a sequence which was automatic on the, on the –
CB: On the release.
PB: On the release –
CB: Mhm.
PB: I mean, I think it was almost instantaneous you know, one one one one, wasn’t a question of the whole [emphasis] lot together and it wasn’t a question of many seconds in between. It was a question sort of one two three four five, like that.
CB: Were they just dropped as they were or did they have parachutes?
PB: [Pause] they had parachutes [emphasis].
CB: Right.
PB: Yeah [laughing] yeah. For a minute [laughs, GG laughs] I couldn’t remember, but no I do remember they had parachutes, yeah, yes.
CB: Including the ones that were pushed out by the dispatcher?
PB: Oh do you know – I would imagine so but I don’t know [emphasis].
CB: With a static line? [?]
PB: I think if they’d have landed [coughs] without, they’d have smashed when they hit the ground.
CB: Mm.
PB: [Coughs]. But [pause] but –
CB: So you’re going over the target and you’ve dropped your supplies. How did you proceed back from there?
PB: Well the navigator had already worked out a course for home, and I don’t think I took much of a part. I, I think I’d checked obviously on what was going on –
CB: Mm.
PB: But I think the navigator gave the courses and we got back home [emphasis]. But the unfortunate thing was that after the V1s started we were ordered, all aircraft were ordered to come back into England over ten-thousand feet, and that was a damn nuisance. I had a friend that was shot up with the Royal Navy, and he was flying at a nice comfortable ten-thousand feet and the – that’s, that’s the story – is that on?
CB: Yeah, yeah.
PB: Well this is the story – I can’t remember the pilot’s name now. He was a New Zealander and he got shot up by the Royal Navy and he said ‘fire [?] the colours of the day [emphasis].’ Well the colours of the day were in a varied [?] pistol above the signaller’s head, in the roof. And he didn’t know what to do, and when they landed, the pilot was absolutely mad [emphasis] and he said ‘you stupid idiot,’ or words to this effect, probably more tastier than that [CB laughs], but he said ‘look,’ he said, ‘here’s a pistol, you just press it.’ [Laughs, GG laughs]. And he pressed it and set fire to the aircraft [all laugh]. And I don’t know whether it was a – I think it was probably superficial damage but, erm, yeah.
CB: So, the point, am I right in saying, of flying above ten-thousand feet was so that the people on the ground would not be shooting at higher level aircraft? Because they were shooting at the V1s.
PB: Yes, yeah. But, erm, we were, we were shot up by the Americans once as we, as we were going into the tar – well not going into the target but crossing our lines, and I suppose you can’t blame them really if they hear or see any aircraft they’re going to take evasive action, but – there were lots of instances. I remember a friend of mine he became a roommate of mine when I was first commissioned, and they couldn’t make the, the height [emphasis] above the clouds, the cumulonimbus, and the pilot went underneath and they got struck by lightning, and he was blind for a week. He walked around with the dark glasses, but he got his sight back. But he ended up with a DFC, he shot down two one-nineties [emphasis] which was very unusual.
CB: Was he mid upper or rear gunner?
PB: He was a rear gunner. He – and there again, coincidence and everything, he, he was my roommate, we were both commissioned together and he finished his tour just before me, and he went away, I lost touch with him. And years later my brother had returned from being a prisoner of war, and he was made CO of a, of an aircrew reclassification unit in Hereford I think it was, where the, all the redundant aircrew were put other jobs, you know, administrative jobs and various things, and who should be one of his pupils but this flying officer Dunning? Very strange.
CB: Hmm.
PB: But a story about him which is perfectly true and a modern person wouldn’t believe it I don’t think, but we used to go, about a flight of thirty, and have our different injections, TAB and ATT and blood tests, and he was a Liverpudlian, or near, near Liverpool, and he lined up and he had his injection, I don’t know which one it was, and within milliseconds [emphasis] he collapsed, and they said ‘oh my God,’ you know, ‘another wimp.’ Put him on the couch and then someone happened to look and said ‘my God he’s gone the colour of crimson’ [emphasis]. So they called, you know, the hospital, and called his mother [emphasis] actually, his father was in the army. But he was touch and go, and what had happened was, you, I don’t know about in your time, but in those days the doctors just used a needle until it was blunt. I mean there was no question of use once and throw away, but unfortunately for him the doctor had changed shift and put his syringe down with the serum in it and the next doctor picked it up and gave this friend of mine the lot, and this previous doctor had put about five doses in the syringe [emphasis].
CB: Jeez.
PB: And the doctor that took over didn’t realise this and he gave this friend of mine the whole [emphasis] lot.
CB: Jeez.
PB: And it damn nearly killed him.
CB: Mm.
PB: I mean, I know that’s true because he told me, but.
CB: Mm. Hm.
PB: We had another crew that – if they were right down in the South of France, I never did have the luxury of doing it, but if they were right down in the South of France, very often they would fly through to Northern Africa, Algeria I think it was, Blida [emphasis], is Blida North Africa?
CB: Mm.
PB: And they would refuel and everything and then come back, and I think probably drop some more supplies on the way back, but this crew, they started back and they’d got all the goodies which you’d never see, oranges and things [CB laughs], and they started losing height, and I think that part of Africa, I think was a thousand feet above sea level, but they gradually lost height until throwing everything that was movable [emphasis] over board, they said ‘it’s no good’ and they’d seen a, a ship which was lights on and they landed by it. And it turned out to be a, a Portuguese ship, neutral ship, and in the ditching, this friend of mine who’s an air gunner, he got a DFM for it, he rescued someone, but one of them was killed. I can’t remember who it was, and they came back to England and they, they were landed somewhere in Portugal and they flew back. But talking of that sort of thing, is this on?
CB: Mm.
PB: There’s a friend of mine who’s well tabulated, he’s, he’s in Max Hastings’ “Bomber Command” book – did I say a friend? He was a brother-in-law actually, my [CB laughs] wife’s sister’s husband, chap called Bill McGrath. Have you heard of him?
CB: Nope.
PB: Well he’s in the official history and everything. And he was a pre-war observer, and he was on the Blenheim Squadron, eighty-seven I think it was. Anyway, he was on the squadron and the Battle of France, before the Battle of Britain, Battle of France, and they used to go out in formation in Blenheims at about ten-thousand feet, and really get messed up, and he went out one trip and he was the only crew to return, and the next trip he went out the whole lot were shot down. And this is absolutely true, it’s, you know, it’s in the official recordings, and he was, he ditched [emphasis] and he was badly injured. He lost the sight of one eye but he never lost the eye, and he was injured but he was made a prisoner of war. He escaped [emphasis] three times [CB laughs]. And the first time, or second time he was recaptured, and the second time he gave himself up, the two of them because they were so cold and hungry, and the third time they made it from Paris, all the way down through France, over the Pyrenees and he got a [pause], what do you call it, erm, a military medal for it. But he carried on flying [CB laughs]. He was instructing [emphasis] and carried on flying, but he hadn’t got sight in one eye, he’d lost it. But he used to memorise the sight chart, and one day he, they changed the sight chart and they said ‘my God you’re blind’ [CB laughs] and he said ‘yes,’ so they says ‘right,’ and he was Irish, Northern Irish actually, or Southern Irish, Irish, and they said ‘right, you’re –’ he was a warrant, I think he was a warrant officer, sure he was a warrant officer. Anyway, he was, erm, reduced to a ground duty job and lost his seniority, and so, being Irish he wrote to his mother [emphasis]. He said, knowing that the letter would be, you know, scrutinised –
CB: Mm.
PB: And he said ‘I’m seriously thinking of leaving. I’m, I’m, I’m Irish so I can [emphasis] leave,’ said ‘it’s disgusting treatment,’ and the CO got to hear, course, course it was –
CB: The censor read it.
PB: Pardon?
CB: The censor [emphasis] read it.
PB: Censored, yeah. And he went in front and he said ‘what’s this McGrath,’ and he said what had happened, and he said ‘oh well don’t do anything,’ he said ‘we’ll see you’re okay.’ And he got commissioned in the [coughs] what was called Flying Control. But that’s the way they treated them. If he’d not been Irish he would have lost all his flying pay and his rank and he was, it was, yes he was – and he’s quoted in I think it’s Max Hastings’ book “Bomber Command,” Bill McGrath [emphasis]. We used to call him Mac but he’d referred to as Bill McGrath. My brother, they [laughs], they say that all air crew are volunteers. I don’t think that was strictly [emphasis] true to be perfectly honest, probably ninety-nine percent, but my brother did the same as me and he was older, and he was attested and they said ‘yes okay,’ you know, ‘pilot under training. Now do you want to come in the Air Force or do you want to wait to be called up?’ ‘Oh no’ he says ‘I want to come in the Air Force,’ so they called him up and put him on a wireless operator course at Yatesbury, Wiltshire, and then when he passed his wireless operator course he said ‘well,’ you know ‘what about my pilots course?’ And they said ‘oh God no,’ they said ‘you’re a wireless operator flying, and you’ve got to do fifteen ops’ or something so he was I think an LAC when he came out of the radio school, and he went on about a six week air gunners course [laughs] and came in as a sergeant, wireless operator air gunner, and then eventually he was told that he’s got to do fifteen ops and unfortunately I think he was shot down on his fifteenth op, but he was a POW, but, yeah.
CB: How did he get on with that?
PB: Not at all well [emphasis]. He’s, he’s one that just didn’t – he was, he was I suppose only [emphasis] sounds awful, but he was about two years as a POW from August forty-three until about May of forty-five, and he stopped on the Air Force for a little while, for about three or four years, and he left the Air Force and got quite a nice job in the city and then he was, they used to go and have a ploughman’s lunch and he suddenly got up and he was vomiting blood in the gutter, and he got a burst ulcer, but he recovered from that. But the POW business really [emphasis] upset him and he couldn’t go on the top flight of a bus [emphasis] and all sorts of silly things. He held a job, but lived on drugs and then eventually they killed him, you know, the drugs were just too much, and –
CB: Mm.
PB: And, he was in his sixties when he died, but [pause] he was just one that didn’t take to being shut up.
CB: Mm.
PB: Incidentally, he said that they were, erm, what’s the word [pause], released [emphasis], that’s the wrong word. I can’t think of words nowadays, by the Russians [emphasis].
CB: Mm.
PB: And they all started to go out of camp and the Russians were really [emphasis] nasty, and the senior camp officer went to the Russian colonel and said, you know, ‘we’re on your side,’ so he said ‘oh yes of course’ and so he said ‘okay, now is there anything you want?’ and he said ‘well we’re very short of food,’ and my brother said they were terrible [emphasis], they were barbarians [emphasis], they used to go round to the farms and places, and they said ‘oh we want that pig, we want that,’ and if they said ‘oh no,’ bang [?] they’d shoot them, and when he came back, and he wasn’t the only one, he said to me ‘we should go straight [emphasis] into Russia now,’ and he was convinced [emphasis] that there would be trouble with Russia. He wasn’t far wrong but it didn’t develop into anything, but he, he was convinced [emphasis] that Russia wanted tackling straight away –
CB: Mm.
PB: But, erm, yes. I’ve been prattling on – I don’t know what you, probably –
CB: When you –
PB: Edit a lot of this [laughs].
CB: Well, you –
PB: [Laughing] cut it out.
CB: When, when you were on, on an operation [clears throat], what were you actually doing most in the – how were – what was your task during the flight?
PB: Map reading. Very intensive, I mean it’s, it’s like if, it, well it’s a bit more intensive obviously, but if you go from here to Scotland all with a sat-nav. They call them sat-navs?
CB: Mhm.
PB: You know, you sort of concentrate, ‘oh you turn right here, you turn left here, go over the roundabout,’ well I mean that was my job, I never had time to – unless they said ‘there’s an enemy aircraft’ or ‘there’s an aircraft’ or something I never, I never left the map, I was, you know, concentrating on the map, making sure that we were on track.
CB: And you could do that perfectly well from the co-pilot’s seat could you?
PB: Yes, yes. You could see pretty well. Yes I didn’t, I didn’t very often get down in the bomb bay until as I say, until we’d got right near the target, and identified the target. And the target was, each target had its code name, which sometimes was a lovely audislamp [?] and sometimes seemed to be a candle [laughs] yeah.
CB: And, er, it was only in the later part of the war that you had the walkie-talkie link?
PB: Yes we only used it once and that was getting on for the end of the war in the South of France.
CB: Yeah, so apart from that, how were you identifying your target when, say, the outside visual, immediate visual distance, so at twenty miles how would you be getting close to be sure that you were on target?
PB: Well you, you, you got as near as you could until you saw the fires or the lights, and erm –
CB: ‘Cause we’re in the dark aren’t we?
PB: Pardon?
CB: We’re in the dark all the time.
PB: Oh, well [emphasis] it was moonlight –
CB: Moonlight.
PB: And believe you me, flying sometimes like ten days each side of the moon, full moon, it was almost like daylight.
CB: Oh, right.
PB: And once they could hear you coming, and it didn’t take much to set fire to these bonfires –
CB: Mm.
PB: Or to have a light and flash the light –
CB: Mm.
PB: And they were always, you know, downwind, upwind, wind was – and there would be three of them, a hundred metres apart, and at the downwind end there was someone would be there, with a bit of luck it would be a nice audislamp [?] and if you were a bit unlucky it would be a dodgy flashlight [emphasis] which would [pause]. But it was remarkably [emphasis] efficient actually. I don’t know – I suppose somewhere along the lines someone could find out what the percentage of successful drops were, but I think they were fairly high.
CB: Mm.
PB: I’m not sure but I think I missed – I could do it now if counted them, but I think out of thirty I think I missed the target about six times.
CB: Mm.
PB: And as I said, two or three of those were in Norway, and that was, that was –
CB: Mm. Very difficult.
PB: Really horrendous [emphasis]. Flying over that snow, it was very difficult indeed.
CB: Erm, how often was the aircraft attacked [emphasis] during your operations?
PB: We were very lucky, we were hardly attacked at all. Very [emphasis] lucky indeed, I mean – in fact I think, I think you’ll find that if you were attacked you’d usually had it, because there’s no way of bailing out at that height.
CB: Mm.
PB: So I mean you’d – and if you’d crashed you’d – like this squadron leader chap, flight commander, I mean he hit a balloon cable the story is there –
CB: Mm.
PB: And he was, I think all the crew was safe [emphasis], but erm. If you were actually shot down at that height there was very little chance of [pause], yeah.
CB: But it was quite difficult for the night fighters to get down to you because their radar wouldn’t work against you close to the ground.
PB: No, no that’s [coughs] their radar?
CB: Yeah.
PB: No, no their – and of course unfortunately our radar [laughing] didn’t work when we were close to the ground.
CB: Mm.
PB: But –
CB: And did you have Monica?
PB: Hmm?
CB: Did you have Monica to test, to check if anything was following you?
PB: Did we have –
CB: Did you have the Monica receiver?
PB: No. No, we never had them. No, all we had was G.
CB: Yeah.
PB: And, and just on the one trip we had these things called S-Phones.
CB: Mm.
PB: But they only operated about something like fifteen miles away from the target –
CB: Mm.
PB: And it was a walkie-talkie thing, and then it had red and green and you could home in on the red and green [pause]. Yeah I personally don’t think there’s enough credit given to the resistance, I mean when you read of – you see that, what was his name, the armaments boss of Germany?
CB: Oh, Speer [emphasis].
PB: Speer.
CB: Mm.
PB: And he said that, erm, many more attacks and Germany were finished.
CB: Mm.
PB: And yet –
CB: Particularly after Hamburg.
PB: Yes, but you see I never – I, I, I’m a great admirer of Churchill, but he was a politician, and I’ll never [emphasis] forgive him for what he, his action [emphasis] he took after the Dresden raid.
CB: Mm.
PB: Now, I’ve got the official history of the RAF, three or four volumes of it, and it’s all [emphasis] tabulated there, letters and memos and things, and Russia wanted Dresden bombed [emphasis on last four words]. And they told Churchill and Roosevelt they wanted Dresden bombed. And Churchill said ‘yes, yes, okay.’ And the chief of the air staff did as he was told, and they said to Harris, Bomber Command chief, ‘we want you to bomb Dresden.’ Now it’s documented [emphasis] that Harris said ‘there’s no point [emphasis], absolutely no point, it’s civilian [emphasis] sort of population and it’s a lot of rubbish to say that’s it’s a complication of troops coming,’ and for two weeks he stalled, and then – I’ve got all this in print [emphasis]. And Churchill said ‘look, if you don’t do as you’re told you’re out.’ So he was an officer, he did as he was told and bombed Dresden. Within a short while, I don’t know whether it was days or weeks, days I think, Churchill was up in parliament condemning the raids on unnecessary civil populations. And of course, another thing which I won’t forgive him for which is all the same thing, was that he never gave Bomber Command a campaign medal.
CB: Mm.
PB: I mean, there was the Italian campaign, there was the Burma campaign, but never [emphasis] Bomber – I got a clasp, I got a Bomber Command clasp [coughs] a nice fibre [?] campaign [laughs] clasp.
CB: Did you get your French Legion of Honour?
PB: No, no, never got that. I never said I deserved it, I don’t think I did anything more than what hundreds of other people did. But I do think that the French should, perhaps they have done, honour the French Resistance more, I think they – and I think our government should have recognised the French Resistance, definitely. I mean there’s a story, one of the stories I remember – I used to read a lot of war books after the war, and there was a great big unit, regiment or something, from the south, and because of the French harassment, the resistance, Maquis Resistance. They took not days but weeks [emphasis] to get up to Normandy, and they, these things aren’t recognised [emphasis], you know, there’s –
CB: Mm. When you got to the end of your tour of thirty, how did you feel?
PB: [Pause, laughs]. Believe it or not, I applied to carry on with the squadron that were due to go out in the Far East [laughs]. I must have been mad [laughs] I think, I must [laughing] have been mad. But, my, my pilot as I say, he had a bit of clout, and he stopped on, on the squadron when it changed to Lancasters, and he got a job as an instructor, or a coordinating chap, but my, the present, the flight commander at that time, he asked people that were in the know, our bosses, if I could go as his bomb aimer but they wouldn’t let him, they said ‘no, he’s done his thirty ops and that’s it, he’s finished.’
CB: Mm.
PB: Tony Darsefton [?], and I read after the war that he was killed in a civil air crash. He became a civil airline pilot and was – I saw in “The Telegraph” obituary that he was killed.
CB: Mm.
PB: But, oh life is full of ifs.
CB: What would you say was your most memorable point about your RAF service?
PB: Most memorable [emphasis] point [pause]. I can’t answer that, you know, I, I’d have to have an hour to think about that I think. I suppose it must be when I did my last op. I suppose it must [emphasis] be really, to think that I’ve – and then again you see ,the war when I finished was nearly over, so I’d got every chance of surviving the war. Sounds melodramatic but, erm. But one never, one never actually thought about dying or getting shot down or anything, or, if you – I mean one or two friends [emphasis] were killed, but a lot of them were ships [?] in the night, ‘oh hasn’t that one returned tonight?’ and that sort of thing, you didn’t, you didn’t know too many people intimately.
CB: And after the war, did the crew keep together, in touch?
PB: Well [coughs] the short answer to that is no [emphasis], but, erm, I did have one of my, the mid upper gunner, dispatcher [coughs] he came to my wedding, and the rear gunner, he came and brought his little daughter, but it didn’t last long, just the one visit.
CB: Mm.
PB: And there were two squadron reunions I went to, but I’d grown so away from that sort of life and the majority of people that I’d met from the squadron were sort of used car salesmen [both laugh], and I just, I just lost touch with them really. And I lost touch with my actual crew members, even the one that came to my wedding, and the one that came and visited us when we were both married and had children.
CB: When you were commissioned just after the pilot, what effect did that have on the social events of the crew?
PB: None at all. No, I mean, I was still a Christian name and we were Christian names, and – in fact, erm [laughs] to get commissioned I was called into the, well not called [emphasis] in that sounds a bit haughty, but I was, called, well called, I can’t think of any other word, to the orderly room and they said ‘oh your commission’s through’ [CB laughs]. I said ‘oh, okay, what do I do?’ They said ‘oh just report to the, the officer, the mess officer’ or something, so I went up to the officers mess and said ‘oh, commission,’ ‘oh yes,’ they said, ‘this is your room now,’ and [pause], I don’t know, but I mean, I just took my, I was a flight sergeant, I just took my stripes off my battle dress and put the ring on my shoulder [laughs]. And I was fortunate that my brother [emphasis] his uniform was at home, and I was easily, it was easier to go home for me from Tempsford in Welling, to Welling, and I used his uniform, and I went to my tailor in London, and I had my uniform made by my tailor, you know, who made my suits and things.
CB: Mm.
PB: An, but that was being commissioned [emphasis]. I mean the, I think the naval and the army people will be horrified [emphasis, laughs]. As I say, one minute I was a flight sergeant and the next minute [laughing] I was an officer.
CB: Mm. And was the navigator also commissioned?
PB: Eventually yes.
CB: But not then.
PB: No he was, he was [pause] – he must have been commissioned when were on the squadron. Oh I – he was about three months after me, that’s right, ‘cause I was commissioned probably in about the August [emphasis] of forty-four.
CB: And the engineer?
PB: No, none of the others were commissioned.
CB: Right.
PB: And again [emphasis] I don’t – you see, as a pilot, navigator and air bomber, you were automatically a flight sergeant after twelve months. But I don’t know whether the air gunners were or whether they have to do – I think they had a bit of a hard task, you know, they probably had to wait a couple of years.
CB: Mm.
PB: I don’t know how long you were between flight sergeant and warrant officer. Might be twelve months, or – but I was never a warrant officer, I was, I went from flight sergeant to –
CB: Rigjhy.
PB: And my pilot [emphasis] of course one day he was a flight sergeant, on the next day he was a flight lieutenant [emphasis].
CB: Oh.
PB: Acting flight lieutenant. Well, not on the next day but within a month certainly.
CB: Mm.
PB: But he was never a pilot officer. I think he was a flying officer from flight sergeant and then a, then an acting flight lieutenant.
CB: Why would that be do you think?
PB: Pardon?
CB: Why would that be?
PB: It was a pilot’s Air Force [laughs].
CB: Now, Tempsford was a wartime constructed airfield. What were the facilities like?
PB: Very good really, very good. I mean, as a, as a flight sergeant I think there was just our crew in the Nissan hut, there might have been a couple of crews. But when I was an officer, I was given a room with this chap I mentioned before, who had the injection and – in a house called Hassles. And it was a country house which the group captain lived in, and he entertained a lot of these important agents, and we had a room, ooh I think it was bigger than this room, with twin beds, above the stable block. And the group captains batman [?], we shared a batman [?] and we shared him part time, and he used to give us the odd gooses egg from the group captains [laughs] flock of geese. But it was very comfortable, it was a bit bigger than this room I think, very, very comfortable.
CB: Hmm. This is about eighteen square.
PB: I think this is [emphasis] about sixteen square, yes, I’m not sure but yeah, it was bigger than this room. Bit, bit bigger than this room and it was very comfortable, and we had – it was about a mile away from the ‘drome, and the, erm, this – he was made the flight commander after Rosswell [?], no after Watson moved onto to – Watson followed Rosswell, and Watson was 161 Wing Commander and got killed, but the chap that followed Watson was Tony Darsefton [?], and he used to live out at Hassles, he had a separate room, and he used to give us lifts in and it was, we’d always be able to get RAF transport if we had to go into the, well we had to go in. But it was, the discipline [emphasis] was almost non-existent, it really was. It was very laid back, but we did our job.
CB: The aircraft went of individually presumably, rather than in pairs or more?
PB: Well, well you couldn’t [emphasis] – I mean you couldn’t, obviously [emphasis] you couldn’t have a mass briefing because you’d have on the squadron alone you might have twenty different targets. I mean each flight consisted of about twelve aircraft I think, and twelve crews, but of course they weren’t all on the same night, but erm, but it was a very [emphasis] exciting time, and of course we got a lot [emphasis] of leave, we got a terrific amount of leave. We used to get I think it was something like ten days one months and six days the next. I was always [emphasis] home. And you used to get, as an officer, as a pilot officer, you used to get a first class travel warrant. In fact it didn’t apply to me, but most [emphasis] of the people [coughs] lived [coughed] up north, they used to put an aircraft on for what’s called a night flying test [CB laughs]. And they’d take them off to York or Scotland for their leave, and then lay on an aircraft to pick them up [emphasis]. Bloody selfish I suppose really [CB laughs], but it was done, I mean they –
CB: Mm. And they could have flown you to Biggin Hill.
PB: Hmm?
CB: And they could have flown you [emphasis] to Biggin Hill.
PB: Yes [laughing], yes I’d have more job to get from Biggin Hill to Welling [both laugh] than from Tempsford. The train was very good from there, yes. Very –
CB: Final –
PB: Very exciting times and –
CB: Right. So what was the most exciting thing do you think?
PB: The most what?
CB: The most exciting [emphasis] event that you had.
PB: In the Air Force? [Pause.] I don’t know.
CB: ‘Cause they were all exciting.
PB: Erm, some of them were boring. I mean the, the trips to Norway, I mean they were five hours there or so and five hours back, they were very [emphasis] boring. And we didn’t have any television or – I suppose we could have got the radio, I don’t know, never tried, but – they used to give us wakey-wakey tablets.
CB: Mm.
PB: I don’t know whether they worked or not –
CB: Benzedrine.
PB: Hmm?
CB: Benzedrine tablets.
PB: Was it?
CB: Mm.
PB: I don’t know whether they worked – I never, never gave them a chance to work. We used to do as we were told a lot. Not always, as I say I got into trouble for oversleeping. You see, going – is this on?
CB: Mm.
PB: Oh perhaps I –
CB: Go on.
PB: Well you can cut it out if you don’t want it –
CB: Yeah.
PB: This, this engineer, flight engineer, he wasn’t [emphasis], he’d gone to flights, and he wasn’t affected by our absence from flights when we went up to Sheffield, and yet you’d have thought he’d have said ‘ooh my God that’s my crew, I’d better go and wake them up and tell them that’ – I don’t know, very strange. But he was a real loner [?][emphasis] sort of chap, you do get them I suppose –
CB: He was the only one married, was he?
PB: He was married.
CB: He was the only one of the crew?
PB: No [emphasis], no, no the wireless operator, wireless operator air gunner was getting on a bit, he might have been twenty-eight or something [CB laughs], he was married with a child, yes.
CB: So you returned from an operation, and had a debrief.
PB: Yes.
CB: How did the debrief go?
PB: Erm, very simple really. I mean you’d – we had to fill out air bomber – one of my jobs to fill out a weather report. Mostly, obviously, the only thing you could report was well, fog I suppose, but was the cloud formations and different heights, and in those days I, I knew what the cloud formations was. I can’t say I do now. And what interference we had, erm, whether, whether it was easy to find, whether there was a good reception or whether it was a terrible reception. There were lots of stories – one story that floated around, I don’t know how true it was, but I think there might have been two crews, but there was one crew that went to this target, and they flashed their identification but it wasn’t quite perfect [emphasis] for some reason, and they thought that they’d best to not drop their load. I thought ‘this is a bit suspicious,’ and after several attempts this signal didn’t come through clear, I mean if it was dot dash dash dot they’d get the dot dash and then they might not get the dash dot. So they decided to bring this stuff back, and – this is rumour [emphasis] as I say I don’t know how true it was, but the story was that these resistance were surrounded by Germans, and every time they went up to, you know, press the signal, they were shot and killed, and if they’d have dropped the containers they would have stood a good chance of putting up a resistance. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, you got all sorts of things.
CB: Mm. Could have worked all ways.
PB: But the stories that are true and I’ve read in a couple of these resistance books – I used to get a lot of books after the war. And it was terribly [emphasis] laid back, gosh [emphasis]. In some cases there was a chap that was dropped, and he went to his safe place and the thing is you don’t walk in and rap on the door and say ‘hello, I’m here,’ you sort of observe the place and, and sure enough he kept an eye on it and it looked safe. So he went in and they said ‘oh come in’ in English you know, ‘come in,’ and they were talking in English [laughs] and he was absolutely flabbergasted [emphasis] at the lax security, but –
CB: Did you ever get to talk to the agents, you were dropping?
PB: Yes, yes. We had – on several of the drops we had an agent that had just come back, and he would give you a few tips, I can’t remember what they were but he could have told you that so many miles south west of the drop there was a German fighter unit or an AK-AK battery or something, which you know, did prove very useful.
CB: Mm.
PB: We did – yeah we had quite a lot of – and sometimes they were a bit of an organised talk by an agent who to tell you what was going on, but of course the tragedy was, I think it was the Dutch [emphasis] – don’t know whether you’ve heard of this, but the Dutch resistance was penetrated [emphasis] –
CB: Mm.
PB: Did you know this?
CB: Yep.
PB: So I’m, I, if I tell you –
CB: Go on, keep going.
PB: I’m only repeating –
CB: No keep going, keep going.
PB: Well as far as I know, they have a call which if they don’t use it, the signallers, then they know that they’re captured. And this signaller, he didn’t use his call sign, and the chap the other end he said ‘oh he’s just forgotten, don’t take any notice,’ and there was one chap at Baker Street which was SOE headquarters, who said ‘I don’t like this at all’ but he was more junior, and they said ‘no,’ you know, ‘everything’s alright don’t worry.’ And unfortunately they were just pitching agents right left and centre into the hands of the Nazis.
CB: Mm.
PB: And it wasn’t until sometime afterwards that they closed the whole circuit down.
CB: Mm.
PB: I, I never did do a trip to Holland.
CB: Mm, tragic.
PB: It was, it was infiltrated.
CB: Now you talked earlier about your later contact with Bletchley Park. To what extent were you aware of any contact while you were in 138?
PB: Was I [coughs], sorry, was I –
CB: Aware of contact with Bletchley Park?
PB: None, none at all. Well, funnily enough, the only contact which we had, and I didn’t realise the significance of course, but when I met my wife up here at this officers mess which would have been about April 1945, they’d imported a lot of Bletchley Park girls, and these two girls were standing by the fireplace there, and a friend of mine said ‘they fancy you,’ and I said ‘oh don’t talk such nonsense,’ you know, I said ‘go on’ I said ‘you’re a lady-killer, you go and ask them for a dance.’ [Laughs] so he went over and he came back and said ‘no they want to dance with you.’ I said ‘oh well you don’t know to treat women.’ So I went and it happened to be my future wife, and erm, I said, you know ‘would you like to dance?’ And they said ‘well, we’ve got the tip that the food’s coming up,’ course my brother-in-law’s, you know, here, the chap that was escaped from POW. So, but that’s how I met Stella. But what, who I thought [emphasis] was a girl, civil servant from Bletchley Park was actually Stella. But that’s the contact I had with Bletchley Park but I didn’t know exactly, I just thought they were evacuated civil servants, but, we didn’t, we didn’t know an awful lot to be perfectly honest. I mean, I met a chap in Rotary, I went to a, what do you call it, a district do, and this chap said he lived at Sandy, I said [CB laughs], ‘oh’ I said ‘I was stationed at Tempsford,’ he said ‘ooh were you?’ I said ‘yes,’ he said ‘well,’ he said ‘do you know, when your aircraft flew out they used to come found and padlock all the telephone boxes.’ I couldn’t really see the point of that but he assured me it was true. But it’s – they never, the Germans never attacked Tempsford. I’m sure they must have had some clue about it, they must [emphasis] have done. But, they, they never attacked Tempsford. They did have one huge raid in about March I think it was, in forty-five, and it was really like, like picking cherries off a tree for them. Because they sent a whole lot of fighters and they followed the bombers in as they landed and they were absolutely sitting ducks and they did do a lot of damage that particular time.
CB: Mm.
PB: But they never actually singled – as far as I know they never singled out Tempsford at all.
CB: Mm.
PB: You never know what dealings went on in war. There’s so much going on. I mean it’s a well known fact that we were dealing with Sweden and Germany were dealing with Sweden, and [laughs] you know it was sort of like this.
CB: After you’d finished your tour you went to the OTU, so how did that –
PB: Up here?
CB: Yes. So how did that work? What did you do there?
PB: I didn’t like it to start with, I didn’t like it a bit. But of course I met Stella shortly afterwards, my wife, and that made life very agreeable. I spent most [laughing] of the time playing tennis down here. But far as the work was concerned it was very good because I did a lot of flying instructing, I didn’t do much ground instructing. To be perfectly honest I didn’t know much [laughs] about the ground. I couldn’t very well say ‘when you get over the target you do this’ [laughs] because I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about main force bombing.
CB: So you went up with the trainee crews in the Wellingtons?
PB: Erm, only with an instructor pilot. I never went up with just a trainee crew. I went up – sometimes on the cross countries where there was a bombing attack afterwards or a, what do you, a bullseye [emphasis] they used to call – where you went to London and you took an infrared photograph of the target. But I don’t think I ever flew with, with a trainee crew there was always an instructor pilot with me.
CB: So what were you doing as an instructor at the OTU?
PB: I often wonder [laughs] ‘cause I couldn’t tell ‘em how to operate the bomb site. Erm, I don’t know, it’s just one of these things that, you know, you’ve got to have an instructor. Well I can understand having a pilot instructor. To a certain degree I can understand having a, a navigator instructor, but why you need an instructor to, to – ‘cause you should know how to use the bomb site on the ground before you fly up. They had, I forget what it was called now, but the bomb site that I trained on was called a setting bomb site. A very, very primitive thing which you set the course, the air speed, and told the pilot to fly on a certain course, and a certain speed, and you dropped the bombs and they were miles [emphasis] away [CB laughs]. They really were miles away. Well I don’t know about miles but – the story, there’s one story which was round, going around, and this Polish [emphasis] crew, and you did a – last trip you did was a cross country, and you ended up from an OTU, a training point of view, you ended up in the Severn or one of these bombing ranges and you dropped a couple of five-hundred pound bombs [emphasis], and the story is that this Polish crew went up and they said ‘to blazes with this, we’re not wasting this on the sea’ [CB laughs] ‘we’re going to take this off to France.’ Have you heard?
CB: No.
PB: And the – I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but the story is that they went off and they dropped their bombs over in occupied Europe. And I think they got told off a bit but they were Poles, and I met several Poles and they were great people, really great people, really were. And good pilots come to that.
CB: I think we’ve had a good run, thank you very much.
PB: Well I told you a lot of –
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 Peter Bellingham
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABellinghamPF161121
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-21
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
02:05:02 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Bellingham worked as a post office engineer before volunteering for the Royal Air Force. He trained in Rhodesia and South Africa and completed a tour of operations as a bomb aimer, dropping supplies with 138 Squadron from RAF Tempsford. He describes the different roles each crew member was given, the briefing, the lights which signalled the target, the release of the parcels, supplies and agents, and the debrief. He then became an instructor and after demobilisation in 1946 he worked in agriculture.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
South Africa
Zambia
England--Bedfordshire
England--Cumbria
England--Suffolk
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Katie Gilbert
11 OTU
138 Squadron
17 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
briefing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crash
crewing up
FIDO
Flying Training School
Initial Training Wing
military living conditions
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Millom
RAF Silverstone
RAF Tempsford
RAF Turweston
RAF Woodbridge
Special Operations Executive
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/168/2477/SRutherfordRL146342v10094.1.jpg
82f24167bdfebf402d77313a1109c1bb
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/168/2477/SRutherfordRL146342v10095.1.jpg
d98e9e8d3d8a6a7456bae7e4dfdfa3f9
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Rutherford, Les
R L Rutherford
Robert Leslie Rutherford
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. The collection contains four oral history interviews with bomb aimer Robert Leslie "Les" Rutherford (1918 - 2019, 146263 Royal Air Force), his prisoner of war diary, material about entertainment in the Stalag Luft 3 Belaria compound and a photograph. Les Rutherford served as a despatch rider in the army, he was evacuated from Dunkirk and volunteered to transfer to the RAF. He became a bomb aimer with 50 Squadron and completed 24 operations. He was shot down over Germany on 20th December 1943 and became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Les Rutherford and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-09
2015-10-05
2015-06-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Rutherford, RL
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
WARNUNG
Der Regierungen der Sowjetunion, der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika und Groβbritanniens an alle deutschen Kommandanten, Wachmannschaten und Gestapobeamten
Im Namen alle Vereinten Nationen, die sich im Krieg mit Deutschland befinden, wenden sich die Regierungen der Sowjetunion, der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika und Groβbritanniens hierdurch mit einer feierlichen Warnung an all Kommandanten und Wachmannschaften, in deren Gewalt sich in Deutschland und in von Deutschland okkupierten Gebieten Kriegsgefangene der Verbündeten befinden, sowie an die Gestapobeamten und alle sonstigen Personen, unabhängig von dem Charakter
[page break]
ihrer Dienststellung und ihrem Rang, in deren Gewalt Kriegsgefangene der Verbündeten, übergeben wurden, sei es im Kampfgebiet, auf den Verkehrswegen oder in den rückwärtigen Gebieten. Die drei Regierungen erklären, daβ alle diese Personen für Sicherheit und Wohlbefinden aller Kriegsgefangenen der Verbündeten, die sich in ihrer Gewalt befinden, als persönlich haftbar betrachtet werden, und zwar in nicht geringerem Maβe als das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht und die zuständigen deutschen Militär-, Kriegsmarine- und Luftwaffenbehörden.
Jede Person, die sich einem beliebigen Kriegsgefangenen der Verbündeten gegenüber schlecte Behandlung zuschulden kommen lieβ oder dessen schlechte Behandlung duldete, sei es im Kampfgebiet, auf den Verkehrswegen, im Lager, im Lazarett, im Gefängnis oder an anderem Ort, wird schonungslos verfolgt und bestraft werden.
Die drei Regierungen machen warnend darauf aufmerksam: diese Verantwortung gilt bedingungslos und unter allen Umständen; niemand kann ihr dadurch entgehen, daβ er die Verantwortung auf andere Behörden oder Personen schiebt.
Marschall der Sowjetunion
J. STALIN
Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten, von Amerika
H. TRUMAN
Premierminster von Groβbritannien
W. CHURCHILL
23. April 1945.
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
Warnung der Regierungen der Sowjetunion, der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika und Grossbrittanniens an alle deutschen Kommandanten
Description
An account of the resource
The Governments of the Soviet Union, United States and Great Britain order that no Allied prisoner of war shall be mistreated. Offenders will be relentlessly pursued and punished.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One flyer
Language
A language of the resource
deu
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SRutherfordRL146342v10094, SRutherfordRL146342v10095
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
1945-04-23
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.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-04
1945-05
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sally Des Forges
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
prisoner of war
propaganda
Stalin, Joseph (1878-1953)
Truman, Harry (1884-1972)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/204/3339/ABatemanJT160802.2.mp3
ed973811a2b5c581c1c4ee9acd8d25e7
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
Bateman, James Thomas
James Thomas Bateman
James Bateman
James T Bateman
J T Bateman
J Bateman
Description
An account of the resource
One interview with James Thomas Bateman (423042 Royal Australian Air Force).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bateman, JT
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
This interview is for the International Bomber Command Centre the interviewer is Barry Jackson the interview is Jim Bateman the interview is taking place at Mr Batemans home in Marsfield, Sydney, Australia on the 2nd of August 2016.
JB. My name is James Bateman I joined the Air Force in June 1942 and eventually having been trained in Canada went to England and joined 149 Squadron where I served as a Navigation Officer and completed a tour lasting from May 1944 to December 1944.
BJ. Jim what made you volunteer for Bomber Command?
JB. I think it was purely adventure, I was very young, I was seventeen and a half at the time when I actually joined and em yes I looked forward to something exciting.
BJ. Were you made aware of the high casualty rate.
JB. No we were not.
BJ. Once you completed you training or you went back to Bradfield Park where did you go, you mentioned Canada?
JB. Yes after being at Tammora and not succeeding as a Trainee Pilot I was posted back to Bradfield Park, I waited embarkation and travelled to Canada, Edmonton where I was in the eh 2 AOS at Edmonton and did my training there as an Air Navigator and eh Then after that, having a wonderful leave in New York going to England where eh eventually going through advanced training flying course to understand the topography of the English countryside and that eh finished up at the OUT at Wing where I formed a Crew.
BJ. And how did you crew up eh how did you choose your crew how did you make that thing which is pretty important of course.
JB. Well crewing up was something that was completely, quite unexpected it was just herded us all into a large hanger, Pilots, Navigators, Bomb Aimers, Wireless Operators and we were told to find ourselves a Crew. Well luckily the Pilot I chose I trained with him at Bradwell Park well nearly twelve months before and I knew him, not that well and that was the start of our Crew.
BJ. I’ve got a question, what happened to the people that were left over in the Crewing side of things, was there anyone left over?
JB. I can’t remember
BJ. What were your thoughts on that first Operational Mission?
JB. The first Operational Mission was really quite a simple one, we did mining across the North Sea off the Dutch, the Islands of Holland and eh very uneventful but that was just to introduce us to the em Operational Experience but the first real Operation was a Resistance trip to supply the Resistance eh deep down in France and eh to our chagrin we found we had the Wing Commander going to fly with us. So we had him, him on duty and eh and all I can say is that the Bomb Aimer and I we did a fine job and got to the place where we were going to drop the eh packages but unfortunately nobody turned up and em after flying about six or seven times from the starting point to the small plot of land eh, the Wing Commander with us said “well you had better go home boys” and eh, that’s what we did. Then they sent us back to the same place the next night, so we got there and dropped out packages and did our job.
BJ. Well, well, how many ops did you take part in ?
JB. I did thirty, but the Crew did thirty five.It was due to the fact that I had a spell in Hospital at one stage, I had my appendice removed and to my great disappointment also was sick on the last trip. I had a bad attack of tonsillitis, they put me in Hospital and little did I know they were going to fly that night. Luckily they came back and we were tour expired and eh got away with doing five less than anybody else.
BJ. Eh and what happened then, how old were you then?
JB. I was still twenty.
BJ. Can you remember your last Op before you obviously got sick?
JB. It, it would have been to a eh place eh eh Oberhausen to do an attack on eh, eh Oil Refineries they were converting coal to oil and that was our task on a GH Operation which we were the Leaders.
BJ Ok and you never had any close calls with Flak or Night Fighters or anything like that.
JB. Oh we had a bad time, our first trip when we converted to Lancasters to a place called Duisburg and on that occasion due to inexperience with the aircraft we arrived at the Target. I as Navigator had the responsibility to put the Master Switch on so that the Electronics worked the Bomb Bay and fired the bombs. Unfortunately when we get to the target which was very quiet, nothing happened because I hadn’t switched the Master Switch on. Our Skipper who was a very conscientious man did a round again trip. In that round again trip everything happened there was searchlights, flack the whole thing, then having to work our way back into the Bomber Stream which was about six hundred bombers that night. So we were very fortunate to survive all that.
BJ. I reckon. What were the two aircraft that you done your Operations in, the Stirling and the Lancaster what are the pros and cons for each one of them and obviously ?
JB. Oh well as being a Navigator the Stirling was an ideal aircraft, had very comfortable appointments and eh for a Navigator. It was very stable and eh I think the Pilot liked flying the Stirling but when he got the Lancaster that changed his opinion all together, it was a superior aircraft in all ways and eh all that I can say is that I would fly in a Lancaster anytime.
BJ. Yeah, yeah you must, the maximum altitude of a Stirling was how high, how high was the maximum ceiling?
JB. Oh about twelve thousand feet, but you see when we were operating on a Special Duty job we were flying at five hundred feet, so it didn’t matter. With the Lancaster we were up at nineteen, twenty thousand and that was what we did.
BJ. Yeah yeah and during eh my previous interviews the eh Gentlemen that I talked to spoke about their eh last thoughts as they were taxiing out joining the stream. There was a very light I believe eh there was a light eh there was a lady that used to give you a green or red signal eh. Did you have any thoughts or were you just concentration on your work.
JB. No the Navigator he was busy at that time eh, working out what the Pilot had to do, what height to fly so he didn’t have much time to think about if it was going to be good or bad. The Gunners on the other hand were sitting with plenty of time on their hands. As far as I am concerned I was busy and that helped me all through the Operation, I was busy.
BJ. Yeah, yeah well that was a good way to be and what were the conditions like at the em Base that em you were at and eh did you have a good social life was the food good.
JB. [laugh] Well you see we were at a Wartime Airfield. Little did we know that sometime before after we finished our Con Unit training, to fill in the time they sent us on what they called a Battle Course. The Battle Course was held at Methwold and eventually well we didn’t think much about it, it wasn’t very comfortable and it didn’t have any atmosphere at all. Then they sent us from 149 Squadron at Lakenheath to 149 Squadron at Methwold so we were back at the same place and it wasn’t [laugh]a very inspiring choice. The point was a Squadron that had a great tradition, Middleton who had won his Victoria Cross there. So there was a very strong feeling of Family in the place. So that made up for War time discomfort.
BJ. Did you, that’s an interesting point because you had Australian, you had English I assume you had all the Commonwealth countries gathered around you had New Zealand, Canadians, South Africans did you all have different groups did you all just rib each other or did you ?
JB. Well speaking about our Crew we were all quite, very close, we had three Australians and three Englishmen and em, we got on well together and the em, atmosphere at the Squadron was good and em we used to go out to the local pubs and, and have social eh, interaction like that. So we didn’t really mix that well with other Crews,we knew them of course, I was a Navigator and got to know other Navigators and em really a lot of the people we didn’t get to know at all.
BJ. That Crew you really got to know really well,there was no outliers?
JB. No, we were very close, there was one occasion we had a bit of a problem, I had a problem with our Engineer and er I don’t think I should go into that sufficiently to say it was all patched up. It was a silly dispute and eh eventually travelling to England after the War I called twice to see our Engineer and his Family and we got on well.
BJ. Yeah but as I said to you before I knew you in my eh eh the Navigator and Pilot are very important but as a whole crew there are seven of you.
JB. All I can say about that is that we had a very good Skipper who had a very good affinity for us. All, all over the times between the end of the War and now and until Wal Crow died we were always going out together, always, as a Crew and the Wireless Operator who is still alive, we see each other as much as we can. So it was a very strong bonding that we had and that was typical of Bomber Command I would say.
BJ. And I loved the way the Crew were formed, my and you can probably tell me a bit more
JB. The skipper used to talk about “my Navigator” something would happen and he would say “I want my Navigator to know about that,” And I I later on in my life I joined a Probus Club with him and he was forever praising the little things I done. I was a Tourist, Tour Officer and he would always ring up next day and say that that was a good outing, you did very well Jim,that was his way, he was wonderful.
BJ. And of course and he had the Crew ah eh, he sounded eh like he had the Crew eh.
JB. Oh right behind him, he was considered very highly by the Squadron, he won a DFC and for my sins I won one too.
BJ. There you go, that’s what its all about eh there are another couple of questions here and I will ask about after the War. Did you have any thoughts of the Targets you flew over and the Civilians, possible Civilians.
JB. All I can say about that without going into the dispute with our Engineer, which was to do with that type of thing eh. When we did the GH Targets, bombing the Oil Refinery that to me is what I wanted to do, I wanted to do things that didn’t involve places, area bombing, bombing cities. I can’t say I was all that happy about that and that is the reason we had a bit of a dispute. He was an Engineer and previous to becoming and Air Engineer he was on a Squadron on Malta, on a Fighter Squadron and the Luftwaffe used to come over from Sicily every hour on the hour and shoot the place up. He had, he had very little respect for Germans as such. So our first trip with the Lancaster was to Duisburg on our return after settling down in our hut he said “I think we killed lots of Germans today” I said “I don’t think we did that Stan I said “I think we were bombing this” and one thing led to another and I gave him a fat lip.
BJ.Lets not beat about the bush.
JB.It wasn’t very good for a Crew at three o’clock in the morning to be doing things like that, anyway we got over that. I must say from my experience I was happier doing that other type of bombing.
BJ.Was there any trip that you would say was worse than the other or did one stand out as probably the worst mission you had ever done? Eventually when you were allocated that trip was oh no Christ what are doing?
JB I would say the Duisburg trip.
BJ.And why was that.
JB.It was putting us at the reality of bombing what a well defended target was, what you could expect and just wondered if every trip was going to be the same.
BJ.And when you finished, when you completed the thirty missions and obviously you had to visit the Hospital em when were you, where and when were you demobbed?
JB.No,no because of my training on the GH equipment it was decided to set up a small school at Feltwell nearby.
BJ.GH what did that stand for?
JB.Yes
BJ.What did that stand for?
JB.GH it was using the Gee Box system with the uses of the Oboe technology.
BJ.What happened after that then, you went back to training people?
JB.I was at Feltwell with a small group who were training new Crews eh on the, the GH System. Just prior to the War ending I was transferred to a Squadron where I was nominally called the GH Officer.
BJ. There you go.
JB. For a very short time.
BJ. Eh when the War finished eh where did you go, did you go back to your former work or did you.
JB. I must say eh I eventually came back and was disoriented like we all were. We had been used to a different way of life for some few years and settling wasn’t easy. I went back to my old job as a clerk in this motor body company and er. Eventually after a short time I was talking to a friend who told me Qantas were recruiting aircrew. So I reported to Qantas and I was employed as an Air Navigator on Qantas Airways.
BJ. For how long?
JB. Not for very long, just on two years until a decision was made by the eh Department of Air that all Navigators should produce first class licenses. Being a Wartime Navigator I was given automatically a second class license. Which involved sitting exams on very difficulty subjects and Qantas provided the opportunity for us by setting up a small school situation with a a a lecturer. All the Wartime Navigators were given time and for three weeks we attended classes to prepare us for these exams. Unfortunately for me I found that getting Maths to work out the various problems associated, I found I just couldn’t formulate equations in my mind resulting in the fact that I failed the exam and was told I couldn’t fly with Qantas at that time. Qantas offered me a job, they were a very small company then, they weren’t very big as an er Air Traffic Officer. Well I decided that was not a good idea and for a while I was getting married and I didn’t have a job [laugh].n
BJ. No problem we can sort that out. So how old were you then you must have been in your early twenties wern’t you?
JB. Twenty One. So eh [laugh] what happened next eh I lived at a place called Lidcolme, Lidcolme Jensen Australia Limited had their factory. They were makers of swimwear as everybody would know and sportswear. Anyway it occurred to me they might have some kind of job for people like me. So one day I went over there and asked to see the er office manager and er which I did and asked him about jobs available. He said “no unfortunately, but maybe the sales department do” He arranged for me to see the sales manager who said “we are just thinking about employing more salesmen and deciding what to do and we will let you know.” Well I was married still had no job, but then just after Christmas in 1947 eh, I eh, was told I had a position with Jensen as a Salesman and that became my career for the next twenty five years and I have a watch on my wrist as a token of their respect which is still going very well.
BJ. How good is that? Excellent and there is a whole load of discussion after the War. One of the things I wanted your opinion on is, what do you think of what you did during the War, Bomber Command and the legacy you left, the sacrifices you made and what that said to future generations,they younger generation today. Is it something that should be strictly remembered eh reminded of, the sacrifices that you, you people made in those years?
JB. Yes, I suppose immediately after the War like most of us we just wanted to get on with life and and not think too much what it was all about.Because eh, you had to bring up children and a living. I did start going to ANZAC marches with other Aircrew friends and they were always more or less eh, jolly occasions, not really thinking of the War much at all. As time went bye and maturity set in, it gave me like a lot of others, the opportunity to think what it was. Now being a member of the Bomber Command Committee, mixing with Bomber Command Boys that are still with us eh, and knowing why we were em there. I have come to the conclusion that Bomber Command was a very necessary weapon for the Allies to have. After all they had nothing else going for some time until D Day and the Russians were able to do what they did. So we carried the War on against Hitler and the Nazi’s and I prefer to think of the enemy as not Germans but Nazi’s and Hitler. The German people and I, I, have become friendly with some, they were possibly in the same situation as us. They needed to be released from the awful eh [unreadable] of the Nazi policy which was a totally violent and eh, non human organisation. So I’d answer the question, I think it was necessary for us to go to War. We had to stop Hitler and the Nazi’s and whatever we did to do that, had to be done.
BJ. When did you learn of the atrocities that were.
JB. And off course the War finished and the reality of what took place in Eastern Europe, that was more so the reason for us to have done what we did. The fact that our boys lost so many, after all Australians lost 3500 killed, prisoners of war as well and eh eh, wounded eh altogether 10500 Aircrew out of 52000 Aircrew. Em the losses were terrific and all that I can say is that we were fortunate that our time of Operations was a relatively easier and eh healthier, healthier time.
BJ. Do you, do you, were there many of your colleagues, friends and associates that didn’t settle down after the War. I had Uncles that couldn’t settle down after the Adventure that had to go and do something else Adventurous, like train for the Korean War for example.
JB. Well Aircrew were pretty sensible people eh. One of the members we lost track of and it took a long time to find him eh it turned out eh an English Boy and he turned up we found out as a warder in a prison. But we couldn’t, he had sort of moved away from us, I don’t know why but. Eventually he was caught up in our family because our Skipper had to go to England quite often with his business. So he was able to contact a man called Harry Sue and eh we got together again writing letters to each other. But he was one of the first of the Crew to leave us, he died rather early considering em and eh. Otherwise where it comes to other people I don’t think that Aircrew as such went through the same kind of trauma as other soldiers did. ‘cause after all, even though we saw some of the, some boys seen some of the worst things you could ever see, their Crew being wounded and things of that kind. We weren’t like Soldiers fighting and killing people. What we did we killed people no doubt, but they were at length, they were away, they were down there, so it didn’t it didn’t feel the same. I think looking back on the War and, and being close with old wartime colleagues em you realise what we did and how important it was.
BJ. For sure, and in that strain did you ever get any criticism either subtle or otherwise for what you did during the War?
JB. No, no we never had that happen to us but some would have, yeah some would have. Some were accused of being eh, Jap dodgers, going to England and doing what they did in Bomber Command. They certainly would have been dodging the Japs, so that was bad. We never experienced that, as I say eh. As a Crew we respected each other and the duties we had and that kept us above all that other noise that was going on. Its rather sad that the War finished when it did with the Leaders being so critical about what Bomber Command did and I refer now to Winston Churchill, he never in his Victory Address mentioned Bomber Command, it was left completely out. Because of legal questions his relationship with the Russians etc he joined the forces of criticism of what we achieved. We didn’t, didn’t have to destroy all those cities in Germany. It wasn’t necessary. We realised it was, because how else would the Germans have realised what, what, what they were up against.
BJ. A different era, the same argument could be about Japan, their dropping bombs.The bombs that they dropped on Tokyo in January plus the two Atomic Bombs. The same thing could be applied it was a job that needed to be done.
JB. I think it’s a em a case of em Politicians with there attitude em about what is possible and what is not possible, they change their mind very readily when they find they have opposition. And Churchill unfortunately despite all the wonderful things that he did in, in Bomber Commands opinion he let them down. We never receive a particular decoration for being in Bomber Command although there was a decoration called Aircrew Europe but that was on a limited basis reflecting the most difficult time of Bomber Command and from nineteen, middle of forty four on you could not qualify for that you qualified before that. We were given the France and Germany Star which was given to every Soldier eh, you know. So there was no distinction. Through all these years there has been a lot of lobbying to try and rectify that and what has happened is that they have issued a small bronze em, ah, em [slight pause] addition to our medals specifying Bomber Command. That is what they have done.
BJ. I was surprised that there wasn’t a Bomber Command medal.
JB. It was all to do with what was taking place politically. Once the Russians had occupied their area in East Germany they started to make all kinds of em unfortunate statements about what had happened there. For instance in Dresden they originally said that something like over 100,000 people were killed. That wasn’t so, after much research the situation wasn’t good but the number was nothing like that, it was 2500. Dresden after all was one of the cities that Churchill himself had designated as important for the Russians to have eliminated as, as opposition as they came through. That was decided six months before, so Dresden was always a fait accompli. The facts are that Dresden had many Wartime factories that produced all kinds of important instruments. So and it was a very big rail centre for the transferring of Troops into the East. So it was certainly a very important target and unfortunately for the people in Dresden the East German Nazi’s did not protect them. They did not have any air raid centres, the only air raid centre of any use was occupied by the Gael Lighter the German Political Boss of Dresden, he survived. It certainly was a tragedy that Dresden was damaged to such an extent. However I have had the fortune to be in Dresden three or four times and I have seen what has happened, it has been completely rebuilt. There are certain things that will never be rebuilt and not change, for example most of the buildings were made from a local sandstone and the horrific fires that came on the night of the bombing burnt into the stone and those stones are still black, they can’t remove it. And, but Dresden has returned to a very charming and beautiful city.
BJ. Do you think eh ah, certain authorities have done enough to recognise Bomber Command, I know they have opened up the Bomber Command Centre in Green Park. Do you think that has gone some way to recognising what you did?
JB. I think the Air Force people do eh, they, they have made great efforts to rehabil,rehabilitate Air Crew. Em,[unreadable] affairs have been good we are based on the standards of veterans, eh, I don’t think we are singled out particularly but er we are given a lot of eh, wonderful support. Em, I don’t think with Australia being involved with the Japanese threat, that the fact that Bomber Command operated in England against Germany etc eh made much impression on the general eh population of Austalia, I don’t think so.
BJ. In those days communication wasn’t as rapid as it now so they wouldn’t have known.
JB. However having said that I must say whenever I have marched on ANZAC day the amount of em, wonderful em, acclamation that comes from the,the crowd watching is a marvellous thing. They recognise a lot of them, because there has been many documentaries showing Bomber Command. If you go to Canberra to the War Memorial there is a wonderful display there of a, a bomber G for George, being attacked at night, a simulated attack if you wish. I think that has brought a lot to peoples minds.
BJ. No it’s a wonderful, I think it is better than anything I have seen in England it’s fabulous.
JB. I feel that Australia with the great respect and eh and eh care. I would have no, no criticism.
BJ. Are you feeling all right, do you want to have a break or?
JB. Yeah I’m alright or do you want a cup of tea?
BJ. Yeah we might do that.
JB. You sit here I’ll make it.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABatemanJT160802
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with James Thomas Bateman
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:39:41 audio recording
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Barry Jackson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-02
Description
An account of the resource
Aged 17, James volunteered for aircrew in June 1942 purely for the adventure as he was looking for something exiting. He trained in Canada as a navigator and after a wonderful leave in New York returned to England for advanced flying training. on completion he was posted to 149 Squadron flying Stirlings at RAF Lakenheath.
On one of his operations he arrived over France to drop supplies to the French resistance but, in the absence of a reception committee, returned home and successfully repeated the trip the next night.
After converting to Lancasters, his first trip was to Duisburg but he forgot to operate the bombing master switch which meant they had to go around again and work their way back into the main bomber stream. James considers himself very fortunate to have survived that episode.
He speaks warmly of his crew but admitted that on the morality of mass bombing he had a dispute with his engineer and actually came to blows.
In December 1944, he completed his 30th operation to the Oberhausen oil refinery but became ill with tonsillitis and hospitalised. On recovery he spent time at RAF Feltnell training new crews on the Gee-H navigation system.
James was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and after demob spent time as a clerk before joining Quantas Airways as an air navigation officer. Unfortunately the training was too complex for him and he left to pursue a career as a salesman for 25 years.
James speaks at length of his strong feelings on the importance of the role that Bomber Command carried out, which was not recognised by the leaders, and considers that the enemy were not the German people but the Nazis.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
France
Canada
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Duisburg
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Hugh Donnelly
Terry Holmes
149 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crewing up
Gee
Lancaster
memorial
navigator
perception of bombing war
RAF Feltwell
RAF Lakenheath
RAF Methwold
Resistance
Stirling
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/241/3386/ACrawleyF151222.1.mp3
c7e60126e907dfc9fd813433d3cabec6
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
Crawley, Fred
Fred Crawley
F Crawley
Fred Crawley DFC
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Squadron Leader Fred Crawley DFC (146012 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Crawley, F
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PL: Hello. I’m Pam Locker and I’m here today in Enfield interviewing Squadron Leader Fred Crawley DFC and the date is the 22nd of December 2015. So, Fred, can I just start by saying thank you very very much indeed on behalf of the International Bomber Command Memorial Trust for agreeing to talk to us and I know you’ve lots of things that you want to say so please, please do start. What I’d like to hear first of all is how you got in to the RAF in the first place.
FC: Well, I thought about the beginning of this and I thought to myself well what I could do, I could tell you, Pam as the interviewer just three lines of information and that would be my career. The first thing I would tell you I spent six and a half years in the RAF from 1939 May to the last day of 1945. I did over a thousand hours flying in doing what I did and I did seventy four operations against Europe. Twenty nine of those came on four engine Halifaxes and the forty five came on the Mosquito Pathfinder squadron. That was all continuous but the amazing part of the story really is the amazing change that happened in my career, not of my doing but what the authorities decided to do with me. So I will start by enrolment. I enrolled in what was known as the Volunteer Reserve, the VR, in May 1939 by leaving the office where I was being trained as an accountant and went to London in Embankment and there I was interviewed. First, for fitness to see if I was fit to be considered at all and despite having had appendicitis the year before and having happened on the Saturday morning when the local hospital had no doctor. They just had a student and he made a complete and utter mess of it and the RAF doctors who examined me on the day I enrolled said, ‘You’ll never fly with that wound.’ So I said, ‘Well, don’t be silly because I’ve been playing football and cricket ever since,’ So I said but if you say it, well they gave me such a pummelling I thought they would break it open but they didn’t and in the end they said, ‘Ok. You’re fit to have an interview,’ and my interview took place the same afternoon with an elderly, well ranked, he was an air commodore and all he said to me, ‘I suppose you want to be a pilot.’ I said, ‘Oh no. No. No, I don’t want to be a pilot. I want to be a navigator.’ ‘Why then. I’ve heard about this.’ Heard about navigation. I thought the first step which told me something really important and I said, ‘Well I, I’m interested in all things mathematical,’ I said, ‘I went to a good grammar school. I’ve been in employment for a year. I’m eighteen years of age and I would like to go in and train as a navigator’. Accepted. Then things started to move quite quickly. We had a few lectures in London and then I was posted to what was called ITW the Initial Training Wing and that turned out to be at Bexhill and it didn’t take long to see why. I thought I was fit despite my appendicitis operation but Bexhill pebbles, if you pound up and down Bexhill pebbles you get fit and we were without anything really except training, drilling, guarding at night with broomsticks and that finished with one of the most laughable things I’ve ever heard. It didn’t take long. It was just over two months and we went to the Delaware Pavilion which was quite a famous pavilion in Bexhill and there the chap in charge was once again an elderly, high ranking, I think he was an air commodore too, and at the end of his speech he said to me, ‘You who are about to die, I salute you.’ And I thought we’re back in Roman times. And so there was just dead silence and then muffled laughter and so that was the introduction to the RAF and almost immediately we were posted. We were all going to be navigators so the whole building was filled with would be navigators. That told you something. We were short of navigators and they were trying to redress the balance and we were posted to Scotland to Scone airfield which is just north of Perth. It was a grass airfield and I started in fact about it was there wasn’t one RAF personnel on the station. Not one. The navigation training was given by retired sea captains, the aircraft, which happened to be DH Rapides, de Havilland Rapides, they were flown by retired civil airline pilots over seventy and we did all our training but it was a wonderful training because they were not satisfied, if you didn’t understand they would go over it and over it and over it again to make sure you did and when you were in the air the pilots would respond. For example, would say, ‘Are you lost?’ ‘Yes, I’m lost.’ ‘Well down there is Lord Inverary’s place. I was playing golf there yesterday and you notice a strange building? That’s their home.’ And that was the attitude. I loved it. It was so friendly but those old people, those old sea captains, those old pilots, they were the salt of the earth and so we had a very marvellous training but nothing was skipped and we had a longer training than was normal. But all things come to an end and we left Perth to go to a place in North Wales for bombing and gunnery training. I couldn’t pronounce the name because it was P W L L H E L I which is pronounced Pwhelli. Well, we found out when we got there that that was where we got out and we were met and we were taken for bombing and that was done by old Fairy Battles which had become worn out and open cockpit Demons. Biplanes. So you could see it was using the rubbish really that we had only to use and so that went on and then we left there and, where did we go then? Oh then we went to Penrhos which was for bombing and gunnery and we did have a wooden platform built out on Aberystwyth Bay and you were supposed to try and hit it. Well there was one snag because they were very small bombs that you used because we couldn’t afford to waste any real bombs and I for one couldn’t find anyone who had hit it but so it was. We left there then to come away -
PL: Can I just ask you a little bit more about that?
FC: Yeah.
PL: So you would go up in just that little open -
FC: Cockpit.
PL: And then what? And there would be a bomb dropped from? How did that happen?
FC: Well the bombing was done from the Fairy Battles which were outmoded. They went to France I was going to talk to you about that. They went to France when war broke out and the French had of course, the French, made the fundamental mistake of relying on the Maginot Line but left the end open for the Germans to walk around the end and our 12 squadron, I think it was, were sent and they were literally wiped out. They destroyed a few bridges here and there but that was all. They did no good at all in stopping the advance of the Germans. So there we were and we were at the end of my training and I was posted then to my first operational squadron which I did on 12 squadron and that was on the Oxford Road at Benson. Well it was a crew of three. The pilot was in an open cockpit. He sat up in front. You couldn’t reach him from the inside and at the back was me as navigator facing forward and behind me, back to, was an air gunner/wireless operator with a single Lewis gun with a pan on top and that was our defence. The only other thing that was terrible about it was that if you got down inside to bomb then you had to pull the slide back and right in front of you there was the radiator for the Merlin engine which just about singed your hair off but that was life but of course in a way it was exciting because I was going to France. I was being trained for France and in being posted to Benson they had this off shoot of that to train people to replace the losses in France and that’s how it worked. In the meantime we were utilised. We used to attack our own forces, the military and bomb them or give them experience of low flying aircraft attacking them head on. Well, we didn’t have any bombs and this is perfectly true, we were given bags of flour and they were tied at the neck and we used to drop them over the side and hopefully hit a tank and one day I did. I was the only one who did but I did and it went straight down the turret which was open and the chap standing in it and it covered him with white flour. I never had the skill to do it again but anyway it was good fun. That was then for Benson in its prime but of course all things come to an end and the powers to be soon realised it was a waste of time sending our dilapidated aircraft to France to be shot down like flies by the Germans fighters who were so much better and the French had nothing at all. They pulled 12 squadron back and so I therefore never got further training in 12 squadron. I was then posted to my next move and so - I’m trying to see now what I put down. They decided that in going from Benson I would be well used in training others. I must have been giving a good impression that I had done fairly well because I never, I couldn’t get away from this training others as an instructor and so I was sent to Prestwick and they had a racket going there in my view. I’ve got to be careful what I say. I think I’ll withdraw that Pam because that might have repur but it was run by a private firm and they had one four engine old Fokker, a German plane, fixed undercarriage. It made the noise of twenty five devils when it took off and we crammed forty or fifty pupils in that with a small table to write on and we tried to teach them navigation and it didn’t work. So they then got a few Ansons and that was better. The old lady of the air force who I loved actually. I flew them myself as a navigator and so I was there at Prestwick for a time and then it was obviously costing a lot of money paying this private firm and I was moved down to, lower down the coast of Scotland to, where are we, [pause] oh yes I went then to Penrhos which was a navigation school and there I had a happier time. They were equipped with Ansons mainly and then I was posted yet again to another training place in Scotland and I kept, I was there until, flying Fairy Battles again, which weren’t used in France anymore and the replacements that came back from there. So the accent was always on training. Training, training, training and so in the end I began to get a bit annoyed and I said to the CO of, of the training station look I didn’t come in to the air force to train others. I want to do something for myself. So, at long last I was posted to [pause] forgive me, I went from Prestwick to [?] I was posted to an operational squadron of Lancasters by myself. Now in the air force it’s very dangerous to be on your own. If you’ve got six other blokes you regularly fly with you form a compact seven and you trust each other but to go by yourself, it’s a nasty position to be in but however I went to 106 squadron at Coningsby and the man in charge happened to be Guy Gibson of fame and he said, ‘Well we’ve got a navigator who’s permanently sick, he’s really ill. So,’ he said, ‘I think the chances are he won’t come back and the crew that you will go with are experienced and they will be pleased to have you.’ And I thought wow and would you believe I hadn’t been there for two or three days and I got my first op and that was to Poland so I was chucked in at the deep end and we went to Danzig Bay and we laid five very large mines in the harbour. Very cleverly done too. One mine perhaps would let two ships over before it got, this one would let four ships go over, this one would only allow one to go up so it shut the harbour right down for a very long time till they got them all up. So I thought right [?] and would you believe luck run out again because the first part of the war I had no good luck in it at all. The chap came back from sick. He wasn’t very well but he passed fit for operations so I was out of a job and I said to Gibson, ‘Look. What are we going to do?’ ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’ll fit you into a good crew.’ So I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be the odd bod fitting in an odd place. I want to be posted and pick up a crew of my own and fly with them.’ And so, so he said, ‘Right. I’ll get you posted. Well I was sent back to Prestwick but much to my utter amazement it wasn’t to teach others. I was pulled in to the CO’s office and he said, ‘We’ve got a special job for you.’ ‘Oh what am I going to do?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We are going to ask you to lead formations of the American 8th Air Force from Prestwick down to their bases in East Anglia.’ I said, ‘Why do you do that?’ ‘Because they are getting lost going from Prestwick to East Anglia.’ And I can understand that. Where they were training if they came across a town there can only be one town because there’s no other town near it but when they get over here of course one town merges into the next one and the poor souls they just, they lost some aircraft too. Crashes. And in the end I had a wonderful time with the American 8th Air Force. They’d do anything for me. They supplied my mother, who lived in London, with butter, eggs and that’s what, that’s what they gave me as, ‘Thank you very much.’ So happy times. Here we go. And so having got away from 106 I was then with the 8th Air Force until, again they did get the idea how they could get from Prestwick to East Anglia without having someone to lead. I was given a special aircraft, a B25 Mitchell, a twin engine and a pilot whose name, would you believe it, was Lieutenant John Haig. Now, I liked whisky and here was a chap with a whisky name and we were great friends by the time we parted but parted again. I had to say, ‘Look, this has got to stop. I must, I must get on to a proper squadron and so I got posted to, much to my amazement from 5 group where Gibson was to Yorkshire, 4 group, on Halifaxes and I went to Marston Moor where they had an OTU, an Operational Training Unit and you were there to pick up a crew and well when I found the crew they were short of a navigator and I thought how odd. That’s the second time this has happened to me. What’s the matter with the chap? Well, he’s not the right type. When he gets angry he loses his temper, he breaks all his pencils and says, ‘’m not doing any more navigation.’ Well they were a young crew. A very young crew. I was the oldest at twenty one, I think. Yeah, twenty one, and so anyway we introduced ourselves and we got to the stage where we were doing the last night circuits and bumps, you know, as you do, with an instructor pilot on board. Well, in the Halifax a navigator’s position on take-off is on the rest bed in the middle of the aircraft. It’s simply because his navigation equipment is up front in the nose and so we did two or three. It was in February ’43. A rotten night. Very dark. Windy. They kept changing the runway to suit take-off better and he said to the pilot, I heard him say it, ‘Well you’re not too bad. Do one more then call it a day.’ He got out and we took off. Well, by this time I’d got fed up lying on the rest bed and I decided to do something about it so I said to the mid upper gunner, ‘Look you’ve had your turn. Can we change places? You come and have a rest on the rest bed and I’ll go in your turret and I can at least see what’s going on.’ No problem. ‘Yes, fine.’ He was fed up being up there himself so we took off and then all bad things happened. We were only just off the ground at about five hundred feet possibly when fire broke out in the starboard outer. So you remember the pictures of Concorde with all the gaps and there it was and we, everything was done that could be done. The fire extinguisher was pressed, the fire didn’t go out and it was trailing back and so all I heard at all was somebody said, ‘My God. We’re low,’ and with that there was a big bang and I went out like a light. Now that aircraft happened, by sheer luck, to be landed on a downhill field so it hit, it didn’t dig in, it bounced. The tail section broke off with the tail gunner in it two fields that way. I was thrown out. I didn’t know how, what had happened but I found out after the middle section broke off from the front section and I was catapulted but I had no shoes, no socks, no trousers on, and I was half in and half out of a bush. The rest of it was down another field and burning like fury and I saw one bloke come to the edge but he fell back in and he’d obviously had it. Well, of course this was on Marston Moor. There were no roads on Marston Moor so they could see the fire but they couldn’t get to it but the MO, the Medical Officer, he had a motorbike so he eventually managed it although he came off the motorbike several times. He got to me because when I came around, the reason I came around my feet were in a small pool of burning petrol and it was the pain of that that brought me around but the experience that I had then was bang, but then you’re going down a long, long black shaft and I was saying to myself if I reach the bottom I shall die. If I reach the bottom I shall die but then a voice out of the darkness, ‘Is there anybody there?’ And it was the farmer whose farmhouse we just missed on the way down and I yelled and said, ‘Yes I’m here.’ And he was, he had his small son of about six or seven with him and he picked me up, carried me on his shoulders and took me to his farmhouse. Laid me on the floor. And the MO got to me there and he filled me up with morphine and then of course I went out for a light, well, as a light and I woke up next morning in York Military Hospital lying on a stretcher in the corridor. Then I found I couldn’t move anything this side at all. Everything didn’t work. Legs, arms, shoulders anything, and they were very painful. I then saw the senior medic in York Military and he said, ‘How are you?’ So I said, ‘Terrible.’ I said, ‘What’s happened?’ So he said, ‘Well I’m puzzled by you,’ he said, ‘You haven’t broken a bone in your body. I’ve been all over you,’ he said. So I said, ‘Well what’s happened?’ So he said, ‘Well, what did you do immediately before the crash?’ I said, ‘I was looking at the fire.’ Of course I was. So I turned the turret around to look at it and so we were going that way you see and I was looking this way so I took everything on this side and he said, ‘What has happened is the force of the crash,’ which must have been a hundred and sixty knots or something like that, a hundred and fifty possibly, he said, ‘All your nervous systems have been so pulverised but,’ he said, ‘If you think you’re in pain now it’s nothing to what you will experience when it starts to recover.’ And it was true. It was agony. So I stayed in York Military. I had facial burns, burns to my legs and I was transferred to Rauceby near Ely Burns Hospital and there of course once again luck on my side. They had just got a new technique to deal with burns which applies to this day and they treated me and the only way Joyce could tell subsequently that when I got hot you could see that there was this side. You could see the outline of the fire and the legs too. And so there I was. So I was in hospital for a month and when I came out they said, ‘Go and have some leave.’ I was arrested in London because they thought I was drunk. I was taken to the SP’s hut and I said, ‘Well I’ve just come out of the burns hospital. I can’t put my coat on because I can’t do it.’ He took me into a pub and bought me a half a pint of beer and got me on the train home. So eventually I go back. I go back to Marston Moor.
PL: Did anybody else survive that?
FC: Well there were seven crew members. The tail gunner and I were the two survivors. The other five died. Two on impact and three from their injuries subsequently and it’s on the internet. My daughter-in-law found the account of this and all the pictures on the internet. I couldn’t believe it. I’ve still got it somewhere. Yeah. So back I go to Marston Moor. So I’ve been in the air force quite some time. I haven’t done anything worth talking about so when I got back to Marston Moor it was difficult to believe but they said, ‘Well, we are a navigator short in a crew.’ Ah. So I said, why, why, ‘Why, are they short?’ ‘Well he’s got a bad temper.’ it was exactly -
PL: Same chap?
FC: And I was convinced it was going to happen to me again and so when I saw the crew I’d got from a young innocent crew I’d got, I mean I was the oldest at twenty one and ok I was a bit older now. This was a Canadian pilot and and these people were a different calibre altogether. And to cut a long story short no trouble. We did our training at the OTU and we were posted to 158 on the East Yorkshire coast and that was my introduction to the operational theatre but I’ve wrote down here I’d been in the air force nearly four years and I’d done one op. Poor return. But then of course as so often happens in life things started to get better. We had, we did a full tour on 158 near Bridlington. I got the DFC and the pilot got the DFC for that and I was then posted to an OTU to train others and I thought I’m back to training again and this kept on dogging me. I get pulled in again but mind you to go to Blyton which was near Gainsborough, dreadful place. Wartime airfield. Nissen huts running in condensation. You couldn’t get a dry shirt and so I got very friendly with the adjutant who happened to be a West End actor. Unfortunately, I can’t remember his name now but he was quite somebody to reckon with at the time and he said, ‘Isn’t this a dreadful station?’ I said, ‘Yes it is.’ So he said, ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said, ‘Suppose we put on a show.’ ‘Doing what?’ I said. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I thought of a mannequin parade. We’ve got some lovely, young, beautiful WAAFs. I’ll go to London and I’ll get all the dresses and you write the music,’ ‘cause I used to play a lot in those days. ‘You write the music and there’s a WAAF, there’s a WAAF officer, she’s a good pianist we’ll tune one of the WAAF pianos so we got two pianos and you write the music.’ So I thought, ‘I don’t think I can do that.’ ‘So,’ he said, ‘The first thing you’ve got to do you’ve got to retune the NAFFI piano to match the Grand in the mess. Never try it,’ he said, ‘It drives you nuts.’ However, we did it and there we were and so he went to London and he came back. Well, when he showed me some of these dresses it left nothing to the imagination, Pam and I said, ‘It won’t do,’ I said, ‘You’ll have a riot because,’ I said, ‘The erks at the back, they’ll be on the stage grabbing them.’ So he said, ‘No they won’t. No.’ He, so he said, ‘Let’s give it a try with nobody in attendance.’ Well no we asked the CO to attend. So he said, ‘Well I can’t see anything wrong with it,’ But one girl was a very pretty girl. She took one look at the dress she was going to wear and she said, ‘I’m not wearing that.’ So he said, ‘Look. Nothing will happen. It will be like a graveyard. They will be so mesmerised by you and your,’ well to cut a long story short again it went ahead and it was true there wasn’t a murmur. I concocted something that was [in a Strauss?] nice and easy, bouncy stuff, you know and the WAAF, she was a lovely pianist and we did well there but when the girls came on in these wonderful dresses, I mean they left nothing to the imagination I can assure you, there wasn’t a murmur and they went out to thunderous applause and we then toured the area to the other airfields with it and so the time at this terrible airfield went quite well. But again I wasn’t happy because I had to go around the night skies with these to make sure they were doing alright and sometimes when I saw them do I thought, ‘Oh dear. You won’t last long.’ And so I thought to myself, ‘I must get out of this somehow.’ How am I going to do it? Well I had a particular friend at Bomber Command Headquarters in York and so I phoned him up and said, ‘What have you done with my application for Mosquito Pathfinders?’ ‘Oh I didn’t know you’d sent one in, Fred.’ ‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘It’s been in a long time.’ I said, ‘I thought you were craving for navigators,’ because what they were doing they were taking pilots who’d got through the initial training, hadn’t done much flying, but putting in an experienced navigator with him. Only a crew of two you see and that made it compact but I said, ‘Well see what you can do.’ He came back to me and said, ‘I found your application.’ I hadn’t sent one in so he was lying in his teeth. So I said, ‘I’m so pleased. When can I go?’ So I said, ‘Like tomorrow?’ ‘Well if you want to go that quickly.’ So I did. I went the next day and I went to Warboys just near Huntingdon and there they were all being selected. Sprog pilots with experienced navigators and they would have had to have done a tour on something to be considered. Well, in that group of inexperienced pilots was a chap that worked in the same office as me in peacetime and who I knew very well and so it was obvious. I phoned his wife before I went and I said, ‘When is Mark coming down?’ ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. He’d been training at Lossiemouth in North Scotland and so we met and I saw the chap who was dealing with the matching. I said, ‘Look, I know him very well. Is it alright with you?’ ‘Yes. You take him.’ So my crew was established. Now, he wasn’t a particularly good pilot to start with. He became one and I was well satisfied with him and we did forty five trips as Pathfinders and of course with Pathfinders you’ve got radar. I had two types of radar. Gee in the nose and H2S up here. Do you know what I’m talking about? No. Well a Gee is a two wireless stations transmission of beam and you’ve got an oscilloscope and you measure the strength of each beam and where they meet that’s where you are. So that was the simple thing. The H2S is something quite different. This was a scanning machine which rotated a hundred and twenty degrees like that in the nose and you could illuminate any building ahead of you to a hundred and twenty degrees wide. You couldn’t take a back bearing. If you’d gone past it you couldn’t do it but with H2S, H2S is the symbol for hydrogen sulphide isn’t it? You know, bad eggs. I mean somebody had a sense of humour and so those two, navigation I was always fascinated by. In fact I loved what I was doing and but mind you the Mosquito, a lovely aircraft and I’ve listened people say marvellous aircraft and I think to myself, ‘Yes, it was,’ but it was, it had it drawbacks. For example, it was so cold. The engines could never give you enough warmth. They gave you a pipe which were supposed to stuff up your trouser leg, you know, to preserve your manhood sort of thing but it was only a trickle of warmth and at the blister at the side, thick ice, that thick. But the windscreen always freezed [they covered that?] But again no toilet. Now if you fly for five hours in freezing cold there’s things happen to the human body and the pilot had a tube between his legs, it came up as a nozzle here and the navigator had to try and get it down there but you know nobody worried about that because it was a wonderful aircraft to fly and so we developed our own skills there because when he came it was bumps-a-daisy for landing. He couldn’t get it right and so I said, ‘Well I think it’s too much to ask. You’re having to do too many things. I’ll do some of them. For example I’ll put the wheels down. I’ll put the flaps down. I’ll call out the airspeed.’ And, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Would you?’ I said, ‘Oh yeah.’ And we even gravitated to when we were on our way back having bombed and marked oh and by the way the radar screen, you always took a picture of it and if it wasn’t a picture of the target you didn’t get it, you didn’t get credited. It was tough. The WAAF officers used to develop it and in the morning when you came down from your sleep they had a big blackboard and there was the target and your ribbon, you know, O-Orange that’s your picture and if you had a picture of a herd of cows you weren’t there and you didn’t get it. So you had to work for your points. So there it was and that went on and on. There was never any talk of giving up because in Pathfinders once you got, you know your special brevvy as you did. It shows you in the picture there you never talked about giving up. You just went on. I’m sure, we had one bloke who did flip and he was found at 2 o’clock in the morning walking around the perimeter track and it was too much. But he went to hospital, he came back and finished his tour. Yes, it’s amazing what people did in those days and so I continued with him and I actually went on the last raid of the war which was in 1945 to Kiel where the Germans had set up their puppet government and do you now that was one of the worst trips I’ve ever experienced because there was nothing happening. No searchlights, no flak, nothing. It was eerie but I kept on thinking, ‘What if the engines pack up? The last war raid that’s likely to be. War is going to be cancelled tomorrow and I get shot down. I ditch in the North Sea.’ And it wasn’t until I saw the lovely cluster of searchlights that always appeared on the English east coast to welcome you home I thought, ‘Oh isn’t it lovely.’ Now, you would think that was the end of my career because the war had finished. I had done, as I said to start with, a thousand hours flying. More than a thousand hours flying. I’d done seventy four trips and I had done six and a half years’ service but no when the war finished myself and one other chap were given a weeks leave. It looked perfectly normal, perfectly normal. I said, ‘Oh that’s very nice.’ And of course I knew my co very well. I was friends with him after the war and he said, ‘Go and enjoy it. Go and enjoy it. You’ve earned it.’ You know. I should have twigged that something was in the wind but I didn’t. I had a nice weeks leave. I was reunited ‘cause we weren’t married then. We knew each other. We’ve known each other ever since babies because our mothers were great friends so we will be married sixty seven years and we are now in our sixty eighth year and so I called on her. We had a lovely weeks leave. And it was that that started it ‘cause I said, ‘Oh we must do more of this,’ you know, and we were married within six months or so and [laughs] when I got back from leave I saw the same CO and he said, ‘You’re posted.’ ‘Oh yes? Where to? Somewhere nice?’ ‘Oh yes. Very nice,’ he said. So I said, ‘Where?’ ‘Italy,’ he said. ‘Italy? But the war’s over.’ ‘Well I’m sorry. You’ve been chosen.’ ‘Am I going by myself?’ ‘No. We’re sending a pilot with you so the two of you are going.’ ‘Mosquitos?’ ‘Yes.’ I thought this is all very fishy. So he said, ‘But you’ll have to go by boat.’ To Italy. So off we went the very next day to Morecambe. We got on the Empress of India or a boat of that ilk and it took us a couple of weeks to get to Naples but right out to Atlantic and down the Med and into Naples and there I was met and billeted near the base of Mount Vesuvius. Nice, nice billet provided you remembered to walk on the duck boards because if you walked on the sand it took the skin off your feet because it was so hot. So, anyway, I was met by the duty officer and he said, ‘We’ve got you all lined up,’ he said, ‘Stay the night here and we’ll get the train to the airfield.’ ‘Train?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Don’t you know where you’re going?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘You’re going to Foggia,’ which is right in the middle of Italy towards the south. Oh well. Anyway, on the way in the train I was very lucky. I’ve been lucky too because I sat in the same compartment with two army officers who had been on leave and had been in the area and they were starting to ask questions, ‘First time out old boy?’ you know, he says. Well they could tell by my knees ‘cause my knees were white. I said, ‘Yes. I’ve just come.’ ‘Oh. Have you got a gun?’ So I said, ‘Well yes but it’s in my kit bag.’ I’d never had any reason to fire a gun. So, he said, ‘Well get it out and load it and always wear it,’ he said. So I said, ‘Why? What’s happening?’ He said, ‘Well it’s very very dangerous out here,’ because they had literally got to starvation by the end of the war and they were ripe to take anybody’s food, clothing, transport or anything. And so I had [?] at Naples airfield. I had Foggia in the middle and I had Bari airfield on the east coast. The Adriatic coast. And so he said, ‘I’ve been detailed to give you two days run around the area.’ So I said, ‘Oh well that’s something. Yeah.’ So he said, ‘But do come prepared. You must wear your gun and you must be prepared.’ He said, ‘Never stop for anybody.’ ‘Never stop for anybody?’ ‘No. Like this,’ he said and out in front was a small village and out of a side turning came a poor old chap. He must have been fifty or sixty on a very rickety bike and he deliberately drove in front of us. So I expected him to stop. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘This is it. Don’t take him on. He’s not what he seems to be.’ I said, ‘What are you going to do?’ ‘I’m going to run him over.’ And he, well he tried but that chap was off that bike so nimbly we went over the bike but we didn’t go over him and of course all his cohorts were -
PL: Hiding.
FC: Behind the wall. And the other trick was to get the girls to pull their skirts up on the mountain roads all by themselves you see but the blokes were all behind the wall and it was very dangerous. And that was after the war had finished. And so that went on and by then I realised I had the most wonderful job I’ve ever had in my life. Never mind about air force. My job, I was in charge of three airfields. The three I’ve mentioned. Naples, Foggia and Bari and in each airfield there was a marshalling area for all, any kind of military personnel who was due to go home for leave, demob or whatever and my job was to get the aircraft from this country to these three airfields to take them there and I could, I had a very powerful radio station. I could order seven hundred aircraft at the drop of a hat. The power. It was marvellous, you know. You don’t, you can’t believe you’ve got that power and there they were all coming into the three places. The colonel or the major in charge of the army camps, they got all the details ready and they were loaded on the aircraft and they all came back to this country. You couldn’t do better than that. I could have made a fortune because everybody wanted to get on the planes but of course they had to take their time. I only did it once and that was because a chap came in, came to see me in the administration building where I was and he said, ‘Can you help me get home out of turn?’ I said, ‘No.’ I dare not do it. ‘Everybody is allotted a day. I can’t do it. Why should you be so particular?’ ‘Well,’ he said, he looked embarrassed for a minute, he said, ‘I’ll be frank with you,’ he said, ‘My girlfriend lives in Milan, she’s pregnant and she’s going to have a baby tomorrow. Now, if you could drop me off tomorrow I can be with her when she has the baby.’ Well, I didn’t know what to do but one of the Lancs that came in I knew the pilot very well and I said to him, ‘Do you think you can sneak a landing at Milan, drop my bloke off and take off like the hounds of hell were after you?’ He said, ‘I’ll do it.’ And that chap gave me a travelling American suitcase so you could take all your gear and it never creased and that was the only thing I ever got out of it. And then it all finished when my number came up ‘cause I had a very early number having been in so early. I found that it was my turn to go and I thought well this time I will get a Mosquito to take me home. No. All the RAF effort was controlled from Caserta in Northern Italy and they told me point blank, ‘I’m Sorry. You’ve got to go home on the train.’ Anyway, we had an Italian train allotted to us, no windows because they’d all been blown out and this was December. Bitterly cold. And the only thing that saved my life was I met my old batman and he had a primus and so he made tea every half hour. I had a stinking cold. I think I almost had pneumonia and he kept us going on that. When we got to Milan we changed trains to the Swiss railway. Lovely. Oh luxury and at every station we stopped at, ‘We hope you will come and have your holidays here.’ You know. Well listen to this when we got to the French border it was the smallest tank engine I’ve seen in my life and it had to pull this whole long train to Calais. Well it had to stop every hour to fill more water in the thing but eventually we got to Calais and, as I say, up to Birmingham for demob and that in a nutshell is my story.
PL: What an extraordinary story.
FC: Yeah.
PL: What an extraordinary story.
FC: It is. I mean could put all sorts of fine detail on it but I think it would spoil it because I think, it’s a true story. I have a job reading my notes so I stumbled a bit here and there but what it taught me was and I only got to this conclusion when I had finished putting these notes together for you. It was obvious to me that they had singled me out to be of the utmost use in training others. They weren’t interested in me getting on to an operational squadron. They’d much rather get the through pull of dozens of fellows. Much better return on paper. Yeah. But then you see four years in. One op. Six and a half, seventy four ops. So they all came in the end but they were the killing years. 1943 was dreadful. I mean the losses were so high. I mean, you could sit and have your eggs and bacon before you took off. When you came back sometimes there wouldn’t be one crew on the table. There was one table. The losses yeah. And touches still come flooding back because on Mosquitos they were really some of the elite if you like. I mean they were blokes with long flying experience because pilots had caught up a bit now. The navigators had been at it a long time. We lost some. We lost one or two perhaps a week. Never found out why. But of course Gibson himself had been killed in a Mosquito, but that was a boob. That was his navigator killed him but he changed over the wrong petrol tank. Still not many people know that. But -
PL: Sorry, what did he do? He changed over the tanks?
FC: Sorry?
PL: He changed over the tanks.
FC: Changed, yeah, the navigator had to do that.
PL: Right.
FC: Because the cocks, he sat in his seat here. The cocks were down there.
PL: Right.
FC: Now, it was very easy, so it was an unwritten rule that the navigators and of course when we were flying Mosquitoes we used, there were drop tanks underneath the wings, papier mache. There was two tanks in the wings and two tanks in the centre piece. Two tanks there. Now if you weren’t careful you had a couple of pints in that one, a couple of pints in this one, a couple of pints in that one. If you were caught when you got brought back ‘cause the weather had closed in you had it all over the place. You didn’t want that so we used to drain every tank dry so ok the drop tanks cause you would jettison those. They were made of papier mache you wouldn’t get a second and then move to the wings because that’s where the shells were going through and you would have fire so drain those and leave it so the centre section ‘cause if you were hit in the centre section you were, you were gone anyway and so we worked that out so we always had every drop of petrol, when we were coming in to land and coming out of markers and watching the beacons we had all our fuel in one place so if we were diverted because the weather packed up, we didn’t get too many. I think the met people did a wonderful job during the war. Far better than they do now sometimes and so petrol in one place. In the heavies you learned the hard way. Now we were raw recruits in East Yorkshire but it wasn’t long before you realised that if you stayed straight and level over there somebody would creep underneath you and - so don’t stay still but move to the side a bit. Get somebody else to take your place. And we and I was the main instigator in this sort of thing. I used to think about these things and say, ‘Well don’t do it.’ It’s a bit of a drudgery you know and of course you had to do it if you saw a fighter. You corkscrewed then but, but I think so many of the crew that were pushed in to these four engine Lancs and the Halifaxes they hadn’t had enough training and that didn’t get put right until 1944 when, of course, the German air force was marvellously organised. Their radar was every bit as good as ours but they used it for a totally different purpose. We used radar to find a target, they used the radar to find you. And they did. And they had directly you crossed their coast they were then saying, ‘Well, where’s he going? Where are they going? Are they going that way or that way or that way,’ and they had got everything organised to pass you on and they did. Pass you on box to box and that’s how it went and one thing that I shall never forgive the RAF for in 1943, round about September, October time, I suppose it was obvious something new was happening because you got these terrible explosions in the sky and it was obviously an aircraft blowing up and you thought well why are they getting so many? Well, we found out afterwards but the RAF said it was because the Germans were firing decoy shells which exploded and made it look like an aircraft going down but when you’re near it you can see it’s an aircraft going down. And that was dreadful because it was so many.
PL: So why were they saying that? Was that just about morale?
FC: Well just to get you, yes it was. That’s to stop you sort of getting the wind up. But as I said at the time when you’re looking at it you’re in no doubt what it is. Yeah. Yeah. And they were red hot. I only had one dodgy time on the Mosquitos because they were so fast they had to be in the position to catch you. And so what they did was as standard we went to Berlin more often than not because we had two types of oboe squadron. Mosquito squadrons. I had one type of radar and the other type of Mosquito had a different type of radar which was used for the Ruhr Valley because the Ruhr Valley was always covered in smoke and dust from the manufacturing. You couldn’t find it and so they controlled the Mosquito entirely from take-off. They took off, set course and they would give them changes of direction and they would even get you in a line which went right through the target and tell you when to drop [targets?] whereas we had to find them and in our case the Germans knew what we were at because the best way to find a target is to identify something near it or comparatively near it which you could see on radar and radar picks out buildings or more particularly, water. So if you go over a big lake you can see it because there is no response at all from water and so the great lakes north west of Berlin and about a twelve minute run in to Berlin stood out on the radar and it was a dead reckoning and so once you got there and took the line, altered course, twelve minutes you were there. You couldn’t miss but they put all their fighters around the great lakes and one of them was educated in this country and he would come on our frequency, he got our frequency taped and he would say, ‘Good evening gentlemen. You’re a little late this evening but we can see you all right,’ because we were the end of the contrail of course and they were up above us because they had the super chargers ME109Fs. They were up above. They could see our contrails. We had three markers per target so the three of us were very close together. They made a lot of contrails dead stick and they would come down, they could dive, they could get the speed to catch them but they had to get us first shot otherwise they were gone through us and they would never catch us up again but, but he would talk to you all the way. He would talk to you all the way in and say, you know, ‘Just stay like that, we’ve got that,’ and he –
PL: So they were really really -
FC: Yes.
PL: Messing with your heads and -
FC: Oh yeah. It was a war of psychology really, you know. He knew exactly how to ruffle people. Yeah. Yeah. And he would talk to you like that.
PL: So, so -
FC: But there is about the story of my RAF life.
PL: It’s just an extraordinary story. It really is. Do, do, I get the impression then that you, did you feel safer in the Mosquitos?
FC: Oh it was so much faster. Yeah
PL: Did you sort of feel in control of the situation more?
FC: A German fighter could outrun you but only in the diving mode so they used the height to catch you and of course we were flying, we always flew at twenty six and a half thousand. Don’t ask me why. Someone at the air ministry rather thought that’s a large figure so they won’t dream of, but always twenty six and a half thousand. Sometimes somebody would say alright we’ll make it thirty thousand but very rare and of course we were, time and time again the target was Berlin because we didn’t need any escort. No escort could keep up with us and so we always went the same way across the north German plains and came back the same way taking bearings on Hamburg, Mannheim and all those places as they came up on the radar screen. Yeah. Yeah
PL: I’ve heard a lot about the relationships within the crews and you talked a little bit about that earlier on.
FC: Yeah.
PL: With that dreadful crash but on base did you, I mean obviously you were in pairs in the Mosquito. Did you all socialise together and form relationships or -
FC: Well in my case because I knew Mark Wallace so well we shared a room. Didn’t have to. You were just allotted a room. We had batwomen instead of batmen by then of course [?] but they were the salt of the earth. They would defend you so that you got some sleep and they would make up their own boards and put them, “Quiet. Operational crew sleeping.” And they’d do your uniform and oh they were the salt of the earth. I always had a tremendous affection for them because they were all in the forty to fifty group, years of age, yeah but they wouldn’t take anything for the, you know, extras. Go treat yourself to something. No. They wouldn’t do that. No. They were really wonderful and of course again we were lucky here ‘cause whereas the Yorkshire one was a wartime airfield I can tell you something about that too but you might want to pack up. Upwood was a peacetime camp so it was all beautifully laid out and the mess was all brick built, everything was brick built. It’s still there. It’s just a massive American hospital now. Not working except for the local airfields. They treat any airmen from their local airfield but it’s there to deal with a calamity like, you know, a multiple train crash or something.
PL: So where is that?
FC: It’s just outside of a place called Ramsey which is just near Huntingdon.
PL: Right.
FC: Yeah.
PL: Right.
FC: And the airfield is called Upwood and it’s still there. I’ve been there. I was taken there by the mayor and of course they wouldn’t leave me alone. They’d say, ‘Was it like this when you were here?’ I said, ‘Yeah. Oh you changed that,’ or, you know, and then you get a magnificent meal you know, oh dear that was a lovely time. George came with me and of course the mayor was one of the, well he wasn’t a real relative but he, we were very great friends and he said well I’ll take you there. I’m invited to bring friends and so I did. Yeah.
PL: Lovely.
FC: Yeah.
PL: Tell me about the Yorkshire airfield.
FC: Well, it was, as the name suggests, a wartime airfield. It was built probably in late part of 1941 or thereabouts and it was all nissen huts except for the control tower. That was made of brick. And it’s another odd thing about my time in the RAF I was always, a squadron normally has two flights A and B. Sometimes, if they’re big enough they have C as well but normally it’s A and B and never, never was in A. I was always in B and I placed some importance to that because I thought I want to be in B for luck. And so as it was a poor airfield you can guess I was a bit of a rogue in those days I got back one morning about half past two in the morning. We’d had our debriefing and so on and we went back to the nissen hut and I thought, ‘Oh this is awful.’ Running in condensation. Well I had -
PL: This is the Yorkshire airfield.
FC: Yeah. Yeah.
PL: So, different from the one down in -
FC: Huntingdon.
PL: Bladon, Bladon, Was it Bladon near -
FC: Blyton.
PL: Blyton yes. Where you had the show.
FC: Yes.
PL: Right.
FC: No that was pretty stark.
PL: Right. Yeah. Ok. Fine.
FC: So that was alright. But I wasn’t flying this particular night and I missed the last bus back to the airfield. That’s me, you know. So I thought, ‘What do I do?’ I gave myself up. I went to the local police station. ‘Can I sleep in one of your cells?’ And they said, ‘No. We can’t do that. That’s for locking up prisoners.’ So I said, ‘Well, what am I going to do?’ ‘Oh, that’s no trouble. If you go along the main road to,’ I can’t remember the square number but it was Beaconsfield Terrace, ‘And the second house as you go in, ask for Mrs Wilson.’ I said, ‘What will she do?’ ‘She’ll give you a bed for the night and breakfast in the morning in time to get the bus back.’ So I said, ‘Really?’ So I went there. I trudged down to Beaconsfield Terrace. I saw this lovely Yorkshire grandmother she was and she looked at me and she said, ‘My God you’re thin.’ Well of course I was. I hadn’t long been out of hospital. I’d been flying on ops as well. So, ‘Come in. We’ll have to get some flesh on you,’ she said. And she took to me like and she, I stayed at Mrs Wilson’s so I had an arrangement from then on. I thought well if I can do it this far I can go a bit further. As the adjutant, I always made a friend of the adjutant because he’s the all-powerful admin. So I said to him, ‘Look, can we have an arrangement? If I phone you and say its Fred here you can tell me if I’m wanted back or not and if you say no I’ll stay in Bridlington and I’ll get the afternoon bus.’ So he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘What if it changes?’ I said, ‘Well I’ll leave you a number to ring just in case something pops.’ It worked like a charm. I was never let down by the adjutant. I never got caught. I used to get the afternoon bus in and she fed me up. I used to have hot milk and whisky at eleven in the morning. No charge. And she used to make the life of the butcher on the corner of the square a misery because, ‘Look at him. Look. He’s hardly got a bit of flesh on him. Give him something.’ And do you know that continued after the war.
PL: Really.
FC: Joyce and I, we were married by now. We used to go up there for holidays.
PL: How lovely. Whereabouts was that in Yorkshire?
FC: Bridlington.
PL: And this was at Bridlington.
FC: Yeah.
PL: You said about Bridlington.
FC: Yes. In the main square. Yeah.
PL: Fantastic.
FC: Yes lovely, lovely women she was. My boys she used to call us. My boys. I had two brothers. One was in the navy on North Atlantic convoys on the, on one of the small, I forget what they called them now, small boats. Terrible time. My eldest brother was too old to serve as a combatant. He was, he was put in, some sort of officer in charge of a prisoner of war camp in Cornwall so he had a lovely war did my brother, Harry. Of course they’re all dead now. Everybody’s dead. But er but we met once only. My brother Bob and he come up with his wife. Yeah. Stayed at Mrs Wilson’s of course. He had the front bedroom on the first floor. Now, Mrs Wilson had one weakness. Her drink was port and brandy. I thought that’s a killer. I couldn’t take it. I’ve never been very good at strong drink. I like a whisky with lemonade. That’s the sort of stuff I like. And so she said, ‘We’ll have a celebration.’ So, ‘righto,’ my brother was there with his wife. The whole of my crew. Now the whole of my crew were all younger than me and she bought them all a port and brandy. Well you can imagine what it did to these kids. I mean at twenty three now, I was, I was the oldest. They were out like lights so they all went to bed early. We heard them all collapse on the bedroom floor. Somebody went up and put them to bed but the thing I always remember with some amusement my brother was just an ordinary sailor, a matlow as they called them. Never try and undress a sailor because we couldn’t get, his wife and I we were so convulsed with laughter we put him to bed in his uniform in the end because we couldn’t get it off. But they were the good times. Yeah. Yeah.
PL: And he survived the war. Your brother. That was in the navy.
FC: He survived the war. Yes. Yes. He was never caught by a submarine or anything and he did it all the war. Backwards and forward to the States. Yeah. Bore a charmed life. Yeah. Harry was -
PL: Talking about the lucky, about being lucky, being lucky, the B squadron was lucky. Did lots of you, were you, were you sort of superstitious in that way? Was there a sort of -
FC: I think everybody -
PL: Did people have charms.
FC: Flying is superstitious really. You, for example you would never dream of dressing to fly except in one way. For example, you always put something on first and then something on second and if you do it wrong you’d strip, start again. I’ve done that. I’ve done that a dozen times. Never change that. No.
PL: How funny.
FC: Yeah and you get an affection for a particular aircraft. That’s the funny thing you see. You know, I had an amazing experience. We had an [laughs] am I boring you?
PL: Not at all.
FC: Oh. Because we had great losses in 1943 and our replacement aircraft used to be flown in by little girls dressed in a beautiful white uniform and they had the time of their lives because they always stayed the night in the mess and then they were picked up. Nobody asked any questions and so and they were right royally entertained but now and again a particular aircraft, I nearly always flew in O-Orange or P-Peter and one of those photographs is O-Orange.
PL: What does O-Orange and P-Peter mean?
FC: Well, each, each aircraft has its squadron letters which in, in Yorkshire was NP but then on the other side of the roundel that was on all our aircraft the NP was on the left of the roundel but the letter of the aircraft was on the right. So you, A flight was from A to H, I think it was, and then B flight was from say L to, no, yeah L to Z and so you identified yourself as you were coming in. You’d say O-Orange
PL: Right. Right, I see.
FC: So, you see, they knew who you were. But we had one occasion which, it really accentuated superstition because the little girl brought the aircraft in. There was three of them. They brought in three Halifaxes from the factory but we were operating that night and we were one aircraft short so we had to bring one of these new arrivals in to the raid and it happened to be the one that was given to us because our own aircraft had been so badly damaged it couldn’t fly and I said, ‘What’s its letter?’ It hadn’t got a letter. It had just come from the factory. It’s got a squadron letter NP but no individual because they didn’t know what it was going to be. Well, I said, ‘Well that’s alright. We’ll call her O-Orange. So we did. We thought of her as O-Orange. That aircraft flew like a gem. It was fast. It was trouble free. It gave us no trouble. We had no trouble finding the target. We had no trouble with enemy fighters. Everything was perfect. I said, ‘We’ll keep this one.’ So we all went to bed. When we came down to the flight offices there’s the chap in charge of maintenance said, ‘Sorry about your aircraft.’ I said, ‘What aircraft?’ ‘Well, the one you flew last night.’ ‘Yes. Wonderful aircraft. We want to keep it.’ ‘It’s finished.’ ‘Finished?’ I said. ‘It will never fly again.’ I said, ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s got a major fault in it.’ For that one raid it didn’t show it. Anyway, it was loaded on a Queen Mary vehicle and taken away in one piece. It never flew again. It was broken up and made into another one.
PL: Good gracious.
FC: I know. And that convinced me -
PL: So that had two flights.
FC: Just that one.
PL: It was delivered and then it went on the raid. How extraordinary.
FC: Extraordinary isn’t it? Yeah. But people did have a, did get a love, it was always a kind of love anyway, you know because for example in the Mosquitos we had one old timer. It was, it was operational but it didn’t have all the modern amendments. For example, the windows at the side were flat whereas in the new version it had big blisters so you could see backwards and that poor thing it kept on going and going and going but I never liked it and we were sitting at the end of runway waiting to take off. It was dark. It was a night take off and S-Sugar it was, with the side windows flat was sitting in front of us. As was the first one to take off in front of us and we saw it go down the runway, we saw him lift off but then the tail lights started to do this and he, obviously something terrible happened to it and it went straight out of control, straight in to the bomb dump of another airfield. Boom. Nobody knew what happened. Poor Mark said, ‘What on earth was that?’ I said, ‘Don’t worry about a thing. Just concentrate on what you’re doing.’ Yeah. So, yeah, poor old S-Sugar had a poor end. Yeah.
PL: Goodness me.
FC: I could tell you a story. One more story about the Mosquitos. Now, our, our losses of course were so little compared to the big ones. After all we had two fellows to lose instead of seven, for one thing and of course the big ones were much more vulnerable. Well, on this particular occasion we had marked very successfully. A lovely picture on the screen showed we were right on the dot and we, the bomb doors shut, pictures taken and dive and turn to come home and we were coming back across the north German plains at about twenty two thousand, something like that ‘cause we were gradually losing height and picking up a bit of extra speed and I started to feel very uncomfortable. I’ve told so many writers about this it’s almost as if I, you know, it happened yesterday. Well, I said to Mark, ‘Is everything alright?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Let’s have a good check all around. You check yours and I’ll check mine.’ Couldn’t find anything so I thought, well, sat down, got on with my work and this feeling came back. I said to Mark, ‘There’s something wrong here. I know what I’ll do.’ We had a little extra astrodome and if you got your head into it you could see backwards so I said, ‘I’ll have a good look around. Perhaps somebody’s on our tail somewhere.’ Anyway, I got under the astrodome and I had wonderful eyesight in those years. I could see things in the dark that most people couldn’t which I’ve now lost of course, completely and I said, ‘Well I can’t find anything, Mark,’ and I sat down but as I sat down something down there caught my eye. I couldn’t see it when I tried to see it so I thought, ‘I know. I’ll wait for my eyes to get adjusted here and I’ll look again,’ and there about a thousand feet down but flying the same course was a single engined plane. Couldn’t be mine. Couldn’t be one of ours. We had no single engines during that so it was obviously one of these 109Fs and so I said, ‘I’ve got him.’ I said, ‘I can see him now.’ ‘What’s he doing?’ he said, I said, ‘Well he’s not doing anything. He’s just flying parallel to us about a thousand feet down,’ but I then began to notice he was getting a little bit closer all the time. Very, very, very slowly. And I said, ‘Oh I know what he’s going to do. He’s going to get as close as he dare and then he’ll come up, firing as he comes up.’
PL: Underneath. Yeah.
FC: So I said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Let’s turn around and go back into Germany.’ ‘What?’ he said. I said, ‘Let’s turn right around and go right around and go back into Germany for three or four minutes. Then come back on the course again.’ Exactly what we did. I sat down. I felt quite comfortable but in a few minutes the feeling was back and so was he. He’d done exactly the same as we had. So I thought this is no, no pupil here this is a really experienced bloke and this time he was definitely closer. So I said, ‘Now, get ready now Mark. Do the same again but dive. Stuff the nose right down,’ and as I said that up he was coming and as we turned he came and he was firing but of course we’d dropped out of his firing range. He gave up after that and I knew he’d given up ‘cause I felt fine. So I think you do get senses of things. Yeah. No more trouble. I said, ‘He’s gone Mark. We can proceed.’ And that’s I think I could bore you to death if I carried on.
PL: No. It’s, absolutely, honestly it has been fascinating hearing you. Really. Are there any other stories you want to share?
FC: Pardon?
PL: Are there any other stories you want to share?
FC: Well, I suppose the story that haunts me all my life, has done and still does, is when I crashed on Marston Moor because I think I was half dead. When I was going down, when we hit there was this colossal bang and blackness and I was out but I was conscious, no, I was aware that I appeared to be going down a long black shaft. Not terribly fast but I was saying to myself, ‘If I reach the bottom I shall die,’ and I’m convinced that had I reached the bottom and been conscious when I did I would have died. So I have no fear of death at all. None at all. I mean we often talk about it, Joyce and I. She’s ninety four. I’m ninety five. I’m ten months older than her and we talk about it. Now, what we have done we have decided we will not go into a home so we’ve persuaded our daughter who has a lovely house in Royston, a big house, to build on it a suite for us and we’ll pay for it. Now, it’s all been done. We have stayed in it. It’s a little bit smaller than we had hoped because when they started to build they had to do something in the building of whatever and so it is a little bit smaller but it’s beautifully done and so when one of us goes the survivor, when all the battels are cleared up will go and live with our daughter and I’ve got the most wonderful family in the world.
PL: How lovely.
FC: My daughter and son are and their spouse’s, well, no I’ll qualify that. No. One of the, my daughter’s husband is an absolute gem. He’s just like a son to me. I say my two boys. Yeah. My son’s wife is not so easy but she’s alright but I often think of that time and I’ll never forget it. It comes back to me. Yeah. And to think that you could survive. Just think, you’re coming down and you hit the ground at about a hundred and sixty miles an hour. That breaks off, the next bit breaks off and the front stays there, huge fire and I’m out here somewhere in a bush. No socks, no shoes, no trousers.
PL: And if you hadn’t have gone up into the top -
FC: Ah that’s the point. If I hadn’t have asked that chap to change places with me I would have been where he was and I would have been flying up from there as I was but he died in my position and he was quite glad to do it because he was bored to tears of course. He’d done it three times already. He didn’t want to do it a fourth time, ‘Yes,’ so we changed over. I actually saw the fire start because, you know, you’ve got your big cupola turret. I happened to be looking down and saw the first globule of flame and I thought, ‘That’s odd.’ Then suddenly there was a long streamer of fire and going back toward the tail end and so I called him up and I said, ‘I think we’ve got a problem with the starboard outer.’ ‘Oh good gracious. Yes,’ turned the petrol off but one thing ‘cause the chap who was CO was Cheshire. Leonard Cheshire. He was my CO at Marston Moor and he said, ‘Well what did you do?’ I said, ‘Well in the front they did everything right except for one thing. They did not feather the prop,’ So the prop was windmilling and dragging that wing down and that did it. And the fire of course did the rest, you know, but they were so inexperienced. They had very little flying between them.
PL: But it’s amazing that you dared go back up again. Were you not terrified when you went back in to the air?
FC: Well I, when I went back to Marston Moor and they told me they’d got another crew whose navigator [laughs] I thought, ‘Oh no. I can’t take that again.’
PL: No. No. No
FC: So I thought, ‘Oh well.’ But of course you can’t refuse. I mean you’re under control from the air force and, but when I saw them I thought well these are a different kettle of fish and the chap, the Canadian pilot, he had hands like ham bones. You know. When he got hold of the [cold column?] he dwarfed it but even then he hadn’t got these [?] you see. It was his first trip and it could have gone so badly wrong because on the first trip which they gave you always what was called a gardening trip. A gardening trip. What do you mean by a gardening trip? Laying mines. And so three newcomers to the squadron took off together on this night and we were going across Denmark in to the Kattegat and putting the mines down in the shipping lanes. Well, there were only three of us flying from that squadron that night and we were the last to get off and the other two were on our left so we were following here but they kept on drifting further and further left and my pilot kept on giving a touch on the rudders to follow them and I said, ‘Don’t do that. They’re not right.’ Drifting away, ‘They’re not on track.’ He did, well he didn’t know me so I got set up but when it got dark he couldn’t see them so I gave him an alteration of course, brought him back where I knew he ought to be and we found Terschelling Island which was the turning point, went over the point of the island, into the Kattegat, down the lanes, no problem at all. Back again to Terschelling Island, home and we were home and in the debriefing room all finished. No sign of the other two. I thought, ‘Oh dear, we haven’t lost them already have we?’ Anyway, they turned up very very late, they had got lost and then been chased up and down the Norwegian coast by fighters but they got away with it but that taught me a lesson so I said to Smith, the pilot, ‘If you ever do that to me again I’ll finish with you.’ I said, ‘I’m navigating. If I say you ought to turn right, turn right.’ If I’d have said it’s raining cats and dogs outside he’d have believed me from then on and they all got their commissions in turn and it was an all commissioned crew in the end.
PL: How wonderful.
FC: Yeah. Yeah.
PL: And that’s photograph that you showed me.
FC: Yes. That’s the photograph. Yeah.
PL: So, what, so what was the relationship like between navigator and pilot then? Was that -
FC: Ah well you had to have good relationship. I mean when you think of a pilot what is he doing? He’s sitting in a seat. He’s strapped in as tight as he can be. He’s staring into the dark, darkness. He can see all the terrible things that are going on. Aircraft going down in flames and so on you know but he’s got to what his instruments and so he doesn’t, and the compasses. His job is just to do what he’s told and do it well but then of course you’ve got to think about other things because the Germans devised the JU88 and also the ME110 where they, underneath, no on the top of their aircraft they had upward firing cannon. It was called schragemusik. You may have heard of it?
PL: Ahum.
FC: Well of course what they did was if you got a bloke flying along straight and level they’d come along underneath. The gunners couldn’t see him unless he did, the aircraft was doing something like and then he would manoeuvre his German aircraft out, to right or left, it wouldn’t matter and he would fire into the wing where all the petrol was. Boom. Gone. If you manoeuvred he’d let you go because he could find somebody who won’t and I got very friendly with a number of German night fighter pilots when I had a writer here. His name was Williams and he said they knew straightway whether the aircraft they were looking at was one that knew the ropes or didn’t and if they started to jink about it was too difficult to pick somebody that starts. And I had a wing commander once who came from Training Command, took over and of course they only flew occasionally, wing commanders, on ops. Anyway, in my, Smithy was not well so as a natural choice he turned to me and said, ‘I’m taking your crew.’ ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘I don’t like that,’ because not only was he green but he wouldn’t listen. So when I said to him, ‘I think it would be a good idea if we did a bit of jinking and weaving.’ ‘I’m the pilot here and I will do what I think fit.’ I couldn’t believe my ears. So I said, ‘Well we have learnt sir, from experience, that if you stay straight and level you gradually find that someone is underneath you and the gunners won’t see him if you don’t move anything.’ ‘I’ll decide when we do that.’ He lasted two trips and he was shot down. That’s the sort of thing. So, gradually, throughout your tour you were learning all the time. Little things happen and, ‘Oh I must remember that.’ You know.
PL: Because it might just save my life. After the war did you, did you sort of, was it a big shock at the end of the war, you know, your transition into doing other things? I mean were you -
FC: Oh the worst time of my life was in the aftermath of war and demob because Pam, I went back to where I came from. They paid me a small salary throughout the war which was very nice. I was training to be an accountant in a big commercial enterprise. When I went back there all the men that didn’t go had the top jobs and all the people below them were their girlfriends. I’m not joking. They were all their girlfriends or [?] so there was nothing for me at all. I went back as an office boy. I came out as an office boy really at eighteen and I went back in exactly the same and the secretary had the gall to call me down when I went back ‘cause he phoned me up and said, ‘I’m so glad you survived,’ you know. ‘Jolly good show chaps,’ you know. ‘When can you come back?’ I said, ‘Well I’ll start on Monday if you like.’ I’ve never had a day’s unemployment in my life. So he said, ‘Well that’s great,’ he said, ‘We’ll make sure we look after you.’ The first morning I got back he called me down and I thought well he’s going to call me down for a drink. I really did. And when I walked in, ‘Oh it’s good to see you. Lovely to see you.’ Something in the boss changed and he said, ‘Let’s get one thing clear,’ he said, ‘You may be able to take an aircraft from A to B and bomb it to blazes but you’re no good to me unless you can do the job which earns money.’ And I thought, ‘Well.’ So I was thinking all the old boys have got the top jobs, the girls underneath them got the second row. Where do I fit in? There is nowhere. So I thought well I don’t know what I’m going to do so I decided the only way to do it was to do two jobs so I went to work for a football pools and I worked Saturday evening and all day Sunday and I earned more money doing that because I love maths. Permutations and combinations were my bread and butter. I loved it. And so old Alfie Coates, it was Coates of course, which was quite near. They’re down in Edmonton. We were living in Palmers Green and he took a shine to me. I soon got on to the top rank of payment and he said to me, ‘I’d like you to come to work for me,’ and I was tempted because I was earning more on the Saturday night and Sunday than I was getting for the full week but I thought, no. You never knew what was going to happen because they were all Jews of course and [laughs] he said, ‘Well I must use your skills,’ he said, ‘You don’t, don’t sit in the factory. Come in to my private office and we’ll give you all the syndicate coupons,’ you know and they put thousands and thousands of lines and very complicated. I might only do five coupons the whole night because there were so many lines but I loved it and that was so satisfying but I learned one of the major lessons of life and that is what you can do as discipline with staff if you have the guts to do it and this came about because with Coates they got so much bigger and bigger and bigger their throughput got bigger and bigger and bigger they wanted more time so they then started to say, well, Saturday evening, all day Sunday. Can you come in Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evening? Well, of course if you’ve got a young family of course I couldn’t do that so what he did in the end was, he said, ‘Well, I’ll take people who can work Saturday evening and Sunday out to lunchtime but if you can’t work beyond lunchtime come to my desk and tell me why.’ So I watched this parade of people going up to the desk and I watched them coming back. They obviously hadn’t got their own way at all but what I never expected ever to see in England all the exit doors were barricaded, locked and a guard put on so nobody could leave the factory and he never got taken. Human rights? I mean, he broke every law imaginable but he never got taken to task and I thought, yes, if you’ve got the guts to do it you’ll get away with it because those chaps had to have the money. They were all fighting for money to support their family and their wife and they would do anything to do it. I did it myself. But then of course things do change. We had a change of chief accountant and somehow my face fitted. He was hated as a man and as the chief accountant but for me he had all the time in the world and he was a lay preacher. Now, of course I was a church goer in those days and I was an organist at the church and I used to read the lessons and so on so I had some sympathy for him and so he said to me one day, ‘Do you think you could drive me to the station to go on holiday?’ I said, ‘Of course.' That was another brick in the cement. All building the wall. And his wife took a shine to me. She was the mothering type. She took to me. It was embarrassing. She always wanted to give me things. And I said, ‘No you mustn’t do that,’ but where he was concerned he suddenly said to me, ‘I think you’re wasted where you are.’ He said, ‘What would you say if I gave you a department of your own?’ I said, ‘I’d say thank you very much and I’ll go for it.’ I finished up, he gave me one, he gave me two, he gave me three, he gave me four and it was damned hard work but I learned the lesson, never complain about the hard work. That’s not what pleased him and I watched one of the other departments that I hadn’t got. The chap who used to work to 5.36 no less on a Friday afternoon for the weekend. Well, of course there comes a time when you’re doing dividends and so on and this chap came in, very close to 5.36 and this chief accountant said to him, ‘How are you getting on.’ ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’m in a bit of trouble ‘cause I’m a bit behind.’ ‘Why is that?’ ‘Well, we haven’t got the work done.’ ‘Yes I know that. Why is that?’ You know this was the kind of, I thought, ‘You idiot. Fancy, you’re provoking,’ what happened in the end he said, ‘Look I’m a reasonable man,’ the chief accountant said, remember Friday evening, 5.36 knocking off time he said, ‘I’ll be generous,’ he said, ‘You let me have that at 9 o’clock on Monday morning and we’ll call it square.’ And the chap said, ‘Thank you very much sir,’ and walked out. Now I don’t know when the penny dropped but I said to him, that’s the chief accountant, ‘You’re the wickedest man I’ve never met,’ and he laughed his hat off because nobody had ever spoken to him like that and from then on we were not master and pupil. We got on like a house on fire and in the end, unfortunately, he died in my arms because he said because we used to go out together around the area ‘cause it was a big area. We were in the Enfield offices and had our meeting with the manager there and said, ‘Well this is not good enough, do this,’ and he, my chap said, ‘Well I’ll go down to the car now. You finish up Fred and I’ll write up my notes and give them to the typist when I get back and they’ll have it ready for the next morning,’ and it was in the local manager’s hands the next morning. You see, pressure. So I said, ‘Ok.’ And I finished up and when I got to the car he was slumped like this and he’d had a heart attack.
PL: Oh my goodness.
FC: And although I yelled for the manager, the local manager to come down and drive the car and I got behind him and I massaged his heart but I couldn’t save him. He died. I think died shortly after we got to the [?] but and that and then life was good. I had four departments. I had a beautiful office over the main door at the south end. I was then promoted to be the manager of two large warehouses where we introduced a system whereby it was all computerised and a crane picked it up and put it down and put it, and then of all things I got the sack. Why? We had a steering group where we all prepared and I asked a question of the eastern board, Eastern Electricity Board’s chairman, I said, ‘Can we go anywhere to see this system working?’ ‘No.’ ‘Why is that?’ ‘Because there isn’t one.’ I said, ‘You’re buying on spec that it’s going to work.’ And he said, ‘Oh it will work.’ I said, ‘How do you know that? You haven’t seen it work have you?’ ‘No.’ Anyway, I said, ‘Well you’re going to have to use a system of contractors which will be liable to failure instead of using solid [states?] I knew a bit about things then and he said, ‘Oh no. That’s old hat,’ he said, ‘We’re going to do exactly as I say.’ Then he appointed me as the manager. Well it never did work and it wasn’t capable of working but of course who do you blame? You blame the bloke in charge and, you know I, Joyce and I used to go down to the warehouse at 8 o’clock on a Sunday evening, cure all the faults on the cranes, automatic cranes, get it all loaded so the lads could pick at 8 o’clock on Monday morning. Nobody knew we were doing it. I even drove a ten tonnes lorry to get supplies down to Harold Hill in Essex on a Sunday night. Nobody knew. And of course I’d have been sacked if they’d have found out but I had such a host of friends now from Harold Hill who realised that I was facing getting the sack because I hadn’t, well I’d driven bigger things than a car, yes, but a ten tonnes rigid full of parts and machines and at the end of course they weren’t satisfied with output of the factory and so we had a meeting and they said, ‘Well, regretfully we’ll have to say we’ve got to have you out.’ I said, ‘Well that’s alright. I fully expected this. In fact I anticipated what you came here for,’ because in the interval they had a spare engineer. They didn’t know what to do with him. He was a very objectionable bloke too so they put him down with me and even said that he has got authority over you but where he made his terrible mistake, he loved sailing so he used to disappear from the factory at Friday lunchtime and come back Monday lunchtime. Never saw him. So he had no idea what was going on. Not a sausage. So of course I all I said to them when they literally sacked me, the secretary of the board was a very old friend of mine and he said to me, ‘I think you’ve been treated abominably.’ I said, ‘Well that’s life. ‘It happens.’ He said, ‘But there’s a job going in Hemel Hempstead but it’s going back to accounting.’
PL: How funny.
FC: ‘How strange,’ I said. But then he said the chap that’s leaving has been promoted and he was very good. It’s the best area on the board. You’ll have a job to beat him. And I said, ‘Well I’ll try.’ And I got there. I got the job by merit and I made that district the best in the board.
PL: How funny.
FC: And then of course once you’re known the deputy chairman said, phoned me one afternoon and said, he never announced who he was, he said, ‘Are you going to be in this afternoon?’ I said, ‘Of course.’ So he said, ‘I’ll come, I’ll be over shortly,’ and he came over and he said, ‘I’m moving you.’ I said, ‘Oh I’m just enjoying myself here,’ I said, ‘It’s a lovely life here. It’s cushy. The entertainment is lovely you know. We go for walks at lunchtime.’ So I said, ‘What’s the job?’ And I dreaded it. It’s the trouble shooter for the board. So if anybody’s in trouble Charlie goes and sorts it out and gets it right. And in this area which was Pinner. Which you may know. Yeah. The offices were just, well you know where it is the manager was permanently sick, was never there, just take it over and get it back. So I did. And that’s where I retired from.
PL: Good gracious.
FC: And I closed that factory down as I retired because we’d moved on and we brought other premises. You know.
PL: So did you never miss your navigational skills? Did you, did you ever think I’d have love to have carried on with something or -
FC: Well you see I tried to -
PL: Flying or -
FC: I tried, well I tried to get into civil flying but I was knocked about so much. So, that, I I had a fictitious medical category. So, you know you get A1 or A2 or whatever. I was called, I was RAF A3B. There isn’t such a category but I was. That was me.
PL: So what did it mean?
FC: It meant that he shouldn’t be flying at all but as he wants to go and fly let him fly and that’s how I went through with the Mosquitos. I was always A3B after that crash but everybody sort of turned a blind eye and said well if he wants to fly let him fly. And I must say I look back and it’s only one of pleasure I look back on because I met some wonderful friends. I met some wonderful characters. Really. I mean one of the pilots was a policemen in the Met police. Totally different from my own who was very careful, nursed an aircraft. This fellow, this policeman his idea was thrash it. Get home first. Why? ‘Cause you got the meal first you see. [laughs] And he was always back first. I never knew why but I said to him quietly one day, ‘One of these days you’re going to get caught.’ ‘Why so?’ I said, ‘Because you’re racing back. You’re using more petrol and you won’t have enough petrol to contain the diversion. I said, ‘Think on it Alec because,’ I said, ‘One of these days you’ll regret,’ but when it came, he should have been a fighter pilot because he was an artiste. I mean you couldn’t tell he was down because I flew with him four or five times when my pilot was sick. You couldn’t tell he was down. He was shhhhh shhh shhh wonderful wonderful pilot. Natural pilot.
PL: So did he get caught?
FC: No. No, he didn’t. He saw the war out and he, he I had to laugh because he liked to drink. He married the owner of a pub whose husband had died. [laughs] Now if that’s not -
PL: So he was lucky to the last.
FC: Well there you go. Yeah. Yeah. I can look back and say I was frightened many times. You can’t go off it but generally speaking I look back with pleasure because you get so skilled in what you’re doing ‘cause in navigation the rule was you fixed your position with radar, you plot it, extend it forward three minutes, alter course in three minutes so it’s six minutes. I did that in three. So I got my fix and in three minutes I altered course. I never got out of the stream so everybody else was there. It made all the difference. You were never a low one that could be picked off by anybody that was about.
PL: So do you think, how do you think your experiences changed you for the rest of your life or -
FC: Well I’m lucky to have the loveliest woman in the world. I mean, to me the thing where Joyce is concerned we only had two children but I would have been quite happy with one but David was very dangerously ill before he was one and finished up in Great Ormond Street but I won’t go into that but she was an only child and she said, ‘That’s wrong. I think we ought to have two children,’ So we had, we got Gillian and my two to me they are the salt of the earth. They’re wonderful. If I have a preference its only because naturally a father thinks a little bit more of his daughter I think. And she, she’s lovely. And I’ve had a wonderful life. Wonderful life. Joyce has been the kindest, the most efficient ok she’s got trouble now. She’s a very bad knee which, every time she goes to the hospital to get it done they find her blood pressure has gone up so they won’t do it. And so I said, ‘Just give it up old girl. You’re never going to get it,’ because she suffers from [Coates?] syndrome, you know. She goes to the doctor her blood pressure goes up. Never win. You know. I hope -
PL: Well Fred –
FC: I haven’t bored you
PL: You have, I’ve been absolutely fascinated. You haven’t bored me for one second.
FC: Oh I’m glad of that.
PL: But I guess there’s just one last question that I’d like to ask you and that is what are your thoughts about how Bomber Command were treated after the war?
FC: Badly. Well of course it hasn’t been handled well this side. First of all let me preface by, I feel very strongly. You’ve touched on a rise, well I won’t speak.
PL: You must say whatever you want to say. This is your moment.
FC: Well, Fighter Command saved this country to start with by not allowing the German air force to rule the skies and to allow an invasion and nobody can take that away but Fighter Command unlike Bomber Command had good aircraft in the Spitfire and the Hurricane. A good match for anything the Germans had, in fact slightly better and they were able to hold their own. Their trouble was pilots. They didn’t have enough pilots and Dowding said very, very strongly, ‘I wish I had more pilots,’ but of course it wasn’t quite as bad as it might have been because we had the university air squadrons, we had the club squadrons and they all had got some training and they were able to slot in. Mind you some of them flew with very little flying hours, I know that, but so did the Germans. They had to bring [?] so there was a parity there which at least gave them a chance of holding their own and so it proved it be and of course they were in foreign territory coming from France. We were on our home territory. If they baled out we could fly again where the Germans once they were shot down they were shot down. They were finished. So gradually they, and Hitler gave up any idea of an invasion but if you look at the history of Bomber Command. Are you alright?
PL: Yeah.
FC: Yeah.
PL: Fine for batteries.
FC: If you look at Bomber Command, the Bomber Command had not been dealt with properly. When we went to war we had no decent bomber aircraft. What we did have we sent to France. They were shot down like flies and in the end it was given up as a bad job and that’s where I first come in the picture when I go to Benson. I’m being trained to replace somebody killed in France. Ok but of course on paper things were happening. New designs were emerging. The Fairy Battle was never a bomber worth talking about. It was a crew of three. Pilot, open cockpit. Couldn’t get at him. One single Lewis gun at the back and nowhere to do navigation. Hopeless. Absolutely. But it served the purpose of giving our military on the ground some experience of being attacked by low flying air and the laugh of the flour bags. So, gradually we got replacements. We got the Wellington. We got the Whitley. We got the Hampden, the Hudson but they were not really satisfactory. They were only twins but of course the Germans made exactly the same mistake. They never went for four engine. The only four engine they ever had was the Fokker Wulf which they put on the convoy routes and so of course they made their mistakes as well but they were never really successful and of course above all else the thing in my book which turned the balance was the advent of radar. Now, we and Germany were well on track for being first. In the end it was a tight race and I think the Germans got radar more or less the same time we did but totally different motives. We were keen on two things with radar, defending our country by detecting incoming aircraft but more importantly finding targets in the dark which we could not do. I mean you can’t just circle around in the dark and hope to pick up something and we couldn’t find the targets and so when we got radar along came the better aircraft to equip it and so we had three. The foremost in the public mind was the Lancaster. Then came the Halifax and then came the Stirling. Now the Stirling really was the poor man’s plane. It was big, cumbersome, slow, couldn’t get the altitude and really was although they flew through the war I always felt desperately sorry for them. I know one or two people who flew them, one particularly well and I said, he was always down there. We were up here and the Lancasters were a bit further up and so gradually we not only got better aircraft but we got radar as well and they became standard. We could find places in the Ruhr because we had two types of radar. The type that finds the targets in the Ruhr were controlled from this country. Two radio stations and you flew on a beam and as long as you got your fix, crossed swords, you flew and kept it if you bring it back and then they would tell you when to mark. I didn’t get that. I got the other one. I got the H2S which was totally different, which was long range. It was, it was a signal which was radiated by the aircraft and so it swept on this, on those, a hundred and twenty degrees like that and I, if I went over a town I could take a bearing on it. I’d get a fix. Never let me down. Never let down once and Gee was marvellous. Gee had its limitations ‘cause the Germans were very clever. They learned how to block it out. And so you got Gee to the enemy coast or just short of it and then they jammed it, you know and so I feel that we were totally wrong when dear old Chamberlain you know, was trying to give us peace in our time, as he said, and then he said, ‘I regret to say we are now at war with Germany.’ Of course we were at war with Germany. I could see it at eighteen coming and that’s why I decided to go in the RAF. I didn’t want to be in the infantry and I didn’t particularly want to be on the waves so I went with that and so I think we were poorly led at the start of the war. We were ill prepared and only the natural gifted talents of our beloved country and the men that would give their lives for it could got us back into it in the end and I think that at the end and to answer your specific question when it then started that Churchill took sides against Dresden I thought don’t they realise the only reason we bombed Dresden was because Stalin asked us to. Dresden was the rail and road junction where all the pulling back of the German forces were going through and it was wood and so of course it burned. I went and looked at it. We’d been to Berlin. I said, ‘Let’s go and have a look at it,’ because we were quite confident by then about what we were doing. And nobody has had the guts to say well, A) Stalin asked to have it bombed because it will reduce his losses as they were pursuing the fleeing Germans and of course the nature of the town being wood it was catastrophic but it was no more catastrophic than Hamburg in 1943. I went to Hamburg two nights running, I should have gone the third night but the aircraft was u/s and that, I saw a town as big as Hamburg on fire from end to end and thousands of people died in their cellars from suffocation because the fires were so intense they had a fire storm and that destroyed all the oxygen in the cellars and so they couldn’t breathe. And so Dresden was no exception but Churchill, I felt he thought he was on a weak wicket here and he, to our dismay anyway, I thought he just let the blame go to Bomber Command. No. Old Butcher Harris, he knew what he was doing. After all, think back in the war. What were we trying to do? We were trying to bomb individual factories which we couldn’t find. When we got radar well you could find the town but you couldn’t find the factory. You didn’t know what it looked like. It took Butcher Harris a long time to convince Churchill we ought to bomb the towns because if you knock the houses down the workers won’t be able to go to work and you’ve effectively stopped production. And so it did and of course time after time you could, well I used to always navigate by the fires, you know. As you were going across the north German plains you go across Mannheim and Frankfurt and all those places you could see where they’d been because of the fires but all those chaps didn’t go to work the next day and so the production dropped and in the end well they either did one or two things. They either had to take the factory, get it undercover, mountains something or caves and transfer all the people that worked there to it and that’s the way they survived in the end. Yeah. So I think and then of course when it came to supporting Bomber Command there was not a voice raised. Not a sausage. And I still think that memorial opposite the RAF club in Piccadilly is is abominable. Do you realise they’ve dressed them up in uniform which we never used. They’re old fashioned clothes. They were the days of open cockpits. So -
PL: Goodness.
FC: Really, you know, so often I see people on the television. They’re usually gunners or wireless operators and they talk about wonderful aircraft to fly. They didn’t do anything to make it fly. Only two people did that. The pilot flew it and the navigator got it to the place it wanted to go to and let’s face it if you didn’t get to where you wanted to get to the pilot is superfluous but most pilots would agree with that and they would say well they were sitting there in the dark. Very little light. I mean the lighting in those things was an anglepoise lamp attached to the outside which came over your shoulder with a nozzle at the end and in that nozzle was cardboard with a pinhead opening and the light [of emmission?] came through that and you were navigating on your knees, you know and people, I mean these blokes how could they know that? They had no experience and it always tickles me, of course, ‘What did you do?’ ‘I was a wireless operator.’ Well he sat down below and he used to listen to the German night fighter controllers, usually wetting his pants as he did so ‘cause the bloke I had he would come eyes as big as saucers and say, ‘They got so and so, all up. We’re going to get a terrible pasting.’ I said, ‘Yeah. Alright well we’ll deal with it when we come to it. Go back and tell us what’s happening.’ But I felt so sorry that we hadn’t got somebody in authority who could have said, ‘Don’t talk rubbish. Tell what the real reason was why we destroyed Dresden.’ Why did we destroy Hamburg then ‘cause that was a burn out. Thousands upon thousands of people killed in their cellars. Doesn’t that merit an equal comment to Dresden, but of course Dresden was wood. Made it worse. It just jumped from one place to another ‘cause all the initial load were all incendiaries. Get the fires going, drop the bombs in, kill the firefighters. Yeah. It’s very sad because, you know, now and again one of the things, I hope you don’t mind me saying this.
PL: No. Not at all.
FC: One of the things that appals me we have got so many women in parliament now. You know they come on the box and they talk with great authority and I think how old is that one? Twenty three. Twenty seven perhaps. But you know they talk as if they’ve lived a life of experience. Hands on, you know but they can’t have done. They’re not old enough. Mind you they sometimes get men that are no better. And one thing I do admire is the vitality of these girls. They work and they speak well too. Yeah. So, but I sometimes I think to myself I don’t thing they have the right to say that to me. [laughs] And how does she know? But there you are looking at an old, irascible, sort of awkward old boy.
PL: I think that’s perfectly fine.
FC: Well there you are. I must say it’s been a pleasure to see you.
PL: Well it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you.
FC: I wondered how could I talk? That’s a big task. When you talked about an hour and a half I thought to myself well you’ll be lucky to get away with an hour and a half if you really are going for it but you’ve been very generous. You’ve just let me ramble on.
PL: Not at all. I think it’s been an amazing story and -
FC: Yeah.
PL: I’d just like to say thank you very very much indeed.
FC: Jolly good.
PL: For sharing that with us.
FC: Oh well it’s my pleasure to meet you too. I would love to meet your husband and perhaps that might happen one day. Who knows?
PL: He’s, I’ll switch off here.
FC: Yes. Ok.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ACrawleyF151222
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Fred Crawley DFC
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
02:05:36 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Pam Locker
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-22
Description
An account of the resource
Fred Crawley joined the Royal Air Force in 1939 when he was 18 years old. While at an operational training unit he survived a crash which killed five members of his crew. He was treated in hospital at RAF Rauceby for burns. After training he completed 74 operations as a navigator with 158 and 139 Squadrons.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
139 Squadron
158 Squadron
aerial photograph
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
entertainment
Gee
ground personnel
Guinea Pig Club
H2S
Halifax
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
medical officer
Mosquito
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Benson
RAF Blyton
RAF hospital Rauceby
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Penrhos
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
superstition
target photograph
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/268/3418/PHarrisB1604.2.jpg
4d93a86a74881c8fecbe08584fd4d043
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/268/3418/AHarrisB160509.2.mp3
193c040b8eadb9b7bbfded56985378c5
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
Harris, Bernard
Bernie Harris
B Harris
Barnard Harris
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. Two oral history interviews with Bernard 'Bernie' Harris (b 1925 - 2017, 1863168 Royal Air Force) an air gunner who served at the end of the war on 622 Squadron flying Lancaster on Operation Manna. In addition a photograph of four trainees.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bernie Harris and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-09
2016-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Harris, B
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: So, I think we’re ready to go. So this is Andrew Sadler interviewing Bernie, Bernie Harris for the Bomber Command Archive at his home in Ilford on Monday the 8th of May 2016. Bernie, can we start by talking about your background? Where you were born and when and —?
BH: Yeah. I was born in Shoreditch, so near to the sound of Bow bells, so I’m an official cockney ‘cause I was born [slight laugh]. So I was born on May 17th 1925.
AS: And can you tell me a bit about your early life?
BH: Er, yep. I was always, always interested in flying but my father was in the Flying Corps, Royal Flying Corps, during the First World War and, I suppose, in the genes anyway. I went to various schools because we were more or less an itinerant family, kept on moving, so we went to different schools. So, as far as an education was concerned, it was elementary because there was no consistency whatsoever. So I left school at fourteen. Um, my mother and father with my two sisters and brother were evacuated to, of all places, in 1939, to Chelmsford [emphasis], which was nearer for the German raids than anywhere else I think because the er, the, they had factories there. So anyway, that didn’t suit me there so I went home and got a little job and um, after a while the, the Air Training Corps was formed. I joined the Air Training Corps. We had no uniforms yet. At sixteen and a half I was working at different places up to sixteen and a half and went to Romford nearby and signed on, volunteered for aircrew, was obviously too young. I used to go every Thursday, cycle up there, make sure I was still —. And they used to say, ‘Don’t worry son. We’ll still call for you.’ Um, which they did just before my eighteenth birthday and they had then what they called their preliminary aircrew training scheme at different places, universities and what have you, and I was sent up to the Manchester School of Commerce er, to upgrade my education, if you like. But anyway, in between that, I went to Cardington for a three-day assessment and if you come out of there with, with, your badge, RAFVR, you know you were good. And I was then classed at PNB (pilot, navigator, bomb aimer) which meant that I was going to be trained either as a pilot, navigator or bomb aimer because my education had now reached a level I could do that and because, in any case, I was going to evening classes when I left school anyway to, to increase my education. I knew there was a gap between what I wanted to do and what the, the qualifications that I should have. So anyway, after vacating that, right next door to the Marconi factory which was a target for the Germans anyway, eventually. Anyway, so I finished the, the PAT course, Preliminary Aircrew Training, and went back to St John’s Wood where St John’s Wood, of course, is where we reported to in the first instance and we were received into the Lord’s Cricket Ground where we got a plate of soup and a long arm inspection which took place under the portrait of WG Grace. I always remember that anyway. So anyway, back to St John’s Wood and then to initial training wing, in Newquay, which was a three month course (in peacetime it’s three years), and from there I went to elementary flying training school, on Tiger Moths, at a place called Burnaston, outside Derby, where there’s one of the Honda factories on it I think now anyway, and done very well with that, but the weather was so bad I couldn’t get the flying hours in to go solo. But I had a very good instructor, Rhodesian, but he used to love aerobatics anyway. But I couldn’t get the hours in because the weather come down and I was allotted so much time at EFTS. So, after that, we were posted up to Eaton Park. Now, Eaton Park was a holding centre for potential aircrews to go to the Empire training scheme, via Canada, Texas or South Africa and, there again, we come up against holdups, so a few of us went to the CO and said, you know, ‘What’s happening? When will we get in? How long’s it going to take for us to get into the war?’ Well, he said, ‘There’s a hell of a holdup. If you want to get into the war go as gunners.’ So we did. So we went straight up to Morpeth, flying, air gunnery school, flying on Ansons, and we’d done all the preparatory work and anyway, for aircrew, so we, we were only there for three weeks, whereas the course was about six months, I think. And then from there, er, posted to operation training unit, Wellingtons, where we were all crewed up. That’s the photograph of the crew, the original crew there, on Wellingtons, and then from there having done that —. And there again we had bad weather and held up and so a continuation of bad weather and from there went to the heavy op, heavy unit, conversion unit. That was a place called Woolfox Lodge, between Stamford and Grantham on the A1. Still there. You can see the, the control tower. Er, and then from there we went onto Mildenhall, 622 Squadron, and we didn’t arrive there ‘til the middle of April. So we had to do quite a lot of things, familiarisation, and then they put us on some testing gunsights and other things like that. And finally on May 8th they put us on the Operation Manna, where we were dropping food over Holland, which was the last day of the war anyway. So we dropped the food at Ypenburg and went back. Then we done a bit more flying, one thing or another, experiments, and work for the Air Ministry, and then in August 19— we were earmarked to go to California to convert onto Liberators for the Far East but the pilot being Australian, the bomb aimer being Australian, in ’45, August ’45, the Australian Government said, ‘No. Our boys are going home.’ So the crew was split up and up popped the word “redundancy”. So, so we were knocked about from pillar to post, wouldn’t de-mob us. Um, a very interesting story. I don’t know whether you can record this but what we said at the time, you know when Churchill said, ‘In the field of humanity there’s so much been owed to so few,’ we said, ‘In the field of humanity has so many been buggered about by so few’ [laugh] . So we gunners, we found ourselves up in Burn, ex-RAF aircrew, full of aircrew, ex-aircrew, and they gave us the choice of three different trades rather than de-mob us and the trades were: learn to drive, a radar and wireless mechanic, or radar operator. And then again three guys, ex-aircrew, sitting back, with their feet up on the table, ‘OK Bernie, what you wanna to do?’ So I said, ‘I’d like to learn to drive.’ So, ‘No. You don’t want that. You won’t be in the Air Force long enough for that.’ So, I says, ‘Well, what about radar wireless mechanic?’ ‘That’s a year’s course. Don’t be daft.’ They said, ‘Go as a radar operator.’ So, ‘Oh, alright then.’ Anyway, the upshot was sent down to Ayls—, down to Wiltshire, for this course, which we did, all aircrew, ex-aircrew, one was Rayner [?] Goff [?] he was with Nicholson and he was mad as a hatter he was. When we finished the course the signal came from the Air Ministry that all ex-aircrew that had taken the radar course are now redundant and report back to St John’s Wood. So we did. So then we were sent back to Burn. Same procedure, ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘I want to be —.’ ‘Oh, alright. We’ll teach you to drive.’ So they sent me up to Blackpool, Warton, to learn to drive.
AS: And so what year did you actually go in then?
BH: Pardon?
AS: What year did you actually go into the RAF?
BH: Er, 19—, April ’43.
AS: Oh, right.
BH: Um. On the 23rd of April. That was before my eighteenth birthday.
AS: And you were de-mobbed in —, you were de-mobbed in ’45 were you?
BH: No, ’46.
AS: ’46.
BH: No, wait a minute. ’47. January ’47 [emphasis] ‘cause I was then sent to Italy to join, what they called the “chechiduderci” [?] Squadron, 112 Squadron, Mustangs, they had the sharks on their cowls and I got into helping with drogue towing, propellers, over the Adriatic, in a Harvard, noisy aircraft, and then they asked me to take charge of the hotel, at a place called Grado on the Adriatic, so I just made sure everything’s alright, got myself a big Q-type dinghy, and made sure I was very comfortable. I had my own room in the hotel, made sure all the supplies were there and staff were alright, go down to the beach, read a book, and then go floating in the dinghy. I was completely blonde. And then I was de-mobbed in January ’47.
AS: And what did you do when you were de-mobbed?
BH: Well, a mixture of things really because I was a bit, very unsettled, like most of the aircrew. Most of the aircrew that I’ve met were totally unsettled. Some stayed in the Air Force. Some went their different ways. Er, my father wrote and told me that he’s found me a job with an agency, so when I returned home the agency turned out to be Prudential, [slight laugh] selling insurance, which didn’t suit me. That didn’t last long. So then I started working on my own as a sort of um, agent for, working on commission, of goods and one thing and the other and I got very friendly with a guy, well not friendly, he contacted me eventually, by the name of Harry Alper [?] and he had a vast warehouse of ex-wartime stuff: tyres, pyrotechnics and dinghies. So, I used to go round there merrily, selling, and I was earning a very good living. [Slight laugh] And then fate takes place, yeah? He had £20,000, no £50,000 worth of tyres, new tyres, and I had no car in those days and I used to use the buses, and I had this list of these tyres on me, and there was a guy by the name of um —, it’ll come to me in a minute, in Putney. Um, and they used to go to him and one day we were talking. I said, ‘What about some tyres?’ ‘No, no, no. I don’t have time.’ So, ‘I’ll leave you the list.’ So he said, ‘Yeah, OK.’ Well, two days later he rang me. He wanted a sample of these tyres. So I said to Harry Alper, ‘I’ll take it.’ No car. The 96 bus used to go from Stratford to Putney. Anyway, I gave the driver, the conductor, a couple of bob, said ‘Can I bring this on?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ Anyway, the upshot was, the guy who wanted them, he wanted the lot. So I was on ten per cent. The next day I thought, well, I’ll take this deal [?]. I’ll get a coach to Margate, you know, have a day out. Try to sell a few bob, pay my expenses. Well, I lived on Forest Gate at that time and all along the kerb were hosepipes. Have you ever had a premonition? An anti-Semitic policeman got into that warehouse and set it alight and the whole lot had gone up in flames. He’d also gone to George Cohen. They used to do tyres and everything like that, over in Canning Town, and he’d set light to that as well. Now I was on commission, £5,000 in those days, so it was a real shocker. So, being green I didn’t —, a few years later I leant, but being green, I had the order, I could have claimed my commission from the insurance. But there you are. I think I got about £5 out of it. So that was that. So after that I started up my own business in —, not my own business, but working by myself, for a company called Hawker Sidley, who were making vending machines, and I had part of the city and I was doing very well selling these vending machines. I met a guy named Brendan Feeley, er, Richard Feeley. He was doing the same thing in —. He had one part of the city and I had one other. Anyway we came together and we formed this company ‘Value Vendors’ which we were leasing vending machines to people, in the city, only nothing to do with industry. And those were the days like accountants, solicitors, everybody involved in professional work, you could shake hands in those days and do a deal. But along came the people from the —, the, the graduates from —, who pretended they knew about business and you couldn’t trust them then and there unless they signed a bit of paper, you know what I mean? Anyway, we built the business up and finally, when I was sixty-five, sold the business and retired, and then I got involved with Operation Manna.
AS: Can you tell me about Operation Manna?
BH: Operation Manna started in 1981. There was an advertisement put in the, the RAF Manual, airmail from RAF Association, Aircrew Association, Air Gunner’s Association, ‘Anybody interested in going to Holland to view, visit, the dropping zones where we dropped the food?’ Mine was in Ypenburg. ‘If you’re interested we’ll go for a weekend. It costs £100.’ Right? ‘We’ll get a coach from Gravesend and go to Holland and —.’ So I said to my wife at the time, ‘Would you like to do that?’ Well I mean £100 for a weekend, in those days it wasn’t bad, so she agreed. Anyway, I applied and that was fine, and accepted. One day I was out, I’d been to a vending exhibition in Hammersmith, I got home late and when I got home, my wife said to me, ‘You’ve had a call from I think it’s the guy that’s organising the trip to Holland.’ So I says, ‘Oh yeah. What’s his name?’ She says, ‘Hallam.’ I says, ‘Arthur Hallam?’ Now this is thirty-six years later, my navigator, right? So she says, ‘Yeah, he’s left his number.’ So I rang him back and we were chatting, chatting, away and I said to him, ‘Did you finish with the accountancy?’ ‘Cause he was an articled clerk. He said, ‘Yes, I’m now the Director of the Whitbread’s pension fund.’ So I says, ‘In Chiswell Street?’ And when I said Chiswell Street my wife said, ‘Arthur Hallam? I’ve been dealing with him for years in the Abbey National round in Sidney Road.’ [Slight laugh] What do you think of that?
AS: Gosh. And she didn’t know he was in the crew with you?
BH: No. So, so we all got together? So yeah, so then anyway, the Dutch, also the guy by the name of Hans Underwater heard about this and said to Ted Levis and Phil Irvine, who organised the whole thing, ‘If you are willing to go to Hull on your coach North Sea Ferries will take you across for nothing.’ (North Sea Ferries are a Dutch firm.) Which we did except it landed and when we got to Holland we were blown out of the water. We didn’t know the depth of feeling of the Dutch. They were in what they called the hunger winter ’44 ’45 and three million nine hundred thousand of the population got isolated because this Nazi, because, one thing because of Arnhem, Operation Market Garden, was a failure so he was so incensed by this that he stopped all food coming in from the agricultural east into western Holland. Further to that Queen Wilhelmina, who was here in exile, called the railway people in to come out on strike so Seysss-Inquart, this Nazi, who did other things and was actually tried as a war criminal and hanged after the war. Er, the railway people went on strike so he ordered the, the sea lochs to be opened which flooded [emphasis] most of western Holland so there was wretches there were starving and the dykes were filled and everything else and as I say, out of the population of three million nine hundred thousand, twenty thousand died of starvation and um, millions suffered malnutrition. Anyway, apparently, in January ‘45 Wilhelmina appealed to Churchill, the American President of that time and Eisenhower, to do something about it and they said, ‘We can’t do anything about it. There’s six thousand German troops still in western Holland and if we landed by sea it would be too costly, they’d have to wait.’ So anyway, a little later on in the year apparently Queen Wilhelmina appealed to Churchill and the allies to do something and this guy, Air Commodore Andrew Geddes —. Am I going on too long?
AS: No.
BH: Andrew Geddes was summoned by Eisenhower. Er, and he said caught [?] us in Reims to do —, for an urgent engagement. Anyway, he met Bedell Smith, General Bedell Smith, who put him in the picture so —. This is in a talk I gave last week so it’s still there. He met Bedell Smith and Bedell Smith who, who had been asked by the Dutch Government, and then pushed by Churchill, got to do something about it, ‘I want you to come back with a plan to feed three million nine hundred thousand people by air.’ Right? So Bert Harris, who was Bomber Harris, had been asked to give two groups, 1 and 3 Group, and 8 Group the Pathfinders. So, ‘Go away, make a plan, come back to me with a plan,’ which he did. So anyway the whole plan was, to cut it short, that Geddes presented his plan and what he would do, and dropping zones, and then went to Holland to meet this Nazi. He was a Reichskommissar. He wasn’t military but he was a real Nazi. He had people shot as hostages and God knows what throughout Europe. Anyway, he met him and showed the plan to which he objected to. So Geddes said to him, ‘You may object to it but we’re doing it and any attempt by you to disrupt this mercy, these flights of mercy, you’ll be charged as a war criminal.’ And so on the 29th of April, 28th of April it should have started er, but the weather was bad so it started on 29th of April. Pathfinders went in. The Dutch population had been told to watch out for flares, keep away, and the bombers are now leaving England to drop food and that was the start of Operation Manna but the agreement wasn’t signed until the next day so the Germans could have shot at us quite easily and been — and legally. Anyway, they kept quiet except a few irate Germans fired off their rifles and one pilot had a bullet through his foot but in most part it was alright. So all went well and er, Geddes, he was actually revered by the, by the, the Dutch. A big memorial is made to him, a street named after him and there’s three memorials, one in Rotterdam, one Duindigt was this race course and one in Zeebrugge to Manna and Chowhound. Chowhound was the American part of it. They came in May 1st to May 7th and ever since then, so from 1983, ‘85, 1995, 2000, 2002, 2005, right up to 2015 last year, the 70th anniversary, we’ve always gone back to Holland and always the same. People would come up to us and say, ‘Thank you for saving my life,’ ‘Thank you for saving my mother’s life,’ ‘Thank you for saving my father’s life.’ Incredible. And the feeling is still there. The whole story is still taught in schools, right? And ‘cause some little stories also. We had a bit of a wit with us and when we visited Gouda, and wherever we went we were hosted and everything else, and he was talking to our group, and he said, ‘Yeah, we came in so low,’ he said, ‘your clock on your tower the minute hand was twenty minutes fast so we clipped it with our wing and put it right.’ So, [laugh] so a bit, bit of a wit. And that’s the whole story.
AS: Fascinating.
BH: So out of that, you know, came a great friendship. Arthur, he died from, not long after we met, cancer, and now I think all my crew except for myself have all gone and these are the photographs of them.
AS: Gosh.
BH: Oh yes. I was also —. Arthur was the treasurer but when he died I became treasurer and the secretary. Geddes was honorary chairman, Prince Bernhard was our president and that’s it.
AS: Mmm.
BH: Any good?
AS: Yeah, excellent.
BH: Do I get a copy?
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHarrisB160509
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Bernie Harris. One
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:29:17 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Andrew Sadler
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-09
Description
An account of the resource
Bernie Harris joined the Royal Air Force in 1943 and trained to become an air gunner. His first operation was Operation Manna, dropping food on Holland at the end of the war.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Netherlands
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-04
1945-05
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
622 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Lancaster
memorial
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Mildenhall
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/268/3419/PHarrisB1604.1.jpg
4d93a86a74881c8fecbe08584fd4d043
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/268/3419/AHarrisB160626.1.mp3
b2fdeeb3d2a420c4b51393c6b2ae8f14
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
Harris, Bernard
Bernie Harris
B Harris
Barnard Harris
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. Two oral history interviews with Bernard 'Bernie' Harris (b 1925 - 2017, 1863168 Royal Air Force) an air gunner who served at the end of the war on 622 Squadron flying Lancaster on Operation Manna. In addition a photograph of four trainees.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bernie Harris and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-09
2016-06-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Harris, B
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TO: Ok, good morning, good afternoon or good evening, whatever
BH: That’s a quick day, yeah [laughs]
TO: Whatever the case may be.
BH: Yeah.
TO: We’re recording, we’re filming this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre. The gentleman I’m, that I’m interviewing is Mr. Bernie Harris. My name is Tomas Ozel and we are recording this interview on the 26th of June 2016. Could you please tell me what year you were born in?
BH: What?
TO: What year were you born?
BH: 1925.
TO: And were you interested in aircraft as a child? Were you interested in aircraft as a child?
BH: Oh yes, yeah. Yeah, my father was in Royal Flying Corps, he passed it on. But always interested in aircraft, anyway.
TO: Did you collect model planes?
BH: Yeah. Spitfires, Defiants, Lancasters, yeah. Defiant were made with Balsa wood. These days they are more sophisticated but it was made with Balsa wood and coverings. They even put a little turret on top of the Defiant as it was then fighter aircraft with a turret for night fighters.
TO: And did your father ever talk about his experience in the Flying Corps? Did your father ever tell you about his time in the Flying Corps?
BH: Not very often, no. He kept it, like most air crews today I think. He didn’t talk about it much. Nor do air crew today, it’s only in the recent years where there’s not many of us left now become more interested but it’s taken 60, 70 years to recognize Bomber Command in the RAF.
TO: And what was your first job?
BH: My first job was to be apprenticed to tool making and I lived in Forest Gate in East London and I was apprentice to an engineering company in Islington and I was apprenticed to become a tool maker. But after six months, on a drill, right, I thought I was been taken advantage of, so I left and went off somewhere else and took a couple jobs [unclear] and finally I volunteered at sixteen and a half. In a nearby recruiting place, which is still there, Romford in Essex and in between I had a job in a shop one thing and the other. My father was a tailor and he wanted to teach me and he said, right, you start right from the bottom and you sweep the floor, and I said, ‘no, I don’t’, and that was the end of that [laughs] ‘Til finally I got myself in a job in a shop, which wasn’t bad, it was a tailor’s shop, actually, and I said, I volunteered with sixteen and a half and eventually, father had to sign for me really, I can still remember, father sitting at a table with a form in front of him, my mother leaning over his shoulder saying you’re not going to sign that are you? And he said, ‘if he wants to go, he goes’ and he signed and that was that. And then from on I went to Carding, Cardington [unclear] a test station you probably know about, and if you passed that in three days you were good and you came out there and you were graded PNB, pilot, navigator or bomb aimer and just waited for the call. And it was just before my eighteenth birthday that I got the call and that was that. I was in.
TO: Do you remember what medical tests they gave you?
BH: A1.
TO: And do you remember the things that they tested?
BH: The what test?
TO: The thing that they tested like your eyesight
BH: Oh yeah, everything. If you came out of there Cardington you knew that you were sane and you knew you were a hundred percent fit. No problem. 20/20 vision, hearing, everything, you were, I mean aircrew were the fittest of the lot I think. Examinations of course not only medical, physical, eyesight, hearing, mathematics, it was a three-day course with, when it was completed you got the badge RAFVR and that was that.
TO: And in the 1930s did you hear about Hitler’s aggression in Europe?
BH: In the 1930s I was aware of fascism in this country, I was eleven and also the Spanish civil war, I remember the placards with planes, with swastikas on them dropping bombs and flames in their placards. I’m Jewish, my, and even then I thought, you know, things are not so good. I knew what was going on in Germany through the [unclear] and but not to the extent about concentration camps or anything like that but I was aware of Moseley and his mob, saw them marching, you know, one thing and the other and also the Brady Street march in which he was stopped, yeah, I was aware. And all the more reason to get in the fight.
TO: And what did you think of Chamberlain? What do you think of Chamberlain appeasing Hitler?
BH: What?
TO: What do you think of Chamberlain and his plan of appeasing Hitler?
BH: I don’t know really. But can you say that again?
TO: What do you think of Chamberlain when he signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler?
BH: Oh Chamberlain?
TO: Yeah.
BH: Well, I wasn’t politically motivated at that age but it, I mean, from listening to the parents and other people they thought, maybe he’s avoided a war, but as it turned out he didn’t, so. So, my opinion of him was neutral. Well, I wasn’t politically aware. As it turned out, he was wrong.
TO: And do you remember the preparations that were being made for the war?
BH: Ah yeah, very well because I was fourteen and I’d left school but I got, I had, I’ve two sisters and a brother, who are younger than me, and my mother for some reason said, ‘stop work, I’m getting you evacuated’. And we were all evacuated to Chelmsford and guess what? Right next to the Marconi radio factory right, prime spot, yeah, I remember the guys being, territorial was being called up, preparations for the black out, the first air raid siren and I remember that vividly, yeah, I suppose it was more of a thrill than anything else, [unclear] something different, right? Yeah, I remember that vividly, but it wasn’t long before I got the bus and came back home, used to be an eastern national bus, used to go from Bow to Chelmsford and from Chelmsford back to Bow, I lived in Forest Gate was on the route so that was that back home. Eventually my mother took my young, my younger brother, sister, and two sisters to Wells, she evacuated to them there. And I was left at home with my father.
TO: Were you surprised when the war started?
BH: No, not really. I did read, at that age I read newspapers and I wasn’t surprised, I don’t think I was even fearful in that sense. More of an adventure, I think.
TO: And do you remember what you were doing on the day the war started?
BH: September the 3rd, 1939. No, I don’t actually remember what I was doing then but I remember the first day of the Blitz, the day Blitz vividly because my brother and I, we went to the local cinema called the Coronation in Manor Park and they were showing Gone with the Wind. And during the course, that the raid started and all the lights went up, they said, ‘you all [unclear] to leave if you want but you can go back, if you want to stay, go back under the balcony which is safer’ so we decided to do that. When we came out there was rubble everywhere and in the distance was my father saying where you two so-and-so’s have been, we’ve been looking for you. And I remember that was the first day of the Blitz. But September the 3rd, I can’t really remember was it, I think was a nondescript day.
TO: Do you remember Chamberlain’s speech?
BH: Yeah, ‘cause there was no television in those days. There was television, but only for the few that could afford it. But as soon as war had broke out the television stopped, anyway, yeah, peace in our time. There is a little piece of this, and a little piece of that, and I’ll have the whole lot.
TO: And you remember the speech where Chamberlain announced that we’d declared war?
BH: Yeah, that was on the radio, there was sort of quietness everywhere, everything seemed to have gone quiet.
TO: Did you have any relatives who were in the armed forces?
BH: Yeah, I’d two cousins. Actually he was, the first into Paris with De Gaulle and another one, he was a Spitfire pilot and finished up ferrying aircraft. My brother went in as a boy, because he’s two years younger than me, he is dead now unfortunately and he was no higher than this and because I went in he went and volunteered as a boy and he also volunteered down at Romford, anyway he went off, my father realised what he’d done, chased after him, when he got to Romford he asked what, oh, your son has just gone to Romford Station and he’s off to Abedon, Aberothy something or it’ll come to me in a minute and the tale is that he got to Waterloo and he said, went up to a military policeman and said, ‘we are so sorry’, he said, ‘why have you joined his Majesty’s service?’ He said, ‘yes’, he said, ‘well, come with me so’. And that was that, so my brother was in the service as well but he wasn’t involved in the war, he was a boy entry and that was that.
TO: Did they allow boys then? Did they allow boys in in certain roles?
BH: Yes, he was trained in [Reemey ?] and what killed him off was that he was finished up after the war, going to the hospitals repairing x-ray sets, and they didn’t do him any good at all. They didn’t have the facilities to have the protection in those days as they have now, so that unfortunately killed him.
TO: And did you have an air raid shelter at your house?
BH: Yeah, Anderson, the Anderson in the garden. There was a nightly call.
TO: [unclear] camera back so.
BH: You’re alright?
TO: Yeah, just checking the shutter. Yeah, it’s fine. Sorry about that. And did you consider joining the army at all?
BH: I did the air force.
TO: What appealed to you about the air force over the other services?
BH: Well, you go to the air force, you can fly. And then again, in those days, it was the only force that get in touch with the enemy. Especially after Dunkirk.
TO: And how did you feel when you heard about the Dunkirk evacuation?
BH: Pardon what?
TO: The Dunkirk evacuation. How did you feel when it happened?
BH: I can’t really explain really. It’s, it’s a mixture of excitement, in one thing or the other, and getting away from the humdrum.
TO: And were you ever worried that Germany would win?
BH: Never doubted it. Never doubted it.
TO: Can you tell me a bit about what you remember from the phoney war?
BH: The phoney war? Well, the phoney war was [emphasis] phoney. Everything was quiet, everybody going on their normal business. The only difference was the blackout. But, no, everybody went about their normal business. The phoney war stopped of course with the episode of Dunkirk and then the day bombing and then into night bombing by the Nazis, but the phoney war was phoney. Everybody went about their normal business.
TO: And what kind of rations did you have when the war, what kind of rations did you have when the war started?
BH: I really don’t know in a sense because I wasn’t politicised in any sense, I knew we had to fight Germany and I wasn’t really fearful or anything like that at all. My parents were worried ‘cause they knew what could happen that’s why I suppose being a bit thick it didn’t worry me but I mean fourteen year old what do you know? Yeah, but I know the phoney war and it was phoney, as I say, until after Dunkirk.
TO: And there were people, were your parents worried that Hitler would invade? Were you worried that Hitler would invade?
BH: I wasn’t worried, wasn’t worried at all, but I knew if they did and I knew their reputation as far as Jewish people concerned, right, where could you go? Into the hills, Wales, Scotland or anywhere like that? ‘Cause there was nowhere else to go. So we were in it, and fight. That’s it.
TO: And do you remember what kind of food you had during the war?
BH: What kind of what?
TO: Food you had, what kind of food you had during the war?
BH: Food?
TO: Yes.
BH: Well, my mother was the innovative and it was mostly vegetable stuff and little bits of chicken, ration meat and things like that, but she probably went without herself, lots of vegetable soups, vegetables, home grown vegetables, she kept chickens for eggs and even when we had visitors she found something, you know, to make a meal with, so nothing elaborate, I mean, cakes, we had home-made cakes, chocolate was, couldn’t get hold of chocolate, things like that. Meat of course was rationed and the ration books, [unclear] but she made do, like most women and housewives in those days they made do. Comes the occasion, comes the person.
TO: And what did you think of Churchill?
BH: Brilliant, could do with him again. I wish he would be reincarnated. Man of the moment. Didn’t think much of him after the war, he’d become a real Tory after the war but then again after the war there’s a great movement for Labour. People have had enough, I mean, people were returning from the forces so right, we’re not lackeys anymore, might be on better things. So, his speech as far as communism is concerned killed him politically but as a war leader second to none.
TO: Did you listen to his speeches much?
BH: Yeah. Yeah.
TO: What in particular did you like about him as a war leader? What, what, what in particular did you like about him as a war leader?
BH: He hated Germans.
TO: You already told me about the first day of the Blitz. Do you remember, are there any other days of the Blitz that stand out to you particularly?
BH: Yes, as I explained, the first day of the Blitz.
TO: Yeah, yeah.
BH: We were in the cinema, me and my brother. And when we came out, there was rubble all over the place, houses had been knocked down, something, so that was the first day of the Blitz.
TO: Do you remember other days of the Blitz?
BH: No, we just took it in our stride, went to work as normal. We used to get on the tram at seven o’clock in the morning to get to this so-called apprenticeship by eight o’clock. I was fourteen, I was working five and a half days a week, guess how much for?
TO: I don’t know.
BH: In out of thirty seven and a half p a week. I can remember my first wage packet bringing it home, and my mother pinned it on the curtain, it was [file missing] six pence for five and a half days work. No allowances for my age, so thirty seven and half p in today’s terms.
TO: How did the people behave during the Blitz would you say?
BH: All as one, helped one another, didn’t see any general fear whatsoever, I mean the patriotism was great. People helped one another. I remember when the night bombing started at five o’clock every day, people used to pack up stuff and we used to go to a communal bomb shelter, just across where we used to live and then eventually we want back to the Anderson but the first, pack up, be there by five o’clock, come out by six o’clock next morning amongst the rubble, hopefully your house was still intact.
TO: Did you ever see anyone behave badly during the Blitz?
BH: No, no, no, not at all.
TO: Was there a lot of bomb damage near where you lived?
BH: Yes, because the Forest Gate is not far from the docks and the first day of the Blitz was the whole dock area because the pool of London was the great entry into Great Britain, England and all the shipping used to go in there anyway. Most of the bombing in the surrounding areas but when they started bombing civilians that was another matter.
TO: And did you ever watch any of the dogfights that were going on, did ever you watch any of the dogfights that were going on?
BH: Yes we used to watch them coming over because we, actually we knew when raids were about because the balloons used to go off and they stationed all around us, there is a place called Wanstead Flats not far behind us where ack-ack guns were on and the, the balloons used to go up, to deter low flying, but the whole mixture of things really but I remember when, they brought in, like rocket fire, the ack-ack and everybody cheered because it used to be a one-off shell [mocks the sounds of gunfire] and then they brought in these, like rockets with massive, right, and everybody stood and cheered, at last we’re doing something, rather than the old pop-pop.
TO: Could you hear the anti-aircraft guns firing?
BH: Oh yeah. Yeah. In Forest Gate as I say about two miles behind us an area called Wanstead Flats which is part of the Green Belt and the ack-ack were on there.
TO: Did it, did it feel encouraging to know that the German bombers were being fired at?
BH: Oh, absolutely, yeah. But don’t forget the Luftwaffe was really indiscriminate, I mean, even today you know, people say about Dresden, but what about Coventry, Rotterdam, every city in the UK, Bristol, Plymouth, London, they didn’t care.
TO: And do you think France let Britain down in the war? Do you think France let Britain down?
BH: Well the trouble with France, they had the Maginot Line, didn’t they, and it was facing the wrong way, so that was a big mistake. Vichy France of course was fascist, so, as an ally, mediocre but not impressed with them.
TO: And so, when exactly, what year of the war did you join the RAF?
BH: 1943. I went in April 1943, just before my eighteenth birthday.
TO: And how did you come to be a rear gunner?
BH: Ah, as I said, I went in Cardington and came out as PNB graded, so, I, when I went, was called to ITW, Initial Training Wing, which was in Newquay and that’s a three month’s course which in peacetime is three years, so it’s condensed from three years, I did there for three months and from there I was sent to Elementary Flying Training School in Derby, which [unclear] factories on it now in a place called Burnaston. Unfortunately I had a Tiger Moth I was as others on Tiger Moths for a while and the weather was so bad I couldn’t get my flying hours in so to go solo but they didn’t determine the fact that so from there we were sent to Heaton Park. Now Heaton Park was a holding centre for aircrew to go to the Empire, you’ve heard about this, to the Empire Training Scheme and ‘cause it was near the Manchester ship canal as well. So we were stuck there for a while and we waited and waited and three of us went to the CO and said, ‘you know, what’s the problem?’ In a nice way. We said ‘there’s a hold up and we don’t know when you’ll be going’ so we said ‘what’s the quickest way getting to the war?’ He said, ‘go as gunners’, so we did. Others went, sent, who decided to remuster in the navy and that’s how I’ve become a gunner. So you become a rear gunner is because when you go to OTU, Operational Training Wing, which was Hixon, a place called Hixon in Staffordshire, which is on Wellingtons, then you crew up together and then you all meet up, either Australian pilots, Pete and we all met up and the other guy, there was the other gunner, he said, ‘I don’t want to be a rear gunner’, so I said ‘Okay, I’ll do it, it’s fine’, that was it.
TO: And could you have been a pilot? Could you have become a pilot?
BH: I could’ve, well if I’d stayed on, I’d have become a pilot, I’ve gone overseas but I’d have missed the war. As another guy did say, I met him later on, but he got his wings but he missed the war. That wasn’t the purpose, the purpose was to go and kill Germans.
TO: And so what was the first bomber that you flew in on as a rear gunner?
BH: Well there again, we were, as a crew, we go to, from Wellingtons, we’re six of us, go to a heavy conversion unit onto Lancasters, which is a place called Woolfox Lodge between Stamford and Grantham and you pick up a flight engineer. And the flight engineer, he’d got his wings but they didn’t want him as a pilot so they made them flight engineers. And then we, with various things of getting to know your Lancaster and one thing and the other, we didn’t get to the squadron till late which was in Mildenhall and then we was, we were sent on to various things, they put us on some secretive work and even in OTU the other guys would tell you we used to go out on Window dropping, a diversion raids, save the main forces going that way, we would go that way to get the Luftwaffe up in the air of the pundits, drop the Window, metal strips, as if the big force come, then come back and the other force would go through. So [unclear] they put us on secret [unclear] and testing one thing and the other, finally got onto Operation Manna. So that was my only operational, real operational side. Which was disappointing in a way. But we had to obey orders, didn’t we?
TO: And did you ever wish that you were anything other than a gunner?
BH: Well, as I say, I went as a gunner because I wanted to get in the war but my aim was become a pilot or navigator or bomb aimer, the PNB, that was my aim. But as circumstances would show, as I said, I missed the war, probably gone to Australia, to Canada, Texas or South Africa. But as it happens, when the war ended, we were earmarked to go to California as a crew to convert onto Liberators for the Far East but the [unclear] said, no we want the boys to go home. So the whole crew was split up and that was in August 1945.
TO: And what did your relatives think of you being in the Air Force?
BH: Oh, quite proud in a way. My mother was concerned ‘cause I remember going home with all my kit ‘cause we’d be going from one station to another and she spotted my helmet, oxygen mask to the top so she had a little cry but they were concerned, rightly so, I suppose really.
TO: And how did you feel when you first heard that the RAF had started bombing Germany?
BH: Elated. Couldn’t get in there quick enough to help them do it.
TO: How long did your training last in total?
BH: Our training, well the training started right from 1943 right through to ‘45. I think I joined the 62 Squadron in March ’45 as I said, they sent us on various things and one thing and the other.
TO: And were you on board Lancaster bombers?
BH: Yes.
TO: What were the conditions like on board the Lancaster?
BH: Better than the Wellington, actually I flew Tiger Moths, Harfords, Wellingtons, Lancaster and of course, yeah, the Tiger Moth, which is the nicest plane I’ve ever been in, or ever flew in. There there was if you were coming down the landing, the instructor used to say, watch the grass is grass then cut back [unclear] head over the side watching, but that was flying, that’s different, that only got you into next grade but it wasn’t pleasant especially when you were flying at height when icicles were forming on your oxygen mask, you had to break them off, we had the heating closing as well.
TO: Was it colder in the gun positions than in the main cockpit?
BH: Very tight, conditions were very, in the turret, the rear turret, cramped, very cramped, but then, you know, you’re in it, you’re in it, and that was it.
TO: Did you feel glad when you started going on missions over Germany?
BH: I didn’t really go on missions over Germany. They got us on all the experimental and secret stuff and then finally got onto Operation Manna, which we dropped food, have you heard of it? Obviously, so no need to go into that.
TO: Well, No, actually, if you can explain it but.
BH: We dropped, it’s three hundred feet, the old German airfield Epinburgh and after that we formed the Manna Association. Which I eventually finished up as secretary and treasurer. Now of about forty, forty five of us, is six left now.
TO: And, did you ever, did you have to fire the guns in training?
BH: Oh yeah, yeah. And tested the guns coming over to Holland over the North Sea, test them just in case but yeah, we had to fire drogues. In fact when I was, when the war was over I was sent to Italy and I joined the Centododici Squadron, this is 112, Sharks Squadron, they had sharks under the cowling and I used to fly with the air craft towing a drogue so they could fire at it, hoping that they would fire at the drogue and not at me, so, so that was alright but a bit of fun, but can I tell you an interesting story though? In 1945 the squadron was broken down, broken up and everybody went their different ways and were all made redundant and that was in ’45. So 36 years later this guy turned out to be a great friend with it, is Ted Livingstone and another guy, Phil Irvin, decided to put an advert in all, like the fly, all the journals for aircrew who would be interested in going to see the dropping sites in Holland? It cost a hundred pounds and get the coach from Graves End. So I said to my wife at the time, would you like to do it? Yeah. So, put my name down for it. Now I had my own business in those days and I’d been to an exhibition and I got home rather late, my wife said to me, you had a phone call, I think it’s the guy that’s organizing the trip to Holland. So I said, yeah, what’s his name? She said, Hallem. I said, Arthur Hallem? My own navigator. Anyway left his phone call and of course got on to him, chatted and he was going, right, with his wife. And we chatted, and during the course of the conversation, I said, he was articled clerk, I said, did you carry on with your accountancy? He did, yes, I am now the director of Wickbrits pension fund and I said, in Chiswell Street? And when I said in Chiswell Street, my wife said, Arthur Hallem? I’ve been dealing with him for years in the Abbey National round the corner in City Road what do you think of that?
TO: When you fired the guns, did it leave a smell of cordite in the air?
BH: Pardon?
TO: When you fired the guns, did it leave a smell of cordite in the air?
BH: Yeah. ‘Cause your shells used to drop off the side, you spew out anyway. But also in the training for gunnery you had to put a gun together blindfolded. I don’t know if any of the guys have told you that, yeah, during the training, you had to be blindfolded and then put the guns together, in case you had a stoppage or something like that while you’re out flying so it’s dark, it’s black, can’t put a light on, so you had to do in the darkness, take the bridgehead out, clear it, put it back in.
TO: Do you think it was hard to learn that?
BH: To be honest no and I’m not being snobbish in any way when a few of us came from our previous training, the guys up in Morpeth it was, the instructors had a bet that we [unclear] we would beat everybody and we did. Not because it’s snobbish or anything but we knew our way around so as I said [unclear] I’m not degrading the other guys in any way whatsoever but anyway they had a bet and they won.
TO: And what was your, I think I’ve already asked you this but what was your, was the Tiger Moth your favourite aircraft to fly in? What was your favourite aircraft to fly in?
BH: Tiger Moth, oh yeah.
TO: And were there any planes you flew in that were, that weren’t very reliable?
BH: There was what?
TO: Were all the planes that you flew in reliable?
BH: Yeah, expect the Wellington. ‘Cause Wellington was, the OTU operational training unit and we used to have in it Gee for navigation and I used to pop out and help the navigator, Arthur used to, I used to do the Gee and everything else, and we lost the Gee, and we got lost and we were in cloud and the aircraft started to vibrate violently so we had a discussion whether we should pop out or not, ‘cause we didn’t know where we were, anyway decided to leave and when we got back to base we went to the hangar, the chief engineer said, said to us, you had one minute before the port engine blew up. So we were rather lucky. So the whole aircraft was vibrating.
TO: So, did you have to bale out then?
BH: No, we did considered it but we didn’t know where we were, so we are sticking out, so eventually the weather cleared and we got down and it was a place called Gamston,’cause we’ve been moved there from Hixon and the chief engineer when we went to the hangar the next morning to see what’s the problem he said you had one minute before that engine blew up, in his opinion. So we considered it a lucky escape.
TO: Did Wellington engines have a reputation for doing that?
BH: Yeah, they were Bristol radials but as a [file missing] Merlin [unclear] different proposition altogether but of all end like anybody else the Lancaster was the favourite aircraft.
TO: Were the guns different on as Lancaster to another aircraft?
BH: No, 303s, the mid upper had two guns, is it alright?
TO: Yes
BH: The mid upper had two guns, as you know, the rear turret had four, later in they brought in 2.5s because the 303 only had a range. And the Luftwaffe knew it, if they stood off, right, the 303 were going then would start dropping, didn’t have the range until they bought the .5 which the Americans had, which was a different thing altogether and that’s why they introduced corkscrew, have you heard about the corkscrew? Yeah, that was violent.
TO: Did you have to practice the corkscrew?
BH: Yeah. That’s one of the things that we had to do on 622, they brought us in a new sight, gun sight, and it was like a square like that oblong, and there would be crystals and you had to recognize the aircraft like Messerschmitt and you set that in and if you got the aircraft in those crystals you couldn’t miss so we had to do an exercise with a mark 8 Spitfire and he did his attack and I got a hundred percent hits by then. My mid upper he didn’t want to do it so I did his and he got ninety-nine percent and the whole thing went to Air Ministry but we also did a corkscrew now a corkscrew, I don’t know if they told, how we get into it and why, I mean you just, an attacking aircraft who lay off you and he put your speed in and if he is on the starboard side which is [pause] to the right of the aircraft, right, so we called our pilot Pete, the corkscrew starboard so he’s got his wheel like that ready and as the aircraft comes in, he’s got to come in like that, and he’s got to come under the back he said, corkscrew go and he goes [mimics the noise of incoming aircraft] down like that and up again and then down again and his stomach comes up here, goes down there, good fun really.
TO: Was anyone aboard the plane actually sick, by those manoeuvres?
BH: No. Fortunately.
TO: And do you think the guns of a Lancaster would have been enough to take down a fighter?
BH: Oh yeah, if they got in range, as I say, the 303, as the other guys will tell you, the only, limited in range, they would drop down and the Luftwaffe knew that.
TO: And were people more afraid of night fighters than anti-aircraft fire?
BH: Mh?
TO: Were people more afraid of night fighters than anti-aircraft fire?
BH: I don’t think so but towards the end of the war they did have intruders. I don’t know if you were told about that. The Focke Wulf 190 used to follow aircraft back and as soon as you got in landing position, what they called funnel, there you’re lined up, your undercarriage is down, your flaps are down and you are more air worthy, you’re more or less, your air speed is down and it happened to where I was in Woolfox Lodge one of guys got shot down because they used to come in, follow the aircraft and while you’re in that position they were vulnerable and shoot them down. In fact to this day they haven’t found the air gunner, the rear gunner, so we used to get the signal to be sent out over the North Sea, Irish Sea, all clear but then that was towards the end of the war and it claimed quite a few victims, so.
TO: As a, sorry, as a rear gunner, were you in the most vulnerable position? As a gunner, were you in the most vulnerable position?
BH: Yes. Because I explain the line of attack would be, they would lay off, turn in and come round like that and then
TO: Come.
BH: Come to the rear so the rear gunner was really the first form of defence and the first to receive attack. As soon as they introduced these Dorniers with guns they called firing from underneath, I don’t know if you were told about that, right, they had these Dorniers and they were equipped with a gun who used to get under the aircraft and fire upwards, couldn’t see them until you exploded.
TO: And what kind of bombs would a Lancaster carry?
BH: Oh, the big ones. Yeah, sit [?] incendiaries, thousand pounders. And also the big one. It takes up the whole of the bomb bay.
TO: And what did you think of RAF leaders, like Arthur Harris?
BH: If anybody started on me outside, I’ll tell my uncle of you. But he’s brilliant and he liked his aircrew. He went to South Africa because he was contemptuous of the government for not demobbing the aircrew, made us all redundant. And that’s a story in itself, stupid. As I say, when the squadron broke up, we made redundant, send up to a place called Burn, up in Yorkshire, an old ex airfield here and are you ok for time?
TO: I’m fine. I’m just checking there be, yeah, I’m just checking the [unclear].
BH: And I get there, masses of ex aircrew walking about doing nothing and what it was it went there before a panel and you had three choices of a trade: radar wireless, wireless mechanic, driver or radar operator. So, and you got all ex aircrew sitting back, what do you want to do Bernie? Sort of thing. I said, ‘well, I’ll go as a radar wireless mechanic’, ‘nah, you don’t want to go, it’s a year’s course, you will be out by then’, so then, ‘I’ll learn to drive’, ‘No, no one is gonna teach you to drive, you’ll be able to, you go as a radar operator’, so ok fine. In the meantime I was sent to a place as a clerk. So they got that all wrong until I said ‘I’m not a clerk, I’m going as a radar operator’. So finally they realised because when I reported to St John’s Wood, when I first went in, there’s another guy named Harris and he starts three numbers 168 same as mine, but his other numbers were different, so they got him mixed up with me ‘cause they didn’t look any further until they realised their mistake. So that was that, so eventually after much arguments I was, ok go down to in Wiltshire and you will become trained as an operator. So about twelve or sixteen ex aircrew we’re trained as radar operators, yeah, for six months. When we finished the course, the signal came from the Air Ministry, all the ex air crew that had taken the radar operators are now redundant, report back to Burn. So we got back to Burn, said ‘what happened?’ I said, ‘I want to learn to drive’, ‘ok we’ll teach you to drive’. So that was that.
TO: And what did you think of other RAF leaders? What did you think of RAF’s general leaders?
BH: In general, loved it. You see, the pysco is this, with aircrew, all volunteers, no one conscripted, they all had the same state of mind, they all wanted to fly and kill Germans. So we had all that in common and air crew is like a big family even today. Even with so few of us left. Silly contact, so, although it was a war it was a great experience, [unclear] my teams.
TO: Were there any ever occasions where weather at your airfields damaged the aircraft?
BH: No. The only laughable thing is that the weather, one briefing we had at OTU we head to normal briefings what you gonna do and end of which is the met man, I can see him now, tall man, long neck, big Adam’s apple, when he’s going all through the [unclear] and he says, ‘you got five tenths cloud’ and all that, but we said ‘it’s raining outside’ , he said ‘not according to my map it’s not’, and it was, it was bucketing down, not according to my map, he said, and that’s true.
TO: And what kind of information would you be given at the briefings?
BH: On a normal target, what you got to do, courses, the courses, navigation, radio codes, gunnery, the whole lot and then finish up with the met report.
TO: What kind of gunnery would you be, what kind of gunnery would they cover at the briefing?
BH: What kinds of what?
TO: What aspects of gunnery would they cover at the briefings?
BH: Just to make sure that your guns are ok, your belts are ok, the gun belts ‘cause they run on the side and your gun is fully charged and everything else. And also the height you’ll be flying at, in most cases more than about ten to fifteen thousand feet, then up to twenty thousand.
TO: Did you bring any rations with you aboard the bomber?
BH: Yeah. There was chocolate of course, gum, I think the gum, I’m not sure, certainly chocolate, apple, I think, what they called the flying breakfast you had to have a pint of milk, there’s an urn of milk on the side, and you had your flying breakfast going and coming back whatever you did. Yeah, there was a chocolate, I don’t remember any of the others ‘cause I don’t think I used it. I did use the chocolate once, it was like a block of ice, it was frozen, nearly knocked my teeth out. So I used to have it, everybody had a flying ration.
TO: And what kind of rations did you have at the air bases?
BH: Very good, very good, at Heaton Park, where we were waiting to go abroad, they had a most brilliant chef there and he made trifles every Sunday, now if I was out on the site I would make sure I go back, he was brilliant, but the food was good.
TO: Did you have more in the air forces food than as a civilian?
BH: Then what?
TO: Than as a civilian?
BH: Yeah, I think so, yeah, yeah.
TO: And do you remember, sorry I’m going back slightly but, do you remember how you felt when the RAF won the Battle of Britain?
BH: Yeah, elated. Absolutely, that was a turning point of the war. But that’s set off the Blitz, then he resorted to air bombardments by the Luftwaffe and when he was beaten in that, in the Battle of Britain, he resorted to night flying, bombing.
TO: And do you remember hearing about the attack on the Ruhr Dams?
BH: Yeah, 617 Squadron. Yeah, that was May 16th, 17th, and May the 17th was my 20th birthday. So, I remember it well.
TO: Was it widely reported in the press?
BH: Mh?
TO: Was the attack on the dams widely reported in the press?
BH: Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah. See, don’t forget, the Battle of Britain was the only real victory that we had, I mean, the desert warfare was going backwards and forwards with Rommel, so that was the only real victory and the bombing of Germany was applauded because we’d had enough, we, it was a turning point, it was, it was as if the Germans were invincible, that was a feeling, but when we had these victories, they weren’t invincible, they realized we could do something about it.
TO: Did they report much about the campaign in North Africa in the papers?
BH: Well, the campaign in North Africa, was, until Montgomery came on the scene was backwards and forwards, Rommel came, forced the British back, [unclear] finished up outside Cairo, at El Alamein and he stood his ground there and he beat Rommel but a lot of people don’t know if you get into modern history of the Middle East, that Sadat who was president, became president of Egypt, plotted with the Arabs to attack Montgomery from the rear to help the Germans and he was arrested by the British, yeah. I won’t go into modern history about the Arabs or anything else, but yeah, he plotted as the others, the Mahdi of Jerusalem went to Berlin so Montgomery had a lot against him but he fought through and he’s held at El Alamein and that was a good victory there. And that was another turning point of the war but you couldn’t rely on the Arabs nor could you today, I have to say, but anyway, scrub that. But yes, so, Battle of Britain and El Alamein, the bombing of Germany. Dresden, right, you take Dresden, Canon Collins who was anti, against the atom bomb and everything else CND he used to go around preaching to aircrew not to bomb Germany and he was allowed to do it for some reason. However, that’s another story, but if you take Dresden with Stalin who was advancing, Dresden was no longer an open city, before that they were making gun sites as well, had a big industry in gun, opticians and, Stalin said to Truman at that time and Churchill that Dresden, the troops, German troops are massing in Dresden and I want them seen to, I want them cleared, so both the Americans, us, the RAF, bombed Dresden. Dresden was unfortunate but there was twenty five thousand casualties, Goebbels put another nought on the ending, it made two hundred and fifty thousand but Dresden was needed because Stalin wanted it, it was in the way of his troops to get into East Germany so no matter what anybody said about Dresden, I will always say Dresden was needed unfortunate. You tell me about Coventry, you tell me about Rotterdam, you tell me about Bristol, Southampton, Bristol, you tell me about those cities, don’t tell me, don’t talk to me about Dresden.
TO: And then, what did you think of the German aircraft of the war?
BH: Never flew one [laughs]. Well, they served their purpose, the Heinkel was the most hated, the 101, no 111, no 101, because they used to desynchronize their engines, whether they did that to avoid radar or not but you could always tell them, the Heinkel 11, they desynchronized [mimics the sound of engines] so that was a horrible sound. The 109s they were ok, the Focke-Wulf was alright and then they brought in the jet towards the end of the war, the Messerschmitt jet, yeah, fighter aircraft, [unclear] aircraft.
TO: And were you quite friendly with the ground crew?
BH: Oh yeah, yeah, especially the WAAFs. Yes, yeah, always had contact with the ground crew, and they’d always be at the end of the runway when you’re taking off.
TO: Did they see you, were they cheering at you?
BH: Yeah. [unclear] together two fingers back.
TO: And do you remember hearing about the first thousand bomber raid on Cologne?
BH: No, I wasn’t involved in it.
TO: But did they report it?
BH: Yeah, they’re good [?]. Actually they brought in aircraft from OTUs, Wellingtons as well, from OTUs and heavy conversion units, they brought everybody in, it was unlucky not to be called. Took tinsel instead. Window.
TO: And when was Window first developed?
BH: I think by Barnes Wallis, he designed the Wellington, I think it was one of his ideas. He just put it down the chute, the flare chute, just bundled it down. And of course, the Germans on their radar, swamped their radar.
TO: And you mentioned sometimes you went on these, was it secret operations or special operations? You said you went on operations to deploy Window as a decoy?
BH: Yeah.
TO: Would you deploy it around the North Sea?
BH: Yeah, I was [file missing] over the North Sea, yeah. The idea was if the main bomber, the main route was through Holland, from the East Coast to Holland. So, if a main group was going, say, across The Hague, we would go with the Window south of that because the German fighter group were patrolling round [unclear] so if they were sent off that way to find us with the Window, they used up their fuel so they had to come back to refuel and in the meantime the main forces got through. Coming back was a different story of course but the main force had got through.
TO: What do you think of the American aircraft of the war?
BH: Was a big aircraft with a little bomb bay. Didn’t have much to do with them really. I mean Mildenhall 3 Group where I was in, I was surrounded by the Americans, Norfolk and all around that. And the only thing against them was that, when they took off, they wouldn’t go over the coast until they got to their operational height and then they went, so if we had a [unclear] right, we got this humming guide on all the time and once they got their operational height, then their fighter escort would go off, and then off they would go, so we called them as a bloody nuisance. But they are good guys, I mean, they took a hammering, they really did. Their graves, memorial in Cambridge, massive, the graveyards there, massive memorial. Took a hell of a pounding.
TO: Did you, were you ever escorted by American fighters?
BH: No. No.
TO: Or Spitfires at all?
BH: No. The only time had contact with a Spitfire was that one they tested the side.
TO: Did you ever, did airfields ever run low on supplies like fuel or bombs?
BH: The airfields yeah, bomb dumps and fuel dumps, yeah. Yeah, self-contained, yeah.
TO: And did they ever run low on supplies?
BH: No, well planned. It was mostly worked by the Royal Army Service Corps. It was the same Royal Army Service Corps bloated our aircraft with food for Holland. Stacking up the bomb bay.
TO: Can you tell me how Operation Manna worked?
BH: Worked? I’ll tell you how it came about and worked. Yeah.
BH: Operation Market Garden, Arnhem was unfortunately a disaster. The idea was to shorten the war and go through [unclear] backed by the Germans. The Reichsmaster, it was a Hungarian, Austrian Nazi commander in Holland by the name of Arthur Seyss-Inquart was so incensed that he stopped all food coming into Western Holland from the agriculture part of Holland itself. Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard were here in England, in the UK, in exile and in January 1944 she called the railway workers to go on strike in Holland. Well this Nazi Reichmaster in retaliation ordered the sea locks to be broken, flooding Western Holland from Utrecht right round to The Hague. So, the dykes were broken and it was flooded. There was a population of three million nine hundred thousand in that area and this is a fact ‘cause I gave a talk on it to 622 Squadron which was reformed in Brize Norton in May, anyway. So out of three million nine hundred thousand, eventually twenty thousand died of starvation and malnutrition was rife, people were starving, so Queen Juliana appealed to Churchill and Truman and Eisenhower. Eisenhower said, they will have to wait, he is not committing his troops, while there are six hundred thousand Germans in Western Holland. Anyway, so Queen Juliana said, finally Eisenhower said, [unclear] find a way of delivering food. And he brought in Air Commodore Andrew Geddes, who was on tactical air force in main headquarters of the Allies, so cut a long story forward, he was met Bedell Smit and Bedell Smith to him, we have a situation, we got people starving and they have to be supplied by food by air. You devise a plan and you come and tell back and tell me what you gonna do. So, apparently, Andrew Geddes went away with others to tactical air force and he devised a plan for dropping food in certain areas in Western Holland by air incorporating the squadrons of Lancasters and also Pathfinders and he got hold of this Nazi [unclear] and in a school called, they met in a school called [unclear] and they explained the plan. The Germans didn’t like it, he said, not the case of you liking it, it’s what we’re gonna do. And if you interfere in any way in what we gonna do, you’ll be arrested as a war criminal. So, on April 29th, the 28th it started but the weather was too bad, so on the 29th of April Operation Manna started without the agreement being signed until the next day. And quite legally they could’ve been shot down and we’re going three hundred feet, hundred meters, something like that, we did a designated area, if anybody went outside that area they’d be warned by red flares and shot at and shot down. Anyway, so, it went off without incident and that was the start of Manna and it went from April the 29th to May the 8th. The Americans came in, they called it Chowhound, the next day and they finished on May the 7th. So in a total there was twelve thousand tons of food dropped overall, the RAF dropped seven thousand and the Yanks dropped four thousand. And to this day in Holland it’s taught, as history, by survivors and when we’ve been back there before we’ve been invited back, as I say, in 1981, we went in 1982 on that first trip, we were overwhelmed, we didn’t realise, people used to come up to us and still do when we go there, thank you for saving my life, thank you for saving my parents life, children are growing, it’s very touching. And that’s how it came about.
TO: And what do you remember the most when you were participating in Operation Manna?
BH: But we went in, I think about two or three thousand feet and dropped to three hundred when we got over to Holland. My first, I’m the last to see anything ‘cause I’m at the back, there’s this boy on his bicycle, on top of the dyke, flooded all around, astride his bicycle, waving a Union Jack and a Dutch tricolour, right and we were flying in just below the roof of a hospital, they were all waving sheets and God knows what else. And we went between The Hague and Rotterdam to drop at Eppinburgh and straight out again. But we could see people waving, they were warned to keep away, one guy whose pony rushed onto the dropping field, got hit by a sack of potatoes and that killed him. But other thing and the Germans were told that if they touched the food in any way they will be arrested as war criminals but this Nazi, he was eventually tried and hanged as a war criminal because not only was he involved in Holland, he followed the German army through the occupied areas organising transportations and everything else, he was a real, real Nazi and he was strung up.
TO: Is there anything else you remember in particular about Operation Manna, which sticks out to you?
BH: There is a guy named Hans Onderwater also a [unclear] historian, he wrote a book called Manna Chowhound, still very friends with him, right, and he organised a hell of a lot, what we, with the Manna Association, what we used to do, together with Americans, they used to come over here, we meet up in Lincoln, right, on the weekend, and we had four coachloads to go to various, entertained by various airfields the RAF Coningsby, Scampton, Waddington, places like that, and they used to, the fifth year we’d go to Holland, and boy! We didn’t know where were going and we were hosted all over the country, memorials, dining, visiting, schools, lectures, concerts, incredible, absolutely incredible.
TO: And the food supplies that you had on board the plane, were they, did they have parachutes attached to them?
BH: No, just dropped out the bomb bay. Just open the bomb bay, they’d fall down. The Pathfinders went in first who did the markers because they were told, the Dutch were told, the aircraft would be coming in and dropping red markers and then after that on their radios ‘cause they were all hidden, radios were all hidden, [unclear] anyway, the aircraft are leaving England bringing you food and of course all out on the streets waiting for the aircraft.
TO: Was there anyone that you know of who actually got fired at during Operation Manna?
BH: Yeah, one guy got a bullet through his foot because some irate Germans, we followed the guns, the anti tank guns, they were following us, could see that clearly and I tracked them as well, but of course we were vulnerable at that height, there were a few rifle shots, one guy got a bullet through his foot, and you could see that, that sort of things that were given there [emphasis: sound of papers rustling] [unclear] in there, a card from Prince Bernhard, he was our, he was our president, and that’s a card from from Bernhard when Queen Wilhelmina died I sent a card, a condolence card, got load of medals in there, as the other guys from Manna. Now, there is only six of us left and the guy, Bob Goodman, he was the leader of Chowhound, he died this March. So, like all good things come to an end, don’t they.
TO: When Operation Manna began, and you had the briefings,
BH: Yeah.
TO: Were you or anyone else surprised when you heard you would be dropping food?
BH: Not surprised, more of an adventure I think. I mean, it was humanitarian. No, it was a surprise, something we wanted to do and like all operations, when you go for briefing, the whole airfield is closed down, the gates are closed, RAF police on the doors, it’s a lockdown. You only go and get your gear and get your breakfast and go.
TO: Did it feel strange to have, to be carrying food rather than weaponry?
BH: Well we knew that, why we were doing it, I mean, three million nine hundred thousand people, I mean we got photographs of kids [unclear] walking about with large spoons, so when they went by these areas where the, kitchens, common kitchens, they’d scrape out the bottom of the urn, we got photographs of kids dying in the streets.
TO: Do you think Operation Manna could have been launched sooner than it was?
BH: I think it was in a timescale it should have done. Because they did know the seriousness after the what happened to, after Arnhem and this Nazi what he would do. He was rightly strung up as well anyway.
TO: And did you hear, was there much reporting on what was happening on the Russian front?
BH: Yeah, oh yeah. Well the Russians, you know, they took quite a beating until they got to Stalingrad, they could have gone, if they had gone past Stalingrad it would have been another story, but the winter of all things killed them, hope, unfortunately and the Russians, I mean, their hatred of the Germans, you couldn’t describe it, so, yeah, right, that’s why there was a great Communist movement in this country as well, because Communism as against, never mind what Stalin did with Holland he made the deal in ’39 didn’t he? With him, but regardless of all that, the British public could see the only real enemy and allies, as far as we were concerned, allies were the Russians. If it wasn’t for the Russians, the Germans would have been here. There’s no doubt about it.
TO: And when did you or when did the news of the Holocaust reach Britain?
BH: What?
TO: News of the Holocaust reach Britain?
BH: Well apparently, well being Jewish I know [unclear], we knew there was concentration camps and what the Germans did before the war with Jews and everything, with the refugees and everything coming over and telling their stories of what was happening. But apparently the leaders of the Jews in Germany were begging for the Allies to bomb the [unclear], but we were, with Enigma, Churchill’s excuse was we know but we, we don’t want the Germans to know that we have Enigma, that we’ve been broken their code, that was his excuse. There was one flaw, they were begging to be bombed because what was happening. But he didn’t want the Germans to know that we knew all about Enigma. So his excuse was no, if we know about concentration camps we would know their secrets. But they took no notice of what was coming out through the Jewish movement, with the concentration camps. Only it wasn’t only Jews, yeah, there’s the only fly in the ointment.
TO: And when did you personally first hear of the Holocaust?
BH: Not until the war ended actually.
TO: And what was your rank when you were in the air force?
BH: Flight sergeant.
TO: Flight sergeant.
BH: I was just coming up to warrant officer.
TO: And were you actually ever on bombing missions or was Operation Manna your first proper
BH: Operation Manna was only one, yeah. As I say, we were involved in experimental stuff.
TO: Did you ever experiment with stuff that turned out not to work? Did you ever experiment with equipment that didn’t work?
BH: No, no, the only thing we were doing was with that gunsight and also we were experimenting with things, high level bombing as well. I’ve got in my log book high-level bombing, which certain things had to be done and navigational things but as a person who wanted to get in the war I still regret not having a good run at the Germans by getting in to bombing raids. But then the powers above gave the orders. Couldn’t go off on our own. Have you ever met a guy named Harry Irons?
TO: Harry [unclear]?
BH: Irons? Harry Irons?
TO: Irons, I think I’ve heard of him but I have not met him.
BH: Oh, he’s local, he lives not far [unclear], he’d done two tours as a rear gunner. I was with him on June the 4th.
TO: Yeah. Of this year?.
BH: Yeah.
TO: Does he live that far from here or?
BH: Mh?
TO: Does he live near here?
BH: Yeah.
TO: Maybe you can put me in touch with him later perhaps.
BH: You want, well, do you want to see him?
TO: Well, maybe, if he wants to talk.
BH: He wants to, yeah, I only, I haven’t got his phone number. I got his phone number but it’s all wrong.
TO: Oh, ok.
BH: I’ve got his address.
TO: Maybe I could send him a letter or something.
BH: Do you want the address?
TO: Well, we can sort that later. It’s fine.
BH; Yeah?
TO: We can sort it later. It’s fine.
BH: Ok.
TO: So, where would you keep the parachutes on board the plane?
BH: Just inside the fuselage, behind the turret. You had to open the turret doors, get the parachute, click it on, turn the parachute, the turret to the side, open the doors and fall out. But you had to get to your parachute first, because it was in the fuselage. And if you couldn’t open the doors, hard luck.
TO: Did they have a steep hatch [file missing]?
BH: Yeah, further up. Yeah.
TO: And were there any occasions where you were flying over Europe and you got lost?
BH: Only in the one I told you about. We were actually fired at over the, over Jersey, we were doing a trip over there, a sortie over there, Northern France, experimental and we were actually fired at and I see this [unclear] coming up, but it missed, as you can see.
TO: Was the fire anywhere near the plane or?
BH: Not, it was why they missed, they went away. Just watched it coming up, this flame.
TO: Did you, were your missions mainly during the night?
BH: Mh?
TO: Were your missions mainly during the night?
BH: Yeah, night training yeah, most of my flying hours were at night.
TO: And how long would a mission tend to last?
BH: Well, it be anything, an hour, an hour and a half, if you are doing circuits and bumps it could be an hour, we say the circuits and landings, circuits and bumps we called them. But one and three quarters hours, something like that.
TO: Cool. And what was the procedure for a squadron’s aircraft to take off?
BH: Well that was controlled by airfield control. Would you like a drink?
TO: No thanks, I’m fine, my eyes are a bit sore. [unlcear]
BH: You’re alright?
TO: Yeah, I’m fine. Yes, so, do you remember what the procedure was for taking off?
BH: Yeah, first of all you went out to dispersal by the crew bus, then you, you got in your positions, everybody in, everything was tested, the ailerons, rudders, flaps, not the flaps but the, certainly the ailerons, then the engines were started up, first the hydraulics, I think was the port outer then the port [unclear] in [unclear] and so forth. Get them running up all ready, then you got the call from aircraft control and you taxied out. And you waited on the tarmac and then as you were called from the air control on the end of the runway, right, give you the green light, you just went round and off you go.
TO: And what about landing, what was the procedure for that?
BH: Same thing, they called it, what they called the funnel, you’re in, pilot called out ‘funnel funnel‘, and they’re calling and said, ‘you do a circuit of the airfield and you come in’ and then, landing in like that there, one after the other and they called that funnel. That’s when you’re most vulnerable, the flaps are down, undercarriage is down, you have slow airspeed and that’s when they took advantage with the intruders.
TO: Were landings and take offs ever nerve-racking at all?
BH: No, I loved them, it’s the best part of it, landing and taking off. Even now, with commercial aircraft, the best part.
TO: When you were flying, could you, were you always above cloud level or?
BH: Yeah.
TO: Or could you ever see the land below?
BH: Only when it’s what they called ten tenths but if it’s like this you couldn’t, probably the height of the clouds at the moment thirty, thirty five thousand feet so if you did it in twenty you could see, but as I say, most of it was at night and don’t forget blackout everywhere. So, it’s all done by navigation and Gee.
TO: And how did Gee work?
BH: It was a series of signals and it was like a small television screen and they had two bars running, one across there and one underneath it, with like “V”s on them, like that, and then as you match them up, you press another button, up come a map where you were, showing you exactly where you were. But that time we got lost somewhere over the Midlands so it didn’t work so we didn’t know where we were but yeah I used to enjoy doing that because when we knew we were quite safe I used to get out of the turret and help Arthur with his navigation ‘cause one of my pet subjects that was when we at ITW.
TO: Were you allowed to leave the turret or were you supposed to stay there?
BH: Unofficially. No once you’re in there, you’re supposed stay in there, but there you are.
TO: And how, how much, was it very noisy aboard the planes?
BH: Very noisy, drumming. A lot of guys suffered, I still have a bit of tinnutis, a lot of guys got pension for the tinnitus, the constant roar of the aircraft, the vibration as well.
TO: And did you, did you have radio sets to talk to each other?
BH: Intercom. They had what they call RT, radio transmission, which another funny story. Stan Fig [?], our radio operator, he could swear for twenty minutes without repeating the same word twice and at one time, we were coming back, on OT on Wellingtons, and we were in a circuit and down on the starboard side to me, which is the port side, ‘cause I’m in reverse to the pilot, I called up with his [unclear] ‘Pete there is someone trying to muscle in on the circuit’, right, on your port side, right, now before that he puts, he switches the RT on, asked for permission to land, now that goes everywhere. So Stan, he puts his head up then and he starts swearing about these guys trying to muscle in. When we got down in the crew bus, picked us up and then he went and picked the other crew up who were Canadians and they go, who is that so and so and so swearing at us? Pete the pilot forgot to switch off the RT, yeah, and it’s gone everywhere, the Germans must have thought it was a foreign language or code, when we, had to report to the air control right and the WAAF at the air control she had a fit with all the swearing and everything [laughs], so, everybody knew about it, right, so anyway we got roasted over that.
TO: And whenabouts did that occur? Do you know what year and month that occured?
BH: Ah, that was in ’43, ’44.
TO: And this was during a training mission, was it?
BH: Yeah.
TO: Could you ever see the cities below you when you were flying over them?
BH: No, that’s all blacked out.
TO: And did you hear about the D-Day invasion?
BH: Oh yeah. Yeah, because when it happened when they said it was a delay in pilot training they sent us back to St John’s Wood where we originally, all the aircrews reported to St John’s Wood. My first day I reported to St John’s Wood to have an inspection in Lord’s, I dropped my trousers under the portrait of W.G. Grace and again, I’ll tell you what, a plate of oxtail soup and we were billeted in St John‘s’ Wood so we were sent back to St John’s Wood and while we were still there the D-Day was on. We saw the aircraft going over. So, I remember that very well. June the 6th 1944.
TO: Were those have been the airborne troops or bombers?
BH: Yeah. Yeah.
TO: So were they airborne troops?
BH: Yeah. Were going over London from all round, from the South Coast, Sterlings were taking the gliders.
TO: What do you think of the Sterling?
BH: I’ve never got in touch with it, it was older and all but 622 Squadron they had Sterlings at first ‘cause it was a peacetime build up, peacetime field which 622 was born out of C flight of 15 Squadron which now flies Typhoons chasing German, Russian bombers. And they reinformed, we reinformed in Brize Norton three years ago and that’s why I was invited three years ago and also in May this last, this May to go there to give a talk on Manna. That’s why it’s all there.
TO: Did they enjoy the talk?
BH: Yeah.
TO: Do you know of anyone or meet anyone who ever refused to go on bombing missions?
BH: Oh yeah, yeah. Couple of Jewish friends, Harry Irons, who I mentioned, he was a tailor, he went in as a gunner straight away and, yeah, a lot of guys from Manna, who were wing commanders, one was a group captain, and we were as one, there was no rank then but great guys. One was Des Butters [?], he was a pilot on Pathfinders so yeah. Another one, I know very well, friend as well, David Fellowes, he is still very active, goes round signing books and he’s older than me.
TO: Were there any other times where someone refused to go on a bombing raid?
BH: Well, the only contact I had with anything like that is our first navigator, who was married and he couldn’t take it anymore and in those days they called it Lack of Moral Fibre. Today you’d go and see a psychiatrist and you’re just whipped away, away, demoted, taken to a place like Christchurch or something like that and demoted him and they treated you like dirt, where it’s a mental condition, I mean, they just didn’t want anybody contaminated, so we had to have a new navigator, a bomb aimer, sorry, he was a bomb aimer, a new bomb aimer.
TO: Did they ever, did he ever talk about what, the problems he had?
BH: Mh?
TO: Did this man ever talk about the problems he’d faced?
BH: No. No. Kept it to himself and then suddenly it’s gone.
TO: What is your best memory of your time in the RAF?
BH: My best memory is after the war when I was sent to Italy and I was on a Squadron, Cento, 112 Squadron and flying in a harbour towing drogues and they had the wing had it’s own rest centre with a hotel, the place called Grado and they want somebody to run it ‘cause the guy was going home. So I volunteered, so all I had to do was go there, make sure it was run properly, make sure it had all the rations and everything else, saw that the staff got paid, got myself a big ‘Q’ time dinghy, go down on the beach. Go back for lunch, go back to the beach again and make sure everything was alright. So until the winter set in then I couldn’t do it anymore and came home in January 1947. But there was the best time in the RAF [laughs].
TO: And, sorry to ask this, but what is your worst memory of your time in the RAF or of the war in general?
BH: The worst memory is the ones that I told you, when the aircraft was rattling and we didn’t know where we were. Everything else is taken in stride.
TO: What did you tend to do to keep up morale?
BH: Morale didn’t come into, as I said, we were all volunteers, we knew what we were in for, so we used to go drinking together as a crew when we had nights off, each one bought a round of half a pint , so that’s three and a half pints, twice, seven pints, so we used to roll back, go to somebody else’s aircraft and get a wick of their oxygen and go back to bed. And they probably did the same to us.
TO: How did the oxygen help?
BH: Well, it livened you up really, it sobered you up.
TO: Were there any occasions where you oxygen supplies froze up?
BH: Mh?
TO: Did your oxygen supplies ever freeze up?
BH: No, no. Not that I know of.
TO: And how did those heated jackets work that you mentioned?
BH: Very good, in fact they ruined my feet for a while. You had, first of all you had silk and wool underwear, vest, long pants right the way down to the, then you had the uniform. Then there was, as far as the gunners were concerned, there was this heated suit which plugged in, so you had slippers, heated slippers that plugged in and all connected, all the way up. Then, your flying suit on top of that, your gauntlets, inner gauntlet was a heated one and all studded to this inner suit and then of course, your, mae west and then your parachute harness on top of that, so you were really lumbering. They brought you at one time what they called the tailor’s suit, it was massive, I don’t know why they got it, we couldn’t get into the turret with it so we quickly discarded that. It was huge like, huge, you know, God knows, anyway it was a bad buy, called it the tailor’s suit. So, yes, we had a heated suit but the heated slippers created havoc with the sole of my feet, burnt them, and it took two or three years after I had come out of the air force to get it right and after that out of habit I still wear white socks.
TO: And do you remember what you were doing on the day the war ended?
BH: Yeah, I was over Holland dropping food. It was the last flight and then the war was over. May the 8th 1945.
TO: And what kind of entertainment did you have at your airbases?
BH: Well, some of them had ENSA concerts but there was not on the base, you had to go outside, at Mildenhall there was a cinema in the town. Some places had ENSA, where the singers and dancers used to come, they would do a performance, some were horrible, sometimes the cinema. One had a cinema that had broke down, halfway through the film, with Cary Grant, don’t remember the title but anyway broke down and that was that so went to the pub but entertainment mostly go to the pub, local pub.
TO: Were there any particular songs that the RAF liked to sing?
BH: No, not really. We used to sing flying, flying fortresses, fly never so high, go round [unclear] in circles finally finishing on their own, up their own backsides, something like that. Well, we put a girl on a bar in a pub and the song is, this is your ankles, this is your kneecap, this is your and this is r, r, r, you know, all that palaver and the girls loved it. But apart from that, made our own entertainment.
TO: And on days when you were just stationed on the airbases, not on operations, could you hear the drone of other bombers flying around?
BH: Well, the Americans. Oh yeah, well at Mildenhall because they used to start four o’clock, five o’clock in the morning. ‘Cause they would totally fly in day, in daylight, which they could, you know, they were vulnerable, very vulnerable.
TO: And do you think the war was worth the price?
BH: Mh?
TO: Do you think the war was worth the price?
BH: I’m sorry.
TO: Do you think the war was worth it?
BH: It was essential. You wouldn’t be here today. Nor would I. It was essential. The biggest mistake was, when Hitler came to power, I think, Churchill warned, war was coming, nobody took him notice until finally 1938, ’36, the Spanish War, which was a rehearsal for the Germans, they should’ve start rearming then, ‘cause the writing was on the wall. But there were a lot of vested interests in this country like Lord Halifax at that time, who was, he wanted to negotiate with the Germans. Churchill sent him to America as an ambassador, he was a German lover and there were a few others in the arms industry as well, them German lovers, vested interests. So in 1936 the writing was on the wall. So, Churchill was the only one who could see it. And they called him a warmonger. But they say, comes the moment, comes the right man.
TO: And how do you feel about Germany today?
BH: The old generation I don’t want hear anything to do about. The new generation are different ‘cause they don’t want anything to do with their own teutonic ways of life, they’re youngsters, you can understand, they’re a great help to Israel, lot of Germans used to go to Israel, kibbutz and all that, I’ve been there, they’ve been there, right, and no, from what they doing I admire them but the only thing now is, I mean, now we got this exodus, well, I call it the exodus, Brexit, coming out of Europe, my opinion is that in time that Germany will be the dominant nation in Europe, who don’t like the French and the French don’t like them. I just hope [emphasis] that it all works out, we don’t get sucked into another war. Because the idea of a united Europe in the first place was to stop wars. So, I’m sad at the outcome. But as far as the Germans today, I admire them in a way, they’re doing well, very well. In part of course they got right wingers again, which has clouded the whole issue with the referendum, I mean immigration has clouded the whole issue, people can’t see further than, so I won’t go on to that. ‘Cause there is one man I blame, it’s the worst president at the wrong time, at the wrong time, Obama. You can edit this but I’ll tell you, when he said to the Syrians, yeah, that if you use chemical weapons on your population, that is a red line, and he’d become a puff, a puff of a pink line, he’d done nothing and that was the signal for them to do whatever they wanted to do. What general tells the enemy or, I’m not going to send an army in, there will be no boots on the ground and that caused what is happening now and that’s caused, who wants to leave their home really, and that’s caused a desperate refugee problem in Syria. I put it down to, the quicker he goes the better, he’s out anyway, so. That’s my opinion.
TO: And what do you think of Britain’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan?
BH: I think it was the right one. I really do. With Afghan it’s been going on for years, when I mean the Russians and all they’re interested in doing there is killing one another and killing everybody else. I mean, it was going on before the First World War, our Bomber Harris used to fly biplanes, and they used to fly with I think it was a pot of gold ‘cause if they were captured, they gave it to the Afghanis, the tribesmen otherwise they cut their testicles off. So, that’s pre 1914. So that’s [unclear]. With Iraq that was a different story, yeah. The biggest mistake with Iraq when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, yeah, and Bush senior invaded, don’t forget Palestinian also, Palestinian terrorist also sided with and in they went into Kuwait as well, right, thought that was a good thing. But when George Bush senior and the Allies went in and pushed them out of Kuwait and on the road to Baghdad all the goodies said stop, you mustn’t do it, said stop, that created the next problem and the next problem was, who knew, he did have gas, he gassed his own people. Of course he had a secret weapon. All these do-gooders, yeah, what happened if they did have them? But the biggest mistake was and is, the Western world does not understand the hatred between the Sunni and the, oh God.
TO: The Shi’a. The Shi’a?
BH: Shi’a. They hate one another. And always will hate one another. They didn’t understand the enmity. So the Shi’a were the governing body in Iraq and the Sunnis hated the sight of them. ‘Cause you got Iran fostering them all up as well. But the bigger to say was they used to call the Foreign Office the camel brigade, Arab lovers ‘cause most of them used be educated in Lisbon, they don’t understand the hatred between the Shi’a and the Sunni and that will never go away. There will never be peace with them. That’s the biggest problem. Don’t blame Blair, blame his advisors who knew the Arab mind, they knew about Islam, they didn’t advise him properly. You go in, make sure you got a proper government. Don’t leave it to the Sunnis or the Shi’a. And that will go on.
TO: I think I pretty much asked all of my questions, so. Thank you so much, I really enjoyed.
BH: You are welcome. Do you want a cup of tea or something?
TO: Ah [file missing] So.
BH: Did the museum supply you with that?
TO: No, it’s my own.
BH: Really?
TO: I brought my so, I do film interviews. And, have you ever watched films about the war?
BH: Yeah.
TO: And what do you think of them?
BH: Yeah, quite good. Glorified, you know, made for the screen, a couple of, a few things they say makes me wince, but for instance pilots always have to be commissioned, right, but, in actual fact you could have a sergeant pilot and a squadron leader rear gunner, right, but films glorify, I mean, as far as a pilot is, ‘cause he’s, the officer he’s the only one to talk about, so. The best film I ever saw was “Journey Together”, where, it takes Richard Attenborough, when he was very young and somebody else, can’t remember his name, where they come together in the ITW and it goes through their course and Richard Attenborough, and then he’s gone overseas, and so is his friend, his friend come to pilot, Richard Attenborough can’t tackle flying, crashes the plane [unclear] and he doesn’t like it, he has to be a navigator, so it is a very good film, so they put him to the test, right, so the screen pilot is flying an Anson which is the one of the planes I was trained on and says I’m not [unclear] and Richard Attenborough, I can’t get what, you know, he want to be a pilot, anyway he says I’m not [unclear] something then they got him, he actually got up, worked it all out then where he were and he realised then that he is just as important as a navigator as all the rest of the crew. Each one has his job to do, they are all important, so, I think that was the best one ever. Another one was the “Journey to the Stars”, we see again only officers please, yeah, otherwise worth watching but that with the “Journey Together” was the only one that I really liked. The other was, you know, we only serve officers if you don’t mind.
TO: What do you think of the Dam Busters film?
BH: Well, that was quite factual, and they couldn’t mess about with that. So, that was quite good, that was quite factual. In fact, in matter of fact, we met his daughter, Barnes Wallis’s daughter up at Coningsby year before last.
TO: Yeah.
BH: Was Open Day up there. I don’t if you went.
TO: No. And do you remember hearing about Japan attacking Pearl Harbour?
BH: Yeah. Yeah, 1941. Of course.
TO: And what was your attitude when you heard that that had happened?
BH: Well, this is the Axis, the come together the Japanese and the Germans, and the Italians of course. No, it was all part of the war process, wasn’t it?
TO: And what do you think of America’s use of the atomic bombs?
BH: Absolutely right. The war could have gone on for ages. Could have gone on for years. Are you tried to sorting out all those islands full of Japanese soldiers and the poor people in the camps? Right? Building the railways, slave labour, starving to death, of course it was right. Absolutely. Don’t call me a warmonger.
TO: I’m not.
BH: [laughs]
TO: And what do you, do you think Bomber Command was treated unfairly?
BH: Bomber Command was not?
TO: Treated unfairly after the war.
BH: Sorry?
TO: Do you think Bomber Command was treated unfairly after the war?
BH: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s why Bomber Harris went to South Africa. He didn’t want us to be redundant. Don’t forget a lot of them had to cover up their chevrons, they had to cover up their rank, I mean, that was degrading.
TO: Why did they cover their chevrons?
BH: Because they were given [unclear] office work and things like that, yeah, and so they couldn’t work amongst people, all the aircraftsmen so they had a thought, oh well, they cover up their chevrons, after all that, the thinking of some of them in Air Ministry that’s why Bomber Harris went in disgust, he wanted us demobbed.
TO: And do you remember hearing about when the Cold War was starting and Stalin was taking over Europe?
BH: [unclear] sorry?
TO: Do you remember hearing about when Stalin was taking over Eastern Europe?
BH: Oh yeah, yeah. Well, first of all there was a treaty between him and Germans over Poland which the Germans broke fortunately, they brought Russia into the war, but he was just, to me, you know, Fascism and Communism in it’s rawest form are just as bad as one another, even to this present day, I mean Putin, he is just mixing it all up and that’s the Russian way of going. And we again in the West are too weak, Crimea, he got away with it, as he gets away with everything. ‘Cause he’s too powerful, he’s bombing civilians. In Syria no one takes any notice but I bet you, because personally, right, if the Israelis done anything like that, it’d be like that on the headlines. Which they wouldn’t. Are you with me?
TO: Yeah.
BH: But Russia, no protest from anybody. He’s moving children out there in Syria on the pretext ‘cause he’s shearing up Assad, ‘cause he wants the Mediterranean Tripoli port for his Mediterranean fleet. It’s the only reason. But he’s a murderer. So he’s as bad as any Nazi.
TO: And do you remember, were there any particular celebrations when Japan surrendered?
BH: When what?
TO: When Japan surrendered, were there any particular celebrations?
BH: Oh yeah, well that was in, what was it June, was it, ’45?
TO: Yeah, August/September.
BH: Yeah, ’45, oh yeah, but that was a sort of a sideshow, as to the war in Europe. But the emancipated people that came out on the, terrible, I mean, they’re animals to do what they did. So, that’s all behind us now, was it?
TO: And how do you feel today about your wartime service? How do you feel today about your wartime service?
BH: I’m quite proud of it. I wish I could’ve done more. Yeah.
TO: And what was your career when you left the RAF?
BH: Irregular [laughs]. To own my own business, owned my own business, had that going. Don’t forget that, you know, I’m not the exception but a lot of people, thousands of people, I mean, come out the forces, they didn’t know what to do, right, some had been in five years, four years, three years, I was in four years, four years out of your teens yeah, so you don’t want to be regulated if you know what I mean, right. You are really unsettled until you find your niche and yeah, unsettled, ‘til finally I founded my own business and that was that. Then I knew what was about.
TO: And, sorry I didn’t ask, during the Blitz, whereabouts in London were you living?
BH: In East London, Forest Gate and then we moved not far from here, to Chapel Heath, which is further up the road there and bought my own house, we had a great time there. The only reason I’m here is ‘cause the house was too big for my wife, she was suffering from emphysema, so the best thing is to get a retirement flat like this. I’ve got a sister who lives in Arizona, we’ve done three months there. I got a son and grandchildren in Israel, we’ll have three months there and the rest of the time in between summer months here. But as soon as we retire, that’s what we’re gonna do. So we bought there [unclear] outstanding [?], you tell him upstairs what’s going on, and what your plans are, he’ll laugh his head off. Didn’t work out. Within two years she was dead. So I’m here, don’t particularly like it, I make the best of it, so I go to Israel a few times, my son is now living down in the Negev but it is too hot for me, I was there last October, [laughs] hit a hundred and four Fahrenheit, so a bit too hot for me, it’s alright further north, Tel Aviv and all around there, Jerusalem, but not where he is. So that’s the name of the game but always say, tell him up there, your plans, laugh his head off, he’ll make sure it doesn’t work out, and you know what I mean.
TO: Is there anything that was important to you during the war that you’ve not talked about, which you think is important?
BH: What?
TO: Is there anything that was important to you during the war which you’ve not mentioned so far, which you think is important?
BH: No, not really, I can’t think of anything. I certainly know when the V1 was about because we were training over the, flying over the North Sea, and we were told, if we see anything like that we shouldn’t mention it to the public, and when on leave with the V2 we just walk, suddenly there’s a thump, it’s the rocket had landed, but then again you know, you’re immune to these things, coming conditioned I think.
TO: So did the V1s or V2s have any impact on public morale?
BH: Concerned but they weren’t frightened of them, they knew, you know, it was the end of the war anyway. Everything was going right and that was the last throw of the Germans, Peenemunde was known about and bombed, but the V1 was transferable, they could move it around, with the V2 rockets had to have their own base and they were bombed out of sight, but a few got up and dropped but people took it as they did in the Blitz.
TO: Did you ever visit any of those places like Coventry or?
BH: Only on business, yeah. Places I built. Portsmouth and Plymouth, Plymouth, new town, new city. Rotterdam new city, absolutely new.
TO: And what do you think was the biggest mistake that the Allies made during the war?
BH: I don’t think they, I think it was circumstances, I don’t think there was any mistake. They had to respond to circumstances and the main thing they had to keep in mind was defeating the Germans. So, if there were a few mistakes, when they tried Dieppe, it didn’t come off but they were probing and they had to do these things to test their defences, so I wouldn’t put that as a mistake, it was unfortunate.
TO: And what do you think was the most important battle of the war?
BH: Mh?
TO: What do you think was the most important battle of the war?
BH: Well, two. The Battle of Britain and the North African campaign. Because they cleared that, there was a jumping off to get into Southern Europe via Sicily and Italy. So, two. The bombing campaign was a consequence of war, that was to stop Germany getting too strong by manufacturing armaments and things like that and also the psychological part of it was giving a bit of their own medicine because the public was screaming out for something to be done in revenge and the Germans, a part from being a planned objective, is also a moral and psychological one, giving them back as good as they get, as they’re given. That’s my opinion.
TO: Anything else you want to add to anything you said earlier at all or?
BH: No, I don’t think so.
TO: Right well.
BH: Just nice to have seen you.
TO: Thank you very much, it was
BH: Give my regards from up there.
TO: Was a pleasure to talk to you, thank you very much.
BH: Yeah. Nice to see you. And be well.
TO: Thank you, you too.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHarrisB160626
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Bernie Harris. Two
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
02:19:14 audio recording
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tom Ozel
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-26
Description
An account of the resource
Bernie Harris joined the Air Training Corps and volunteered for the Royal Air Force, joining in April 1943 and training to become an air gunner. Mentions his father serving in the Royal Flying Corps. Witnessed the London Blitz as a young boy. Describes training and operational flying conditions. Gives a vivid, detailed, first-hand account of Operation Manna. Expresses his view on wartime events, including Chamberlain’s speech, the North African campaign, the Phoney War and the Russian contribution to the Allied victory. Explains why, in his opinion, the Allies decided not to bomb the concentration camps during the war. He was de-mobbed in 1947, after a final posting to Italy with 112 Squadron. After the war he set up his own business leasing vending machines. He later became involved in an association of ex-servicemen who were involved in Operation Manna.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Italy
Netherlands
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-04
1945-05
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Carolyn Emery
515 Squadron
622 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
entertainment
faith
Flying Training School
Gee
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Heavy Conversion Unit
Holocaust
home front
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Hixon
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Woolfox Lodge
Stalin, Joseph (1878-1953)
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/271/3424/PHenwoodP1701.2.jpg
5bd36850f41a574b0a6cb559380241aa
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/271/3424/AHenwoodP171125.1.mp3
7d85bbdcc9253696b663f18de3fe16fd
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Henwood, Priscilla
Priscilla Henwood
P Henwood
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Priscilla Henwood (b. 1921, 21397/2618 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Henwood, P
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MC: Right. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Margaret Carr. The interviewee is Priscilla Henwood. The interview is taking place at Priscilla’s home in Helderberg Village, Somerset West, South Africa on Saturday the 25th of November 2017. Priscilla, thank you so much for seeing me today. I really appreciate it. Would you like to tell me just a little bit maybe about your early life, where you went to school and your family.
PH: Thank you, Margaret. Thank you very much for taking time on your two day visit to come and visit me. I feel very very honoured. Truly honoured. And it’s lovely to meet you and your family. My early life. Well, my early life. My brother and I were twins. Our parents lived in, were stationed. Well, my father was stationed in the Royal Air Force, or Royal Flying Corps in Palestine in the 1916/17 I suppose. And then my mother was stationed in Salonika in Greece — working with the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve. And they all wore grey and scarlet and they were very, very elite nursing sisters. Anyway, she was there until the end of the war and then she went. She somehow managed to go from Salonika to Palestine to meet my father whom she’d known before in her early life in — down in the New Forest. And so they were married in 1919 in Cairo. In the riots. Always riots in Cairo. And I see today two hundred, six hundred people have been killed in Cairo. This is today. Saturday. In November 2017. It’s a tragic country. Anyway, they were married there and went back. Eventually they went back to England. And my brother and I were born at Farnborough. One of the first RAF stations in, in Hampshire. Royal Flying Corps. We were born in October 1921. And my father was stationed near. Then, it all changed then and people were re-routed and reconnected. He left the air force and eventually we lived in London. All sorts of post war problems that we recognise today. They were the same problems back in 1920s and ‘21s. In fact they call the 1918 to 1939 “The Long Armistice.” And so anyway there we were living in Sussex for a while and then my brother and I grew up in London. In Maida Vale and St John’s Wood. And we had a happy time visiting, with going to museums. The Science Museum or the, always Westminster Abbey, the unknown warrior. And so we, we went and we grew up there. I went to school in Maida Vale and then to secretarial College. My brother went to school at Monmouth. And then just before the war in about 1938 I had a great friend whose father was in the War Office and he recognised this war was coming. He recognised that women were going to be recruited in to munitions or farmer’s labourers and all sorts of things. So he arranged for my friend Joan Morgan and myself to join the 600, City of London Squadron. That was a fighter squadron in London obviously. And they wore, they wore red and scarlet cloaks. Or their cloaks were lined with scarlet. They were an elite but they were stationed at Hendon. And this is a bit, this is an interesting part. We used to, I used to go about once a week. I never actually went down to Hendon but they had meetings in the HAC headquarters and at Finsbury Barracks in London. And the idea was that we were to be as a group. We weren’t really the WAAF yet. We were going to be the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and we were going to do exactly what everybody had done in the first war. We would go with the squadron, 600 City of London Squadron. We would go and be typists or telephonists or cooks or drivers, or whatever. Medical assistants. And so then we went to various lectures. Very interesting people from the first war. And learning about how it would be in trenches and stations in Europe when we were conquering Europe. But it was not to be. The training went on. My brother was in the Royal Fusiliers in that time. So we were pretty well prepared for the war when it came. In fact, I was called up before the war. And we went. We were then based at Finsbury Barracks in London and did recruiting. The great thing was we used to recruit young women for the air force and then they’d say, ‘Yes I want to be, I want to be in the air force. I want to be in the secret service. That’s what I want to be.’ So we said, ‘Well that would be nice.’ I said, well we must have, one of the first things we had to do is to go for a medical. And there at Finsbury Barracks we used to take, one of those places to be — ‘No. I can’t go for a medical today. I was out at a party at the nightclub all last night. So can I come back and have a medical later?’ [laughs] In fact one particular person did come back and had a medical and she passed. And the big passing was that I remember my [unclear] — fit, brave one, mentality alert. And so we were launched. And so I did various tasks in Finsbury Barracks. Including working on the telephone exchange at Clerkenwell. And then in October 1940 I was posted. And I went off with a rug in a rug bag and ready to go to the trenches really. That’s what we thought would happen. But anyhow off we went to Royal Air Force Station Bassingbourn. B A S S I N G B O U R N. Which is near Royston in Hertfordshire and Cambridge. And that was an Operational Training Unit for Wellington bombers and we, I was in the equipment section and typing on a Royal machine. And you see, I mean, they said, ‘You’re setting that machine on fire.’ There was a lot of nonsense going on. We were all very young. And one of the people who was stationed there was Hope Embry and her husband Basil Embry became a most highly honoured and significant member of Bomber Command. And he survived the war. I think you can read more about Basil Embry. But he was a lovely person. Obviously, I was all of seventeen and thought I was, I’d conquered the world, you know. I had arrived. But he was, I suppose much older. Probably twenty five you know. And there was Corporal Bates who was in charge of equipment in this Operational Training Unit and he used to tell us a story of how he was in charge of, of parachutes. And his parachute, what it did, what happened was they decided to change where the parachute, they had the rip cord here but then they decided it was awkward, and fear. And he used to tell us this gruesome story of a pilot who used his parachute, forgot it was on this side and they said he’d scratched himself to nothing on the way. We always used to be horrified by that story. And so it was very, very interesting and we saw the Wellington bombers. We met a lot of sergeant pilots. There was one man called Wally Walsh who was from Toronto. And I remember another, Len Day from London. There was several of them. And what we used to do as we became a little more used to Royal Air Force life we’d walk up to the pub at Royston. It was probably not as far as Royston — Bassingbourn. A local pub. Well I always remember before I left to join the air force or to go to Bassingbourn my mother said, ‘Now, Priscilla, you may, you must be very careful what you drink.’ She said, ‘You may have a shandy. Ginger beer shandy. You may have a little sherry, but no cocktails. Don’t you ever have cocktails,’ and since then I never had a cocktail. Now I never drink cocktails [laughs] but it was all very innocent. Two or three of us used to go with these dear men. They were just that much older than us. They never took advantage of us. We all went up to the pub and had a shandy and played shove ha’penny and had a lot of laughter. And those were those early days of the war, before Christmas in 1939. And then I went, I remember I went home for Christmas. Some of the, some of these pilots had had a car and one of them drove a lot of us up to London where my mother was now living in a flat. And so that was the first Christmas of the war. And my brother came down, still in the army, from wherever he was stationed. Bushey I think. And so life was very interesting and we learned a lot. Bassingbourn. And it was very, especially good for me because my, my cousin was still at University in Cambridge. And so I could cycle to Cambridge. In fact one day I walked from Bassingbourn to Cambridge. This was lovely. It was fun. So we did that. And there was talking about photographic interpretation. There was a Photographic Interpretation Unit at Benson just near, and I had never went to Benson but I met people who were there. And it was wonderful work they did interpreting a little dot in the sky. In those days with no, no modern facilities. And they did wonderful work those photographic people. And then we used to go into Royston. So then, in May 1940 a message came, or a signal came. My name was Welsh then. W E L S H. That was my maiden name. I meant to tell you that going to Cambridge I met, I’d already met him but I met Paul who I was eventually to marry or who would marry me. But he was a great friend of my cousin. They were having their last year at Cambridge and then they both went off. He into the army and Paul was, who I married, into the navy. But that’s another story. Anyway, that was so, I didn’t waste much time when I was at Bassingbourn. But I enjoyed every minute. It was all an education. Like a university education I suppose. And so then I was stationed, sent to London to the Air Ministry War Room. W A R room. In, in Whitehall. Near the [pause] I think it’s a, not the Home Office [pause] I can’t remember but it was that end building at the end [unclear] at Whitehall. And the Spanish, the St James’ Steps, King Charles Steps below, in to Green Park. Anyway, I went there as a rookie little WAAF and was put in to a correspondence. What do you call it? Just give me a minute.
MC: Secretarial. Typing and —
PH: Just put this thing off a minute.
[recording paused]
PH: Well, I was in the room where all the correspondence came. And in those days in The Air Ministry in 1940 it all came through on tubes. Like you have at the grocer’s shop or the haberdashers. You know ,they all had these tubes coming in, down and these messages would come in. So really it was a very responsible job because extraordinary messages came. One actually I remember was Amy Johnson. Amy. She was the wonderful pilot. And she had been, some said she’d been shot down into the Thames but she, she had crashed in to the Thames in London at that time. That would be about probably June 1940. So this, then I was to be there in the Air Ministry War Room for the next year and actually it was May 1941. We used to go up to, walk up to Westminster to Trafalgar Square for lunch. And Myra Hess played and it was quite peaceful. Then of course the Blitz started. And so then I had very interesting work then but we seemed to just take it in our stride because we did twelve hours on, twelve hours off in the War Room. And we’d have just a, right down in the bowels of the, of the War Rooms. The War Office I’m sure. And we used to have time off and we’d go up and amongst the ramparts of the building. Churchill and Clemmie would be walking about too because he had his secret place down below. Quite close to where we were. And the whole idea, object of the War Room, Air Ministry War Room was to supply the Cabinet War Room with up to date information. So all the correspondence came in and then we distributed to the, to the necessary parts. One of the very important parts was stats. Statisticians. How many tons of bombs had been dropped. Tons of bombs and then piles of bombs I think they called them in America. So stats was very important. And somebody was working at the back at the war room on them and it was very interesting because they were also working in the Battle of Britain. So messages were coming in and they’d, rather like the cricket scores. Twenty four for two. Six for eight. You know. They were counting it all. So that was a very interesting time for me. But then suddenly when I could go into all sorts of details but there was a great feeling of, of confidence and hope. You know, we never thought of any other way but we did realise that by then, by 1940, the end of 1940 just before the Blitz ended, the big Blitz ended there were no more planes. No more pilots. Just one more and suddenly Hitler had a brainstorm and decided he was going to attack Russia. Do something extraordinary. So my part as a WAAF, I was still a WAAF, they suddenly said I must go on a corporal’s course. I said, ‘Oh that’s lovely.’ I can’t remember where I went to that course. It may have been to Alnwick for that. I know I went to Alnwick in South Shields later but, so I did a corporal’s course and came back with these two stripes and was sent. I can’t, I can’t remember. Oh yes. I was sent to Tangmere but to be down in a little GCI station, Durrington near Tangmere. Anyway, I wasn’t long on that course and somebody said I must go on an officer’s course. Oh I know. Sorry. I did go from that corporal’s course. I went up to Chester. To Cheshire. To Honington. RAF. That’s it. From the corporal’s course that other bit. I never went, I didn’t go back to the War Room. I was sent to RAF Honington in, in Cheshire. Near Liverpool. So there I was with a, with a very nice sergeant. Woman sergeant. And she and I became great friends. And we had a big challenge at, as you were, it was not Honington. Honington was where my bomber friends went. It was Hooton Park in Cheshire. And that’s where I was stationed for, from April 1941 ‘til about July I think. And my promotion to sergeant came through and then in the same correspondence I was told I must go to an officer’s course at Loughborough. I remember saying, ‘Can’t I be a sergeant first and then go to Loughborough?’ They said, ‘No. You must stay as a corporal then you go to Loughborough.’ So I went to do the officer’s course at Loughborough and I was there for six weeks I suppose, whatever. And somehow or other I passed and I went to, I was posted to Tangmere. But going back a while I haven’t said enough about that time that I was in Bassingbourn. Can I go back to that? Because these, I told you about these, these chaps who were, they were all sergeant pilots and very fine men. Then they went off to — one went to Honington in Bomber Command and the other one went to Marham. I think he was 215 Squadron in Honington and 9 Squadron in Marham. Also up near Bury St Edmunds and there they flew and then I lost touch with them really but I know that Len Day went to Malta with Bomber Command. And while he stayed in London and then as war went on one lost touch. But I knew they did wonderful work. But I never really found out what happened to them but these people were the salt of the earth and so steady. And so that that time in in Bassingbourn which I just spoke about earlier made a very strong impression on me. It was a short time really but it was, it gave me inspiration and confidence and as I said earlier one always felt secure. They weren’t, there weren’t problems. At least I never found them. Probably there were too. So now I go back to my arrival at Tangmere. The day I arrived at Tangmere everybody was in mourning because Bader, the famous legless pilot, had been shot down that day. That was in August 1941. And there’s this famous story about his legs. They wanted to, the Germans said they’d give safe passage for his legs. And Fighter Command said not on your life. We’ll bring them over, as it was [laughs] if you catch us you catch us. We don’t want any special courtesies. We’ll just bring his legs. And they did. They flew them over. I think they parachuted them down. And Bader went on to have an extraordinary career too as a prisoner of war. But it was very interesting for me to be at Tangmere. There were Hurricanes and Spitfires and they’d had a tremendous bashing in the Blitz and a lot of people were killed and a lot of WAAF were also injured. And some of them were, were honoured with medals for bravery in that Blitz. But this was in 1940 when I was in London. So I, I went after that so all was so called peaceful then. There was no more bombing there. And then they, they had, this was what I was saying earlier. It was a little station near Ford, near Arundel, also in Sussex. Down from Tangmere. And I was put in charge, only having been on a course as an adjutant. And I was put in charge of this little station which was GCI and doing, working in radar. This favourite vital work. So we had this little office down below then, up at the top of the hill where these people were working on the radar. And wonderful things that came from, from that radar time. Interception and all that and I knew the [pause] when I was at Durrington it was probably early in 1941. There was a, it would be probably September ‘41 there was a warning that the Germans were coming to Durrington. They’d be parachuted in to, to get the people who were doing the radar work up at the top of the hill and kidnap them and take them back. And so they said, ‘Now, you people here below who are looking after them, you are going to be getting issued with Tommy guns so that you can protect your people.’ And along came a Home Guard. A Home Guard chap with a Tommy gun and he said to me, ‘I want you to learn to fire a Tommy gun. When the Germans come you’ve just got to pick this thing up and go boom, boom, boom and he’ll be dead and then you,’ [laughs] and then I put it on my shoulder and tried and I couldn’t do a thing with it [laughs]. I said, ‘I’m very sorry but you’ll have to have a bigger chap than me to protect these people.’ So there was a lot of laughter about that and of course the, again Hitler changed his mind and they didn’t come. So then, when I was there in Durrington and got married in the middle but that’s another story. A lovely time. It really was. My brother was, by that time, in the air force and he’d been shot down in the North Sea but rescued after two days and my husband Paul had been in the Malta convoy. He’d been in a Russian convoy but at this time he was in a Malta convoy relieving with The Ohio which was a ship with supplies for Malta. And anyway while he was in this convoy in Italy somewhere they were very upset. They were bombed by an Italian plane which was very interesting, and they said the plane was badly hurt, the ship was destroyed. They’d lost a whole keg of sherry they’d been given somewhere. That upset them. Anyway, he, he survived and we were married in 1942. In the war. Again near Cambridge, near Bassingbourn. So I was stationed. I went on to be stationed at Durrington and then went on another course and my, my husband left South Shields in his destroyer, a new destroyer to go to the Far East and he was away for three years. And I was on another course at Alnwick and enjoyed that. And I was stationed. Then I was sent to Biggin Hill. Stationed at Biggin. Again as adjutant. Sailor Malan was a famous South African pilot. And a lot of the Free French Air Force were there. And they were famous because they had at Biggin Hill, the squadrons there had shot down a thousand bombers. There was a tremendous publicity stunt with the papers. There was a big ball at the Dorchester to which we all went. All the, all the Windmill Girls were given open invitations to come to Biggin Hill for that weekend so there were high jinks with the Windmill and the other, I suppose night club characters would come. And Biggin Hill was the talk of every Sunday newspaper and everywhere in the world. They shot down a thousand planes and all the wonderful men which of course they were wonderful men. There was no doubt about it. And then they were to have a reception at [pause] in, at Biggin and Lord Trenchard was to come. Lord Trenchard, one of the founders of the Royal Air Force. Royal Flying Corps. And he came and the pilots told me that he, he came very much in his military Royal Flying Corps sort of uniform I think. Very impressive. He came and he said, ‘Good day gentleman,’ he said, ‘I come here to give you one message. It’s the bomber’s boys who is going to win this war. Good day gentlemen.’ And he turned and left. All the deflated people who were not really. That was, that was the big thing was the bomber boys who were going to win this war which of course we remember very well happened. And that, the tragedy of that was that the bombers did the job they had to do as we well know with, and I had many friends there and people to do with it and the casualties I knew. But after the war they were treated like [pause] like rats had left the ship. It was disgraceful. And people said, ‘They bombed Dresden. Dresden. With all that china. Look what they did,’ and I’d say, ‘Well Dresden was a route for those bouncing bombers to go thorough.’ They were, they were transporting all these bombs to go through to wherever they did. So those bombs were based before they bombed. These wonderful men who of course I can’t even think of the names as I’m talking but everybody knows them and they, well they saved, saved England really. Saved the world. And we all said if it had not been done, if the bombing had not been done successfully we would all be speaking German today in England. Nobody really saw that. People still don’t realise the precarious critical situation we were in because Churchill would always talk and buoy us up and life went on. And those bombers and the fighters. We all needed each other. And the Coastal Command and Transport Command, and balloons we all needed but it was the bombers who were the vital factor in any war. And their bombing saved Britain and to me it is, one feels ashamed that they’re only now being recognised and still people say, ‘But they bombed Dresden. How could they dare to bomb Dresden?’ Never mind they bombed London and would have absolutely finished us if they’d had their way. So, so where did we go from there? Let’s have a rest.
MC: Do you want me to turn this off for a short while?
[recording paused]
PH: I’m talking with Margaret about Bomber Command and at Hucknall and Scampton and others that I can’t remember, some of those. I was never actually stationed again on a Bomber Command station but we knew about them and recognised them and honoured them and a lot of the, it was an extraordinary life they lived because they lived in a nice cosy little English town where they’d be in tea rooms and life would go on and the station, people stationed nearby and some of the pilots —
[doorbell rings. Recording paused]
MC: Ok.
PH: Can you go back to what I said?
[recording paused]
PH: I was probably talking about, have you been to the War Room in in —? Cabinet War Room in —
MC: In London.
PH: King Charles’ Steps there. And you know how they said there’s nothing more. There’s nothing we can do. And then Hitler, you know, we believe in prayer. I don’t know, we’d had, we’d had a World Day of Prayer and suddenly Hitler changed his mind, we don’t know. I don’t know. I’m not telling anybody what they should or should not do or how they should be but there is something more than we know. It’s not just, it’s not just the computer and wireless and all these wonderful new ways of [pause] somebody said I’m watching a good film. Somebody gave me a stick. You get a stick and you put it in your television and then you watch a film. So we’ve got all these wonderful contraptions and things but we still can’t regulate the weather. We can’t regulate the tides and we can’t regulate the eclipses of the moon and the sun. And what happened two thousand years ago at such a time suddenly happens again two thousand years later, whatever, at such a time. There’s something more than even our brains can do. But so there we are. So I was talking about the faith and they had the, there was faith. We couldn’t have managed without faith in those days of war and I think maybe we might have done better in these last ten years if we hadn’t been prohibiting people from praying at the school. And you mustn’t mention Jesus and you mustn’t talk about Christmas. You talk about the holiday. Anyway, somehow and then other people come and say what’s what about this God? He doesn’t do anything for us. Well poor chap he doesn’t get much chance. He’s not allowed. So I’m not into religious talk but I do believe in faith and I do believe that it was the faith and prayer that brought us through that war. Maybe without, it would have happened, but we haven’t come through very well this lot. So where are we back to? Can you just stop a minute?
[recording paused]
PH: And then the pilots would get married and their wives would come down and stay in the local hotel or boarding house or get a house and next to the RAF station so they’d live a normal sort of life. But then at night time they’d hear boom boom. The bombers going off. Counted them and when they came back five, six, sixth where’s the sixth? And they’d be off to the station to see if their husband had come home. So there was an extraordinary artificial but normal life living right in a war. Yet going as I say, you would go to the flicks. Everybody went to the flicks in those days, and going to the pub. So that I think the wives and the mothers really suffered. Even if they were in a town where they didn’t have a husband or son or somebody they heard the bombers going off and they would listen for them to come back and there would be one short or none would come back or something. And they would be very much aware of these people. So there was a strong [pause] a feeling of rationing, of letters to the Far East. Air letters we did, air letter cards we wrote. And they would be they would be minimised and sent off. And I think that people like myself who were privileged to be in the air force it was a full interesting life. We were all in it together. But for the mothers with the children and the one egg and a couple of potatoes a week and maybe some, a bit of meat — it was, it must have been terrible. And those cold, cold winters. One, one good thing that came in the war at that time was Lord Woolton and his feeding. All those children. They were very bonny — the wartime children. He had a special orange juice sort of proceeded so that all every child had on their ration card — orange juice. No bananas. They didn’t know about bananas in those days. So that the children were well cared for but the mothers had a terrible time. And other people who came into the war at that time and did a lot of, a lot, a great job, were the land girls. And the Land Girls were often employed on, on farms and learned to milk the cows and to make up the hay and all the rest of it. But some of them of course were misused and used as maids. They would milk the cows and then come on in and make the breakfast for the farmer and his wife and his children. And they’d wash up afterwards and then go back to the fields. So the Land Girls were magnificent and did a great job. And the other people I always feel we’d never, they’d never been, to my knowledge, been recognised as they should have been were the mechanics. When those fighter planes landed the mechanics were there. They bashed, probably had some shooting, and the pilot would go off and have a shower and had some breakfast. Meantime this chap would be working on his plane so it was ready and he could take off again. Take off. And it’s the same with the bombers. Those chaps who looked after the — the engineers and the, all the people who worked on the planes. One has never really heard enough recognition of them, or for them. I think that is something that is missing. Maybe you could mention that to your people in Bomber Command. And Fighter Command too. Because they were, they were on the job and of course suffered terribly when their pilot was killed. And they, you know became, you know mates. Worked together. Worked on the plane. And so that was that. So then I told you I was, I did the officer’s course at Loughborough and I went to Tangmere and then did where I’d been. I’d put Hooton Park as well. But then I went to Biggin Hill. I told you this and as I said Sailor Malan was there. And Churchill lived nearby at Chartwell. And Sailor Malan’s wife was there too and she had a baby and Churchill was the baby’s godfather. He was there. It was a wonderful station Biggin. In spite of it being rather choked off by Lord Trenchard telling them that it would be the bombers who would win the war. Separate from Biggin Hill I went, I was sent on another course. Of course they loved to send us on courses. So it was very like being at university but you’re not. And a lot of legal work too. Not that I can remember any of it now, as you can hear. I can’t always remember the names of the stations but from, from Biggin Hill I went on this course and it was and I went to Shrewsbury, Shropshire. To Montford Bridge. And that was another training station. Rather like Bassingbourn had been originally. And I was stationed there as adjutant near another big RAF station — Oswestry. All near Shrewsbury. And the, and at Montford Bridge there were Czechoslovakian and Polish pilots all waiting. Doing circuits and bumps waiting to go. To go off, to fight. They were waiting to go off but the weather was dull all the time. and they were frustrated. And the Poles and the Czechs were not good friends so there wasn’t always a very good atmosphere there. But they were lovely. They used to call me — the Poles used to call me mamushka [gihana?] — little mother. And I, because I had to sort of tell them what to do. ‘Oh Adjie, can’t we do —?’ They wanted to fly but they couldn’t. They nearly went mad because the weather was so bad. And that was in, I’m talking now about 1943. October. That sort of time. And while I was stationed, while I was stationed there I had a phone call to say that my brother had been — it was an accident I think in a Mosquito night bomber and his plane had crashed. And he was alright but his observer wasn’t, and he went to try to rescue him and he was also burned. That was my twin brother. November 1943. Seventy something years ago now, just this week. So then somehow or other I didn’t apply so I left Montford Bridge and I went back to the Air Ministry of War Room in 1943, November. And I was in the Far East operations and was there ‘til the end of the war. ‘Till ’45. But my job there was to monitor signals that came in. And they came in then for one and we had to read them and work out the tonnage of bombs that had been dropped. This was all in the Solomons, in the New Guinea. All near Australia. All the fighting of the Japs which were impossible really. We’d never beat them as it seemed. Anyhow, we had to have this report ready by four in the morning to go through to Churchill to go to the Cabinet War Room where Churchill would be with, of course, all his people. And it had to be accurate. And I remember I made a mistake of saying Zagreb was [pause] and they were dropping bombs, dropping bombs on Zagreb which was west of, of the ocean. Of course it was east. Whatever it was I got it wrong and Churchill in amongst all the other things he picked up this mistake and it came back. He didn’t miss a trick. But it was very interesting time in the War Room with the Far East and the war going on in Italy. That was a new one. Remember we were fighting in Italy. That was an unnecessary tragedy too. And that was the time when I was in London of the bomb. What did they call them? Dropped bombs. I can’t remember. They came through silently and they dropped.
MC: Oh I know.
[pause]
MC: I know what you mean. Yes.
PH: I had a few adventures with that. And we were stationed in London again and it was a very exciting time in a way waiting. Waiting for D-day. Buzz bombs they were called buzz bombs. And they were the ones that were boom boom boom and then you heard them when it stopped that’s where they dropped. And then they had an even worse bomb that just came silently and it just, you didn’t know and the next thing was chaos. I experienced a bit of that when I was living by then at, when a whole group of us WAAF worked for officers all together in Chelsea. We had, there was a flat and somebody else had a room and we all used to get together. And there was quite a bit of bombing then in the night again. And I remember one of our, one of our friends had a flat in Chelsea. She had a lovely flat upstairs which she’d had for some years, it was her home. We were down, we were down below. A couple of us were down below in more the basement. So we would all come down to the basement for the night when the bombing was on. And then next day we’d go up onto the, into her flat when the sun was shining. And a big fruit to have in those days was rhubarb. We’d always have rhubarb. And I remember we had rhubarb at the top of the nook for pudding and he used to call them — we always heard, none of us had had babies but we always heard that the, after your baby you have a wonderful sort of party. You forget all the pain, all the problems, and just sit down and enjoy it. We used to call them our post baby, post bombing breakfast. Then I can remember going back again. Way back to when I was in the War Room in 1940. Again, we were caught one night going somewhere. A friend had had a flat in Ebury Street in, near Victoria Station. So the bombing was pretty hard that night but she had one of these records playing the Warsaw Concerto which had just come out and some Beethoven and boom, boom, boom you know, the sign from France when the code Beethoven’s fifth. So I can remember those days. We were really in trouble but it was alright. We were all in it together. And that’s, as I said earlier was how I felt sorry for the mothers who were left behind with the children and rationing and clothing. Maybe their own sick mother with them. Their diets were not easy. Neither, as I’ve said earlier, were the lives of the people that maintained the aircraft and the ships and the guns in the air force. We have a very fine young woman. Well, she’s not young any more, she’s my sort of age. She was on searchlights in London, and in the park and they used these lights all the time. And that must have been a big, big strain because they were right out on Hyde Park and I suppose Regent’s Park with these lights going, so they were a certain target for the bombers but she survived it all. She’s written her book about it. Then came, going back again now to the War Room and there was D-Day which we were all involved in in the War Room of course. And still the Japanese war going on I was very much involved in that. There were reports coming in. And we, the [unclear] then there was that sudden war. Somebody decided to fight in Holland between Holland and Germany and a lot of casualties there. I can’t, I’m trying to think of the name. We can probably think of it afterwards. But where the army obviously were involved. I’ll think of it, and tell you later but it was in, it was in Christmas 1944 because the, it was D-day was June ’44. 6th of June. But this was another little war that somebody seemed to start and it was on the Holland/German border, and we had a lot of casualties. And then after that came, came May and the end of the war. And I remember we were all, we were, I was on duty in the War Room that night and so we phoned Buckingham palace and asked, ‘Would the king and queen be out?’ And they said, ‘Yes.’ So we all went down to Buckingham Palace.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHenwoodP171125
PHenwoodP1701
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Priscilla Henwood
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:00:01 audio recording
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Margaret Carr
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-25
Description
An account of the resource
Priscilla was encouraged by a friend’s father to join the 600 Squadron in anticipation of the war. She was called up and was based at Finsbury Barracks, involved in recruitment. Priscilla also worked on the telephone exchange at Clerkenwell.
In October 1940, she was posted to RAF Bassingbourn, an Operational Training Unit for Wellingtons. Hope Embry, wife of Basil Embry was stationed there.
Priscilla was sent to the Air Ministry War Room in Whitehall and received correspondence in pneumatic tube system. She recalls an extraordinary message about Amy Johnson crashing into the Thames. She would see Churchill and his wife. They provided the Cabinet War Office with information, including statistics.
Priscilla went on a corporal’s course and was stationed briefly at RAF Hooton Park. After promotion to sergeant, she was sent on an officers’ course at Loughborough and then posted to RAF Tangmere and the ground-controlled interception (GCI) radar station at RAF Durrington. Priscilla was put in charge of the GCI station near RAF Ford. She did another course at Alnwick and was then made adjutant at RAF Biggin Hill.
Priscilla expresses her disappointment with how Bomber Command was treated after the war. She praises the land girls and mechanics, who were often overlooked.
Priscilla went to RAF Montford Bridge and was an adjutant at RAF Rednal. She returned to the Air Ministry War Room in 1943 and was involved in the Far East operations until the end of the war, monitoring signals. On D-Day they all went down to Buckingham Palace.
Coverage
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cheshire
England--Sussex
England--London
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1943
1944
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
600 Squadron
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
faith
ground personnel
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
promotion
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Biggin Hill
RAF Hooton Park
RAF Tangmere
training
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/281/3434/PJeffreyS1604.1.jpg
f8f06ac3c4f2638cbf3035d20977df0f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/281/3434/AJeffreySE160613.1.mp3
b1e7a38c64e687b9a1f552904a6bb1df
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jeffrey, Stanley Ernest
Stanley Ernest Jeffrey
Stanley E Jeffrey
Stanley Jeffrey
S E Jeffrey
S Jeffrey
Description
An account of the resource
24 Items concerning Stanley Ernest Jeffrey (1139581 Royal Air Force) who served as a mechanic engineer groundcrew with 102 Squadron at RAF Topcliffe and RAF Pocklington. Collection contains air force documents, engineering course training notebooks, photographs of aircraft and people and includes two oral history interviews.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Stanley Jeffrey and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-18
2016-06-13
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Jeffrey, SE
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: This is an interview between Harry Bartlett on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre and Mr Stanley Ernest Jeffrey, a former Flight Mechanic in the Royal Air Force, 102 Ceylon Squadron from 1941 to — 1946. Interview is taking place on the 13th of June at xxxxx Oadby.
HB: That’s the introduction, Stan.
IJ: Yeah. That’s the introduction.
HJ: Yeah.
HB: One of the things we’re interested in Stan, is before the war, I mean obviously you were born somewhere, where — you know, what was your family life before the war?
SJ: Well, I lived in King Street in Oadby and Cross Street in Oadby and I worked at the Imperial Typewriter Company from the last day of the old year 1940 —
IJ: No. 1930 something. Would it’ve been 1934?
SJ: 1934. I left school 1934 of course. Sorry.
HB: Which school was that Stan?
SJ: Oadby School, there was only two schools in Oadby then, the Senior and the Junior. So in the Junior School, in the — when I started school at Junior School in Oadby and then moved to the Senior School in nineteen, [laughs] I get mixed up with the dates — [laughter].
HB: Thirties.
IJ: Thirty-four.
HB: That would be about in the thirties, yeah. What did you do at school? What were your main interests at school?
SJ: Well we did — more or less all schools — the usual school, you know, nothing in particular, that was, what can I say, well we just started school at four, started school in the Junior School at four, from the Junior School we went to the Senior School, that’s on the Leicester Road, Oadby.
IJ: Did you have any interests at school?
SJ: Well not really. We just —
HB: What, what did you enjoy most at school Stan?
SJ: I think I had the schooling really, the teachers were very good to us you know ‘cause we weren’t well off you know, all the kids at school the majority of the time. Yes it was quite nice at school, I enjoyed my schooling really.
HB: So what, what family did you come from Stan?
SJ: There was my mum, dad, I had a brother Aubrey, he died recently.
HB: Oh.
IJ: Ten years ago.
SJ: Ten years ago he died.
IJ: And Aub wanted to go in the Air Force but he had to go down the mines.
SJ: Yes, my brother was very disappointed because he had to go down the mines instead of being in, what he called ‘being in the war’.
HB: What did mum and dad do, what did dad do?
SJ: Dad was — worked in shoes, pressman in shoes.
HB: Was that local or in Leicester?
SJ: Er, it — he was local for a start and he was also at Leicester and mum, she was in the hosiery, and the boots and shoes. [laughter] They both had different jobs, they got work where they could you see.
HB: Yes. So as we get to your leaving school, how did you come to work for Imperial Typewriters?
SJ: Oh, there was a fella, he was the printer at, at the cartwrighter’s, he were a printer and he got me the job.
HB: Oh right.
SJ: He got me the job. He knew me. Me mum went to see him and he got me the job. So I did start school at the last of the old year, 1934 at the Imperial. I worked there until I got called up in — yes, I worked there ‘till I got called up in nine — when were it? I’m getting mixed up with —
IJ: Nineteen forty-one, was it?
SJ: Yeah, in nineteen thirty-four until I got called up in nineteen — oh God.
HB: I think it says on your Service Record early, something like, February 1941, something like that. About February 1941.
SJ: Ah. Yes I think it was about 1941.
HB: Where was, where was Imperial Typewriters at that time?
SJ: At the East Park Road.
IJ: In Leicester.
SJ: In Leicester, East Park Road in Leicester, yeah.
HB: And did er, and did you just go into it or did you go into some sort of apprenticeship?
SJ: I went in as a runabout, I, I were fourteen you see. You started as a runabout and you worked your way through various jobs til I become a foreman.
IJ: Well you did later on,
SJ: Manager yeah,
IJ: Not long before you went into the Air Force.
SJ: That’s right I worked up myself to be a manager at the Imperial —
IJ: But that were after you come out the Forces Stan.
HB: I was just, yeah, I was gonna say, so Imperial Typewriters was an important
SJ: Yes
HB: part of your life before the war.
SJ: Yes
HB: Um, what interests, what interests did you have outside of school before the war Stan?
SJ: Well I didn’t have very little interests.
IJ: Did you go night school Stan?
SJ: I went night school, night school but apart from that there well, there was nothing much in the village then. We had the picture house built, I remember that being built you see and that livened us up a bit, [laughter] somewhere to go at night time. Ahh, but that even closed down, that didn’t last, it lasted a while.
IJ: It were going when the war were on weren’t it?
SJ: Oh yes, yeah.
IJ: So it was after the war when it closed.
SJ: Yes it closed in about, ooh, well after I’d met you and that.
IJ: Oh yeah, yeah, because I mean it was till open when Jan were little, cos we used to take her pictures. So I mean, I think it might have been the sixties when it closed.
SJ: Yeah, as I say it was there for a short while really because as I said, it closed down and it were a shame really because we had do nothing else in the village, there were nothing until the pictures were built in Oadby.
HB: You were doing a bit, you were doing a bit with the Scouts weren’t you?
SJ: You what?
HB: You were in the Scouts weren’t you?
SJ: Yes, yes for a short time. That’s where I met that fella again, who got err, who crashed.
IJ: Hmm —
HB: Yeah, yeah in the, in the, in the accident.
SJ: Yes I met him again. That were funny that was meeting him because you see well when err, when you were detailed to a certain aeroplane and that, perhaps sometimes it had to go in the hangar for a major inspection and perhaps you used to have to follow it in and work on it in there and that’s where I met this fella who, you know, who got shot down yeah.
HB: Yeah, yeah the crash at the um, where the memorial is now yeah. The,so that, that you know, you’ve obviously been called up, when you’ve done, when you’ve done all your training, and you were you know, what was the process, what was, how did they sort of send you out? Did they just —?
SJ: No, well you see, you went to what were called to the school do you see? You went there from errr, I know I come away from there September 1941,
HB: Aha
SJ: yeah September. You had about seventeen, seventeen or eighteen weeks training and then you moved out to a squadron and that’s when I was posted to 102 Squadron in September 1941, I do remember that yeah. And I was with them all through the war years.
HB: So when, when you were posted out, how, how did you feel, how did you feel about going to, you know being posted to 102 Squadron?
SJ: Well it was great really because you felt as though you were doing something towards the war you see? You looked after the engines from you know, and you were, it were nice when we was made, in the latter, that latter part of the war, they made the Ground Crews the same as the Air Crew. The Ground Crew was to a certain aircraft, I was on EEs then, in the latter part of the war.
HB: And from that you formed friendships —
SJ: That’s right
HB: Through that?
SJ: That’s right yes, you went, you were posted to any aircraft to look at in A Flight, I was in A Flight. There was A, B and C Flights with about eight aircraft in each, in each Flight and I was posted to A Flight and I was with A Flight all the while.
HB: Yes. When, when you were working on the aircraft you obviously, you know, you’ve, you’ve done the work, you’ve got to get them ready for the operation. What was that process, getting them ready for the operation?
SJ: Well for a start the aircraft was always out on the dispersal point and you, you were detailed to this one aircraft, EEs towards the latter part of the war, so you went, you went out 8 o’clock in the morning you’re out there doing your inspection. It really [unclear] and sometimes it was about perhaps a 16 hour inspection, a 32 hour inspection [unclear] so the bigger the inspection were the aircraft.
HB: Yes.
SJ: You see, so you had a detailed inspection to do every day and err that, well then sometimes the Air Crew used to come out and they used to have a look over the aircraft and you know, have a chat with us and such like. That were quite nice, quite interesting really that were.
HB: And that, and this is where the bond, the friendship grew?
SJ: That’s right yeah yes, yes we formed quite a lot of friendships with the air air, you didn’t call them sergeants and such like, they were mates of yours really yeah, on our Squadron anyway. I mean you used to come out, perhaps have a fag with them, and a chat, and when they went on operations you always used to have to sign the form 700 which was my work form to, to say I’d done the engines you see and you’d go in when all the Air Crew were ready for Ops, they’d run the engines up, the pilot would, they’d sign to say they were satisfied with the engines and then I’d come out and shut the door and then you’d see, see ‘em off on the Ops. You used to have to sit there at night waiting for ‘em coming back which was quite, it were nice, all the EEs and them in the circuit you know they’re OK, we’d know we’d got ours back you see. And as each one come in we saw each aircraft in.
HB: So did you actually manage the aircraft as they left and as they came back, when they came down onto the ground?
SJ: Yes, seen, seen, seen ‘em off and seen ‘em back, oh yeah. And sometimes, well, well I used to stick a bit of chewing gum on the undercarriage for ‘em, it got a habit, yes I used to [unclear] , that were the good luck charm for ‘em.
IJ: Oh crikey.
HB: On the EEs?
SJ: Yeah on the EEs, yeah and I used to get a bit of chocolate for that [laughter] , from the aircrew and that yeah.
HB: And did, obviously you were there for a long time you know, from 41 through to 46 um.
Doorbell
SJ: That’s all right, it’s only —
HB: It’s all right I can pause —
HB: That’s just a short break in the interview ahh while a friendly neighbour delivers one or two bits and bobs to Stan. Um, we’ll just go back Stan to obviously the length of time you were at Pocklington and er what not. You you had the same aircraft?
SJ: Yeah.
HB: Umm, what was —
SJ: We didn’t from the start we didn’t from the start. You see, what at one time the the Flight Sergeant used to ‘right so and so Stan, Jack you’re on E today, you’re on A ’ he said. And then suddenly it got to it that the same aircraft, the same aircraft and the same ground crew which was, it were more interesting, better for you, you felt as though you were part and parcel of the —
HB: It, it strikes me, from the way you’ve spoken previously that it must have been, quite, umm I won’t say emotional, I would say difficult, to —. You’re looking after the aircraft, you’ve formed these friendships with some of the Air Crew and you’re watching them disappear,
SJ: Hmm.
HB: and obviously there was a possibility that they weren’t going to come back?
SJ: Yeah, yeah. Well we never thought about that, we always thought about them coming back. I never lost an E, in all my, no I never lost an E, not err, not in the latter part. For a start I’d say when you were on any aircraft you see, I did, one aircraft, E, I did lose one aircraft that, he come down shot up with a hundred, hundred holes in.
HB: Phew.
SJ: Yes, he managed to land it. I forget his name now, but he rose in the ranks to Squadron Leader, I forget his name you see. And er, and er of course you saw a lot of that really, you know, crashes and. You used to be fetched out to crashes you know. I mean one crash I did [unclear] , there were seventeen on it, they took the ground crew up and they crashed you see. So we had to sort that out and I didn’t know at the time, it were night time, I didn’t know at the time but the pilot was still in there. When they come in the morning they had to report the pilot still sitting there you see. Yeah, they’d missed him yeah. But anyway, yes we and we also, it was one time perhaps we were stationed in the farmhouse and the farmers and that and the family looked after us through the, oh yeah, perhaps had breakfast with him or something. Oh yes, they were big on breakfasts and that with the, on crash duty yeah.
HB: Hmm. Difficult.
SJ: It were nice, I enjoyed the time there. You see I’d been there all the while with the same fellas and it were quite nice ‘cos you, you formed a bond with them you see and also the Air Crew, and as soon as they’d finished operations of thirty ops they’d take the Ground, they’d take us out for a meal.
HB: Mmm.
SJ: Yeah, I’ve been on one or two [laughter]. As I said I never lost an aircraft in my time. So, yes, before, yes they’d take us out, take us down in the car to Pocklington to the pub and have a meal, come back and sitting on top of the car roof coming back, [laughter] had a good time, all singing and shouting the ground crew and that, we were all one yeah. I think I had about four, four meals. Yeah yeah, I didn’t lose a ground crew, it were quite nice up there for me
HB: Hmm.
SJ: thinking back. It was, it were Hank and Tom and all this lot. One were a tailor, one were a tailor in, err somewhere you know. One were You got to know what they did you know.
HB: 102 Squadron had a range of nationalities in the air crews. Um, was that reflected in the Ground Crew as well, or just —
SJ: No there were some, we did have a group that’d come one time come, perhaps about half a dozen engine and aircraftmen, yeah. We did have that at one time, but normally we had, it were just the lads, you know, the lads who‘d been there on the same aircraft and that and you see you formed this er loyalty and that to the aircrew you see.
HB: So you had, you had four dinners, that’s four crews,
SJ: Yes we had four —
HB: How long, how long would it have, would the aircraft —?
SJ: We had thirty ops
HB: taken the aircraft have taken to do thirty ops?
SJ: They’d done the thirty ops, they’d done the thirty ops and they took us to the local pub yeah. They didn’t err, as I say I never lost a ground crew in the latter part, which was quite chuff really. We all got er, we formed that bond [unclear] for thirty ops and that and seeing them off and back, yeah.
HB: So as you’re coming to the end of your time at Pocklington and then you moved to um err, where did you go after Pocklington?
SJ: Bassingbourn.
HB: Bassingbourn. So you’re coming up to the end of the war, what did you, how did you feel about, at what point did you think this, this ain’t going to last much longer?
HB: Well when the war were over, we were only too pleased it were over and it weren’t the same, it weren’t the same in the Air Force after the, after the war had finished. Well we’ve done it, let’s get out, you know. That’s kind of how it was yeah. Because it, as I say, you formed a bondship with the Air Crew, each Air Crew you see after their first two or three ops you know and that, yeah.
HB: Hmmm. Cos, I mean, in what, about the early part of 1945 you know they were moving towards D Day and all that sort of thing you know. Did you know much about that on the airfield?
SJ: No, no we just carried on you know, every day you did, did the same thing,
HB: Yeah.
SJ: look at the aircraft, see it’s OK but it wasn’t the same as before. You’d think it’s finished, it’s over and done with.
HB: And when when did you and your Ground Crew sort of think to yourselves, or find out. that you were coming towards the end of it?
SJ: Well I think in the latter part, you see and they took, they took us about the second, the second week after the war finished, they took, they took us for a trip over Germany to look at all the bomb damage so we had, we had a quite a good trip out to show us all the bomb damage, yeah. What we’d done. That’s when you started knowing it were over, you know, you’d done your bit, let’s get out.
HB: Hmm, yeah.
SJ: You understand what I mean.
HB: So they, so you were actually in an aircraft, was that your own aircraft?
SJ: Yeah, that’s right it were your aircraft. EEs were our aircraft, we looked after that.
HB: And they, the pilot flew you out over Germany. What was you, what was you f —That must have been a bit of a strange feeling Stan?
SJ: It were nice though.
HB: You see —
SJ: It were nice the way, ‘cos they flew low. Matter of fact I looked up at wotsit Cathedral, cos it were that low going on and all the people were waving to you, you could see all that.
HB: How did, how did you feel when you actually saw what they’d done, the effect of the bombing?
SJ: Yeah, I thought, well I mean when I went out I were in the rear turret, so I had a good view I did. Cos it, it weren’t you know, they were all in their positions, some were sitting in the wotsit, but they gave me the rear turret seat so I was first off and last on ha ha.
HB: [laughter] Was that because of the chewing gum on the aeroplane?
SJ: [laughter] Yeah, I had a good view you see of what happened. All the bomb damage you see.
HB: Hmmm. When, when when you came to actually coming out of the RAF um how did you feel about the sort of attitudes towards Bomber Command, that sort of thing?
SJ: Well, it was, to me, to me I never bothered with me medals because I was that disappointed with how we were treated, you know, Bomber Command, I never bothered. I didn’t get a medal and that. I were in five and a half years and I never got a medal.
HB: And yeah, did you? You say you were disappointed, um what?
SJ: With the attitude of the higher ups, how Churchill treated us, you know. He done nothing, he done nothing really. They did too much damage. What, what killed Churchill was when the last bombing raid on Essen, is it Essen? Where, where they killed, they killed a lot of people and they said it weren’t defended, but it was, it was. Because, err how was it, [pause] they said it, they hadn’t ought to bomb that because it wasn’t a proper bombing raid or something like that.
HB: Hmm right.
SJ: Yeah. They shouldn’t have bombed it, like that. But it was, ‘cos there was, there was a, err they were still using, they were still bombing err us as well as them you see. I won’t say it were tit for tat but we we thought we did a good job you know, to end the war, really.
HB: And that and that feeling towards, you know, as you said, Churchill and the higher ups, um did that affect, did that affect how you looked at the country after, when you came out of the RAF, did that did that affect how you looked at things?
SJ: I don’t think I gave that a thought you know, I’d been, I’d done my bit and I was satisfied what we’d done and that was that.HB: Hmm.
SJ: Yeah.
HB: Hmm. At what point in this, in this time at what point did you meet Iris?
SJ: Did?
HB: Did you meet Iris?
IJ: Yes.
SJ: That was nineteen forty —
IJ: I was sixteen weren’t I,
SJ: Yeah [laughter]
IJ: When you met me and?
SJ: Yes. I met Iris about, oh after I’d been in the Air Force
IJ: Yes.
SJ: for a couple of years or more.
IJ: Yeah that’s right.
SJ: Came home on leave once and I was introduced to Iris at the De Montfort, the De Montfort Hall.
HB: Aaahh.
IJ: Yeah, so that’s when we got together, we had a dance and that were it weren’t it?
SJ: Yeah, yeah. We got married two years after. But it weren’t —
IJ: 1944 we were married.
SJ: 1944 we got married, 1944 yeah.
HB: So you’ve met Iris, you’ve got married, you’ve come to the end of it, you’re coming out of the RAF. Um I think you said earlier that you went back to back to —
SJ: Imperial.
HB: Imperial Typewriters?
SJ: Yes because your jobs, your jobs was er spoken for, you were reserved yes. If you went back, you went back to the same job and everything yes and that’s when we err
IJ: What?
SJ: I had about six weeks leave. I didn’t want to go back to work for six weeks, I thought, well you know, and then I went back, went back after six weeks leave and err I think was it, weren’t it Iris?
HB: Did you, did you just pick up where you left off or did you —? Was your engineering stuff in the RAF useful?
SJ: Yes it seemed a bit tame after, seemed a bit tame after being with the lads.
HB: Hmm.
SJ: I missed the lads when they come out of the forces, yeah. Well you’re bound to after all them years, ain’t you with them?
IJ: Well It’s like the college lads and girls, I’ll bet when they come out they miss all their mates unless they keep in touch with them.
HB: So your, when you actually got back to Imperial Typewriters, um you’ve got your job that’s been reserved for you, you know you sort of start work, the lads that you’ve been with, particularly the ground crew, um how did you, how did you feel about keeping in contact with them?
SJ: Well we kept in touch with one, Eric.
IJ: Yes Eric.
SJ: I kept in touch with him ‘cos he lived near, where were it? Where did he live?
HB: Kettering?
IJ: No.
SJ: About er twenty five mile away.
IJ: I forget where.
HB: I kept in touch with him for quite some time.
IJ: We used to go and see them, haven’t we?
SJ: Yes we used to go and see them, yeah.
HB: Was he the one from Northampton?
SJ: That’s it Northampton.
HB:Right yes I think we mentioned him last time.
SJ: Yes from Northampton, kept in touch with him but he died didn’t he, he died.
IJ: He died yeah.
SJ: I went to see his wife afterwards didn’t I but that’s — when he died —
Iris: She kept in touch for a bit, she sent us Christmas cards and that didn’t she? Then the daughter rang to say that she’d died.
SJ: Yeah.
HB: Did you ever, did you ever get any messages you know about reunions or getting back together or anything like that?
SJ: No, no there was nothing, I’ve never heard of a 102 Squadron reunion at all. Since I’ve been in touch with them they’ve been talking about them now but you see I can’t get up to them at the present time. I’d love to get to one, you know. I mean I’ve been invited ain’t I to —?
IJ: Yeah, oh yes you’ve —
SJ: I’ve been invited, they’ve been in touch, they say I can go to the home at Pocklington.
HB: Hmm yeah.
IJ: We’ll perhaps be able to do that if it —
SJ: I hope to be able to do that one of these days, I might see if I can get back there.
IJ: Well if we can get that wet room done, I mean hopefully if we can get in, we can go there while they’re doing it, you know for at least a week.
SJ: That’s what we’re thinking because they’re going to do the wet room for us you see. They say there’s going to be a bit of a noise for a week and I’m hoping to try, if possible to go for a week whenever they start. It could be six months or more.
Iris: That’s if we can get in.
SJ: Yeah.
HB: That would be really nice.
SJ: They tell me I can because I was on that Squadron for a long while.
HB: Well, yeah I mean, 1941 to ’46 it’s —.
IJ: You were there.
SJ: Yeah.
HB: That’s why, I mean I’m, I come from an era where you know we didn’t have that situation, so it’s hard to think that guys who were together as a team, as a group working every day, you know in war time conditions, um it comes to an end and there doesn’t seem to be much happening afterwards.
SJ: No there was nothing, you think, it were funny really. It took a little while to get used to being back in Civvy Street, as they say, it took a while yeah really. I mean yeah [laughter] you felt like, at one time that I’d like to get back to the lads you know, no disrespect, no disrespect to the wife of course but you miss the lads.
HB: How long, how long before that sort of faded away?
SJ: [pause] Oh I think it took a year or two before it finally, you know because well, you were back in Civvy Street then, which is entirely different to being in the Forces really.
HB: What did you think were the biggest differences at the end of the war when you when you came back to work?
SJ: Well there were the lads and you were, you were all together you know even when you were bombed and that you know.
HB: You got bombed did you?
EJ: Oh yeah, yeah we all went running down the shelter, it were that full of water and we got wet through.
IJ: Where were that Stan?
SJ: Pocklington.
IJ: Was it in Pocklington?
HB: Three foot, three foot deep in water?
SJ: Yeah, yeah [unclear] were full of water yeah. We got err once or twice, as a matter of fact when we got married, that were 1942 when we got married, 1944 sorry, when we got married, and err one aircraft bombed and it took err it damaged another aircraft right at Barnby Moor yeah right at — oh yes, it it bombed this aircraft, I were on leave at the time, come back yeah.
HB: So, so you were [cough] excuse me, actually on the airfield when you got, when it was bombed?
SJ: Yeah, yeah.
HB: Err obviously by the enemy, [laughter] um, so yeah that, hmm yeah so that’s, is that when they were out on operations or had they followed them back or was it just an opportunity?
SJ: Ah well, sometimes they followed ‘em back you know.
HB: Hmm.
SJ: Sometimes they followed them back and one time there were quite a bit of damage done because all the lights were lit up and the aircraft were bombing the airfield.
HB: How many times do you reckon that happened to you?
SJ: Not many times.
HB: Right.
SJ: No not many times it were only about once or twice that were but we had plenty of air raid warnings you know as they were after all airfields you see.
HB: Hmm. Well bearing in mind the time and you need to get something to eat Stan, I think we’ll call it a day and I’ll, I’ll pass this over to the guys at Lincoln but thanks ever so much you know for what you’ve said before and all the photos, it’s absolutely brilliant really because as I say —
SJ: Even so I don’t feel as though I’ve done much.
IJ: Stan can’t quite remember, it’s changed a little bit this last month or two, he can’t he can’t remember quite so much now.
HB: Stan what you can remember is is remarkable and as I say it’s an aspect, that you know the Ground Crews and the way the air stations worked,
SJ: Oh yeah,
HB: And all that. These are things that —
SJ: We did appreciate the grounds crews and they appreciated us.
HB: Yeah.
SJ: They appreciated —
HB: I’m going to turn the tape off now, or the recording, it’s not a tape any more.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AJeffreySE160613
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Stanley Ernest Jeffrey. One
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:40:43 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harry Bartlett
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-13
Description
An account of the resource
Stan Jeffrey was a flight mechanic at RAF Pocklington. He discusses the camaraderie between the ground and air crews. He would stick chewing gum to the undercarriage as a good luck charm. Shortly after the end of the war, the ground crew were taken on a flight over Germany to see the bomb damage. He worked for Imperial Typewriters before and after the war.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tina James
102 Squadron
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Cook’s tour
flight mechanic
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
military service conditions
RAF Pocklington
superstition
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/282/3435/AJenkinsAE160709.1.mp3
d7f55b2a9645816ec63b14a23072b635
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
Jenkins, Alexander Elliott
Alexander Elliott Jenkins
Alexander E Jenkins
Alexander Jenkins
A E Jenkins
A Jenkins
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Alexander Elliott Jenkins (430033 Royal Australian Air Force).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-09
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Jenkins, AE
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
RG: Preamble to the interview with Alex Jenkins of 6 Belton Place, Orange, New South Wales, Australia. Alex was a Lancaster pilot in 460 Squadron who was shot down and although he spent some time in a German hospital it was only a matter of a short, a fairly short time. He wasn’t ever in a prison camp. He was returned to the UK and resumed operations in 1945. Interviewers are Rob Gray and Lucie Davison. Also present at the interview was Alex’s wife, Pauline.
AJ: In fact one of my colleagues coming in clipped the top of Lincoln Cathedral and he went, he could have really cracked. Clipped the top and he had to, after that to just, for some reason or other he couldn’t continue but he continued, lost height slowly and finally belly landed [laughs] not all that far from where he’d come down. But he went clean through the biggest chicken farm [laughs] in the whole of England. Can you imagine all of the, all of the God-damned chickens. We renamed him after that for obvious reasons.
RG: Chook.
AJ: Chook.
LD: Do the intro.
RG: Hmmn?
LD: Do the intro.
RG: Yeah. I’ll just do a quick intro, Alex. This is an interview with Alex Jenkins. Former pilot with 460 Squadron.
AJ: Yes.
RG: And survivor of being shot down. Interview. The date is the 8th of July. Interviewees are Rob Gray and Lucie Davison. So do you want to lead off?
LD: Yeah. Look, I’ve basically, I’ve kind of, you know compiled just a little order of service but it’s really just to make sure that we try and cover all bases.
AJ: Yes.
LD: You know.
AJ: Yeah.
LD: It’s certainly not meant to be definitive. So —
AJ: I know. You’ve got to have some guidance.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Yeah, it’s —
RG: But on the other hand also this way, because you’ve done interviews and things before haven’t you?
AJ: Yes. Some time back I had an interview. Pauline. My memory, by the way is, short term memory, is very, very poor now. I’ve been a bit ill and so on and I can’t remember accurately even some of the simple things.
RG: Oh yes.
AJ: So Paul, when she comes in, if there’s something that I can’t remember she knows a fair bit about it.
RG: She’ll know about it. Yeah. Ok. I was going to say though that we were particularly interested in, like your personal recollections.
AJ: Yes.
RG: So if something comes to mind.
AJ: Right.
RG: Please feel free to divert from the original question.
AJ: Yeah. Right. Right.
RG: So Lucie do you want to —
LD: Yeah. Just interested in your background and, you know, where you grew up.
AJ: Right.
LD: And why you joined the air force initially.
AJ: Yeah.
LD: And so on.
AJ: Yes. That’s rather interesting because it starts really with the history of my father who was terribly knocked around in the First World War. In the, in France. He wasn’t at Gallipoli, but he was in France. In the gunnery groups. And he was gassed and terribly injured. Came back home. And from the time he arrived home just before the war finished in France, he was in and out of military hospitals. Never really recovered enough long term and as a result of that — and my mother was born way up in the Kelly country of North Eastern Victoria with the, her surname was Cann. C A N N. Now, C A N N.
LD: Cann River.
AJ: Now, Cann River and all those things were well documented. The Canns were horse breakers and they were rabble rousing. And in fact William Cann, and this is not apocryphal, William Cann was the principal horse breaker and roustabout in the Kelly gang.
RG: Ah ok.
AJ: And William Cann, he was actually jailed after the shoot-up and so on and served his time. And as my dear mother used to say, ‘Don’t you mention that you’ve got a relative — ?’ [laughs] Most people were very interested. Particularly since he was the one who used to, they had a little tin with a bit of wire around and, and make the fires. It was nicknamed — billy can.
RG: Billy can. yes. Yeah.
AJ: Billy can.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: That’s where the term first started to be used. Used. It’s in —
RG: Of course. Yes.
AJ: The Billy can.
RG: William Cann. Yes.
AJ: Anyway, my father was in and out and he, on my eighteenth birthday I was one of the first Legacy awards. We were raised in the slums of Toorak. Toorak, you know, down by the railway lines in those days was a cut-throat area. It was criminals, and God knows.
RG: That’s like Surry Hills in Sydney at the same time. That sort of —
AJ: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: That was my raising. We were very, very poor. I was brought back from the country where my mother was — she went there I think after they got together. I’m not quite sure how they got together straight after the war. But I was a sort of lad that was caught up in the Samuel McCaughey whip around in the north. I think, darling that if you wouldn’t mind when we have the tea that you sit here too with me as I —
PJ: Why. I’ve heard it all a thousand times before [laughs]
AJ: I mean, I was saying my memory is pretty terrible in various things. Anyway, she [pause] I was brought down under the state government’s attempt to round up these uneducated wild kids.
LD: Right.
AJ: Of which I was one. And we were forcibly removed from the family in North Eastern Victoria, black books, and brought to Melbourne for our own good. Shades of the roundup of the aborigines.
LD: Yes. Absolutely.
RG: Oh yes. There was more than one stolen generation.
AJ: As a result of that I was often in sort of foster care. And my mother was ill. Etcetera etcetera. And dad had had such a terrible life that —
[background chat]
AJ: It was impossible, it was quite impossible for me to forget that sort of thing. And my dad finished up, when I’d turned, was approaching eighteen I was fortunately a gifted kid in education. And I finally got to Melbourne Boy’s High and had an excellent career there and my legacy guardian was none other than Bill Woodfall. The great cricketer.
RG: Oh ok.
AJ: And they, oh they were wonderful people and they looked after me. And I, as 1942 turned over I found myself at Melbourne University in first year. So —
RG: What, what discipline?
AJ: In engineering.
RG: Engineering.
AJ: Engineering yes. And metallurgy. Materials. So I, at the time when I’d completed first year university at Melbourne that would be ’42. I felt, on my eighteenth birthday, dad was in Bundoora Mental Asylum, behind the wire.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Terrible.
RG: As a result of the war.
AJ: Yeah. And I said I’m going to get even for dad and so I joined up at eighteen. On my eighteenth birthday. 29th of October 1942. Well, all hell broke loose because that was a protected profession.
LD: Yes.
AJ: You weren’t allowed to join the service.
LD: Yes. I was wondering how you could join up.
[background chat]
AJ: I got as far as Somers camp and the university and the government people forced, came down and said, ‘You’re coming back. You’re man-powered. You can’t join the services.’ I went back to Melbourne Uni and I stood before the enquiry group of the profession and some of the representatives of the professorial board at Melbourne University and the government official who was man-powering people. I said, ‘I’ve got news for you. You can all get stuffed. I’m not going to continue my course. I’m going to join the service.’ Prof Greenwood was the professor. An English don of the old school.
RG: The old school.
AJ: He was a wonderful bloke. He was called the pink professor simply because he spoke out, you know, more on moral social issues.
LD: So pink as in shades of communist.
AJ: Yeah.
RG: Shades of red.
AJ: Yeah. And he fought for me and he won. He said, ‘This man must be allowed to serve. And join and serve. He has had such provocation. And we will see him on his return when he can resume his course.’ Well, that was it then. I joined the air force. Went in to training at Benalla and went solo and so on there. And after a lot of argy bargy after I’d completed the conversion on to Wirraways at Deniliquin. The great Australian fighter. We graduated to get our wings. You know, to become young sergeant pilots. Well, in the interim, just briefly I had been leading a small group of three on our last, final flight before graduation. Now on a long cross country to be twenty, fifty feet above all obstacles. Low flying exercise. And as part of that low flying exercise by tradition we used to bring the Wirraway down. You could imagine at nearly two hundred miles per hour and the great wheat fields, if they were in that stage —
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Which they were when I was ready for graduation you’d bring it down, you’d look in your rear vision mirror and when you were cutting a furrow along the top of the wheat.
RG: You were low enough.
AJ: You were low enough. But —
LD: So, six feet will do.
AJ: Three of us. And the trouble was that the farmers, they hated this practice.
RG: I can’t understand why.
AJ: Because, you know this was low. We had to get the low flying experience. And the air force had the horror of seeing me charged by the civilian.
RG: Authorities. Yeah.
AJ: They appealed you see, and I was made an example. I was the leader of that flight. And so instead of just rapping me over the knuckles and saying, ‘Don’t do it again because you’re so close to graduation,’ I got sentenced to twenty eight days in the Geelong jail.
RG: My God.
AJ: As a civilian. As a young man in training. It caused such a colossal outcry. You know, here what the hell is it coming to.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: If a guy can’t train for war and the civilians say he can’t do that.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Anyway, it was famous. People went through all the business and when I got out.
LD: So you did have to serve the time.
PJ: Oh yes.
LD: The RAF wasn’t able to —
AJ: Oh it was terrible because they brought all the rapists and the murderers down from the Queensland coast. They were frightened of the Jap invasion up there. And they were all, all of the worst types. And myself at eighteen and another young lad. A young bloke. I don’t know what his offence was. We served, but we served, and you could imagine what those nasty bastards. I didn’t know anything about male practices on other males. I was innocent. But finally we turned around and the other bloke and myself and we were young. Fit. And we belted some of these, some of these vicious saddoes and guards up. And they took it out on us and really did us over. Anyway, the end of the twenty eight days came, and I got back to Deniliquin, and graduation. Another month. I was a month behind after my internment. And the graduation came, and everyone, step forward so and so, sergeant so and so, step forward so and so such. And the Hs, you were doing it. And the I’s. The J’s came and went, and my name wasn’t mentioned. K L M N and right through to the end. And then there was a bit of a drum roll and the commanding officer and the big wigs thing there then said, ‘Step forward Pilot Officer Alexander Jenkins.’ They commissioned me of course. And that —
RG: And that’s, that would have been extremely unusual.
AJ: Oh that did. That caused. Anyway it was so bad in many ways. The whole history of the event. The parliament had gone crazy about this sort of stupidity.
LD: So you’d be there [unclear]
AJ: Two weeks later I was on a troop ship. Fast troop ship.
PJ: Just to digress so you can have another mouthful and another piece of cake or a biscuit or something. This went into limbo as far as Alex was concerned. He had to appear in court on a driving, a possible driving offence. He was not convicted but the barrister representing him said, ‘Alex, you didn’t tell me you’d already been in jail.’ And it was still on the records.
RG: Records. Yeah.
PJ: That he’d been in jail. So that was then. They did the right thing and removed it but you know he’d forgotten all about it at this stage.
RG: You would wouldn’t you? After, you know, you would.
PJ: He was sixty or something, you know and anyhow —
AJ: Being an officer and two hundred and fifty airmen. Sergeants, you know. Navs, pilots and so on, on this troop ship which took us solo straight over to the —
PJ: San Francisco.
RG: Oh.
PJ: You went to —
AJ: Coast up to San Francisco. And from there —
PJ: You went over. You were based in that. You know there’s that big base on that island there by the harbour of San Francisco.
AJ: Past Alcatraz. Yeah.
RG: Oh ok. Yeah.
PJ: San Francisco.
AJ: But from there on —
RG: Yeah.
AJ: As an officer I, it was fortunate that I suppose I was because we did our training.
PJ: But at your exercise in New York he was billeted out with the McGraw-Hill, the McGraw-Hill book people.
RG: Oh yeah. The publishers. Yes.
PJ: The millionaires. So he was billeted with them and they carted him around and he ended up meeting people and singing with Jimmy Durante and —
LD: Oh wow.
AJ: Lena Horne.
PJ: Lena Horne.
AJ: Lena Horne and I became very firm dance partners etcetera. It was quite a, quite a business and then —
RG: Quite an adventure for a young man from —
PJ: That’s right. From the bush in Victoria.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: It was fascinating.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Do you remember the name of the ship that you went on?
AJ: No. I don’t, darling.
PJ: On the ship. Let me think. Was it the Mariposa?
AJ: No. It wasn’t a —
PJ: It was —
AJ: I think it was the Lurline.
PJ: Yeah. Well the Lurline, wasn’t the Lurline the one that came across? It will be there in your, in your book.
AJ: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
PJ: I’ll have a look and see if it’s there.
LD: Well that’s alright. It was just —
RG: It was just —
AJ: But anyway —
PJ: I’ll just have a look and see if it’s in his history there.
AJ: Eventually after about a month in New York the great convoy was formed and off we go. And that was —
LD: So, you did go across as part of a convoy.
AJ: A tremendous convoy.
LD: Right.
AJ: And accompanied by American flat top battleships. You know, the ones that had no structure on top.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Just guns.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
AJ: Things like that. We lost an awful lot of boats.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Of course. It was submarine attacks.
RG: So this was the end of ’42 wasn’t it?
AJ: This would be —
RG: What? Early ’43?
AJ: ’42 I joined. ’43. ’43.
RG: [Unclear] Battle of the Atlantic. Yeah.
AJ: And I got to Britain and my first thought as I saw Liverpool and all these barrage balloons. I said, ‘God almighty if they cut those balloons the bloody island would sink.’
LD: So, so did you arrive directly in Liverpool?
AJ: Hmmn?
LD: Did you arrive directly in Liverpool?
AJ: Yes.
LD: Or did you go around through Greenock.
AJ: No. No.
LD: Ok.
AJ: Directly in Liverpool. And from there the Australian contingent was taken down to, eventually down to Brighton on the south coast where we [pause] I did various training things. Learning to — how to get out of parachutes if you landed in water and all that sort of thing.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: I wouldn’t call it nonsense but it was very very tough.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Activity. And I had.
RG: So that was sort of survival training.
AJ: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
PJ: Eventually I was.
LD: Sorry, was that done at Brighton or was that done —?
AJ: Yes. That sort of introduction to survival and elementary training in use of parachutes and things like that was all done at Brighton.
LD: Wow.
AJ: And then you were, well I was eventually posted up to places. I had completed first year uni and therefore in training I had a good mathematical background etcetera.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: And so they fast-tracked me in training in the centre part of England for eventual allocation to the famous Mosquito high flying.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
AJ: PRU. Photo reccy unit.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: And I was completely just flying so high, so fast.
RG: Did you have a multi engine licence at this point?
AJ: I was trained.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: I went on first on Oxfords and that kind of.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Standard training for me. But that PRU interval — I thought this is great. Flying that fast and no one could see you or shoot you. That only lasted a couple of weeks because they said, ‘Look, we’re now Bomber Command.’ This is coming through now. The year would be ’44. And they said, ‘You’re, Bomber Command for you lad.’
RG: So when did you arrive in Britain, Alex? When was that?
AJ: I arrived in Britain in December ’43 and spent all of ’44.
LD: Yes.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Right through ‘til the end of the war.
RG: Yeah. Ok.
AJ: Ok.
RG: Just trying to get a sort of timeline on it.
AJ: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: That’s right. I was rapidly put into the Bomber Command thing. They were taking pilots from anywhere they could get them because the losses from Bomber Command were so —
RG: Well they had, the losses were, well the Battle of Berlin was just running down then wasn’t it and —
LD: Horrendous.
AJ: And I actually joined the squadron, 460 at the very last part of December ’44. So I, fortunately missed out on the Battle of Berlin and all that sort of thing. But I’d been flying at that time up and down the coast in our training, dropping aluminium foil and trying to assist in the confusion.
RG: The deception for D-day.
AJ: Yes.
RG: Was that, was that in Mosquitos? Was that in Mosquitos you were doing that? Or in —
AJ: No. No. Lancasters.
RG: Lancs. That was Lancs. Yeah.
AJ: Lancasters.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: That was part of the training. So that that went through. D-day came and went and by that time I had not joined a squadron but aircraft like ours were deployed on all sorts of weird jobs. You know, we would fly way up to, right along the French coast, over the North Sea, dropping this aluminium foil.
RG: Yeah. The Window.
AJ: And D-day came and went. And then the awful business of starting to do, being injected into the bomber stream with, before the squadron. Before I joined 460.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: I’d completed all of about half a dozen raids into the German areas near the coast.
RG: While you were under training.
AJ: While training.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: They were —
RG: They had the spoof.
AJ: We were losing so many aircraft.
LD: I know.
AJ: And of course when the jets came in, the ME262 jets came in around about October, I think of 1944. And our losses were just so, there was no answer to it. And so by the time I was finally allocated to 460 Squadron myself and my crew were well versed in some of these dangers. And the —
LD: So was this a crew that was set up within the OTU or —
AJ: I beg your pardon?
LD: The crew that you joined the squadron with.
AJ: Yes.
LD: Did you guys set up within the OTU or —
AJ: Yes.
LD: Right. Ok.
AJ: That’s right.
RD: Yeah.
AJ: It was a fairly standard practice that I went through once I was on the, on to the heavy aircraft.
RG: Can I ask you, Alex, how did that crewing up occur? Because we’ve spoken to other veterans and it’s a mixed bag between people actually just finding oh we need a pilot. There’s someone over there. We’ll just grab him. And a bit more formalised.
LD: Some people even meeting in a pub.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Yeah.
RG: So how did yours work?
AJ: Actually that was quite strange the way that crews were formed. Now let me think. The crew that I finally, my first crew it would be at [pause] let me think.
PJ: This is Campbell in all this lot.
AJ: Yes. That’s right. Now where the devil did that take place? But the system was, I might remember where it was. Somewhere in central England. Firstly, you’d get up, the officer group and there were only a few officer, officer pilots because the pilot was the, was the first. He was the senior man.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
AJ: Crew captain.
RG: Captain. Yeah.
AJ: The pilots that were officers, firstly stood up on this platform and there was all these —
[background chat]
PJ: Alex is deaf. Very deaf. So he wears a hearing aid but you might have to speak up a bit.
RG: Yes. OK.
AJ: Yeah.
PJ: Anyhow, I think it was the Lurline, Alex. I can’t find it, but I think it was —
AJ: At Lichfield.
PJ: No. The Lurline. The ship you went out on.
AJ: Oh the Lurline. Yeah.
PJ: The Lurline. But —
AJ: Anyway, the pilots, officer pilots would stand up first and give a bit of a spiel saying, you know, where they’d trained. Because a lot of them had trained in Canada.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Some in South Africa.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: And I stood up and said I was trained fully in Australia and commissioned off the course. Which was most unusual.
RG: Yes. Yeah.
AJ: I didn’t go into the fact that I was in jail [laughs]
RG: It might have scored points with you Alex.
AJ: Yeah. And after that, you know the other pilots would get up and do the same and then the meeting in the great hall would dissolve from formalities and you’d just wander around. And then you’d have groups of guys. Gunners would tend to, they tended to stick together. And the navigators and the w/op wireless operator blokes. They’d all, they’d be talking and some of them had teamed up with another group. And they’d come up and talk to the pilot. Many of the pilots. And after a while things sort of settled down and I got, in my crew, I got, there were two Englishmen, ‘cause the first Englishman had to be the bloke sitting at the front with you on the right.
RG: The engineer.
AJ: Not the pilot.
RG: The engineer.
AJ: Hmmn?
RG: The engineer.
AJ: Yeah. Flight engineer. Because they weren’t trained out here. They were almost invariably Englishmen.
RG: Oh. Were they? Oh. Ok.
AJ: And the man who I, who came up to me had been in the army and was highly skilled. He was thirty two years of age. An old man.
RG: Yeah.
LD: That was an old man.
AJ: But his rank, I think was oh, major I think.
RG: Wow.
AJ: Frank Stone was his name. A real gentleman.
RG: Was he a sergeant then or was he still commissioned?
AJ: No. He’d re-joined —
RG: Yeah.
AJ: The air force as a pilot officer.
RG: Right. Ok So that’s a big come down though from major to pilot.
AJ: A big come down. He was, I remember he was the first guy. So I had, as the pilot, the flight engineer, Pilot Officer Frank Stone. And he had, for some reason or other known this rear gunner and he, those two joined me. And then the other group of Aussies — the mid-upper gunner, the navigator and the wireless operator were all Australians. A couple of them were, one of them was commissioned. Now, who would that be? Anyway, one was commissioned. And so that’s the way the crew was formed. Well, we went finally, as a crew. We got posted to 460 Squadron which was, you know, we all thought oh that’s it because 460 had a great reputation and what’s his name? The VC.
PJ: Hughie Edwards.
AJ: Hughie Edwards.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Was at that time the 460.
LD: Apparently, he was the world’s worst driver.
RG: Oh was he? [laughs]
LD: Yes. He had a Mercedes.
RG: He was a pilot. Yeah [laughs]
AJ: He was a shocking pilot. Oh my God.
PJ: And then he had a Mercedes and apparently, he had more dents in it because there was a 460 Squadron —
AJ: But everybody said that you fly with Hughie [laughs] at your own risk. But he was charismatic.
PJ: Yeah.
AJ: How he could instil wonderful, wonderful feelings amongst his squadron.
PJ: One of those, one of those sort of pulling off bays, you know, along the highway. In Canberra.
LD: Yes.
RG: Yes. Hughie Edwards bay.
PJ: There was a Hughie Edwards there and his brother that was, that must have been put in, I suppose seven or eight years ago. I can’t remember but we were down there.
AJ: Yeah.
RG: It’s been a while.
PJ: And his brother was there, and he was telling a story of what a frightful driver. He had a Mercedes and he had more dents in it than you could poke a stick at.
AJ: Anyway, I’m probably getting too far ahead for your questions.
LD: No. No. We’re actually.
RG: No. No. it doesn’t matter. We’re actually ticking them off as we go. Just carry on Alex.
AJ: I started flying in combat from 460 right on [pause] almost New Year’s Day of ’45. When the, I’d been flying in, in to but not in to direct combat. We were doing interjections before that as a crew.
RG: So was that the sort of the spoof raids?
AJ: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Those sorts of things. Anyway, the first real operation was either New Year’s Day or immediately after. And —
PJ: Weren’t you involved in that Battle of the Bulge? Where, you know, there was such terrible weather.
AJ: Yeah. Yeah.
PJ: That was New Year’s. That was Christmas Day.
AJ: Yeah. Well that’s —
RG: Oh that’s right. Christmas.
PJ: It was terrible weather.
AJ: It was awful weather.
PJ: Nobody could have — the Germans couldn’t come in and the —
AJ: Yeah.
PJ: What’s the name of the town?
AJ: We were all grounded.
PJ: I’m trying to think of the name of the town.
AJ: The bomber force was grounded because of the weather.
PJ: Because there’s a memorial to the Yanks.
AJ: And then it lifted and oh God they launched everything including training aircraft against the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge. Anyway, my first raid was done as what they called a second dickie.
LD: Oh yes.
AJ: That’s a senior pilot and his crew would take you. You’d sit there in the flight engineer’s seat.
RG: Little seat. Yeah.
AJ: And you went through the raid and learned that whatever and if you were lucky you’d return. They didn’t like second dickie trips. I’ve taken a few too on when I was skilled.
RG: Yeah. When you were — yeah.
AJ: And you never liked them because for some reason or other they seemed they were cursed.
PJ: Bring you bad luck.
AJ: Bring you bad luck. Yeah. It was a fair few. Well, ok I started after that with the crew and we had a series of raids which I won’t go into but near the, on about the 20th or something of February we went to Dresden. Awful. Awful. You know the story of Dresden and so on. How we, most of us just made it back because the tremendous long trip to Dresden and the awful conflagration. I’ve often been back to Europe with Pauline.
PJ: Well, when we were in Prague. He wouldn’t go to Dresden.
AJ: We’ve had opportunities to go back to Dresden.
PJ: That was only a couple of years ago.
AJ: Just over the border and I just said no. I just can’t. I’ve never returned to Dresden.
PJ: One of the most interesting things I find with history is its very one sided. It depends who’s telling the story.
RG: Absolutely.
PJ: And you get an enormous amount and when I, ‘cause this is the second marriage for both Alex and I but we’ve now been married thirty two years so it’s been a long, a long hard road [laughs
AJ: I lost my first wife, the mother of my kids to cancer. Breast cancer.
PJ: Anyhow, the thing is that when I first married Alex he was still having nightmares about the Dresden raid etcetera and so forth and you hear a lot about the horror of the Dresden raid, but you seldom hear about the horrors of Coventry. You know, if you go to the cathedral and you see walls left and that amazing cross and so on.
RG: Been to the cathedral. Yes. Yeah.
PJ: You seldom hear this. You seldom hear. And when I was first in Europe in, because I wasn’t in the war, I’m younger than Alex but I was first in the Europe in ’54 ’55. So I was there for the tenth anniversary of the end of the war and so on. And I went through Hamburg. I went through Germany and I couldn’t believe it. You wouldn’t know there was a war there because the Marshall plan had rebuilt everything.
RG: Rebuilt. Yeah.
PJ: But London was still derelict.
RG: Yes.
PJ: All around St Paul’s was still flattened and so on.
RG: Yeah. In fact, just last night we were watching a film which was made in London in — 1953 was it?
LD: ‘51
RG: ‘51. Yeah It was in —
PJ: Still all the bomb damage.
RG: It was in the city and there was buildings down everywhere
AJ: Well, I’d better continue hadn’t I?
PJ: Oh yeah. Sorry.
PJ: That was my fault Alex.
AJ: No. No. It was —
PJ: The history is interesting.
AJ: It is interesting.
RG: It is.
PJ: Interesting.
AJ: After the Dresden we got home and the, the three nights later we went to Dortmund. A bombing raid which was pretty rough. Pretty terrible. And coming home it was midnight. Snow on the ground. And the worst possible conditions for bomber aircraft because it was heavy cloud low down. Full moon. And just above the top of the cloud which was at our return flying height, so we were in and out.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: But often silhouetted.
RG: Yeah. Silhouetted.
AJ: Against the white cloud below. We were caught by — over the German Belgian border by a Messerschmitt 262. Jet.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: They were so fast. Fully armed with cannon.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Not just machine guns. And it blew the starboard wing of my Lancaster clean off. I mean there was no, no, you know, pilot stay in his seat, hold it until the rest of the crew baled go.
RG: Just go.
AJ: And the poor crew of course who were serving. They were at their desks and so on. Never. Their parachutes were strapped to the side of the Lancaster.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: So they always had to somehow get to them, put them on.
RG: And then get out.
AJ: While I held the aircraft.
RG: But you couldn’t do that.
AJ: Theoretically in a position where they could bale out. Well there was none of that because the cannon blew the starboard wing right and the aircraft just disintegrated at twenty two thousand feet. We all went out. I never saw my crew again. Naturally. They fell to their deaths. And I, being a pilot, occasionally you’ll see this in the record in such a case the armour plated bucket seats, which I’m sitting on, sitting on your parachute went out like a cork out of a champagne bottle.
RG: The whole seat.
AJ: The whole seat. Yeah. And I don’t remember anything of that naturally. Just the disintegration. Nothing. I must have fallen. Well, I obviously did because I came to at about two thousand feet. And there’s no steel seat. Somehow that had got lost in the fall down and the parachute harness was still on me but the parachute was unopened. There’s a stick sort of thing.
RG: Handle. Yeah.
AJ: And on fire just above my head.
RG: On fire.
AJ: Yeah. And this great hero at that stage looked down and here’s a church. And we were in a little a place called Lummen in Belgium. And I looked at that and so help me, this is written up and it’s quite true. There’s no exaggeration. You know, I’m a few seconds from death. What do you think the great hero thought at that time? Christ, if I don’t bloody do something that, that’s going to go up my arse. True [laughs]
LD: [laughs] Well it would have looked very small from that height too wouldn’t it?
AJ: Talk about anti-climax. I think people who ask me what’s my, my biggest memories. I said that little thing [laughs] I thought oh gawd. So I gave the rip cord a tug and so help me this burning sticker top opened up just sufficient because I landed in the church yard.
RG: Yeah.
LD: Not on the steeple.
AJ: Not on the steeple. And I think, they say I landed in the peach tree, somewhere near, in the gravestones and so on. In any event I survived the fall. It was in no man’s land. And the Luftwaffe were in charge at that time around that part and of course we had some respect for the, or a great deal of respect actually for the massed combatant. Combatants of the Luftwaffe and there wasn’t —
PJ: And he was also quite seriously injured.
AJ: Wasn’t particularly, if you’d seen the Wehrmacht or something they would have slit my throat. I believe, quite soundly, I was finished in a field hospital of which the Germans were in charge and they saved my life. And all things went on in there and I won’t go through that but some time later —
PJ: They were retreating. The Germans were retreating and left him behind.
AJ: Eventually the Canadians moved through the area and I remember being interviewed there. I spoke up for the Luftwaffe nurses and staff.
RG: Did they leave staff there? Just for interest’s sake, some staff?.
AJ: Yeah. They didn’t want to get back with the, because they didn’t want to go to Russian front.
RG: Oh. Ok. Yeah.
AJ: And I said these people had treated me very very well. I honoured them and they wished to be taken in charge as prisoner of war ectera. ‘Yes. Yes. That can be done. But you’re under arrest.’
RG: Alex, this is becoming a habit [laughs] you know that don’t you?
AJ: And this was, this was a pommie colonel.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Oh did I give him hell.
RG: Why did he say you were under arrest though?
AJ: Good question. You know, I said the same thing, ‘What the f’ing hell are you talking about?’ Anyway, he went out and about an hour later he came back.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: And he confirmed some of the basis of the story that I was saying.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: And the point was that he raised that issue early because such was the loss, terrible losses of our crews.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
AJ: I must have to be sorry to say that it’s not often mentioned in the records. Many of our bomber crews cracked under the strain.
RG: Yeah. Yes.
AJ: And they used to fly over such places to become prisoners.
RG: Yes.
AJ: Or even better to get into Sweden, Switzerland or something and save themselves. They’d had enough. They were cracking.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: And really the Germans were winning the air war. There was no doubt about it.
PJ: Yeah. If Hitler wasn’t such an idiot, he would have won.
AJ: He would have. He would have won. All he had to do was keep on going a little bit longer, you know. But anyway as a result of that I was pulled back to Britain some, a week, or ten days. I forget the length of time, later. And instead of being repatriated home immediately which was the usual thing the wonderful base commander, also an Australian. And that was —
RG: Don’t ask me what his name was. I can’t remember.
AJ: Binbrook was —
RG: This was the base commander not the squadron commander.
AJ: That’s right.
RG: Yes.
PJ: [unclear]
AJ: I was flying with the Australian commander at that time. I forget his name now. But the base commander was an Australian too.
PJ: Cowan. Wasn’t it? The base, not the base commander but Cowan.
AJ: No. Cowan was the guy who came in. His crew I finally picked up.
PJ: I can’t remember the name of that fellow. I met him at that —
AJ: No. Anyway he said Alex I’m going to ask you a pretty terrible thing. He said we now have, because of the losses being brought about by the jet aircraft which Churchill refused to allow our air force commander Butch Harris to try and describe to we, the crew because Churchill believed that we’d all surrender.
LD: So did you not —
RG: Did you know about those?
LD: You were not informed that these aircraft —
AJ: No. We were kept in the dark about these engineless things.
PJ: Aircraft.
AJ: That were shooting us down. It was deliberate by Churchill because he had no faith in Bomber Command. He hated the bloody air force. Anyway, he said, ‘I want you to stay here and to pick up the new squadron commander, Wing Commander Cowan.’ He had no experience anyway. He was barred from flying. Anyone above the rank of full squadron leader was barred from flying, because of our losses. And he said, ‘We can’t, we have his crew who were perfectly ready to take over, but they won’t have a pilot. We want you to volunteer to continue in action.’ I said, well I thought about it for about one second and said, ‘Yes, I’ll volunteer.’ So, I was appointed the pilot and commander of the new untested crew. Mainly Aussies. And —
RG: I wanted to ask. Can I just ask, how did that, so they worked up that they were the wing commander’s, Wing Commander Cowan’s crew. They’d worked up with him, trained with him and whatever. And then he goes and you, you jump in.
AJ: Yeah.
RG: How did it work out with them? How did you —
PJ: He’s still friendly with — there’s one in Melbourne.
AJ: Yeah. Well the camaraderie within the squadron was absolutely tremendous. Even though we were being shot to ribbons. And people respected me because they all believed I was dead. When I turned up [laughs] I just rescued my tin in the steel box of personal goods from the, that’s called the graveyard down in London. They used to take —
RG: Sorry, what was that? They used to take the stuff down to what was known as the graveyard.
AJ: When crews went missing or were killed in action. And there were many. Their personal belongings were generally put in a big steel trunk. Sent down to London to the, ‘dead meat factory.’
PJ: Then to be shipped home.
AJ: And then shipped home
RG: We were going to ask you about that if you don’t mind. The Committee of Adjustment term that we’ve heard which is very little information on.
PJ: Never heard of it.
LD: These were the people who picked up —
PJ: Oh yes.
RG: It’s an old term from the nineteenth century. It’s an old British army term and I’ve heard it in Bomber Command. That how, when a crew went missing, were killed that process of who, who did it. And it varied in different squadrons and stuff.
AJ: Yeah.
RG: Who came and picked their kit up.
AJ: Yeah.
RG: And we’ve also heard about censoring. That they’d go through and —
AJ: It was the same committee that — I’ve heard of it. I don’t know much about their operations because they were — you didn’t want to know.
RG: No. No. You wouldn’t.
AJ: But they were the ones too who used to pick up the belongings of people who cracked up in combat. Many of us did, you know. Many, many guys would return and they’d be [pause] and they were sentenced. Sentenced. Think of the modern treatment of such people. LMF. Lack of moral fibre.
RG: Lack of moral fibre.
LD: That’s another —
AJ: That was the worst term in the air force.
LD: Yes. Yes.
AJ: Lack of moral fibre.
RG: So what happened, again LMF is naturally there is very little information because no one wants to —
LD: And what you read is so inconsistent.
RG: Yeah. And different squadrons, different groups seemed to do this different in different, well the Canadians did it differently from us.
AJ: That’s right. They all had their certain people that looked after that. And they were ostracised. It was almost too, too much to bear to talk to such people. You know, you’d be, even as an officer in the permanent quarters where my room were because I was a pretty senior officer, combat officer. And, you know, you’d be at breakfast or something after a raid or [pause] and, you know, ‘Where are they? What’s happened?’ And they these people would take over. And when you saw them I could recognise them, but they never socialised with any of us.
RG: Who were they?
AJ: I don’t know.
RG: Were they officers?
PJ: Were they part of the air force?
RG: Were they officers or were they —
PJ: Were they part of the air force or civilians?
AJ: Oh yes. They were air force guys.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: They would dress just like the rest of us but from memory now, that’s right, they had a tag. A tag up here and if you saw them we used to, well we had various words for them. Death heads or something or other. I forget now. But there was no camaraderie with such people. They were terrible around. They had an awful job to do.
RG: They did didn’t they.
AJ: But in my case, I got back. I take over Wing Commander Cowan’s crew and away we go. And from thereafter I think we did another ten or fifteen combat bombing trips. Some finished up in daylight with the American Forts. I admired them, the Yanks. Even though they were bombastic bastards [laughs] we used, we used to fight like hell in the pubs. They were always, we reckoned chasing our women. Our women. We used to call the ladies from Grimsby that we’d invite out to the officer’s mess, famous mess out there called the Village Inn, the Grimsby night fighters. For obvious reasons. But they were, they were lovely, lovely lasses. And strangely enough it wasn’t a sexual trend although that obviously went on. But it was, they were, they seemed to accept their role in a beautiful manner. They’d calm you down when you were dancing, and these are the memories now that are very strong in my mind.
RG: Yes.
AJ: Since the horrors and the trauma of my experience after my recent illnesses for some reason has faded away.
RG: Faded away.
AJ: And I am now touching ninety two and as Pauline says I have a, I don’t have the awful trauma. Only the funny things
RG: The good ones.
AJ: Of the Grimsby, of the Grimsby girls.
PJ: In your second stint, that was when you did Operation Manna.
AJ: Yeah, that’s interesting. As Pauline has just said. After [pause] no. Before the war finished the — a group of Germans and the whole of Belgium and Holland was grounded. It was sealed by Montgomery’s army. And Hitler being Hitler refused any suggestion that these people, that the German and there was a hell of a lot of Germans there, should surrender. And therefore the Red Cross and International Red Cross I think it was mainly who organised a cease fire in order that Lancasters, because of their great load carrying ability would be used to drop food to the starving Dutch.
PJ: Yeah. All the dykes had been busted.
RG: Yeah.
PJ: So Holland was all flooded so there was no production of food.
RG: Yeah. Yeah. It was impossible to get any other way.
AJ: That was amazing. I did about three. Three or four of those.
RG: That was amazing thing, wasn’t it?
AJ: And the worst thing about it was that there were only certain areas that you could drop this food and the stuff we were dropping, you know. Big two hundred pound bag of potatoes and bulky packets.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Of all sorts of food wired up in our own bomb bays. And we’d release those at about, to nearly two hundred mile an hour. We had to fly no higher than a thousand feet over all of the approaches to this area. And the German gunners were, this was unofficial trips.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
AJ: You could see, you could set the watches on the —
RG: 11 o’clock. We’ll, yeah, it’s over.
AJ: And we I remember so well the time when the plane in front of me in this great field that was up above the flood waters fence. And all around the fence would be the German troops keeping the starving, and they were starving.
RG: Yeah. Starvation.
AJ: Ordinary folk away. Well the plane in front dropped successfully and suddenly, terribly the German troops, they laid down their arms and raced to get the food. They were starving too.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
AJ: And then followed by the people. Can you imagine it? I’m approaching.
LD: Oh and you’re coming.
AJ: And suddenly dropped them as you came in.
LD: Carrying two hundred pounds of potatoes.
AJ: I’ve got to drop. I’ve got to drop. The plane is ready to drop. So I dropped my load and so help me God. You could see them. You know. if you get hit in the head with a two hundred pound bag of spuds at two hundred miles an hour.
RG: Two hundred miles an hour.
AJ: There’s not much of you left. Well I did about three. Three or four of those. And in there I have a plaque that was issued to those of us on Operation Manna. And on the way back, trying to recover our sanity we went on, going past these great windmills with great Lancasters — four engines. You approached the windmill [boom] and the wheels — vroom [laughs] We had photos of that which have gone missing now. That was Operation Manna. And then, after the war, some three days after the war, Churchill ordered the air force to provide a skilled crew. A pilot, with the facilities in this Lancaster for photography. For the record over all of Germany.
RG: The destructed. The destroyed cities. Yeah.
AJ: And hence my first long range. I was selected, and you had, I had on board about eleven or twelve senior people, photographers, ladies, WAAF chiefs. Some of them were very senior people. And at a thousand feet we flew all over Germany taking those. They were quite famous photographs.
PJ: These are the negatives we gave to the War Memorial last year.
AJ: The negatives we gave. We have the copy. Particularly that famous one.
RG: Of the bridge.
AJ: The bridge of Cologne.
AJ: Over Cologne. And the funniest thing of all I guess was the fact that those long trips the ladies of course, it wasn’t set up for ladies in a Lancaster.
LD: From what I’ve heard the elsan wasn’t very well set up for men either.
AJ: The elsan. I had strict instructions I gave to my rear gunner that he wasn’t to switch. I could sense when he moved his turret.
RG: Turret. Yeah.
AJ: I said, ‘You keep that bloody turret looking out.’ But a couple of times there I could sense what was going on. And he was laughing like hell there. So there was some funny things.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Then further on we joined the new force.
RG: Tiger Force.
AJ: Single Australians with very long, highly experienced crews.
PJ: Tiger Force.
AJ: Tiger Force. At the home of east, at East Kirkby which is famous anyhow.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: And we started to bring back, we’d fly tremendous distances all over Europe doing various tasks to get experience for when we were to be based in Iwo Jima.
RG: In bombing Japan.
AJ: That had just been taken by the Yanks. To bomb Japan. Can you imagine these long range Lancs up against the Japanese Zeros defending their own land? Over Tokyo. But the worst thing about it was that we would not have enough fuel to return to Iwo Jima.
RG: So what was to happen? Land in China?
AJ: We were too overfly. Think of this for a crazy bloody.
RG: Planning.
AJ: Arrangements made by that idiot Churchill and others to overfly Tokyo in to deep Soviet Russia and to land at a field of opportunity.
LD: Oh because it would all just be sitting there.
AJ: There were no maps. We were just told that you overfly if you survive. You can overfly, land where you’ll be refuelled and rearmed and you could come back. There was no way we would come back. It was a flight to death. But that’s what we were up for. But before we got down on to that level we were, we did a lot of flying down to the south of Italy to the coast. Bari.
RG: Oh yeah.
AJ: Because that Bari became the central point for the collection of all the poor darned prisoners of war.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: From all around that area.
RG: From right up through Europe. Not just to Italy. Everywhere.
AJ: Down. Yeah. All the prisoners that were to be returned to Britain were to be, as far as possible collected from Bari.
RG: Brought back through Bari. Ok.
AJ: We’d fly down and bring them back.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Ten on each side of the Lancaster, strapped.
LD: Of course I’ve heard this, and I’ve wondered where they put them and how they put them.
AJ: Well that’s it because the Lanc became, of course almost unmanageable with twenty people. It’s centre of gravity was all over the place.
LD: Yes.
AJ: It was highly dangerous work.
LD: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: But we did quite a few of these trips and on one trip — this is quite a funny story really. We had realised and so had the people down in Bari that a nice little trade could be organised. We’d take down the, we’d bring back the prisoners but what do we do?
RG: Come back empty.
AJ: About taking them down because you can’t sort of turn up an opportunity to load up your Lanc bomb bay. In a station like Binbrook there were hundreds, literally hundreds of push bikes.
LD: Of course. Of course. Yes.
AJ: Pushbikes were, of course, used by everyone. When a crew went missing no one’s interested in the pushbikes. The bicycle dump was bigger than the bomb dump. And we, a lot of us got our little heads together and said if we take down bikes wired up in the bomb bay and then exchange them down there for fruit, Italian jewellery, you know. For all the goodies that were missing in England. Ah, great. So this trade started. Well we’d done quite a few of these trips bringing back the prisoners itself was —
RG: Key thing.
AJ: A very emotional experience. But mid-way through this exercise the bloody military police down in, our own coppers —
RG: Yeah. Yeah. The crushers.
AJ: Down in Bari. They had a racket or two going too and we were undercutting them, you know. And so they decided that they were going to stop us.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: By arresting a few of the crew and causing mayhem.
RG: You didn’t get arrested again did you Alex?
AJ: What happened was that I got, to there was about six or eight in this flight. I happened to be leading it, of Lancs from Binbrook with our bikes. And we’re flying at about fifteen thousand feet down the Med. We get a call from base saying, ‘Get rid of those bloody bikes. The cops are waiting for you in Bari.’ How do you get rid of bikes fifteen thousand feet over the Med? Obvious.
PJ: It is really.
AJ: I opened the bomb bays and wired them, and at my command, ‘Bombs away. Bikes away.’ And so that’s what happened. And can you imagine suddenly out of the [laughs] hundreds of bikes?
RG: You’ll see them down there on the floor of the Mediterranean there is all this piles of bikes.
AJ: That’s it. in the future, five thousand years away there will be some stupid palaeontologist saying these are unusual.
LD: There’ll be some child who was down on the beach that’s going, ‘Mum, can we go out and get some of those bikes that fell in to the sea?’ ‘Oh, you stupid boy.’
PJ: Wouldn’t believe it.
AJ: Oh dear. But when we got down there and the cops raced into the aircraft. Nothing there. Bomb doors open. Opened the bomb doors. Nothing. I can still see [laughs] they knew they’d been beaten.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Didn’t find anything.
LD: What did you do with those bloody bikes. What bikes?
RG: What bikes?
LD: They didn’t find anything else to arrest anybody for instead did they?
RG: I’ve just got this mental image of all these people riding pushbikes in these 1950s and ‘60s Italian movies.
PJ: That’s right.
RG: And they’re all RAF bikes.
PJ: Of course they had no transport so —
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
AJ: So there was some funny stories amongst the tragedies.
PJ: What else is there? I can’t think. Actually now there’s, in Lummen, where Alex came down.
RG: Sorry what was the name of that town again?
PJ: Lummen.
RG: Yeah. How do you spell it?
AJ: L U M M E N.
RG: Ok.
AJ: Lummen.
PJ: They now have a street, an Alexander Jenkins Street, Strasse in the new subdivision there.
RG: Oh truly. Oh wow.
PJ: Yeah. The mayor wrote last year.
AJ: Yeah. What happened was oh about 1983 or thereabouts.
PJ: It was ’83 because that was when I was going through those things for the Department of Foreign Affairs.
AJ: ’83. They, the local people in Lummen. The younger men and women who had no real experience of the war decided that they knew all of them now. They knew the history of that terrible night. The number of aircraft shot down over their, over their area on the night of the 20th.
PJ: Very close to the German border.
AJ: And they decided that they knew that there was somewhere in this rhododendron swamp. Beautiful rhododendron forest but there were bits of my aircraft that had been in that swamp. Had not been discovered and taken away in the great clean-up straight after the war had finished. And they were just resting in pieces until then. And a number of them, the patriots decided they’d find the remains of my Lanc. Which they did. They were amazing the way they did it. And anyway —
PJ: They didn’t find much.
AJ: No. They didn’t find much. The heavy undercarriage survived of course. A few other bits and pieces. So at about ‘83 this occurred, and they finally had got through the ID markings on the, on the remnants. They knew that it was a bomber from Binbrook. The records showed that that was the site of the Lanc. And they decided that they would try, they knew there was one survivor. The pilot.
PJ: They didn’t know that at the outset did they because that young, the young girl that looked after the graves, first of all they had all of you.
AJ: Oh yeah that’s right.
PJ: Lost.
AJ: It took a long time.
RG: For everyone.
PJ: For them all. And we met this young girl who, she was a twelve year old when she used to look after the graves.
RG: Yeah.
PJ: Because they were buried in the village.
RG: Yeah.
PJ: Now they’re in the war cemetery.
RG: War cemetery. Yeah.
PJ: But in the small war cemetery.
RG: Yeah.
PJ: Not in any major ones.
AJ: No.
PJ: Because they said, you know, their our guys. So it’s a small war cemetery.
AJ: They decided that they would get this, these bits and pieces and build a memorial. And the identification — they searched everywhere. Records and so on to try and find the name and the whereabouts of the surviving pilot. Me. Well, officialdom, particularly in Australia and for good reasons you make at that time, you make an enquiry like that and — no comment. Because of the threat of retaliation and bribery and things. People getting even if they handed out that sort of information.
RG: Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough.
AJ: Where Joe Blow was, who was doing this at that time in the war. Where is he now? I want to go over and shoot him.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
AJ: So they didn’t pass any info at all. They couldn’t get anywhere with it. But in any event, they finally did, through the university system. See, I was a professor in the, I was a foundation professor at the University of New South Wales and eventually also a professor in charge of the Department of Materials and Metallurgy at Sydney University. And Sydney, the university has this international academic thing over and they, apparently there was a publication in England about me.
PJ: Well there —
AJ: And they found me.
PJ: Apparently, yeah, apparently, there’s a university magazine that goes out and this fellow in Belgium put an ad in this university magazine seeking the whereabouts of this Alexander Jenkins.
RG: Yeah.
PJ: And Alex had already retired so the registrar of the Sydney Uni rang Alex and said, ‘I don’t know what you’ve been up to.’ And also the Department of Foreign Affairs got in touch.
AJ: Yeah. They said, ‘What have you been up to? You’re wanted.’
RG: Again. Get stuffed.
AJ: Well we were —
PJ: It was.
AJ: Planning to go back at that stage.
PJ: Well, I was working and when I married Alex he said I’d like you to retire in five years. So, ok, because he didn’t know what he was going to be doing. So by the time I retired he was on every rotten board in the country and he was never at home so I could have killed him. But that’s beside the point. So the people I worked for, they, they knew I was going to retire so this was ’86. It must have been. And they said, ‘Look you’ve done a good job for us. We think you should get a new car. We’re suggesting you get BMW and we suggest you go to Munich to pick it up.’ So I was quite happy to do that. So we knew we were going to be in Europe. And we took a house about fifteen kilometres out of Florence for about six weeks or something. So we had all this in place. Well then when they finally got hold of Alex we said we could be there etcetera and so forth. So we went, and we drove into this town and there were thousands of people and Alex said, ‘It must be market day.’ It wasn’t market day it was us and him.
LD: It was Alex Jenkins day.
PJ: And it was incredible.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
LD: Did you go by car and wave like the queen?
PJ: It was a big deal.
AJ: It was a big deal.
PJ: The head of the NATO forces for Belgium was there. Colonel [unclear] And there was the Australian Ambassador to France, I think he was. And there was the British Ambassador to somewhere or other. They were all there and it was interesting and we, and Colonel [unclear] said to me they were going to unveil a memorial to Alex’s crew.
RG: Yeah.
PJ: Outside the church. So, and Colonel [unclear] he said, because it was a Flemish area. There was a book written about Alex, but it was in Flemish. Have you ever tried to get Flemish translated in this country? It’s almost impossible.
RG: I know one person who can do it.
PJ: Well, I found one person who could do it and she was in Adelaide. And it was interesting. My daughter was working for the Commonwealth Bank and the girl at the desk next to her, she was saying, because Alex was coming up for his eightieth birthday and I was trying to find some way to get this translated so he could, so that I could give it to him for his eightieth. Well, so Louise was helping me. And somehow, she said something to this girl and she said mum, she’s a translator. She’s married to an Australian but she’s from the Flemish region of Belgium. Anyhow, Colonel [unclear] said it in Flemish and then he said it in English and so on. And there was a guard of honour drawn up for Alex and they were all the Resistance fighters. And they were all old, and they were gnarled and they were a tough looking bunch. And they made him an honorary member, his medal’s in there, of the resistance. Well then Colonel [unclear] had said to me, ‘Be prepared for a bit of a surprise.’ So they go through all this and then they gave him a flypast of F16s.
RG: Wow.
PJ: They came over the top of the church.
RG: Yeah. To recognise.
PJ: It was quite amazing. It was a very emotional day. We’ve been over a couple of times since. But —
AJ: It was quite something. I’m standing there and in front of the dais and the colonel and there’s all the Resistance. Wartime blokes. God [laughs] they were a rough bunch with their berets and so on and when he said that there would be a celebration and he didn’t really describe it except that I thought, you know this is something to do with this air force business.
PJ: No. He didn’t tell you. He told me. You didn’t know anything about it.
AJ: No. I didn’t. And anyway, the, I’m standing there and just waiting. And, in the background, I heard vroom vroom vroom and I thought, My God. that’s a bloody aircraft on full power, flaps. It’s a, there’s a word for it in some tactical approach. Supersonic aircraft flying as slow as possible with flaps down.
RG: Flying down.
AJ: And undercart still retracted.
RG: Ok.
AJ: But flying as low and as slow.
RG: Slow as possible.
AJ: It takes tremendous power for a plane like that to do that.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
AJ: And they were revving the engines. Vroom. Vroom. Vroom.
RG: Virtually standing on the tail. Yeah.
AJ: I thought, oh my God, I think I know what might be coming because that’s the first part of a ceremonial, highly meaningful but seldom performed performance by aircraft in the honour of a fallen or a number of fallen comrades. Prince of Wales Feathers it called. Anyway, sure enough and low on the horizon was that. How many were there? About six weren’t there? I think so.
PJ: No. I think there was four or something [unclear] to make the Prince of Wales Feathers.
AJ: No. Six it would have been.
PJ: Anyhow, whatever.
AJ: Anyway just over the top just above the ground really and I’m looking at that and I thought I know what’s coming now because what happens is that they move away. That’s meant to be the sound of the human heart.
LD: Yes. Yes.
AJ: Vroom vroom vroom. Then they move away. Get out, away from the crowd and everything else. They reassemble and this time —
RG: Come back.
AJ: They come in with full power as an arrow group.
LD: Yeah.
AJ: And then vroom just above and straight up and then they.
LD: That’s where they get the name the name the Prince of Wales Feathers. Just spreading.
AJ: Prince of Wales Feathers.
LD: Spreading like the feathers.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Yeah. The beating of the human heart first and then the departure of the soul to heaven.
RG: Yeah. Ok. I didn’t realise the significance.
PJ: These, we were guests of this —
AJ: Gosh it was so impressive.
LD: What a wonderful thing for your crew isn’t it.
AJ: I had tears in my eyes.
PJ: The pilots took us to dinner. Their wives took us to dinner that night and one of the wives was saying that she, she, they used to hide under the table during the war. And she said her mother used to say she could hear the Lancasters going over and she’d say, ‘There goes the sound of freedom.’ So —
AJ: Yeah.
PJ: She’s but she —
AJ: What a story that —
PJ: This Colonel [unclear] was the air attaché to the Belgian Embassy.
AJ: He was a wonderful bloke.
PJ: Embassy in Washington. And his wife told the story that when they went over there they had three daughters and the youngest, the littly really spoke no English at all. The other two were bi lingual. Anyhow she gets her there and she didn’t know whether to send her to school or not and so on. So she sends her to kindy and when she gets home her mother said, ‘How was it? How did you like American kindy?’ She said, ‘Mum, it’s quite good but, ‘she said, ‘You know none of the kids could understand a word I said.’ So she said it took her a while. But they were delightful people. When we were there a couple of years ago he was too ill to meet us but no this first trip we went one of the, oh well there’s a, there’s a little memorial. Alex has photos there and it’s made of the, the what do you call the big straps that the wheels go in.
AJ: The oleo legs.
PJ: Ok. And they made a chapel of them.
AJ: And then on top there’s this —
PJ: But then they, and there was an ink drawing of Alex falling out of the sky with his parachute on fire and so on. And there were a whole stack of kids. There was just so many people there. And I tried to, I was saying to these, trying to explain to these kids that that old guy, he didn’t have a beard then but that old guy over there was the guy falling out of the sky. They looked at him. They looked at it. But this bloke from the Australian Embassy had very kindly brought a pocket full of little gold kangaroos, you know so they dispensed these out to the kids.
RG: Yeah.
PJ: And they thought it lovely fun. But at the same time there was a dinner that night a reception that afternoon and a fellow gave Alex, this father and his son came out and the son spoke very good English as they all do. The father wasn’t [unclear] but he had a gold watch he had which belonged to one of Alex’s crew and he asked if we could try and return it to the family. Well I was still working, and I tried and as Alex said earlier you can’t get any information. People don’t give you any information. So when I retired I couldn’t find out where this guy had come from or anything, by the name of Campbell. Anyhow, when I retired I tried again and I struck. I told the lass this story, you know, what was going on and she was quite helpful and said he came from Mudgee. So we did some research. It was very hard. You know, it was a long time ago and people change and die and move on and so on.
LD: Yes.
PJ: Anyhow, we eventually found his three sisters and we gave them back the watch that apparently their mother had given to their brother for his twenty first birthday and so we were able to give them that.
AJ: By the way we have been back several times and I think the last time that we were in contact the people the people in Lummen because we are, we have the freedom of the city and so on.
RG: That’s one place in the world you’re never going to be arrested. You know that [laughs]
AJ: Yeah. That’s right.
PJ: The last time we went —
AJ: Well, the last time we were there they had the signs up.
PJ: But we said, ‘Very low key please. Very low key.’ So we arrived, well first of all they picked us up from the railway station in Brussels. And they described, there would be three guys and they described themselves and their description was absolutely spot on. There was a short guy, a tall guy and a fat guy. Three guys. So they picked us up and we drive into town and there was all these, “Welcome Alexander Jenkins.”
AJ: And since then —
LD: So it was lucky it was low key was it?
AJ: They have, there was a big estate.
PJ: Yeah. Well as I said your name.
AJ: That’s been formed. The principal avenue was named after me. Alexander Jenkins Strasse.
PJ: Strasse but they, you know we were.
AJ: So I’ve got my name in that part of Belgium.
PJ: And we had a reception. And all these kids. A group of kids I think they were probably eleven. Ten or eleven. Something like that. And their job was to draw the story they knew and to draw what they thought of this fellow coming out of the plane. Well, they all stood there literally and came forward and presented Alex with their, their drawings. Which was all very nice. But the only thing, you know, because I worked in the not for profit sector and I used to bring people from overseas as speakers I was very conscious of the luggage that people had to take back, but jeez you know, when we were there last time they presented Alex with a beautiful crystal vase about so high and about so big with everything engraved on it. It weighed three tonnes.
AJ: Yeah.
PJ: And how on earth we were going to get this home, but we did but, no its —
AJ: Anyway that’s the —
PJ: That’s his story. Is there anything else you want to know about?
AJ: That’s my story basically. I know I’ve rambled.
RG: No, that’s, that’s fine.
LD: Oh no. No.
AJ: But the funny parts about it are when I think the last couple of weeks, so we went down to this function which we generally go to once a year.
LD: Yes.
AJ: Of the 460. Under G for George.
PJ: The 460 under the wings —
LD: I was going to ask you to talk about your connection with G for George.
AJ: Yes. Well G for George is of course a Lancaster from 460 Squadron. One of the most weird aircraft we ever had in the squadron. Long before my time. Ninety eight trips. Combat trips. And it’s still in one piece. The C flight, there were various flights on 460 Squadron. A B C D. Twenty six aircraft actually to the squadron, six commence of the four and two spare, and C flight always has G for George, And I finished as the command of C flight of 460 Squadron. And therefore, and I’ve flown of course during the war when this one had returned to Australia. Peter Issacson and others for the, brought that plane back for the — raised funds at the time. I’ve flown G for George. G10, G11, G12 because the average life of the Lanc was only three months.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Before it would be shot down. So I’ve flown quite a few G for George’s but I’m also the ex-commander of that one, C flight which is —
PJ: The one there in Canberra is the one that flew under the Harbour Bridge.
RG: Yeah. Yeah. On that.
PJ: When Peter Issacson was flying.
AJ: They let me in to that aircraft as a special dispensation.
PJ: This was last Friday.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Last Friday. I’ve often said to Pauline and others I’d just love to, once before I go to —
PJ: I’d heard —
RG: Seriously.
AJ: To get back in to my plane.
LD: That would be a wonderful experience.
AJ: It was so lovely.
PJ: I’d heard that you could do this. So when we were talking about taking stuff down, well first of all to give something to the War Memorial isn’t that simple.
RG: No.
PJ: You’ve got to go through a terrible lot of rigmarole. They don’t want you to bring stuff there and so on. I was talking I just left a message and this young man rang me back. And I said look we’re going to be there. I said, ‘My husband is elderly. It doesn’t matter if we bring the stuff. You have a look.’ ‘No. We’re not interested. We’ve already got that.’ ‘That’s fine. But at least then we know.’ And I said, ‘While I’m calling you I understand that if you were a pilot of a Lancaster you can have a sneaky inside.’ And he said, ‘Oh I’ve never heard of that.’ Anyhow, they rang back and said there was this special thing etcetera etcetera. So, there was a message waiting for us when we got to Canberra last week and they said to ring so we rang, and they said well we’re not supposed to. We’ve had to get authority from the highest but as a very special thing and the big thing is apparently a couple of years ago there was an old pilot was up in there and he had a bad fall and severely gashed his head.
RG: Yeah.
PJ: So now it’s totally taboo.
LD: And it’s a good long way up.
PJ: Yeah. So what they had there was two delightful young men. One went in front and one went behind and they had one, of course they used those ladders, you know, those wood ladders, flat on the top.
AJ: My ambition was to get in.
PJ: Anyhow, he got there.
AJ: I knew I wouldn’t be able to get and sit in the front, in the pilots seat because it’s all wired up with dummies, but what I wanted to do, and any Lanc crew member would understand what I’m saying. I wanted to get over the main spar.
RG: Yes. Yeah.
AJ: That main spar was the continuation of the wing structure through the middle of the plane. It used to cause tremendous problems to us. Particularly if you were in combat and you needed to bail out.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Oh. It was awkward. Anyway, I got in, struggled along the plane and I came to the main spar. And I think the bloke said, ‘Do you think you can?’ Because I’ m pretty weak. ‘Do you think you can get over there?’ I said, ‘I’ll do this or die.’ And I got over it.
LD: So does it look like, I’ve seen people climb over it. It doesn’t look like there’s much room.
AJ: Oh yeah. Once I was over there I could see the cockpit and everything else.
PJ: He was a very happy chappy.
AJ: I was a happy chappy and I came back over again. Top of this great ladder and I looked down and opposite in the recess were the two aircraft. One of them the ME262.
RG: Oh yes. Of course there is.
AJ: The one that shot me down.
LD: Yes. Of course you were —
PJ: That’s right.
AJ: And the other was what we called the chase me Charlies. They were the rocket ships that used to go.
RG: ME 163.
AJ: Straight up. And the trick about them was that they had this great cannon which if you were hit with that you didn’t, what I got, blown to bits. You go, it goes up and then it levels out. It levelled out in the stream and selected a target and that was the end of the target. But when you could see it going up we thought oh my God, you know. You watch. You watch. If you see a, the thing stop and then the trail continue you breathed a sigh of relief because it’s going away from you.
RG: Yes.
AJ: Because of the jet at the back. But if it went up.
RG: And vanished.
AJ: And there was darkness it was. ‘Oh my God.’
RG: Coming towards.
AJ: It’s coming to us.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: So those two planes. I looked down and the blokes with me knew what I was thinking.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: I said, ‘Yeah, I remember those two,’
PJ: Are you going to see David Griffin?
RG: No. We haven’t been able to get back in contact with him. I’ve tried ringing all week.
LD: We did want to try and see him.
RG: And his phone’s been ringing out. He may have gone away. I’m not too sure.
PJ: He’s got a daughter here. David is ninety five or ninety six.
RG: Yeah. So ninety six. Yeah.
AJ: Very weak.
LD: We were kind of a bit concerned that the phone just kept —
RG: Yeah.
PJ: Well do you want me to ring a friend who is quite close to them. Literally living close but they have a lot to do with David. He also was a headmaster of a school but David was the headmaster of Orange High. But if you like I can just find out if they know whether he’s there.
RG: That would be nice Pauline. Yeah. Because we thought what we might do is we’ve got his address. We might just pop around because I said we’d come today.
PJ: Yeah.
RG: We hadn’t organised a time And I haven’t been able to do that, so I thought we’d pop in and say look we’re —
PJ: His daughter’s here. You had no trouble with the Belubula River. There was a flood. Did you come down through, down it.
RG: No. It’s up but it was no trouble though.
PJ: And where is it in Cowra that you like to stay?
RG: There’s a — you know where the airport is? And then the Grenfell Road. The road that just goes up and up
PJ: Oh yes. Yes.
RG: Well just before Grenfell Road there’s a little road called Back Creek Road that goes back the other way.
PJ: Yeah. Back by the racecourse or whatever it is. Is there a racecourse out there? Yeah.
LD: Yes. There is.
RG: Is there? Oh. As you go down Back Creek Road there’s through a bunch of vineyards and there’s a little vineyard down there.
PJ: Oh yeah.
RG: And there’s a little cottage in the vineyard right up against the creek which is now just about running a banker.
PJ: That’s right.
RG: And it’s beautiful. It’s just a quiet little spot.
PJ: I went, I went to boarding school in Cowra, so —
RG: Oh ok.
AJ: Well, that’s been a rambling thing. I’m sorry.
RG: Can I just ask you. You said something and I’ve kind of lost context of what but it was to do with jinx. That’s right. The second dickie runs, and the second dickie runs , and you said you hated them because the jinx thing. Did you have a talisman or a token or anything that you — ?
AJ: No. I did not and a lot of guys, you’re quite right, a lot of guys swore by them. See it’s strange you know. You were a very old man at twenty five in Bomber Command.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Very few guys older than twenty five. It was a business for very young and hopefully very fit. Yes, we were very fit. Even though we drank like fish. The one reason I have never smoked in my life I can put down to my service as a Lancaster bomber bloke because we drank, naturally. And we all, we had very strict rules though. We used to police ourselves. We didn’t need the service police who used to be around for all sorts of reasons on a squadron.
RG: Yeah. I know.
AJ: They used to pick up every now and then. Spies and so on.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: And we drank, and I found that if I had a cigarette then nothing would happen on the ground but as soon as I used to have to go on to the oxygen mask which is at eight thousand feet, or —
LD: Yes.
AJ: I’d give the command to, ‘Masks on.’ I’d become violently ill. Now, if you’ve got to sit in the pilot’s seat strapped in, its bad enough to have a wee because you couldn’t get out.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: And the poor bomb aimer, you used to have to butter him up because he used to carry a peach tin or urine bucket they called it and you’d have to struggle and have a widdle if you could into there. And he’s down there and you’re up so sometimes a splash [laughs]
LD: He’d want you flying straight and level while you did that.
AJ: That’s one thing. But to be absolutely sick in your oxygen mask.
LD: Yeah.
LD: Which you couldn’t take off.
LD: Yes. Yes.
AJ: And spend eight, ten hours.
LD: Oh God.
AJ: So naturally I never smoked.
LD: No.
And it’s served me so well in my life.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Being a non-smoker.
RG: Yeah. I agree. I was smoker.
AJ: I wouldn’t say that I was a non-drinker but I’ve cut that down now, obviously on medical advice to just red wine.
PJ: They don’t, they don’t, haven’t heard that he was going away or anything but he’s terribly deaf so —
RG: He may just have not heard the phone. Yeah.
PJ: So I’ll give you the address.
RG: I’ve got that. I’ve got his address.
PJ: Got it. 90 Gardener Road.
RG: Yeah.
PJ: You know Gardener Road.
RG: Oh we use the sat nav. It’ll get us there.
PJ: So I suggest you go and knock on his door.
RG: Yeah. That’s what we thought we’d do because he said he’d written a book which has never been published.
PJ: Oh yes.
RG: He’s got the manuscript and Lucie checked. Because I wrote a book about a friend of mine’s father who was in the 2nd machine gun, 1st Machine Gun Battalion during the war.
PJ: Oh yes.
RG: So, and it’s just a little personal thing for her.
PJ: Yeah.
RG: But Lucy checked with the National Library and they said yes, they’d be happy to take a copy of that.
PJ: Oh yeah.
RG: And a copy of David’s if it’s, providing it’s typed. And if not, we can do that for him if he wants.
AJ: Because he’s an English fellow who was in the RAF.
PJ: But he’s, he’s very deaf. He almost yells. He has good days and bad days. Some days he’s not terribly with it and sometimes he’s fine.
RG: When I called him, you know, he said, ‘Oh look I don’t know.’ He said, ‘I’ve done a few of these interviews I don’t think I could contribute any more,’ and then an hour and a half later I was still trying to get off the phone [laughs]
AJ: [laughs] Yeah.
PJ: He’s a bit of a hoot you know. He comes. Well the people I’ve just spoken to, Bill he won’t wear — because he’s got a service medal but he did, because he didn’t, he was too young. Bill is just ninety. He was too young to actually, he was in the air force, but never got anywhere.
RG: Didn’t go on ops. Yeah.
PJ: He said, ‘I’m too embarrassed to wear the medal I’ve got.’ Whereas David comes, and he has every conceivable pin that he’s ever got, and said. Well the Russians do.
RG: Yeah. Or the Americans. Oh yeah.
PJ: All the bits and pieces. But no, Actually one of my nephews was in the navy. He went through [unclear]
RG: What was his name, just for interest sake?
LD: My brother was at [unclear]
PJ: Was he?
LD: Yes.
PJ: Well me nephew is now, because he is exactly twenty years younger than me. So, we share a birthday so he must be sixty three. But —
RG: Well that’s almost my age. What was his name. We were in at the same time.
PJ: Mark Dowd.
RG: Do you know what he did?
PJ: Yes. He was a diver.
RG: Oh I didn’t know any divers really. Yeah.
PJ: And it was interesting. It was very interesting because you know there was something like twenty of them in this diving class for starters. So I think there was twenty one or something finished.
RG: Very few get through.
PJ: They were either psychologically unsuited. Physically unsuited. There were a few deaths because of accidents and so on but the navy did Mark a great service because he was [unclear] whatever he was. He went to Vietnam. I think they had to make sure there were no mines. They had to clear.
RG: Under the ships.
PJ: Under on the ships and so on. But then he came back and started his own diving business. I don’t mean sort of leisure. It’s like —
RG: Professional diving.
PJ: Cables and this sort of thing. Dams.
RG: They were very well trained. The navy divers were very extremely well trained.
PJ: I’d say Mark has done very well. The navy did him a big favour but no, so his two sons. Neither went into the navy. One’s an engineer. The other one is doing something. I think science at CSU so, not CSU ANU, in Canberra. Alright. Ok.
LD: Just a couple of really short things.
AJ: Yes, love.
LD: One is do you know what a command bullseye is?
AJ: A command.
LD: A command bullseye.
AJ: Command bullseye.
LD: That’s in the diary that I have and it’s from the context it seems to me like it’s the, it’s like the kind of last exercise you do at the OTU before you go on ops. So, you know ,you go out, you fly at night. But I just haven’t actually been able to find the term anywhere.
RG: [unclear] crew, they did, “Did their command bullseye today” was pretty all what they said and they went to London.
LD: Yeah, they went to London.
AJ: Yeah.
RG: They did it over London. But other crews we’ve heard of doing it over France as well.
AJ: No. I don’t think I came across that.
LD: It’s alright. I know It could have even been a local term.
RG: Well Ken was a little, a fraction before you. he went down in December ‘43 and I noticed that terms and practices and things came and went.
AJ: Oh they sure did.
RG: Yeah. There was no consistency.
AJ: I went to Lindholme — and in the final set up. Yeah. Command bullseye. No.
LD: No. That’s fine.
RG: Might have been a local.
LD: Yeah. And just the other thing. I don’t know how you would feel about this but I, in Katoomba I met a man who was busking. He had the most beautiful voice. This baritone and he was busking in a shopping centre. And he was so well-presented. Anyway, I got to talking to him and he was from Dresden.
AJ: Oh dear. Came from Dresden.
LD: Yeah.
RG: Yes.
LD: He was born and grew up Dresden. Middle aged man.
AJ: Oh dear.
LD: And he busks as a professional and he said he busks in Dresden. And he said he goes to the old city and he sings to the old people. And I thought that was really lovely that —
AJ: Yeah.
RG: Yeah.
LD: You know, that he, you know this is his contribution.
PJ: Well the world moves on. I mean this is —
AJ: I have a horror.
LD: No. No. I mean he sings to the people.
PJ: Yes.
AJ: In relation to Dresden no man who bombed Dresden will, he will never be the same because it was such an awful set up in execution that, you know it scarred any conscience. And the worst thing about it was that it was specifically ordered by Winston Churchill to impress Stalin. And when the British public quite rightly revolted in revulsion even in the wartime and admittedly there was some technical reasons why Dresden had to be bombed because they were concentrating German troops and so on there. But Churchill just wiped his hands. He said, ‘I never.’ He blamed Sir Arthur Harris. Better known as Butch Harris. Sir Arthur Harris never, was never recognised except just before his death. And above all Churchill was so furious with the outcry that in blaming Sir Arthur he never forgot that Bomber Command, in his view needed to be brought to heel. And in that way, I don’t know if you know that story that when the great Victory Parade was organised Bomber Command was the only command refused permission to march in the Victory Parade, and yet Bomber Command was the only service for quite a while that was able to take the —
RG: To Germany. Yeah.
AJ: Oh God. We have the clasp. Have you ever seen that clasp that was awarded?
RG: No. No. I haven’t. No.
AJ: I’ll show you. The clasp was for those in Bomber Command.
PJ: Do you want your medal?
AJ: Yeah. Just the main medal because the other one hasn’t got it.
PJ: It’s not exactly a big deal.
AJ: The British government, queen and parliament eighteen months ago passed a motion of condolence and regret and apology to Bomber Command for the insult delivered to us in the peace. The processions etcetera and by command of the government and the queen a special clasp, a gold clasp was awarded to those of us who served in Bomber Command. When the papers came here and to my colleagues and so on almost to a man, here in Australia we initially refused. In fact I was ready —
PJ: That’s all it is. That’s the bar.
RG: Bomber Command.
AJ: Ready to rip it up. Put it in the application envelope and send it back.
RG: Send it back.
AJ: You know, with the words, ‘Get stuffed,’ but I had second thoughts.
PJ: It was interesting, like last Friday we were at this thing and there’s all these young people there.
RG: It is late but it’s the least they can do now.
PJ: Twenty six or something but every time they go away they get a medal.
RG: It is recognition finally isn’t it? It’s late and it’s long overdue but —
PJ: Always. Every one’s is a different tour of duty, so.
LD: Yeah.
AJ: They’re campaign medals.
PJ: They’ll have five or six medals and they’re about twenty five and, ‘Where did you get all them?’ ‘Oh well, you know I’ve been to Afghanistan. I’ve been to Iraq.’ Or something. But anyhow.
RG: Yeah. There is that.
PJ: Did you know, I’m trying to think? What’s, what’s the naval bloke here. Harris, Harris?
AJ: Yeah.
PJ: Harris.
AJ: Yeah.
PJ: His wife’s name is —
AJ: I can’t remember.
PJ: He was actually the naval attaché to the [unclear] of Paris. What’s his name? I saw him on Anzac Day. Kim. And he’d be older than you.
AJ: Not many. Not many people.
PJ: I was one of eight. And there was a boy, then six girls and then a boy. So the three youngest girls that’s me, my sister. Monica and my sister Dot. We’re the only survivors. But we did very well because until the last two years. My younger brother died, I don’t know probably fifteen, twenty years ago. And my elder sister died when she was only about fifty one but the rest of them, they’ve all been well in to their eighties. I’m eighty three. The next one’s eighty four and the next one’s eighty five.
AJ: You don’t look eighty-three.
PJ: Well thank you. In a good light.
AJ: Now I’m getting nice.
RG: Indeed. Alex. One other question I’d like to ask. VE Day. What was —
AJ: VE day.
RG: Do you have any remembrance of that? Do you remember it?
AJ: Yes. Yes and no. VE day the crew and I were in London. Naturally. I think we all descended on it, and I was actually, I’d been somewhere around Australia House in the morning, early. And they had up on the thing a little notice that guys from certain squadrons and so on represent for, and they had a sort of a bus, open topped bus and I put my name down for 460. I was the one who was chosen to sit on the bus and we got very close, you know, to the royal family. Waving away. And the celebrations though. The Aussies had a number of bars whose names now I forget but we, we descended on the bar in this particular place and we’d actually used the time and time again with the darts that they had for the dart board. We, after a celebration or a particular bomb raid that had gone well and, you know we were proud of it we’d put a few details and twing.
RG: Threw them up on the ceiling.
AJ: Anyway, we decided that they should come down.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: And so we got ladders and things and I remember being fully inebriated trying to get up these ladders to pull darts out of the roof.
PJ: It’s a wonder you survived all the things you got up to.
AJ: Well, I mean basically we were young and stupid.
RG: Yeah.
AJ: Yeah. So VE day was quite a day.
RG: I had to ask because the chap in Canberra Arthur Louden we said to him you know where you on VE day when the war ended. He said I was in bed with the wife up in Scotland. Someone knocked on the door and said, ‘The war’s over.’ I thought, good. And went back to bed again.
AJ: Oh dear that last raid that our squadron was involved in on Berchtesgaden. Hitler’s retreat. We blew the side off the bloody mountain. 460 Squadron was involved in it. It was Anzac Day. I remember that. Anzac Day they blew the side off the bloody mountain. When Pauline and I went back there I remember somewhere. We looked across, ‘I blew the side off that mountain’.
LD: ‘See that landslip there. I did that.’ Wow.
PJ: It’s interesting. I think it’s a shame that more, whilst still there’s people like Alex around that school kids aren’t given more information about the Second World War.
LD: Yes.
RG: Yeah.
PJ: At the present time of course it’s a hundred years —
AJ: That’s a moot question.
PJ: Yeah. But at the present time it’s all a hundred years of course of the First World War and so on.
AJ: The First World War.
PJ: But they don’t get a lot of indigenous history in school but very little about the Second World War.
AJ: Yeah. It is a shame. I’m ambivalent about that.
PJ: You know it’s a bit like —
AJ: I don’t know whether it’s good or not.
PJ: I don’t know if you have children, grandchildren or whatever, but, you know kids today like I said to me granddaughter who will turn up in a few minutes, ‘What are you going to do this year?’ You know. She said, ‘Well, grandma, I can’t decide whether I’ll go to Japan or Italy again this year.’ She went to Italy last year. But she’s never been to Cooper’s Creek or Cameron’s Corner or out in to the outback of Australia or where the various explorers went or even around here which was Mitchell’s territory. You know, she knew nothing about it. I do think it’s a shame. I think there should be more of, yes ok the indigenous. My next-door neighbour, his daughter married an indigenous, and. I keep saying, ‘Don’t blame me I, my I had three Italian and one French grandparent so it’s nothing to do with me,’ but —
LD: It’s a question of getting the whole story isn’t it?
PJ: But how do they ever give you the whole story?
LD: And not, you know, eschewed to one side.
PJ: But we’ll become so politically correct.
LD: Yes.
PJ: That it’s ridiculous and —
LD: My daughter went to Munich.
PJ: Oh yes.
LD: Last year. A couple of years ago. Whenever it was, Brother in law was married in Norway so they did all that. And she came back, and she said, ‘Oh mum. Munich’s beautiful.’ And then she said to me, ‘Did you know it was bombed during the war?’ I thought, ‘Hello.’ Would you like to tell? I could tell you, ‘I could tell you the name of people who did this if you like Polly.’
PJ: It’s very interesting.
LD: And I was just gobsmacked that my daughter who I thought was.
PJ: Yeah. But they don’t.
LD: She’s not a silly girl.
PJ: No. But it’s not, it’s not a part of their scene. It’s a bit like oh well, you know once again I’m not indigenous bashing but alright so the indigenous were here. So Captain Cook arrived so they established colonies etcetera, etcetera [unclear] I think was the first bod that arrived up on the West Australian coast, but yeah. Like, who’s going to grab England? Who are you going to go back to? The Gauls?
RG: Well exactly yeah. Yeah.
PJ: Or France or anywhere.
RG: I’ve got, I’ve got a Norwegian skin problem. So where did my family come? We’re from the north of England, ok.
AJ: Oh yeah.
RG: Originally.
LD: With the Vikings.
PJ: So it’s crazy you know.
RG: Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AJenkinsAE160709
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Alexander Elliott Jenkins
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
02:00:55 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending OH summary
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rob Gray
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-09
Description
An account of the resource
Alexander Elliott Jenkins grew up in Melbourne, Australia and joined the Air Force aged eighteen. He flew operations as a pilot with 460 Squadron from RAF Binbrook. His aircraft was shot down by a Me 262 over occupied Belgium.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Belgium
Great Britain
Germany
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
460 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Cook’s tour
final resting place
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Me 262
memorial
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Binbrook
shot down
Tiger force
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/252/3438/PJohnsonGL1703.2.jpg
b0e04e09829fa1165d2691d7c4cc044c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/252/3438/AJohnsonGL170801-02AV.1.mp3
eb39e14f9d84e850e2bbb56162504c34
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
Johnson, Johnny
George Johnson
G L Johnson
Description
An account of the resource
Three oral history interviews with Squadron Leader George Leonard ‘Johnny’ Johnson MBE (1921 - 2022). Johnny Johnson flew operations as a bomb aimer with 97 Squadron from RAF Woodhall Spa and with 617 Squadron from RAF Scampton. On 16/17 May 1943 he took part in Operation Chastise to attack German dams with bouncing bombs. He served in the RAF until 1962 and then had a career in education. He was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Lincoln in 2017.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-01
2015-03-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Johnson, G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GJJ: On 106 Squadron was known as the arch bastard.
[Laughter]
Other: Good. [pause] That part I got on camera.
DE: I did press record before.
HH: We were told a very funny story about how Gibson and his new wife booked into some inn in Lincolnshire on the night of their wedding and they had this rare, rare commodity of smoked salmon and they handed it to somebody who was kitchen staff to put it, to serve it up and it came all fried [laughter] And he was apparently absolutely livid that the smoked salmon had been fried.
Other: You would be slightly upset, wouldn’t you?
HH: Someone had told me that story.
GJJ: I gather she was quite a lady too. She was one of the Windmill Dancers, wasn’t she? I think.
[pause]
Other: I must [pause] Ok.
[pause]
Other 2: May I take it out? May I take it out?
DE: Can he, can you remove that thing behind you?
[pause]
Other: Ok.
GJJ: How tall are you?
Other 2: Six two.
GJJ: Have you stopped growing?
Other 2: Not yet.
[Laughter]
Other 2: Ok. Right.
[pause]
Other 2: Ok.
[pause]
Other 2: Ready to go.
Other: Ok.
Other 2: Switched off.
DE: Switched off?
Other 2: Ok.
HH: Do you want me to come and hold that?
[Noise in background]
DE: That’s just to make you jump.
[laughter]
GJJ: The last time that happened I had a coffee and dozed off. The telephone rang. Ahh all down my trousers.
DE: Oh dear.
Other: That’ll teach you.
DE: Yeah. Johnny, I wonder if you could tell me what your feelings were, what your thoughts were when the Dam Busters film came out?
GJJ: Some of it has to be disappointment. I’m afraid the author didn’t get everything quite as right as he might have done. He didn’t mention the Sorpe at all. And the film was based on his book. Didn’t mention the Sorpe at all, either in the introduction or the attack on the Sorpe. So as far as that was concerned we had done nothing at all. I was amazed, I saw recently, saw a copy again where Gibson is looking at one of these now manufactured bombsights on the, on his desk. They didn’t exist. At least as far as I’m aware they didn’t exist. I think the only one that he really accredited to the squadron was that of Dave Maltby’s. His father was headmaster of a big school and I think he had it made. I’m not sure. I know it does say on the thing as used by Flight Lieutenant David Maltby’s crew. That one had done the circle. And Fred Bateman who recently was committed to two years in jail for basically stealing people’s logbooks more than anything else. He auctioned that particular one and I think he made something like forty thousand pounds. Where he got it from I don’t know but it was supposed to have gone back to the family. But these things now have appeared quite frequently in all sorts of areas. I have, I signed two for Nigel the other day. They’re both going to IBCC I think. But, no the other thing about Paul Brickhill is that I know that Johnson is a popular name . Notice I say popular, not common but he managed to get Ted Johnson, flight lieutenant on Joe’s crew and me on Johnson’s crew in the crew list that he produced. I was looking through quickly his latest book in which he deals with the squadrons throughout the war and when he’s talking about the attack on the Sorpe, McCarthy made three attempts and then gave it up. Where he got his [mentions?] from I don’t know. I would have to say that I think the greatest author is John Sweetman. And the thing I like about John is that whatever he’s writing about he researches it thoroughly and then he just writes what he’s found in his research. He doesn’t say this should have happened, that should have happened or could have happened or might have happened. Doesn’t believe in that at all. So, what he produces ultimately is a very factual book and his Operation Chastise which was produced shortly after Paul Brickhill’s book is absolutely accurate from the beginning to the end. And it goes right through from the first thoughts during the early thirties about the dams being used in an attack, as a target right through to the actual completion of the whole thing. I got to know John very well and I do find him a very interesting and pleasant character and I do much appreciate that what he writes is purely factual and nothing more. There are a few of the other authors that might take example from that, I think.
DE: Do you think sometimes perhaps that Operation Chastise has sort of over- shadowed some of the other work that Bomber Command did during the war?
GJJ: I can’t see, quite frankly any reason why it shouldn’t be because the work that Bomber Command did during the war was certainly something that everybody has to be extremely grateful for. And that, I find is another of my moans at the moment — trying to get recognition for those. I think the figure as I know at the moment is fifty seven thousand six hundred and eighty one, something like that, who were killed. Over eight thousand that were injured, some permanently, and the over nine thousand who spent some time in German prisoner of war camps. No recognition of that comes up on anywhere. Particularly from the politicians. The senior politicians in particular. And I have moaned about this and the non-appearance of a Bomber Command medal. And the last time I did this was, strangely enough at the IBCC’s annual dinner two years ago. I was asked if I would say a few words about Bomber Command and about the museum itself, the centre itself and I really went to town on the Bomber Command bit. Particularly Churchill. Because he, to my mind, had no time at all for Sir Arthur Harris, the chief of Bomber Command who was so much respected by the air crews of Bomber Command. And the one particular instance that sticks out is the operation against Dresden. Arthur Harris didn’t want to do it. It had no military achievement. All we would be doing is creating fire but Churchill insisted that it was done. And when it was done and it became virtually a holocaust at Dresden Churchill blamed Harris for it. He had wanted to do it. He striked me as being the type of man who if he had an idea which he thought would help end the war he’d go to the senior colleague in that particular area and suggest it to them. If it came off it was my idea. If it doesn’t it’s your fault. It shouldn’t have gone like that. And that was the sort of thing I found so annoying about his attitude generally. It may sound a bit off-side, an Englishman talking about Churchill in that matter but that’s the way I feel about him. I found that on that particular dinner meeting I mentioned senior politicians all the way through and when it came to the IBCC I was as full of praise as I possibly could be and stressed the personal effect it could have. And at that time my MP, my local MP, [Catherine Lesser?] at Bristol [?] I had met on a couple of occasions before, I’d done a brief interview with the Daily Express, shortly before the dinner and the Daily Telegraph journalist was sitting in the dinner making notes as I spoke and they both printed the next morning. And oddly, Catherine read it and then she wrote a letter to David Cameron which suggested why didn’t he do something about it? Why couldn’t he even invite me down there and discuss what might be done between us to put this on. And then I got a copy of his reply to her letter and a more political letter you couldn’t wish to see. Everything that could be done had been done. You can’t afford two medals for the same business and there’s already the 1945 [pause] sorry the ’39 ’45 Star and the Air Crew Europe and now they’ve got the clasp which I had said at my talk I thought was an absolute insult. A tiny bit of copper with perhaps Bomber Command, if you can read it, across it. It has to be fitted to an existing medal and [pause] but then, that’s the way it goes. And so far, we’re still no nearer to a Bomber Command medal than we were then but at least it doesn’t stop us from trying. Anyway, when I get the opportunity, I belly ache about it and I will go on to.
DE: What do you think about the memorials that there are to Bomber Command?
GJJ: I think the park, the Green Park one is very good. I think the, I take my hat off to the sculptor that designed it. I think that you can see the look of expectation in that crew’s eyes as they’re waiting for their comrades to come back. And you can also see in some the tiredness in their eyes. And if — I’ve got a picture down there. If you can. The one behind the one in the front.
DE: We’ll have a look at it in a minute if you —
GJJ: That shows [pause] That shows the model, the memorial in the background behind that aircraft with the, “Never forget,” notice underneath. I think it’s tremendous. But yes, a very good model. But again, it’s not, not as personal as the IBCC and that I think is the finest memorial to Bomber Command that there is in this country in that it is so personal and reflects so much the work that Bomber Command did. And of course, includes the Bomber Command county of course as we say Lincolnshire was known. Others, I think, where they’re placed, I think the people that have done it have done it with every good intention and I think they make a point but the dominance in my mind comes from the IBCC and I have yet to see anything that will really overtake it.
DE: Smashing. Thank you. Just, as I think as a final question what are your feelings about the campaigns to give you some personal recognition?
GJJ: I am absolutely completely grateful to all those people that have worked and prepared to sign the petitions and those who have worked so hard to get them signed. I’m grateful for the award that has resulted from that. Very grateful. But I have to remember that this is not me. I’m the lucky one. I’m still alive. This is representation of what the squadron has done and that is the way it needs to be looked at. I will always regard it as such. Again, but still with great gratitude for, for the recognition. And that is why I find that my recognition from Lincoln [pause] Lincoln [pause] I’ll try that again, from Lincoln University is so special to me because it not only deals with my wartime stuff but it deals more specifically or I think highlights more specifically my work and life after my service life. And I think that I’ll always be extremely grateful for that. Absolutely. A great deal.
DE: Thank you very much. I think that’s, that’s absolutely wonderful. We’ve got, got all we hoped to get and more. 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/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AJohnsonGL170801-02AV
PJohnsonGL1703
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Johnny Johnson.Three
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Moving image
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:18:57 audio recording
00:15:33 video recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-01
Description
An account of the resource
George ‘Johnny’ Johnson comments on Paul Brickhill's book and on the 1955 film of the same name, expressing disappointment that there was no mention of the Sorpe Dam. He voices contempt for the unscrupulous people who have made money by selling log books taken from veterans’ families. He notes that not all authors writing about Bomber Command are reliable. He criticises Winston Churchill for the way in which he held Arthur Harris responsible for the Dresden attack of February 1945. He explains his part in the campaign for Bomber Command to receive a medal, and his disappointment about the clasp. He mentions his correspondence with David Cameron. He praises the Green Park memorial but feels the finer one is the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln. He acknowledges the recent recognition given to him, but stresses that gratitude is due to all those who fought and died.
<p>This content is available as embedded video:</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/B87JkF-HJlg?rel=0&showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany
Germany--Sorpe Dam
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-05-16
1943-05-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
106 Squadron
617 Squadron
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Eder Möhne and Sorpe operation (16–17 May 1943)
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
memorial
perception of bombing war
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/307/3464/PMooreWT1506.2.jpg
ba450a2587f7d4bdd809b39eda3c5fa9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/307/3464/AMooreWT160703.2.mp3
6fa0b673061052f9a9f442da1a4176b2
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
Moore, Bill
William Tait Moore
William T Moore
William Moore
W T Moore
W Moore
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. Three oral history interviews with William Tait "Bill" Moore (1924 - 2019, 1823072 Royal Air Force) and five photographs. He served as a navigator with 138 Squadron.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-28
2016-03-18
2016-07-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Interview Agreement Form - Moore, WT, William Moore-03
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Moore, WT
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TO: Right, good morning, good afternoon or good evening, whatever the case may be. This interview is being filmed for the International Bomber Command Centre. The gentleman I’m interviewing is Mr Bill Moore. My name is Thomas Ozel and we’re recording this interview on the 3rd of July 2016. Now, could you please tell me what year you were born?
WM: 1924.
TO: Mhm. And when you were a child, were you interested in aircraft?
WM: The first time I was introduced to the aircraft was when I was taken to Guyun [?] Southern Highlander’s annual camp and that was when I came in contact with my, my first aircraft. And at that time, I was a drummer [?] boy in a band [?], and at that time my father had made me eighteen month older and I was supposed to be because otherwise I would have been too young to have went to the camp with men. As a matter of fact, that eighteen months stood by me for the rest of my life.
TO: And whereabouts did you grow up?
WM: I grew up in a town called Dunoon which is on the Firth of Clyde in Argyllshire in Scotland.
TO: And were your parents involved in the First World War?
WM: My father was, yes. As a matter of fact I just told somebody the other day, that I knew where my father was a hundred years ago. In other words, he was right through the whole of the First World War. He was a great battles, the Battles of Boulogne [?], first and the second one, and also the one that was also celebrated this week. And then he was actually taken prisoner by German forces and he was taken to Poland, and he worked in Poland there and that was, and that was until the armistice came along. In other words, he had about, he about between six and nine months as a prisoner of war, mm.
TO: And what was your first job?
WM: My first job, all depends how you mean your first job. If you mean your first job when you started doing [emphasis] something and getting paid for it, well I was delivering milk and newspapers in the morning. Later on I delivered butcher, butcher meats and I delivered the evening papers, and among one of the most famous characters I delivered to was Sir Harry Lauder, who was a very famous Scottish singer and comedian. And every time I went there I got a farthing [emphasis] each time, which meant that I got a fully penny in one day, but that was four farthings. And I did that from, from Monday to Saturday. And anyway, after that of course I left school, but I left school when I was thirteen. The reason I left school when I was thirteen was because it was during the Great Depression years and every penny my family could earn was to be encouraged because people needed it to survive [emphasis], although my father was always in work, but that was about it because I used to come in. And that was what my mother saved the money so that I could have my school books paid for, instead of, instead of waiting for someone to pass on second hand books to me.
TO: And in the 1930s, did you hear about Hitler’s aggressive behaviour?
WM: Well yes. As a matter of fact, of course I did, but it was quite, quite strange. Go back further than that, when I was a young boy, I was in what we called the Boys Brigade, which was just an organisation but it was started, it started way back in 1883 by a chap called William Smith, and the uniform they had then [emphasis] was, was taken more or less from the Third Lanark Rifle Volunteers in Scotland. It wasn’t military but the idea was for discipline, because in those days Scotland, Scotland and discipline was two things that people wanted, although with me, that was many years later. I did not meet Sir William Smith himself but I knew both of his sons who carried on the Boys Brigade after him, and also I met Mrs McVicker in Belfast in Northern Ireland when I used to take the Boys Brigade myself [emphasis] over there, and that, that was, she was the, she was the wife of the founder of the Boys Brigade in Northern Ireland. When I joined the Boys Brigade it was through the Life Boys, which was a genuine organisation. I went through there and I went right through the Boys Brigade, and at my age, I’m still a member of the Boys Brigade Greater World Fellowship.
TO: Would you mind if I just closed the window?
WM: No, carry on, yeah.
TO: Is that okay?
WM: Oh, you might get the traffic, yeah.
TO: Yeah, is that okay?
WM: Yeah, carry on [pause while window is closed]. That’s okay.
TO: Okay, thank you. And what did you think, what did you think of Chamberlain?
WM: Well first of all, going back before Chamberlain’s time and before he was making speeches, what I was saying is we used to look at news reels and we used to see about all the equipment that the German boys and girls were getting, and at times we were quite envious of it, because there was gymnastics, there was gymnastics, I was swimming, I was hiking, I was doing all these same things as, as a, the German Youth were there. Maybe not so severely [emphasis], but that was where the Boys Brigade, as I’ve just said.
TO: Mhm. Sorry, there’s a noise coming from the kitchen. Is it okay if I shut the door to there as well?
WM: Yes, yes, yes –
TO: Sorry [door closes].
WM: Can you stick that through?
TO: Sorry.
WM: You could get a nickel [?].
TO: Yeah [pause during continued background noise]. Sorry about this, sorry. And what did you think of the Munich Agreement?
WM: Well, put it, put it this way. What did happen was that I think growing up at that particular time, we weren’t really interested too much in politics, but then we began to gather that things were getting rather serious. And the big thing that was going around at that time was, was people sincere? And there’d been so many promises broken that, and I’m talking about Scotland now, was the people in Scotland at that time just said, ‘well if, if these people keep on breaking promises, what’s, what’s the Prime Minister going to do? Is he going to be leaving it [could be believing it].’ And of course, it seems, it seemed to us at that particular time that he was being foreborstered [?], brainwashed and as if he was being used as, as they all were in those days was, is a patsy.
TO: And what did you think of Churchill?
WM: Well, Churchill in the early days was quite a hero [emphasis] because he was a type of fellow who had been through the Boer War, he’d been through the, through the First World War and of course he was still a fiery rebel as far as politics were going as, at that time in the UK.
TO: And do you remember the preparations that were being made for war?
WM: Well, it all depends on who’s side you mean, because the big thing that we noticed, and that was that where, where the German forces were going over [?], taking over different places. Some of them were, were considered to be German lands of former times, but, but even when they came to Austria and they were welcomed into Austria, at times we wondered whether there were other people there who weren’t quite happy about it, with this, you know? But it wasn’t ‘til, it wasn’t ‘til as we say, clouds [?] are going that, and horizon, as if the, all the promises that were given, made were just null and void. The reason we said that was at that particular time was because the fact was that even, even being with Chamberlain, trying to negotiate [emphasis], and of course France as well were negotiations to see if they could actually bring about a more sensible [emphasis] approach, ‘cause people like my father said that the terms of various things that had been laid in after [emphasis] the First World War were so severe that it was almost impossible for the, for the German people not [emphasis] to revolt against these conditions, and of course this is what people were thinking in the UK at that particular time, was that that’s what they were trying to do was just to regain what had been lost. But of course later on when it came into the, these negotiations that they had, nobody was very sure [emphasis] whether that Chamberlain was playing for time or not. It could have been, it could have been a great strategy on his [emphasis] part. Many people think it was, many people think that he was quite gullible. But if one reads on the history of the Royal Air Force, well the Royal Air Force was starting an amalgamation between the, the Fleet Air Arm, or the Naval Services. The Naval Service became the Royal Air Force and that was 1918. Now, with that coming on, we noticed as young people, we noticed that there was different things happening [emphasis], and also, I remember at one time I noticed that the, the talk was about different types of aircraft, ‘cause that was through the magazine I used to subscribe to. And then of course what happened, I was in the school cadets in my grammar school in Dunoon and we, we were the Army cadets, and of course we wore the kilt et cetera, the same as the local Hern [?] Division, and the Guyun [?] Southern Highlanders. Anyway, I, I started thinking about aeroplanes and there was an organisation just started up which was called the Air Defence Cadet Corps. Well this Air Defence Corps, Cadet Corps, the nearest place to Dunoon where I was, was at what is now Glasgow Airport, and I had to find a handout, to find the money for to go in the boat and train and go up there and attend the lectures et cetera what was necessary to do to be a member of the Air Defence Cadet Corps. Anyway, of course along came different aircraft that we saw, and the, the first of the new [emphasis] ones that I saw and touched was the Wellington Bombers, and that Wellington Bomber came up to me, to Abbotsinch, which is, as I said, Glasgow Airport. Abbotsinch I managed to walk through it and I was absolutely taken with it. As a matter of fact I felt as if I’d fallen in love with it. And then of course what happened, things went from one to another, and then of course along came, along came the Polish incident and with that Polish incident of course it was followed very closely in Scotland because the people of Scotland, people of Poland were always very close [emphasis]. A lot of people don’t realise [emphasis] that but it was a fact, because I always remember that they used to send boxes of eggs from Poland and what we used to do, we used to buy these boxes, these crates, and we’d turn them into canoes that we, that we lined with canvas, and we used to sail in the Clyde. But that, you know, that was, that was our knowledge of in Poland on that day, apart from what I’d been told by my father. Anyway, what happened was along came, along came, as I say, with the trouble in Poland, and of course, then of course the First World, the Second World War started and at that time, being in the Boys Brigade and being in the Air Cadet Defence Corps, I was nominated as a member of the ARP, the Air Raids Precautions people, as a messenger. Then that was fine, that was alright but I still had to go to my lessons with the Cadets, but that was alright, everybody carried on. That carried on and then of course along came, along came 1941 [emphasis] and that was when the Air Training Corps started, and I, I went along. I had to say I was finished with the Air Defence Cadet Corps which everybody else [emphasis] was, and we signed up for the Air Training Corps. That was quite strange, that was on a Monday night, and I went back along on the Friday [emphasis] night at the first official meeting, and we fell in and we fell in ranks according to sizes et cetera, et cetera, and I was made a flight sergeant. And the reason was that, I asked them and said ‘oh no, you’ve had training [emphasis] in the Air Defence Cadet Corps, so you know probably more about it than instructors do,’ because they were all school teachers who had volunteered to do that cadet work, and of course being made a flight sergeant, without uniform of course, it took a wee while to get uniforms, but that was it, and that was, that was me well and truly a part of the Royal Air Force. Anyway, that went down very well and I passed all the examinations. My aim was to become a member of aircrew. I fancied that, not just the glamour of it but there was a practical side. Anyway the, along came a day when I went along to Edinburgh and I took all my papers, exam papers and everything else, and bearing in mind that I was a year and a half older than I was on paper than I was supposed to be, and when I got into Edinburgh the chap says to me, ‘are you sure [emphasis]?’ I said ‘yes.’ He said ‘what you were doing?’ So I told him, he says ‘oh, that seems alright,’ he says ‘alright,’ he says ‘we want you to go along to this hotel and you stay there and you come back here in the morning, and you go there and you find that you’ll be registered and et cetera, et cetera.’ So I did that, go back there the next day and there were one or two other chaps around that I knew, and we, we went in again [emphasis] and we had exams to take and tests to take and, a by the time the day was finished I was a member of the Royal Air Force, and what they did to us was that they gave us a little silver badge that we, we had to wear at all times. And that was to show that we were a fully fledged member of the Royal Air Force, and all we had to do then was just wait until they were ready to take us in [emphasis]. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t being called up for National Service, we were all volunteers of course, which is a big difference because we were already members, voluntary members, and of course the, joining the Air Force like that you volunteered. But as I say, after that, once you’re in, you didn’t get to volunteer again [laughs]. You, you’re then volunteered [emphasis, laughs].
TO: And do you remember what you were doing on the day the war started?
WM: The day the war started, yes [tape beeps]. It was a Sunday morning and I was at a bible class in Dunoon, and shortly after that the sirens went and we all had to go to a post. And with us at that particular time, as I say, I was with the ARP. So we had to go there and be ready for to, for to be messengers. That was what, that was what my job was then, to be a messenger [emphasis], so I had to go to my post, which we all knew where we had to go to, and that was it. But after the all clear went then we stood down again, no, mm. But of course there was, was times when there were raids on the Clyde and all the rest of it later on, and my compatriots had a lot of hair raising activities. Most of that by that time I was, I was in the Royal Air Force.
TO: And was there much bomb damage or bombing around where you lived?
WM: Well, not so much on my [emphasis] side of the Clyde but across the water on the Firth, right from Greenock and Glasgow, Greenock and Port Glasgow, right up the Clyde, right up to Clydebank into Glasgow itself. Oh yes, all the industrial areas. There was quite a lot of very heavy damage, yes.
TO: And when the war started, were you, were you expecting that German bombers would be coming on the first day?
WM: Oh yes, well that was, that was it. It wasn’t, it wasn’t long after that there was a couple of raids that was, that was, that came across Scotland before there was even, even them in England, yes.
TO: And how did you actually feel when you heard the war had started?
WM: Well, put it this way, with having quite a knowledge from my father about his experiences, and what we had, what we had actually seen on the news reels about Poland, and I really mean about Poland, that was when we realised what could happen, yeah.
TO: And did you watch news reels a lot at the cinema?
WM: Oh yes, oh yes. Yeah, when you went to the, when you went to the cinemas there was always, always a portion for the news reels at the beginning of every performance, and that was very good. The news reels were very good, they, they brought everything to you, mm [papers shuffle].
TO: And so when you volunteered for aircrew, what kind of medical tests did they give you?
WM: Well, you had, you had a full medical. You know, you had blood, heart, you had all sorts of things done and then, you even had a type, a place where it was called up [?] on night vision. We never knew about night vision in those days and we were told, told about that and you had a test to see whether you could, you could see and come back again and your vision – you had, you were taken into a darkened room and they had various sort of tests they gave you in there, including different things and different numbers and the results was in different colours [emphasis], and if you, if you, if you could identify these things through these different colours then that meant that your, that your night vision was quite good, and you passed and you could identify then, then you’re dropped out. ‘Cause that was one of the main things at that particular time, was night vision.
TO: And what role did you train for aboard, in aircrew?
WM: Sorry?
TO: What, what position, as in, were you trained for?
WM: Well you see, when I went to Edinburgh I was classified PNB, pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, you know, the idea being that you selected for that term [?]. Anyway, what happened then was that I was called, called to the colours, not called up, I was called to the colours which once again, as I say, was different from being called up for National Service, very proud of that of course. Anyway, I, I got a notification to go to London and there I went to, to Lords Cricket Ground and, with many other people. There was one or two people that I’d met on the train, met down there before, went inside and some of these fellows I still know today, which is quite amazing. Anyway, what happened there in, in, at Lourdes, you – and there is a big plaque there today, big black plaque indicating that was where the aircrew was at that particular time. Going back to that, we had further [emphasis] tests and, I suppose to see whether anything had happened in between times, and then we, we got all the usual jabs for left and right, two arms up together and that one and that one going along r at the same time and, and then you had FFIs and things like that, and then of course you came along to another [emphasis] big room and that’s where you started getting your uniform. And there was a system [?] what you’re gonna get, when you’re gonna get, and by the time you got to the end you wonder if you’re able to carry everything, you know. Anyway, we all managed to get there, and at the end of that we were introduced to a corporal, two stripes. Now, we thought that was a high rank [phone rings], oh –
TO: Is that a phone call?
WM: I’d better take it. Sorry about that [tape beeps]. It’s a bummer [?] –
TO: Hmm, anyway –
WM: Anyway.
TO: So you spoke to her [unclear] –
WM: So anyway, as I was saying, we, we were then under this corporal [laughs]. He, he told us that he would be looking after us in more ways than one [emphasis] for the, for the next few days. Anyway, we went along in London to a place called Avenue Close which was a new block of flats in St. John’s Wood which had been built and never been occupied, and the Royal Air Force used that for all their new recruits, and, but there’s no, there’s no canteen facilities there, no mess hall, and we went across to Regent Park’s zoo where we dined. The animals had been evacuated and we were there in place of the animals [laughs].
TO: And did you train to be a navigator?
WM: Put it, put it this way, what happens, all depends how deep you want me to go into this, I don’t know. Anyway, what happened was that we had to, we had to pass more, several tests there. They were very strenuous, very strenuous, extremely strenuous, you know. And then of course we were there for about a week, and we were all setting off to different places and the group that I went with was up into the north east of England, to a town called Scarborough where they had quite a number of initial training wings. And what they were, they were just like boarding schools [laughs], certainly a little bit different but that’s what we took them to be. It was just like going back to school or college and starting all over again, and my one was number seventeen, and I was in what we called the Odelpha [?] Hotel, which is a hotel right opposite the Italian gardens in Scarborough. Now, there we studied navigation, theories of flight, engines, just about everything, even how to use a knife and fork in the mess, and that is quite true [laughs]. That seems quite a thing but that was quite true [laughs]. But that was a little on the side [?] there. But we actually studied all of these things, and at the same time we had to do guard duties and various other things like that, and there was two or three times when we were there, there were air raids go on and even a time when there was suspected that we might have had a German couple of U-boats in, about eight boats coming along and they expected them to come up and be looking for certain people that were there on that shore [?] there, people who had been at a conference and we were all turned out for that. They didn’t tell us very much about it but later on we heard it was Churchill and the cabinet members in the Retreat as they call it nowadays. Anyway, but that was, we didn’t know anything, why it was [unclear]. Anyway, what happened was that we had to sit the final exams and everybody in there was doing the same exams, you know? Anyway, what happened after, I passed, I pass through that quite successfully and I was waiting a posting. My posting then was a place called Scone [pronounced Scun], not Scone, Scone [pronounce Scun, emphasis], which is just, just outside of Perth in Scotland and that was where you got to learn to fly on Tiger Moths. Now, when you flew in Tiger Moths up there, we had already been classified from ACs to AC1s and when we, we went up to Scone, actually passed Scone in the Tiger Moths and we thought we could be trusted to do a couple of circuits and you came back down. They didn’t give you wings in those days, they gave you a propeller, always a propeller on your left sleeve, and then we became a leading aircraftsman, which was your first step up. Anyway, what happened after that, I, I was sent from there all the, all the kit bags and everything, and I was sent to a place called Broughton-in-Furness. Broughton-in-Furness, it was like a commander course, only the Royal Air Force calls it an escape course, and you did everything on there that you could possibly do if you were trying to escape. It was always put down to you in the Air Force that you had to try and escape if you were taken prisoner. That was, that was a thing. It was always drilled into you, if you could get back, so much the better. Anyway, that was, that was all about. When that was finished I went to a place called Heaton Park in Manchester. Now, Heaton Park in Manchester, it was mostly Nissan huts, the old corrugated iron ones, you know? And sometimes you also got billeted out with the local people, sometimes you’re lucky and you did both. Well we, we were quite lucky. We were billeted out, and just within a stone’s throw off Heaton Park [laughs], and we, we were with a landlady whose husband was in the Middle East at that time, and we used to pay her half a crown, was two shillings and sixpence in those days and that was for, to leave the snub [?] off the window so that we could lift the window sash up and crawl in after half past ten at night. Well she used to make, she used to make a cup of bronzer [?] up for that [laughs], because she had let out two rooms and that was eight of us in her house, yeah. Anyway, the, everybody knew it happened, but you’re [unclear] to be in by eleven. It was just in case you had trouble getting back you know. Anyway, if you were in the main camp, you had to make sure you were in at half ten at night [laughs]. Anyway, after that we were, we were taken back into the camp, and this was a big camp. There was hundreds of people in there and guesses – we didn’t do a lot of paperwork there but we did a lot of physical training, marching, all that sort of thing, and every time the, every time the Royal Air Force tunes went up you had to march to attention. Doesn’t matter what you’re doing, you had to march to attention. Anyway, what happened after that, you got your uniform. Now, if you were going to, to South Africa, we, we began to learn these things, you went to South Africa you get tropical kit but long [emphasis] trousers. If you were going to Rhodesia, you get tropical kits with short [emphasis] trousers. If you’re going to America, you more or less get issued with civvies, as we called them, and if you were going to Canada then you were alright. Anyway, what happened to us was that we got issued with short trousers and we said ‘oh no, we know what we are [?], we’re going to Rhodesia. That’s pilot training,’ et cetera, et cetera. Good, anyway, we got shipped out, we were on a ship called The Andes [emphasis]. You’ll see a little thing there –
TO: Oh yes.
WM: Andes, you know, ship.
TO: Oh right.
WM: And I’ll show you it afterwards.
TO: Yeah, show me it afterwards.
WM: But what it was, was this ship, The Andes was brand new in the Clyde in nineteen, 1939, and it disappeared then came back again all painted grey, but where we [emphasis] met it, we met her in Liverpool. And this friend of mine, Alec Care, we must have joined up, helped each other, and we were on the ship and we said ‘bye-bye’ to Liverpool. There’s the – ‘bye-bye, bye-bye,’ you know, and we sailed down the Mersey. Anyway, a while after that we, I judged that we had been round the head of Northern Ireland, go down the west coast, and now they could, well according to roughly the speed of the ship and that, and we’d be near the Bay of Biscay. All of a sudden night fell and I said to my friend, ‘Alec, this boat’s going the wrong way.’ He said ‘you and your Clyde navigation.’ I said, ‘this boat’s going the wrong way [emphasis], we’re now going back north.’ So we ended back up in the Mersey again. Then what happened, we got in there because I suppose they got word there was a pack of U-boats around, you know, and that’s why they changed us. Anyway, we got up into the Mersey and looked across and I said to Alec, I said, ‘there’s the five-three-four over there.’ He says, ‘what’s a five-three-four?’ I say, ‘I’m not telling you, you might be a spy.’ He says, ‘euch.’ I says ‘oh, that’s a five-three-four.’ He says, ‘come on Bill, what is it?’ And I say, ‘that’s the Queen Mary.’ ‘Oh.’ Anyway, we admired this big ship because, well I knew her from the Clyde right from when one of my great uncles was helping to build here. Anyway, there she was. Anyway, we, we had a meal there, and the next thing we heard was the whistle went, ‘all RAF personnel so and so and so and so,’ went ‘oh that’s us, what’s happened now? Oh.’ ‘Get all your kit together, assemble here in, in fifteen minutes.’ ‘Oh boy that was, that was quick.’ ‘Cause you hadn’t, hadn’t taken in any kit bag, was just us, you stood up so it was just a matter of taking your kit bags and going to deck. We were then taken across onto the Queen Mary, and we were weighed [?] down so far in I thought we were going to go to New Zealand or somewhere, and [laughs] – anyway, the Queen Mary set off and a few days later we were in New York [emphasis]. We didn’t see a lot of New York, we had a bit of leave time on the promise that we wouldn’t be late coming back, so that was good, and we got on a train and we went up to Moncton, New Brunswick. All the way up to Canada by train which was a great experience for us, ‘cause the first thing we noticed was the food. Now, there was nothing rationed, this was American trains and we were getting the best of everything. Anyway, we got to Moncton, New Brunswick and the, and we were not given any winter clothing because we were still in this kit that we thought we were going to Rhodesia, so anyway [laughs], for two or three days we walked about up there and they used to call us ‘Scors’ because we were walking around with blankets on us to keep us warm, mm [laughs]. Anyway, that was, that was all part of the trials and tribulations. Then of course was, we were told to fall in and you, you, you’re told that you’re now going to a training station. They didn’t tell you where you were going, they just told you’re going to a training station. So we got on a train, and this was the Canadian national railways and we said, ‘well, Canadian pacific goes that side and nation [?] is that side, mm, oh well, fair enough.’ So we landed up in Winnipeg, went all the way through to Winnipeg, then we got off that [emphasis] train and we went up to another [emphasis] one, up past Portage la Prairie and then the railway finished so we got, we got on we’ll call it a bus [emphasis], and this took us up to Dauphin, Manitoba and then we, we were at Paulson and Dauphin and there we did bombing and gunnery training. We did all these sort of elements again that, that everyone had to go through the same things, and then the next round of course we did, we did flying training and, and then of course we did the navigation, another step up. That was fine and we were still all together, no deviations. Then of course we passed all that and I had a, I had an excellent, I had an excellent bombing record, really excellent one if I say so myself, you know. Anyway, next thing we knew, we graduated from there. You had to pass, it was a hundred percent pass, you know, there was always people dropping out and, but we carried on and we went, we went down, down [emphasis] the line to Portage la Prairie. Portage on the Prairie, that was – now that there [emphasis] was the school for air observers, you know? That was number seventeen air observer school, Portage la Prairie, and there of course we, we got changed around a bit. I was told that I was a good candidate for, to be air observer. I said, ‘how about piloting?’ ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘if you’re an observer you’ll get to fly as well. You’ll get to pilot as well,’ you know. I said ‘well that’s okay.’ He did really ‘cause you were told [emphasis], you know? Anyway, I graduated from there. I got my wings there, and eventually, eventually ‘cause we [coughs], we went back to Moncton, New Brunswick and we got on a ship to come back to the UK and that ship I recognised as [laughs] the Empress of Japan. I said to my friend, I said ‘I don’t like that name, Empress of Japan,’ you know. We got up beside it and it’s now called the Empress of Scotland [laughs]. They had changed its name. Now this was in Halifax, Nova Scotia, so we come back, we come back across the Atlantic, the North Atlantic, and we sailed up the Clyde and eventually we went to a place called Harrogate. So Harrogate we were more or less brought back to earth again. Rations of course still, instead of the food we’d been having in Canada and that, you know, America. And we, we then – well the [laughs]. It was quite strange, they gave us another FFI to see if we’re alright and we’re okay that way, and another medicals to see if we’re alright, you know? And the next thing I knew, I was, I was in a detour [?], so my friend went that way and I went that way, so that was it. Anyway, I landed up at a place which is just outside of Wolverhampton, and this was an advanced navigation and low flying school called Halfpenny Green. Now, quite a number of years ago they made a film there and then called it “Halfpenny Field,” but it was Halfpenny Green [emphasis], and today it’s been nominated to be Wolverhampton Airport. Anyway, what we were doing there is that we were taught low lying pass flying, landing on beaches, landing on small areas and we wondered why this was all about, you know? But anyway, we didn’t ask any questions, you just did as you’re told and [laughs], ‘cause you’ve already volunteered [laughs]. Anyway, that was it and we [unclear] was successful, it was, it was excellent. We [tape beeps] treetops. We were making bomb, making, making bomb attacks on the railway bridges across the Severn and even, even the RAF stations that knew we were coming but of course they weren’t open up at us ‘cause they knew it was an exercise, and all various target like that. And also as I say, we were learning to land on short, short runways or grass and beaches and all sorts of fancy things like that. Anyway, this was all preparation because what you didn’t realise that you were, you were being selected there, and that was, that was when I was, I felt as if there was something, something strange [emphasis] about all of this because everybody was going to do different things, and that was where, where, where we were taken aside one day and told out where we were going to, you know? And some of the, some of the chaps went one way and I went another way and I landed up in this aerodrome which the first thing I had to do was sign the Secrets Act all over [emphasis] again, because you’d always, everybody signed it but this was what they called a double one, extremely secret, you know? Now, with that all I could see around this place was a multitude of different types of aircraft [laughs]. So we wondered what this was all about. Normally you went to an air station there would be two different types or something like that but on this particular one there was several, you know? And, and of course [laughs, pause] what we, erm, I’ll bring it back [pause], hmm.
TO: Was this for the SOE?
WM: Yeah, this is, this is, this is really the beginning of the training for that, you know? Well the, we had been doing the training, you know, and of course, as I say, when we were, what we were doing this sort of thing, you see, the secrecy that was coming up, we really wondered what we were, what we were doing [emphasis], you know? Anyway, we were told then that we had joined 138 Squadron, you know? Now, just like everything else, nobody ever knew what 138 Squadron was doing or any other squadron, but we soon began to find out what it was. And it always seemed strange at the beginning that no one would tell us much and we began to wonder what we were doing there, and we were, we were confined to the station. We were confined to the station for at least two weeks [laughs]. Anyway, that’s what we, what we were doing then was we were, we were learning to fly once again low level at night time. We had to do all sorts of things and [pause] we just – oh we were introduced, we were introduced to people who were pilots and, and aircrew and to us, you know, they were a bit rag tag and bob tailed by the looks of them, they were, they weren’t exactly all spick and span like we expected us to be, you know [laughs]. Anyway, excuse me a minute.
TO: It’s okay [tape paused and restarted].
WM: We were introduced to groups of people and we were told that ‘you’ll fly with this one and fly with that one, but you might fly in two different ones on the same night.’ ‘Oh, that’s alright.’ ‘So what we’re going to do is, we’re going to introduce everybody, but just remember that when you do get introduced is that, remember what you’re signed [?].’ ‘Cause there was a secret come out, we were at Tempsford. That was the home of the flights for the SOE, and of course there again that was the reason why all these different odd aircraft was lined [?] up, was that they were used for different purposes. Later on what we used to say, we used to say that Bomber Harris used to send over there all the old junk that he didn’t want on Bomber Command [laughs]. Anyway, what happened then was as I say, you got to know the different colours ‘cause by that time, as I, as I, as I say, I was, I was classified and reclassified into what I was doing and this was observer, and that was what I graduated as, and of course I still kept up my flying skills. That’s another story, I’ll come back to that. But anyway, there we were and we, we had one or two short flights with different pilots [phone rings] and we got to know – [tape beeps].
TO: No problem.
WM: No, when we, when we flew with these different chaps, they got to know us, we got to know them and each had their own specialities, and what used to happen then was once, once the powers that be realised that you could do [emphasis] what you’re supposed to be able to do on paper, then they would trust you with an operation. The reason being was that we were using the fields or pieces of, strips of roads or even, even old glider fields, we had to land, and it wasn’t always the best of territory ‘cause we did this with Lysanders which was the single engine one, you know? I got lots of pictures of Lysanders over there somewhere, mm, and the idea being there’s, is that when – you were given a map reference, and you had to study that map reference very carefully. And we never [emphasis] tried to find out how our passengers were, and they didn’t try and find out who we were. There was no communication. The reason being is if we got shot down, or either of us got taken prisoners you couldn’t, you couldn’t tell them about the other ones, alright? ‘Cause the ACA [?] people were considered to be a different category from what, even what we were, and we were a different category from them entirely, and we were a different category from normal aircrew, and even – that was known in Germany, that was known. Don’t tell me how they got to know but that’s another story. Anyway, we did, we did several of these operations. We were taking people out and sometimes it was a matter of taking two people or three people about. Squash, it was a bit of a squeeze in the, in the Lysander but we weren’t [?] gonna enjoy the ride, and all I could say was all the trips that I made was very successful, and I flew with certainly [?] different pilots from time to time on that. Then of course likewise they had different observers, you know? But we had great faith in each other, and the navigation aids that we had was elementary map reading, night flying et cetera. We didn’t have the joy of T and all the other things that came up later on. We were actually doing it like the old time pilot, many, many years before.
TO: I don’t know how much detail you can tell me about this, but when you brought these agents over from Britain to Europe, did you have a certain, were you, did you have an arranged landing field?
WM: Oh yes, when we, you know, same thing [?] we left, we left Tempsford. Well, I knew where we were going [emphasis], I had to know where we were going, and the pilot knew where he was going but I took him there, you know? I took him there, passengers there. Well these passengers were known to be coming. There would be a reception committee ready for them to whisk them away as soon as they were on the ground, oh yes. There was a good communications, yes.
TO: And did you ever see any German aircraft when you were flying on these missions?
WM: Oh yes, yes. There’s – oh we, well, put it this way. In those days we were flying low [emphasis], very low, and we weren’t too bothered about it. Now and again you run into a bit of trouble, but the night fighters was mostly come to different bits, I’ll tell you more about that, alright? But the, even, even by all the secrets that we had, there was a terrible tragedy that happened through the London office where somebody infiltrated into the London office SOE, and they, they gave away people on the ground, and they were just massacred. But you know, that was one of those terrible things about that, and that was country man to country man, and I’m sorry to say that was in Holland, mm. But we, we, we never knew exactly how our people got on, alright, or if we were picking somebody up and taking them back to the UK, as soon as we landed back at Tempsford they were taken away and we never saw them again, but they were taken away to their different places like that. Quite strange to say there was a big house just quite near here where, where they used to go back you, you know? Did –
TO: Did you, sorry.
WM: No.
TO: Did you – it’s an odd question, but did you get a sense of pride knowing you were helping secret agents?
WM: Oh yes [emphasis], yes. Well as a matter of fact, we, we felt we were doing a good job that way, because the thing was nobody, nobody heard about it, but we knew what was going on, sometimes by results. We got, you know, we got to know back, back on the station how well the people that we had delivered had reacted to what was going on, ‘cause there was just a matter of them infiltrating back into populations and we never heard anything, but if it was a special operation they were going to do, someone would say well, ‘well done chaps,’ or something like that, you know?
TO: So what, what, do you know what year it was that you started helping SOE with this?
WM: 1942.
TO: And was it just western Europe you went to?
WM: Well, well put it this way, what happened after, after a while, we started getting different aircraft, ‘cause in our station we used all the old stuff, Whitleys and things like that and various other ones like that, vintage. Then of course we got, we got one or two of the American ones come in, you know? And there was one time that we were delivering stuff to the Maquis. Now the Maquis was different from SOE, Maquis’s French. So what we were doing, we were delivering guns and ammunition, there was a full load in a Hudson. Now the Hudson was an American aircraft that was designed to land in the prairies, naturally [?] on good tarmac runways, but anywhere a farmer would put up a windsock, that’s where they were designed to for, and one particular time we, we had this load of stuff, full load, and we had to land on this area and it turned out to be, it was an old glider drone where people used to learn to fly gliders [emphasis] in France, you know? ‘Cause where we were [?] about a hundred and eighty kilometres north east of Colonia [?], you know? As near as I can tell you about that one, ‘cause a lot of stuff’s still secret. Now that is fact.
TO: Mm.
WM: Anyway, what happened was that we, we landed safely, we turned around and as we turned around to face to go out again, we began to sink. Anyway, I said to Nobby who was the skipper, I said ‘Nobby I don’t like this.’ He said ‘aye, you’ll be alright Bill, we’ll get rid of all this rubbish, we’ll be alright.’ So anyway, the Maquis came out the bush, as I call it, took all this stuff away. They disappeared and then the, the lady who’s in charge of that section, she came and she says, ‘what’s troubling you?’ I says ‘I don’t think we’re going to get out of here.’ So we got the sticky bombs ready for, to stick it to the aircraft and blow it up, and she said ‘ah, I’ll see if I can get the villagers up, push you out,’ you know, just like that. Anyway, she went back to the village. Now, normally we were aware on the ground about fifteen, twenty minutes at the most ‘cause anything after than that was dangerous, yeah, you know? She went down and she got the villagers up and it was quite a way away, but anyway, I asked [?] too many questions about that. Up she comes with the villagers, but on their way back they met the general sergeant who was in charge of the village, and he turns round and says to them, ‘now, all you people, you’ll be in trouble. You’re out here, it’s after curfew, you’re supposed to be in the village.’ And of course the idea was that she turned round and said to them, ‘but your big black aircraft is stuck in the mud and we’ve got to push it out, and the Gestapo says if we don’t push it out they’re going to shoot us all and you.’ So he says, ‘I’ll go and look after the village, you go and push the aircraft out.’ So in the end they got us out. We didn’t need to blow it up.
TO: So just to clarify, were you stuck in the mud [emphasis]?
WM: Aye, just going down, like that.
TO: And how big was this aircraft?
WM: Hudson.
TO: And how –
WM: Twin engine aircraft, hmm.
TO: Were you ever scared during these missions?
WM: Of course, yeah. But they, you don’t go like that you, you, gung ho, you know what I mean by gung ho? We weren’t gung ho. We prided ourselves on being professional.
TO: And is there, are there any other occasions from your time with SOE that you are allowed to tell me about which you recall, a lot?
WM: Oh yes, lots of things that we – as a matter of fact, during, we didn’t bring them all [emphasis] back, but during the time that we were there [emphasis] we brought back four chaps, four men, Frenchmen, who actually in later years turned out to become prime ministers, prime ministers of France, hmm.
TO: And sorry, did – when you, what happened when you left SOE and started back on standard bombing missions?
WM: Well anyway, what, what happened was we were always alternately from time to rime on different missions. It wasn’t as if we, we just jumped from one back into that one, but we were always, was always in the, always doing the missions. Sometimes it was only a few aircraft going out for a special mission, or sometimes, sometimes we joined up with the, a bomber stream. It all depends on how, how we were required, and we, a lot of our chaps became leading lights on the Pathfinders, because of our highly successful rates in navigating to targets.
TO: And do you remember your first bombing mission?
WM: Yeah, first, my first bombing mission was to Kiel, Kiel Canal, mm. And that, that, that was also for – the idea there was to try to block the canal from time to time. We, in the early days there wasn’t anything that we had big enough that could do [emphasis] it, but the idea used to be that if you could bomb something, you know, bomb ships or something like that, that would make traps in the canal, you know, then of course that, that would be a help on keeping stuff from going through it, you know, hmm. But, no we covered a high variety of trips, you know, oh yes.
TO: And what aircraft were you in for these bombing missions?
WM: Well first of all I was in, I was in Wellingtons, you know? We did a lot of Wellingtons and then of course we were onto Lancasters. We converted [?] onto Lancasters, mm.
TO: And could you please describe the conditions inside a Wellington?
WM: Well in the Wellington there was, it was rather cramped but we still considered it a good aircraft. And by that time we had six in the crew, and we, we had crewed up and we were flying together, but you know, it was just, it was just, there was no comfort, there was no comfort. Each person had their own little cubby hole or section [coughs] but that was all. But once you got up over ten thousand feet, then of course, then it gets a bit uncomfortable, you know? You’re always [?] trying to keep warm was the thing, you know? Then of course you’d all sorts of wires for – you had your air com [?], you had your oxygen masks, you had all these sorts of things, you know? And as I, as I say, it was, it was a lot, a lot colder than it was later on in the Lancasters and even the Halifaxes and Stirlings, mm.
TO: And as an observer, what were you duties for the mission?
WM: My duties – we were highly skilled navigators then. We were, we were a step above the, we were a step above the normal navigators, mm, yeah, because we did, we did everything. We did the whole job. It was the same thing as – at one time, what happened was that the, every aircraft had two pilots. Anyway, there came a time when they took one pilot away and then it was the observer that was the backup pilot, you know? Anyway, after that, after that when the big four engine jobs come out, the, they brought in the role of flight engineer, and the flight engineer was supposed to be able to fly, but the way I’d seen it right from very beginning was that I reckoned that I knew enough about flying, and I told people ‘as long as I can take her home and land it, that’s good enough for me’ [laughs].
TO: Slight side story, a few weeks ago I interviewed a man who was a flight engineer for Lancasters, and he said he was taught how to fly the plane but not how to land it.
WM: Yeah well [laughs], well that’s the – my, my big thing was I was taught how to land them, yeah. And I had a good, had a good background in flying and piloting in the lighter aircraft, but then of course between the Wellingtons and the Lancasters and the, we had a – well we did it quite often. We did it as part of an air, sometimes, sometimes you went up for, to test your engines. You did that, you did that pretty often, or to see the rest of the aircraft, and I always took the opportunity to be able to land the aircraft.
TO: And can you tell me a bit about Halifaxes?
WM: Not a great deal. I didn’t do a lot of trips on Halifaxes but you know, she was also a good aircraft, but I know there’s, there’s friends of mine who, if you have an argument they say ‘ooh, it’s far better than a Lancaster’ and blah, blah, blah, but that’s only, the Halifax was a good aircraft. It couldn’t fly as high [emphasis] as a Lancaster and it wasn’t as fast as Lancaster but that was just about it, mm.
TO: And what’s your take on Halifax versus Lancaster?
WM: Oh [laughs] to me it was the Lancaster [laughs].
TO: And was the interior of a Lancaster different from that of a Halifax?
WM: No, much the same, mm, much the same. It’s just the skin.
TO: Mhm.
WM: Just the skin, you know? You know, you know, everything was for bomb loads.
TO: Mhm. And you mentioned something about Stirlings earlier.
WM: Yeah.
TO: What’s your take on them?
WM: The Stirling was, she was the first of the heavies, and she was, she was quite slow [emphasis] and didn’t have a high ceiling rate, you know, but she did a good job in her day [?], oh yes. There was many, many a crew that did great work in Stirlings, oh.
TO: There’s a D-Day veteran I spoke to a couple of years ago, his glider for D-Day was towed by a Stirling.
WM: Oh yes [emphasis]. Well there was a lot of that. Halifaxes and Stirlings did a lot of glider towing, yeah, oh yes.
TO: And what bombing mission of the war do you remember the most?
WM: Er [pause]. Just, just before, just before the war finished we [tape beeps] there were two big ones, and that particular night our wing commander, Wing Commander Murray, who I’d known from Tempsford days, you know? He, he came along and he said he wanted to fly with us that night and be the captain, and he said, and I said ‘no, you can bugger off.’ It’s not we wanted [?] coming into aircrew, you know, taking over. ‘Cause I could say that to him because we’d flown together a lot. Anyway, he says ‘what happens if I don’t sit in the pilot’s seat.’ I said ‘alright then you can come along, that’s my seat’ [laughs]. I mean it was my seat when I was needed, yeah. I said ‘no you can come along and be second pilot,’ you know? But it was, it was, it was quite a thing. It was a place called Magdeburg, it was of the big ones that we were on, but several other big ones as well of course. I could, just hold that a minute? [Pause, tape beeps]. Now there was several big ones but the last, the last big one was Potsdam. That was a real big one, yeah. As a matter, matter of fact, that one was in the, in the fourteenth, fourteenth, 14th of April, so that was one of the last big ones, you know? And that was a night one, and there was another was on the 13th [emphasis] of April was another time we went to Kiel, and what had happened was the night before we went to Kiel, and we put this battleship and we sunk it, we turned it over, mm. And it came back but they wanted us to go back again, but one of the retorts was that night, one of the crews was, ‘I hear you don’t want us to put it back up again’ [laughs]. But that was a, and that actually blocked a canal, that actually blocked a canal, you know, ‘cause then of course one of the, one of the last of the big ones we did was to Bremen on the 20th and 22nd of April, you know, yeah. And course there was places like Merseburg and various other ones like that, you know? But this is something I keep to myself.
TO: Okay.
WM: You know? Because I got, you know, I’ve got – the way I look at it is, it’s not, not a thing we brag about, you know? It’s, it was wartime and that was it. And today I’ve got, I’ve got, I’ve got many friends across Europe and across Africa and they come from all sorts of walks of life and all sorts of countries.
TO: Sorry, can I ask what happened to the wing commander who wanted to be on the flight?
WM: Oh yes, oh well he came in the flight with us there and that was it, Wing Commander Murray. We were flying F for Freddie, yeah, and of course, well anyway, he was in charge of the squadron, you know?
TO: Mhm.
WM: And he stayed on the Air Force for a while, you know, and I lost touch with him, you know?
TO: Mhm.
WM: Because we’d been, we’d been quite good friends there, mm. But after the war, after the war was, you didn’t really go out of your way [emphasis] to keep in touch, although with my own crew [emphasis] in the Lancaster we have done. As a matter of fact even, even now [emphasis] one of my chaps in aircrew, a fellow called Jimmy Dagg, a New Zealander, his great grandson plays rugby for the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team. His name is Israel Dagg, mm.
TO: And are, just in raids in Germany in general, how much anti-aircraft fire was there?
WM: Oh plenty. As a, as a matter of fact, what a lot of people don’t realise was that the amount, the amount of German troops, and specialised German troops that had to be contained within Germany because of what the, the Bomber Command was doing. Now as a matter of fact, that was, it was, it was a surprising, there must have thousands upon thousands had to be retrained in Germany who could have been going somewhere else, and they were all very highly trained people, mm.
TO: And did you ever encounter night fighters?
WM: Oh yes a couple of times, but we were quite lucky. We, we managed to corkscrew away, but the night fighters, what you had to watch even more carefully than over, over a target area or on the way back was just before you landed, because there used to be quite a few of them that used to prowl round about aerodromes and airfields in this country, and waiting for people to come in ‘cause that’s when you’re, you’re, you’re most vulnerable, when everything was shut down. And there was quite a number of people that got shot down just before they landed.
TO: And could you please tell me how this corkscrew evasive manoeuvre worked?
WM: Well that’s, that’s just what it was, a corkscrew. You might have been flying more or less level or up and down a bit, and then the corkscrew was like that. That was a corkscrew, yeah. They got away, yeah, mm.
TO: Did anyone in the crew ever get sick when that happened?
WM: Oh yeah [emphasis], my mid upper gunner used to get sick as soon as he put his foot inside the aircraft [laughs]. Once we were still fly, still take off he was alright.
TO: Mm. And did you ever, during the, did you ever find out how much, whether you’d hit the targets during the raids?
WM: I know we did [emphasis]. As I say, one of my specialities was, was bombing.
TO: But could you see photographs of it later?
WM: Oh yes, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, mm, yeah.
TO: And were you ever on raids to Berlin?
WM: Yeah, mm. Oh yes, as I say, that was, that was, that was one that would come up quite often, mm [pause]. Hell [?], mm.
TO: Sorry, you still okay for me to ask questions?
WM: What?
TO: Are you okay for me to ask questions?
WM: Yes, yes.
TO: ‘Cause just let me know if you want to stop.
WM: No, no.
TO: Okay. And what did you think of the German aircraft of the war?
WM: Oh very good, excellent, yeah, excellent yeah. As a matter, as a matter, as a matter of fact, at the end of the war there was one, one German one, you know? And I thought, I thought at first it was a shooting star, you know? And it wasn’t, it was a jet, and it flew past me just as if it was a shooting star and when I went back to report on this, and they said ‘ah, it probably was a shooting star you saw.’ I said ‘no, no, no, no, this is an aeroplane.’ That was one of the areas [?] ones that we’d seen [?] and spotted, yeah, ‘cause, you know, you got debriefed after every, every trip.
TO: Was there any ever occasions where you had to turn back from the target because of bad weather?
WM: No, I was, we were alright. No, we didn’t, we never, we never turned back. Ground crew were every bit as good as our aircrew.
TO: Mm.
WM: They kept our aircraft in excellent [emphasis] condition. We never had any [emphasis] complaints about our ground crew, mm.
TO: And you explain to me how the briefings worked for the missions?
WM: Right, well what, what happened was that when, when you landed, when you landed you’re taken from the aircraft back into wing on, it was trucks, we used to call them crew trucks. So in other words you didn’t split up, you’re taken in, in a crew truck, and there you’re integrated and say how the trip went. And of course you had your version of what went on and then of course your cameras that you had in your aircraft also their versions, and we always seemed to marry, marry up on tours exactly the same, no. But we had a, we had an excellent [emphasis] crew. We had two New Zealanders, two Scotsmen, two Englishmen and one Londoner [laughs].
TO: And what about the briefings that you had before [emphasis] you went on a mission?
WM: Well the briefing was, what happened, they assembled. Now first of all they had an all-in briefing where the, every member of the aircrew was there, and then after that was, that briefing was done and that was more or less told you where you were going and et cetera, et cetera, and you split off into different sections. The gunners was going to see about their guns and talk to their gunnery officers and the flight engineers, they went to see the air officers. The air observers and navigators would go in together and the pilots and the, and the observers were together, you know? That’s, that’s how it went ‘cause you know, we, we had to make sure we were exactly correct at all times between the pilots and observer, the pilot and the navigator, mm.
TO: And when you, were you sitting in the cockpit during the mission?
WM: Yeah.
TO: Could you, could you actually see anything below you during the mission?
WM: From time to time you could, yes, mm. From time to time you could, yes, mm.
TO: And what sort of things could you see?
WM: Well it all depends. The more water about the place the better it was, better reflections and things like that.
TO: And could you see what the Pathfinders had left?
WM: Oh yes, it all depends – well that was to be able to recognise, make sure that you had taken the right targets.
TO: Mhm.
WM: Because the Germans were, were quite sophisticated because they could try to imitate your Pathfinder’s TIs, what they put down, no.
TO: And were you involved in raids to other cities like Hamburg?
WM: Oh yes, mm.
TO: And what do you remember from those missions?
WM: Well a lot of them, well the big, the big one in Hamburg was a big fire raiser. But that happened to be that the wind conditions, everything was just right or wrong [emphasis] as regards which way you’re looking at it. As far as we concerned that was right, as far as the Germans were concerned, it was a big disaster because at that time a lot of the buildings in Hamburg were wooden, mm.
TO: And were you surprised when you heard how successful the raid had been?
WM: Not surprised, ‘cause that’s what we went for. Most successful it was, well, the better the raid was, mm.
TO: And was, were you involved in the raid on Dresden?
WM: No I wasn’t, but we were on standby, but I wasn’t involved in that one, no.
TO: Mhm.
WM: The, some, some people on the 90 Squadron were, ‘cause at Tuddenham 90 Squadron and 138 Squadron ran alongside each other, you know?
TO: Mhm.
WM: No.
TO: And when did you, when did you react, or how did you feel when Churchill announced that they would start bombing Germany?
WM: Start [emphasis] bombing?
TO: Yeah.
WM: Oh that was right at the beginning.
TO: Yes but how did you feel?
WM: That was [sigh], well put it this way, we had already had casualties our side, so it was just war, no. It was war, yeah.
TO: Mhm. And was your aircraft ever damaged by anti-aircraft flak?
WM: Oh we had, we had, but we had nothing really serious, mm. No, we had holes all over the place from time to time. Some very close to the occupants was [laughs] but –
TO: Mhm.
WM: No, we always managed to get back.
TO: And were you ever given, did you get new bombs as the war went on?
WM: Oh yes, yes. We, we dropped just about everything that was going, yes. Oh yes, no.
TO: Did you ever, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. Did you ever get any of the massive bombs that Barnes Wallis had developed?
WM: Well, there were different ones yes, yeah we did. We went on a couple of trips to Bordeaux and things like that, yes –
TO: Might be –
WM: But, I know for a fact that even Barnes Wallis’ bombs, and the big ones, big ones that were dropping there, the German’s fortification of the submarine pens was, was terrific. Now they even today you can have a walk through them and see what it’s like, oh yes. But there [emphasis] is what I say, is that the – sorry I, there’s what happens is what – the amount of German personnel that had to be employed because [emphasis] of the Bomber Command raids was tremendous, tremendous [emphasis]. It wasn’t just one or two round the village or something like that. The number of people they kept back within Germany itself was properly, oh it must have been millions.
TO: And what do you think was the most important battle of the war?
WM: Well it all depends what you mean battle. Do you mean aircrew or land or –
TO: Any, anything.
WM: Or the ships.
TO: Well most important campaign then.
WM: Well, they’re all different, all different. You know it all depends, you know, if you say that – well the thing that lead up to the retention and taking back over Europe, and that was D-Day.
TO: Mm. And were you involved in that?
WM: Oh yes, yes.
TO: Can you tell me about any of the missions you went on?
WM: What, what we were doing, we were, we were, we were on the mock, one of the mock raids further up the coast. And a lot of the stuff that we were dropping that night was, was like aluminium foil, and that was showing them, well came up on the radar where there was massive amount of aircraft flying around, you know? And [laughs] of course at the same time we carried a lot of bombs, but we tried as much as possible to use them away, away from where we’d be flying over, as if it was again going further afield in. But at that time what we were trying to do was trying to keep away from human habitation because that was, that was just something that we were asked to do, because keep it away from the towns and cities and northern France, mm.
TO: Mm. And on, in bombing missions in general, what kind of targets were you actually given at the briefings?
WM: Well it all depends, you know, because no two briefings were the same, no. Yeah, you had factory towns, all sorts of things that you’re going after. You know even, I wasn’t, as I say, I wasn’t in on Dresden but there is a book called “Dresden,” and if you want to know anything about Dresden, get hold of that book. Now, it’s about that thick, and it goes back into the old days of Saxony, and it goes all the way through from the different things all the way, right through, right up until modern times. But that explains exactly what happened in that city. It’s very [emphasis], very complicated. It’s, but it tells the whole story of Dresden, not just one side of the, it’s the whole story, mm.
TO: And, I’m sorry to ask this but did you suffer heavy losses on your missions?
WM: Oh, well, from time to time we had losses, but we never, we never had what we considered a heavy loss, mm.
TO: And what did you think of Arthur Harris?
WM: Oh, we supported him. He was, he was our, our chief. We looked up to [could be after] him, yeah, we did.
TO: And what do you think of his tactics and strategy?
WM: Well I thought they were alright, because if you go back, go back in time that was his instructions that he was getting from the Air Ministry. That, that what a lot of people forget about, was that he [emphasis] was getting told by the Air Ministry what they wanted [emphasis], and that came from the cabinet meetings.
TO: Mhm. And do you think Bomber Command was treated unfairly after the war?
WM: No [emphasis]. They were not treated fairly. It was completely unfairly. As far as I’m concerned, even, even it took, it took for recognition, it took over seventy years [emphasis]. Now, on my, my medal bar, I’ve got the ‘39-‘45 Star, but also I wear [tape beeps] a little brass mounting [?] which says ‘Bomber Command,’ you know? That took seventy years for them to give it to us. Have you seen it?
TO: I think I saw it briefly when I met you last Sunday.
WM: It was in the middle.
TO: Yeah [paper shuffles]. And could you ever see fires below you on the ground?
WM: Oh yes, oh yes, definitely.
TO: Mhm, were they large or small?
WM: All depends, all depends what area and what you were doing. Some time you knew, you knew, you know, you had raging fires. Sometimes, sometime, see it all depends what the target was.
TO: And do you remember seeing fires when Hamburg was bombed in 1943?
WM: Well that’s what I said to you, I said to you already that that was a big one, you know.
TO: Mhm.
WM: But that was – then again, you’ve got to read the story about Hamburg, because what happened was that all the conditions for a bombing raid was right. The wind and the target and the structures of the building and everything, it all came into it.
TO: Mhm. And what did you think of the thousand bomber raid on Cologne?
WM: Well that, that was one of the best adverts that Harris could have. I won’t tell you what the thousand bombers were because nobody knows, but what he did was he got all the aircraft that could fly and return from there and used that. You know, right down to, there were some of the Blenheims [emphasis] that were in there to make up a thousand bombers, you know? That was a big propaganda one. And not only that, you say something about Harris and doing that, but there again, all of these things came from the War Cabinet. You know, this is what people forget or don’t know, there’s War Cabinet and then you come down to the Air Ministry, and the Air Ministry would then passed it onto Harris. And Harris was, alright at times Harris was dogmatic about what we were doing, but you think of Dresden. The Russians were fighting like hell coming our way, and at the same time the amount of German troops and everything else that was passing through, through Dresden, and what was happening in Dresden, what they were actually manufacturing [emphasis] for the, for the German, erm –
TO: War effort?
WM: Well, the German war effort [emphasis] was terrific. There was everything from stuff for the U-boats and aircraft and everything like that, it was all over the place. And this is admitted in this book, this book is, is called “Dresden” and it tells you street by street what they were doing, mm.
TO: And do you remember hearing about the attack on the Ruhr damns?
WM: Oh yes. Oh we were also, we were also on standby for that mission. We were sat, you know – the idea was that if it didn’t work that night, we were going to go the next night. There was, there was another three squadrons ready to go the next night –
TO: And –
WM: But it actually came through.
TO: And did that improve morale a lot?
WM: Oh yes, definitely.
TO: This is going to be –
WM: Scampton, were the, were the, were the Dambusters squadron was, we were also stationed at Scampton for a while, mm.
TO: This is probably going to be an odd question, but what was your least favourite aircraft to fly in?
WM: A Bolingbroke.
TO: Mm.
WM: A Bolingbroke was the American Canadian version of a Blenheim. She was underpowered and if you lost one engine, you had trouble trying to make it back to your base. But in Canada, a lot of chaps were lost over the lakes in the wintertime when they lost one engine, they went down through the ice.
TO: Mm.
WM: But that was, that was my one, a Bolingbroke. But as I say, I flew them and we were alright.
TO: And what was your favourite aircraft?
WM: Well I started off, I had a love for the Wellington but of course, later on it was the, it was the Lancaster. But old Lizzy, she never let us down and Lizzy was the Lysander. But the other thing, there’s one that’s hardly ever mentioned and that was the Anson, and of course the, the amount trainees that was through on the Lysanders was amazing. Everybody praises the Lysander, the Anson, mm.
TO: Mm. We’re actually out of battery on the camera, so is it okay if we have a break while I charge it up?
WM: Yeah, yeah, sure [tape paused and restarted].
TO: Okay so, can you tell me a bit about how you came to be involved in Operation Manna?
WM: We, we were stationed at RAF Tuddenham and we, we’d actually been on ops and we were called forward to stay and we thought ‘oh, well it’s another op,’ and this was on a Sunday.
TO: Mhm.
WM: And we were told that we were going to have stuff loaded on and we were to drop it, but it wasn’t bombs. It was in our containers, the containers that we’d used for dropping the stuff into the, into the Maquis as well, when we used to drop stuff. And that, that was alright. And when we got in the air, of course we didn’t know the whole [emphasis] story but it’s like a very good friend of mine says, her grandmother told her to hide under the table because she thought this was a message [?] they were gonna come and do some bombing [emphasis] round about there. Instead of that of course we were dropping the food. Well that was, that was the plus the operation started, but I suppose you know the story about that, about the two Canadians who went – can I tell you that one? Well what happened was Operation Manna came about because there was two young Canadian officers who had permission to go over to the German lines and speak to the German commander if it was possible and advise them that they could arrange for, to have food dropped into Holland because all the people there were starving, and that included the German troops that was there. Anyway, after negotiations, they had managed to get to them and they managed through the negotiations, the fact that we would be flying in Lancasters [emphasis] and dropping the food and we would not be dropping bombs. And of course the Germans advised that their anti-aircraft guns wouldn’t be firing at us, but they forgot to tell a lot of people with a rifle that what was happening, so it wasn’t impossible for us to get a few pot shots aimed at us with people on the ground with rifle fire. But anyway, we landed, we didn’t land [emphasis] of course, we just went in and we dropped it and certain food dropped and that was it, but later on, on the second or third day, by that time they’d got a bit organised and we were dropping food into, into football grounds. And what had happened, they got the local people to put big white crosses on the football grounds and that’s where we had to drop into. And one of the, one of the trips we were doing was at, we were flying in, and this, all the Lancasters said ‘ooh, a sprog crew.’ And this came, become across us and we had to veer quickly and let him come in, and when we were dropping our stuff, one of them went outside and landed on the railway line. Anyway, I could see lots of people round about it ‘cause it was taking quite a while to get into it of course, but by this time they’d realised it was, it was food in it and not bombs. Anyway, many years later in Africa when we were reopening a new rugby field, and in the pavilion later on I was telling the story, and I said ‘yes, it was, we were dropping the food to Holland’ and there was one of these things, a fellow, and I said ‘it was just like a lot of little ants round a sugar lump.’ And all of a sudden, somebody put his hand on my shoulder and I looked round, there’s this big fellow, a youngster, must have been in his early twenties, and he said to me, ‘you nearly killed me.’ And I said, ‘what do you mean I nearly killed you, I’ve never seen you in my life before.’ He says, ‘I was the first of these little black ants to get there’ he says, ‘because I saw it falling outside and I rushed to it, and all the other people came and dived on top of me’ [laughs]. So you see, it’s a small world there. But also I’ve got, I’ve got a large number of friends in this area, Dutch people, who actually received the food and they also still have services where, where they bless Manna, and there’s one particular family who come here into our court here, our Debbie’s [?] court and one, one Wednesday a month, and she was five years old when we dropped our first lot of food, and she’s always been thankful, thankful all the time, and she does tell people that ‘oh, Mr Moore, Uncle Bill here, he saved my country from starvation’ [laughs]. So you see that that was a real pleasure to do that, and I was actually awarded the Dutch Medal on that one, and very earnestly I consider that one of the finest medals and for the finest properties [?] that I received during the war.
TO: So would you say that’s the mission you’re most proud of?
WM: Yes.
TO: And when you first learned about Operation Manna, were you surprised that you’d be dropping food and not bombs?
WM: Oh yes, no, no.
TO: And could you, what do you remember most about Operation Manna?
WM: Well, the amount of aircraft. Well after, after the first Sunday, after the first Sunday it was well organised, ‘cause the first Sunday and Monday it was a trial run to see what happened really, but after that we, we had several squadrons that was dropping the food, and of course even, even some of the Americans were dropping food as well. But there were dropping food further afield than what we were, you know.
TO: And –
WM: At the beginning the war was still, the fighting was go on. It wasn’t, you know, it carried on afterwards but the first, the first few days of it that was still when the war was going on, you know.
TO: And what about, could you see if any Dutch civilians on the ground were waving British flags?
WM: Oh yes, well you could see them waving [emphasis]. You’re not always sure what they were waving but they were waving and clothes and waving anything at all when I realised on the second wave what we were doing, ‘cause it wasn’t, wasn’t bombs we were dropping.
TO: Mm. Well Bernie, the veteran, other Manna veteran whose number I gave you, he told me that flying so low he could see a Dutch boy waving a Union Jack.
WM: Yeah well, he must, he must have been very lucky to have – ‘cause it maybe that someone dropped the Union flag –
TO: Mhm.
WM: And then he got it, but not a Union Jack [emphasis].
TO: Mhm.
WM: It’s a Union flag. Do you know the difference?
TO: No, please explain.
WM: Well the Union Jack [emphasis] is flown in the brow of a ship –
TO: Mhm.
WM: The Union Jack is the one that’s – Union flag [emphasis] is the one that’s flown everywhere else.
TO: Oh right, I didn’t know that. Thank you.
WM: Mm, the Union Jack is the small staff in the front of a ship.
TO: Mhm [pause]. What kind of, when you were sat in the cockpit, what kind of equipment did you have in front of you?
WM: I know, I know that this is [?] navigational equipment that we could use. We had, we had G, we had Oboe, we had all sorts of different ones, yeah, mm.
TO: And how did G work?
WM: Well G was, G was in two, two, two beams, and where these two beams crossed, that’s where you were. It’s as simple as that.
TO: And did that improve navigation?
WM: Oh yes, yeah, mm. Well the H2S was a different story entirely. The H2S was you were beaming down and the more [?] water that was around the clearer the river [?] became, but your only trouble about that was the German fighters used to vector onto the, what we were, we were projecting. Sometimes that could become a hazard.
TO: And how many occasions do you think you deployed Window?
WM: Oh quite a number, even, even when we were doing training operations we were dropping Window, which we never counted, it didn’t count as operations as such. But we, we were dropping Window many a time, yeah, during training flights, mm.
TO: And when bombs were dropped from an aircraft, did the plane become noticeably lighter?
WM: Oh it came, you rose, you rose slightly yes, mm. All depends on how much, how much stuff you’re actually carrying or dropping.
TO: And could you please explain what the procedure would be for, in terms of what the crew would do, each crew member would do and say when you got over the target?
WM: Well each person had their own to do. The pilot, he was taking instructions from whoever was doing the, the lead onto the target. Sometimes we did that with myself, quite a number of times of course, and sometimes, sometimes it was the wireless operator, sometimes it was another, we had a radar operator as well, they used to use that over the targets ‘cause as I say, we were, we were still on special duties. Of course your gunners were always on the left and as I say, engineer, he had to be very careful then making sure everything was alright on his side, yeah. But everybody was active.
TO: Mhm. And were there ever any times on a mission when you could more or less relax?
WM: No [emphasis]. If you relaxed you, it was wrong. There’s many, many a time, many a time – what happened with us was that, and I’ve said this before, we never really relaxed until we were home. Can we give that a break for a minute? I’ll show you something.
TO: Yes, certainly [tape beeps]. Mhm. And did you or anyone else in the crew have a special name for your own aircraft?
WM: Yes, well we, we called our one after the Loch Ness Monster, that was it, yeah, mm [laughs]. It was, it was a favourite of ours you know, especially with two Scottish men was there [?] and we adopted, we adopted the rest of them, you know? Mm.
TO: [Paper turns] and when you were on missions, could you, or rather night missions, were there other British planes flying near you?
WM: All depends, all depends on what type of mission you were on.
TO: Mhm.
WM: Now, if you’re in the stream, well – at the beginning the squadron took off but you had a rendezvous point. A lot of rendezvous points were like Beachy Head, you know, and they used to assemble in that area and then they took off. And of course the thing about that was that the Germans also knew we were assembling at different places, and they could actually send out their night fighters if, if they did, you know? But there was, there were umpteen different places and they couldn’t, they couldn’t get to them all [emphasis] because often there was more than one raid on one night, on the same night. And that was deviations to keep away from maybe the real big one of that occasion, you know.
TO: And how many times a week would you go on a mission?
WM: Well sometimes it was night after night, three nights in one week [emphasis]. Sometimes according to the weather, it might be about eight days, maybe a week.
TO: Mhm.
WM: The weather had a lot to do with it you know?
TO: And were you ever escorted by fighters?
WM: We, well we, we were escorted ‘cause we did quite a few daytime raids, yes, we were. But we, we were quite, we were quite happy with that, mm. ‘Cause we used to see them, we used to see them on the verges of the, of the streams, you know, mm.
TO: And do you remember what kind of fighters they were?
WM: Well the ones that we saw was Mustangs, mm. All depends on how far in you were going. If you were going a long way in that was, that was a Mustang. Sometimes, sometimes it was a Hurricane, sometimes it was a Spitfire, mm. But they were only used as short flights, mm, whereas a Mustang was built for long range, mm.
TO: And was it cold aboard the planes?
WM: Oh it was never pleasant [laughs]. At one time everyone used to have a different [?] suit. It was like a fur jacket and things like that. But once we got onto the heavies they took all that stuff away from us, saying we didn’t need it. Well that was alright for these [emphasis] people, they weren’t flying [laughs], mm.
TO: And did you ever carry food with you aboard the plane?
WM: Ever carry?
TO: Food with you?
WM: No, all I carried, used to carry was five, five barley sugars, sweets.
TO: And what sort of entertainment did you have back at the airfields?
WM: Well all depends on what the, if it was, if it was one of the pre war stations there was generally a building that was used for dances and things like that, and concerts. If it was the war time ones then sometimes all you did was make sure there, there was an empty hangar and you had something in there. But, you know, that was how it was done, no. But that, that, that was the main thing of entertainment, you know, ‘cause the picture shows and things like that within the camp always started off as I say with propaganda [laughs], mm.
TO: When you saw those propaganda things, did you ever wonder whether they were being truthful?
WM: Well, the things we used to say ‘woah, woah, woah, woah’ [emphasis] and things like that, you know, the British sense of humour, you know, mm. And that’s a fact, mm.
TO: And were there any particularly popular songs?
WM: Oh yes there was all the, all the, I’ve got, I’ve still got all the tapes here of all the popular songs, mm, oh yes, I have all them, yeah. All of the artists at that time, yeah, and these artists I have, I have run [?] many a concert here and had the same ones come performing for me.
TO: And was there anyone that you knew of who refused to go on bombing missions?
WM: I never met anybody who refused to go on a mission, but I always remember there was two people who graduated and got their wings and then they, then they refused to go on ops. But that’s the nearest I ever came to it. But they never did any ops, they never were in, they weren’t even on a bombing station. And I’m sorry to say that we heard later on that they’d transferred to the Pioneer Corps and both of them got killed [pause].
TO: You mentioned that there was a raid where you had to attack a German warship in Kiel.
WM: That’s right.
TO: Do you remember its name?
WM: Not off hand, no.
TO: Would it be the Hipper?
WM: Oh it’s quite possible, it’s quite possible it was, yeah. I’ve got the date there, I told you the dates of it the other –
TO: Mhm.
WM: Yeah.
TO: I think I remember, I remember the sinking of the Hipper though because it was sunk on the 9th of April which coincidently is my birthday.
WM: Oh [emphasis].
TO: So –
WM: Oh [emphasis], 9th of April?
TO: I think I kind of have a selfish reason for remembering that if you see what I mean. Or maybe it was the Cher [WM laughs], I’m not sure. I do know though that –
WM: No, no, no. 9th of April [pause], 13th, 13th of April.
TO: What does it say was the target, or –
WM: That was in Kiel, mm, yeah. That was the 13 of April.
TO: Mhm.
WM: That’s what that was, that was the target.
TO: Mhm.
WM: That was the one that I told you that we, that we we bombed it that night and knocked it down and we had to go back again and make sure, one of [?] the chaps said ‘are you sure you don’t want us to put it back up again?’ [TO laughs]. ‘Cause you’d obviously got somebody –
TO: Mhm.
WM: Who [laughs] would give you an answer for something [laughs], mm.
TO: And were there ever any occasions were you could, where you ever flew over neutral territory and could see the cities all illuminated?
WM: There was one night we were, we were coming back from a trip, and the next thing I saw was these lights, and I thought ‘well what the hell is going on?’ And what had happened was that the [laughs], we were almost sent to Dublin, and what that was, was that the wind speed was ferocious and what we thought we’d found out was that we were nothing near [emphasis], we were nothing near the wind speed, what the actual wind speed was, and of course as soon as we saw that we turned round and we were on the way back.
TO: Mm.
WM: But that was the nearest I’ve been to being on neutral territory, you know.
TO: Mm.
WM: From that point of view, mm.
TO: Mm, and were there ever any occasions where you were accidently fired at by allied anti-aircraft guns?
WM: Well, what we, what we had was that we had the Junkers 52-53 aircraft, and we used to do special missions on that and we used to fly low [emphasis]. And what had happened was that that one had been liberated in the desert and we were using it on special duties, but there was no esigners [?], painted black, and going out was fine. Coming back [emphasis], it wasn’t until we got into our own territory that we used to get a few pot-shots at us, you know? Probably because [laughs] we were flying without the proper identification and things like that, that’s why we get into trouble. But we never actually, never actually had anything serious happen to us.
TO: Mhm.
WM: But that was under secret risk [?].
TO: Mhm. So was it, so you were trying to use, you were using German aircraft for the missions over France?
WM: Yeah.
TO: For the SOE.
WM: Yeah, SOE, yeah.
TO: So it wasn’t always Lysanders then?
WM: No we, we used many, you know, the Lysander was for the agents.
TO: Mhm.
WM: But as I said before we used to use other aircraft for taking other stuff in, for Maquis and things like that, you know.
TO: Mhm.
WM: Oh yes, mm.
TO: And did you ever meet any senior commanders during the war?
WM: Well every now and again you had a parade where we didn’t actually, we didn’t actually get to meet [emphasis] them as such. Not like, not like last Sunday, no.
TO: Mm. And were some missions much more dangerous than others or were they more or less the same?
WM: Well, what we used to do, we used to classify every mission as dangerous, because if you didn’t and you dropped your guard, that’s when you would have been in trouble. I don’t say they weren’t, but we never loaded [?] to be.
TO: And were there ever any times where you, where your missions were just taking photographs of areas?
WM: Oh yes, we had that [emphasis] from time to time, yes, mm.
TO: Could you tell me about any of those?
WM: Well they were, they were done by 138 Squadron and that was, you know, the idea behind that was sometimes it was targets, that they had been bombed, and sometimes they might have been targets that we flew past. We passed them as if we were going somewhere else and we might have been taking them then. But we got a lot of practice in that, because that’s another story I can give you, mm.
TO: And did you hear how other events of the war were going?
WM: Oh yes, we were kept up to date, we were kept up to date. As I say, between the news reels and bulletins, you were kept up to date, mm.
TO: Were you ever worried that Germany might win?
WM: Well, we, I would never say that, that I was frightened of them winning [?][emphasis], but we always worried every now and again where it might have been something that was going the wrong way, but not, not for an all out win no. No, no, no.
TO: And what was the most feared German night fighter?
WM: The Junkers-88, ‘cause she’d a cannon on her, and she, she actually fitted onto her guns that would fly, fire upwards and try and get under the bellies of the Lancasters. And that’s where we lost quite a number of Lancasters, firing guns from the, from the JU28, JU88s, yeah, mhm [pause].
TO: And did you ever feel any animosity towards Germany?
WM: Well, that’s a difficult one because, you know, there was people who lost friends, relations and all the rest of it. Some of them got quite bitter but on the whole people just took it as war.
TO: And how do you feel today?
WM: Ah, what I can say is that I have been involved in promoting rugby, football all over Europe and all over Africa, that’s my answer to that.
TO: And how do you feel today about your wartime service?
WM: It was something – when I had to something and that’s what I did, mm.
TO: And do you think the war was worth the price?
WM: I think yes. I think yes, because that’s another story I can tell you, that you haven’t asked me about.
TO: Yes, tell me, yeah.
WM: Well after, after the war finished, we still had special duties to do, and one of the first was to bring, bring back prisoners of war which were British, well there was all sorts involved but most of the ones we brought back were British, and a lot of the stories that they related to me including two of my uncles who were prisoners of war since 1940. Some of the stories they had to say was horrific. Anyway, when we finished that job bringing back the prisoners of war, we, we then went onto ferrying people from parts of Germany down into a place called Eastridge [?] in France and we had camps there where we took the refugees into, and a lot of these people thought that we were going to lock them up, same as they’d been before. But it was trying to tell them that it was to help them and that the, the camp was just secured so that the local people wouldn’t be coming in to try and get what they were getting, ‘cause this was to try and build them up again, you know. But then of course after that, the next big thing after that, we, we were put on photograph and the whole of Europe. We started off with photographing the likes of London from about two thousand feet, and then towns like [unclear] Woking here, from about four thousand feet and then the countryside was from, anything from ten to twenty thousand feet. We did that for the whole of Europe, mm. And that was 138, 138 Squadron again, because what we did, we’d started doing it at Tuddenham and then when they realised that we were quite successful, they transferred us over to RAF Benson and we did that over at Benson. And then of course we, we had several substations, substations in Norway, substations in France, we had substations around the country here at different places where we would load [?] to land and fuel up, and we had special signal recognition that we could, we could use and that went on for quite some, quite some time, ‘cause that photographing Europe was one of Churchill’s ideas that he left behind after he was out of office.
TO: And during those photography missions, could you see the damage from the bombing?
WM: Oh yes that was the idea, mm. Anyway you done it at two thousand feet you could see right down, no [unclear] of course, mhm, mm. That’s where we, well that’s where we started [emphasis] photographing, mm, but it was the while, the whole area was done, mm.
TO: Are there any other missions of the war that stand out a lot to you which you’d like to tell me about?
WM: Personal ones?
TO: Well any, any ones you were on from, that were missions that, but only if you’re willing to talk about, don’t if you –
WM: No.
TO: If you don’t want to talk about it it’s fine.
WM: No, as I say in general, in general we, we carried out what we had to do, and as I say, 138 Squadron of special duties, we were doing all sorts of things and there’s lots of things that, that we still should not talk about, because we are sworn to secrecy about them, because that was in conjecture [?] with SOE, ‘cause there was lots of people who maybe still, maybe not in favour of some of these operations.
TO: Mhm. What about some of the other bombing missions? Are there any others that you’d like, any others that stand out that you’d like to tell me about?
WM: You know, you know, the big, a big, a big thing was that there was missions we knew [emphasis] –about and there was other missions that people were on that we got to know about and [tape beeps] I can assure you that once the reason, these missions – people said ‘oh that could have been us,’ you know? ‘Cause even the Dambusters, ones we were a back up squadron for that. It wasn’t a method, it wasn’t just a method of a few fellows doing that, there was back up squadrons as well.
TO: And when did you hear about the Holocaust?
WM: Well that, that’s hard to say because we, we, we got, we got to know in bits and pieces. As I say, I started to learn a lot of that from our own prisoners of war that we were bringing home, and then of course we found out from other people who, who had been there in the camps. And, course the big thing about it was you didn’t realise just how widespread it was. I don’t think anybody did at that particular time. I know there was some friends of mine who visited Belson and visited the other ones in person and as I say, they were horrified how the treatment that people was getting. But that’s a different category all together you know, that was someone away from, away from a normal war. That was, that wasn’t the same.
TO: Were there ever any times when you were tasked with dropping leaflets?
WM: Oh yes we had that from time to time, mm, we had that, mm. We were never sure whether the leaflets were doing any good or not.
TO: Arthur Harris said after the war that never engaged in those leaflet dropping exercises because it only accomplished two things. One, it gave the German defenders practice in getting ready for the real thing and two, it supplied a substantial quantity of toilet paper for –
WM: That’s right.
TO: The Germans.
WM: That’s more or less correct, yes, mm.
TO: Mm [page turns]. Did you ever wish you’d been in something other than the Royal Air Force?
WM: I had been in the Guyun [?] Southern Highlanders –
TO: Mhm.
WM: But not, not an active service, no. But I never, never felt as if I should have been there, no.
TO: And did you ever wish that you hadn’t been an observer or a navigator? Did you ever wish that you’d been a different position on board the aircraft?
WM: Well we did, on aircrew we went around the different jobs in case anything happened to one of us up there. We actually flew in different positions [emphasis] from time to time [emphasis].
TO: So did you ever fly the Lancaster yourself?
WM: Oh yes, yes. Oh yes.
TO: But the pilot would always do the takeoff and landing?
WM: Well that was the idea, although we had to do, I had to be able to land the aircraft.
TO: Mhm. So would you consider yourself a flight engineer as well as an observer?
WM: No, observer, my observer, my observer – I covered all these courses –
TO: Mhm.
WM: As an observer, mm. The flight engineer came into his own with the four engine bombers, mm.
TO: And you mentioned you were on Wellingtons for a while.
WM: Mm.
TO: Were they generally reliable?
WM: Oh course [emphasis]. They were the most reliable bomber that we had.
TO: And did you hear about the, how the early bombing of the war was progressing?
WM: Well the thing is, everybody hoped that it was for the best because there’s everything else. There’s, the accuracy improved. Obviously the saturation bombing was started by the Germans. They started saturation bombing. Our people tried to go for individual targets and alright, after that there was [emphasis] saturation bombing, you know.
TO: And were your airfields ever attacked by German fighters?
WM: Not to my knowledge no.
TO: Mm. And I’m sorry to ask this, but were any of your friends killed during the war?
WM: Yes. A lot of school friends, school friends and friends from the Boys Brigade, oh yes, mm. School friends were the younger ones but the older friends were the ones I’d made through the Boys Brigade, and they were, most of them was on aircrew [emphasis], different categories.
TO: How, how was morale in Bomber Command throughout the war would you say?
WM: Good, it was good. It was excellent.
TO: And why do you think it stayed so high despite the losses?
WM: It was the camaraderie of sticking together, yeah, oh yes, mm. We were all volunteers, and we’re still volunteers [laughs].
TO: And you know after Dunkirk, was there a general fear of invasion?
WM: Not fear [emphasis] of invasion. There was, what did I say, there was – people didn’t think it was imminent but [phone rings] it could happen, you know? Hello?
Caller on the phone: Hello.
WM: Hello dear.
Caller on the phone: How are you?
WM: I’m very, very [tape beeps].
TO: And what did you think of the atomic bombs that were used against Japan?
WM: Well the big thing about that is that it could have happened to us, because as we know from hindsight, that the Germans had been working on that, and that could have been us. And of course, if the development of the V2s had come, could have come, come all the way across the Atlantic into America [emphasis]. As far as I’m concerned it’s, it’s one of these weapons that it could, it could obliterate mankind if it went on too long. And of course we noticed what happened with the aftermath of these things, but our war was nothing compared with that. I also, also think that if it hadn’t been for the, for the ones dropped in Japan that millions of troops would have been massacred, and it doesn’t say how far on everything else would have went if they hadn’t been dropped because that may have gone on for years and years and years, so it may have been at the time was a good thing.
TO: And, just going back to the crew that you were good friends with –
WM: Mm.
TO: Did, did they talk much about their lives before they joined the Air Force?
WM: Yeah, we all had that, but yeah. The pilot, pilot was a sheep farmer in New Zealand, our radar [?] man was an accountant in New Zealand, our wireless operator, his father had a joinery business across in Lanes [?] Bay, across the water from where I come from. The, the rear gunner was an, a surveyor for the [unclear] down the water here and the mid upper gunner his, his family had got a hotel in Canterbury in Kent, and that’s quite strange was that I got married on a Friday night in Scotland, and we had another party in the Fleur-de-Lis Hotel in Canterbury on the Wednesday following, because the crew was all going home to New Zealand and places like that. But no, we did, and as I say, Jimmy Dagg, his great-grandson is playing rugby as Israel Dagg for the All Blacks, [unclear] rugby, mm.
TO: And did you ever actually, I know you could see them from the sky, but after the war did you ever go through any of the cities like Berlin or?
WM: No I didn’t. All I did was flew, flew over them you know, mm.
TO: Mhm. And what’s your opinion on Britain’s involvement in recent wars like Afghanistan?
WM: Well there, there again the – that’s an entirely different thing. It all depends how far back you get. It’s always been said that, that nobody ever wins a war in Afghanistan, ‘cause even going back to even before Christ [emphasis] there’s been, been wars and people trying to take over and trying to settle Afghanistan region. But some, some of the other, some of the other wars that goes on, you just wonder why, no, because – on the other hand you don’t really get down to it, you know. The likes of Korea was quite a war, and also the McArthur at the time, he was right up to the Chinese border and he was, he wasn’t defeated or anything but the American government told him to come back, and of course that was reintruded when the, when the two states were formed, Northern and South of Korea. Now, if you talk about Sing, Malaysia. Now in Malaysia there was thousands of troops and everything in there, and where I was from in Africa, there was African regiments in there from, from Rhodesia, from Kenya, from Tanganyika. They were called the King’s African Rifles and they Rhodesians, the Rhodesian regiment, they were all involved in there, no. And then of course you got these other skirmishes up, was up in Europe and there again, they all seemed to arise from either petty politics or religions. If you, if you go into some of these other ones where there’s still fighting today, and you turn around and you say to Syria, but what is it? It’s one against one, it’s a civil war. That’s really what it is, but why can’t they get together on it? You know, there was a civil war in Spain pre-1938. Now that was a vicious war as well, but 1938, thirty-nine it came to a close and a person who took over Franco and the nation was brought together again. Before Franco died, he brought back the king and that was, that was brought back and that settled both people, both lots of the people in Spain. Now you see all these other ones that’s gone on, skirmishes and even in the South American countries, that’s all about drugs, that’s not really about people, it’s about drugs and things like that which is entirely [emphasis] different thing entirely [emphasis]. Now holy wars as I call them can never be settled, ‘cause one, one against the other they will never, never change [emphasis]. What happens with these things is they just goes on and on and on, and that, and that’s been going on for centuries, or one country wants to take over the other one and it’s through, it’s though their, their type of religions it happens, which is wrong.
TO: And one of my last questions now, what’s your best memory of your time in the war?
WM: When I met my wife [both laugh]. I came, I came back from a raid, a raid on Bordeaux and I was given three days leave. Instead of that I got it made up to ten days and I, I went home and I got a lift in fish truck. I was never sure if it was real fish or scrap fish for [laughs] for to go for manures or something like that. But anyway, I got there and the first thing my mother did was put all my clothes in the boiler and she’d have put me into the boiler if I hadn’t got into the bath. Anyway, that night I, I went along to the local dance, the big pavilion, the big high balcony and all the people up there spectating, and I was dancing with this young lady, and my friend wanted to dance with her. ‘Come on, come on, this is my one, you go and pinch your own lady,’ you know, ‘your own girl,’ you know? Anyway, what I didn’t know was that her mother and father, two sisters and sister-in-law and some kids were all up on the balcony, and every time I danced, being in the Air Force they were shouting ‘hooray,’ because their son Walter was in the Air Force in India, and my friend Vann Muir [?] was in the Navy, so I was winning according to them, and I did [laughs]. That was my happiest [emphasis] that was my happiest [emphasis] occasion in the whole war, mm.
TO: Mhm. Well that’s all of my questions –
WM: Alright.
TO: Do you have anything at all that you want to add?
WM: No, it’s just [unclear] want to say this, I’ve had another two of these interviews, there might be a little discrepancies or differences but –
TO: That’s fine.
WM: It’s all going from in here you know.
TO: That’s fine, your memory’s been great –
WM: Oh.
TO: And I’ve really enjoyed what you’ve told me.
WM: Oh, no.
TO: So thank you so much for telling me.
WM: Oh okay, thank you, welcome, thank you very much.
TO: Thank you so much for your wartime service as well.
WM: I must see you from time to time somewhere –
TO: Yeah.
WM: Along the line. You come to some of these gatherings from the Royal Air Force, I’ll be there.
TO: Mhm, thank you.
WM: Yeah.
TO: It would be great to see you.
WM: Thank you very much indeed.
TO: Thank you.
WM: Anyway –
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMooreWT160703
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Bill Moore. Three
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
02:50:38 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tom Ozel
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-06
Description
An account of the resource
Bill Moore grew up in Scotland and volunteered for the Royal Air Force. He completed 36 operations as a navigator with 138 and 161 Squadrons.
Please note: The veracity of this interview has been called into question. We advise that corroborative research is undertaken to establish the accuracy of some of the details mentioned and events witnessed.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
France
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Suffolk
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Kiel
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Katie Gilbert
138 Squadron
161 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Bolingbroke
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
briefing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
displaced person
fear
Gee
H2S
Hudson
Lancaster
Lysander
military service conditions
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
perception of bombing war
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Tempsford
RAF Tuddenham
Resistance
Special Operations Executive
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/168/3481/Rutherford, Les.1.jpg
2a360ecc2c6bd3a2271901a17ad37fe7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/168/3481/ARutherfordL150605.1.mp3
e2df55e7e391691119891be5fff5f9ee
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Rutherford, Les
R L Rutherford
Robert Leslie Rutherford
Description
An account of the resource
Ten items. The collection contains four oral history interviews with bomb aimer Robert Leslie "Les" Rutherford (1918 - 2019, 146263 Royal Air Force), his prisoner of war diary, material about entertainment in the Stalag Luft 3 Belaria compound and a photograph. Les Rutherford served as a despatch rider in the army, he was evacuated from Dunkirk and volunteered to transfer to the RAF. He became a bomb aimer with 50 Squadron and completed 24 operations. He was shot down over Germany on 20th December 1943 and became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Les Rutherford and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-09
2015-10-05
2015-06-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Rutherford, RL
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TJ: Right well I’m here today with Mr Les Rutherford at his home in North Hykeham near Lincoln. Can I call you Les?
LR: Yes you can.
TJ: Yeah?
LR: Certainly.
TJ: Where were you born Les?
LR: I was born at Wallsend on, near Newcastle on Tyne.
TJ: Oh right yeah and -
LR: I’m a Geordie.
TJ: Oh you’re a Geordie? Not much accent. Can I ask what year you were born?
LR: 1918.
TJ: 1918. Right. So um brothers and sisters?
LR: Yes I had three brothers and three err and four sisters, yeah.
TJ: And your parents? Did they, so you were born just at the end of the First World War.
LR: Just at the end. Just before -
TJ: Were your parents -?
LR: October.
TJ: Was your father involved in the First World War?
LR: He was in the navy.
TJ: And he survived?
LR: Oh yes, yes.
TJ: Jolly good.
LR: Yes, he survived. Yes he lived to a ripe old age as well. He was ninety seven.
TJ: Good for him. And so where did you come in amongst the siblings?
LR: I was the eldest.
TJ: Oh right so your father definitely survived then.
LR: Yes. [laughs]
TJ: Did your dad used to give you tales of the navy?
LR: Oh my dad was a great tale teller. We were inclined to disbelieve him. We used to think he was shooting a line half the time.
TJ: Really?
LR: Yes we used to laugh at him.
TJ: Yeah.
LR: But some proved to be true actually.
TJ: What, how old were you when you left school?
LR: I was fourteen when I left school.
TJ: And what did you do straightaway then?
LR: I lived with my grandmother who had a general dealers business and she died just a matter of weeks, a week or so before I left school and I’d often helped her in the shop to give her a break you know, and when she died I went into the shop to work. The funeral was going on and things like this and looked after things and then in her will she left the business to my mother. My mother came and took over the shop and I carried on err running the shop from then on. From, from fourteen, I carried on running the shop doing all the buying, selling and all the lot and it was hard work but it was a, it was a good business because it was right on the entrance to the big shipyard, Swan Hunters, in Wallsend. So in the morning we got all the passing trade from the workmen for their cigarettes and things like that and then we had good passing trade and a local trade it was marvellous, it was a very thriving business and then of course when the war began I was called up into the army and my mother said, ‘well I will go in the business until such time as you come home again,’ she said, ‘and when you come home when the war’s finished I will retire and you will take over the business as your own and pay me a pension.’
TJ: What had your dad been doing during those years?
LR: Well my dad was working.
TJ: What did he do?
LR: All sorts of things. He was um, my dad was a miner and he had a very bad accident down in the mines which stopped him doing that for a while and then he was went to work on the engineering works as various different things. So he was more or less a labourer.
TJ: I see.
LR: I think, you know he was basically a miner so when he went there in to the engineering works he was just doing anything that was going.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: He worked on building for a while, and bricklaying but then he went back in to the engineering works again.
TJ: So you got your call up papers for the army.
LR: Yeah.
TJ: What did you think of that? Was it what you would have chosen?
LR: No I would have chosen the RAF but um I wasn’t given any option.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: I was in the second batch of the militia which were, before the war there was a conscription scheme where they were calling youths of eighteen up for a period of military service and they called the first batch up and while they were doing their three months or so the war broke out so they went straight into the army and then I was in the second batch and I was called up in October and straight in to the army. No choice.
TJ: What, you were about eighteen then?
LR: I was twenty one then.
TJ: Twenty one by then?
LR: I was called up a week before I was twenty one.
TJ: Right. Yes.
LR: Spoiled my mother’s celebration party [laughs]. She wasn’t too pleased. She’d made all the arrangements.
TJ: I understand you were a despatch rider. Did that, did that start soon after? Or
LR: That started straightaway.
TJ: Straightaway yeah.
LR: That’s, that’s I went into the Royal Army Service Corps with the 51st Highland Division and after the basic training we went down to Aldershot and there we were allocated vehicles and I became a despatch rider.
TJ: Were you experienced at riding a motorbike?
LR: Oh we’d had motorbikes before the war. Yes, yes I was.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: So it was a natural thing.
TJ: Yeah. And where did you do your despatch riding?
LR: I like motorbikes yes. I enjoyed it.
TJ: Yeah. Whereabouts did you do the, the job? Did you
LR: Well.
TJ: You were in the England, or
LR: In France to start with. We um we went across to France in January of 1940.
TJ: Yeah.
LR: And then we, err I motorcycled across pretty much the whole of the north of France. We were stationed up in the north of France and I was all over the place up there of course on the job and then we moved across in to, on the German border. In Alsace Lorraine.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Near Metz and we were there when the Germans invaded and they moved the division across from there to positions in northern France to try and stem the German advance and then when Dunkirk took place, when they decided to evacuate the army, our division was left behind to fight a rear guard action to try and hold up the Germans while the evacuation took place and then when the evacuation took place they said that any troops left in France then should be given up as lost.
TJ: Really?
LR: Ahum and there were still some boats trying to get in. We were eventually, the whole, pretty near the whole division was, what was left of them, was surrounded in a place called St Valery.
TJ: Ahum
LR: And St Valery is famous for when Scotland with the 51st division, the 51st division was a purely a Highland division with a few Englishmen in it, I was one of them, and they were surrounded in this place and it was obvious they were going to give up the next day. We’d got to surrender. There was no choice and another chap and I decided that that wasn’t good enough and we put out in to the channel on a door and paddled away and we’d seen ships going in further along the coast and they were going directly into the place and then out, straight out and then forming a, and going away across towards England.
TJ: So was the sea choppy?
LR: No it wasn’t too bad.
TJ: Could you swim?
LR: Well I could swim. I’d done a lot of competition swimming and that sort of thing.
TJ: So it wasn’t too frightening.
LR: So, not for me um but this door it wouldn’t hold the two of us and just as we were getting on, on the door this chap informed me he couldn’t swim.
TJ: Oh dear.
LR: Which I thought was tremendously brave of him actually. And so he got on the door and paddled with a piece of wood and I got on the back of the raft and acted more or less as a rudder and a propeller kicking my feet and going away and we eventually got way out to sea and the next morning we were picked up by a -
TJ: Was this in the dark?
LR: This was in the dark. This was about um 10 0’clock about, you know between ten and eleven at night and um the next morning we were picked up by a French trawler and they picked us up and then later transferred us to an English vessel. Now, when they picked us up they took all my, they gave me a glass of hot rum to start with and that put me out like a light. ‘Course I’d had nothing to eat for about two or three days.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And then, they had taken all my clothes off and put me in a bunk and then they woke me up to say they were transferring me, and they wrapped a blanket around me, transferred me to the lifeboat.
TJ: And the other guy as well.
LR: And the other one, I assume. Do you know I never, ever saw him again.
TJ: Really
LR: No and I’ve often wondered how he fared because he was a bit, he had a bit of a job getting up on the, I know they threw a rope over but he was sort of stiff from the, paralysed from the waist down with sat on this raft all night.
TJ: Once you got on the fishing boat did you see him?
LR: No I didn’t.
TJ: Not even on the fishing boat?
LR: Not on the fishing boat no, the um, as I say -
TJ: Ahum.
LR: They gave me, they hauled him up first and then brought me up and they give me this glass of hot rum and it just knocked me right out.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And when I came too, when I was laid in the bunk and this chap was shaking me to say they were transferring me and they transferred me to the English ship.
TJ: What sort of ship was that?
LR: It was a big, a big cross channel type ship.
TJ: Yeah.
LR: With a lot of soldiers aboard which they’d picked up from further down the coast and um I, I contacted, after a while I went off to sleep again and then after a while I found the officer who was in charge of the lifeboat and asked him where my uniform was and he said oh we didn’t bring any uniforms. So I landed at Dover wearing a blanket and a pair of socks which this chap had given me and that’s all I had on [laughs]. Yeah so that’s, and that was the end of that adventure.
TJ: So after that how much longer were you in the army? How long was it before you transferred?
LR: Transferred. We was taken from there up to Scotland up in the Highlands and um I was up there until June of 1941. The um, meantime there was some, a notice had been posted on the unit to say they wanted volunteers for air crew duties and so I volunteered and I actually changed job in June of 1941. We went down to Stratford on Avon and we were initiated in to the differences in the drill and that sort of thing, given uniforms and oh it was absolutely wonderful. We got down there and we were billeted in the Shakespeare Hotel. We had
TJ: Nice
LR: Rooms with two to a room with sheets and beds. Beds with sheets on them.
TJ: Luxury.
LR: Oh absolutely we were sleeping on the floor for a couple of years [laughs] and um and then of course we went to initial training at Scarborough, in the Grand Hotel, afterwards.
TJ: Very nice.
LR: And then from there when we finished that course we were posted to Rhodesia which is Zimbabwe now.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: On a pilot’s course. And I passed the flying moth, the tiger moth flying course which was the initial flying course and then was sent on to twin-engined planes and I was just ready to solo on those when um the chief flying officer sent for me and said they were taking me off flying and when I asked why he said, ‘Your reactions are too slow.’
TJ: Oh.
LR: So I was absolutely devastated of course as you can imagine and I was sent up to Salisbury, this was down near Bulawayo. We were sent up to Salisbury, the capital and we were then billeted in a big hotel and I was in there with about oh I should think fifteen, twenty other men and they had all been taken off flying duties. One of them went around and asked where were we on ground subjects, you know, like navigation and things, things that, ground subjects - not flying and nearly all of us were top of the course or second top of the course and they then decided that because they were short of navigators or observers as they were then, because they were short of observers they, they had decided to take two off each course and put them on an observers course. Now whether that’s true or not I don’t know. But it salved their conscience a bit, made us look a little bit better. Well at least we didn’t fail [laughs]. But, and then of course from there I went down to East London in the Cape err to do the observers course which was, you passed three courses to be an observer. You passed as a navigator, a bomb aimer and air gunner. You had to pass all three courses and we did that successfully and then moved down to Cape Town to catch a ship home.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And came home.
TJ: Did you see much of South Africa while you were there? Did you have much time to go out?
LR: Not as much as I would like to. I would like to. I mean we were up in Rhodesia, up in Salisbury only a short distance in in their terms.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: From the [Niagara] Falls and the Zimbabwe ruins and never got the chance to visit them. I did get one weeks holiday while we were in Salisbury. Two of my friends and myself asked the flight sergeant of discipline if we, if we couldn’t have a week’s leave to see something of the country and he said leave it to me and the next day he sent for us. He said, ‘you’ve got to report down to the station and go to this err, get tickets to the Marandelles and somebody will meet you there and take you for a week’s leave on a tobacco farm’ which we did and we had a lovely week on a tobacco farm.
TJ: Did you? Yeah.
LR: Saw all the process right from growing and curing and all the whole lot.
TJ: Ahum. And did you smoke yourself at that time?
LR: Not at that time no. No. And then of course we went from there down to the unit. I would have liked to have seen more of South Africa. The journey up from, we landed initially in Durban and travelled from there up to Rhodesia. Now that travel, that route is now the scenic route, you know the great scenic route in South Africa that they all go and pay thousands for. That was that route. We went through all the old Boer countries Mafeking, Boer towns like Mafeking.
TJ: Yes.
LR: And places like that which we knew from the Boer war and it took us three days actually to go up there. And it was, it was wonderful.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Wonderful country South Africa actually.
TJ: So I understand yes.
LR: And the people were very, very good to us.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: The English people that is.
TJ: The settlers.
LR: Yes.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Not, not, not the Boers.
TJ: No.
LR: The Boers, well they used to beat the lads up.
TJ: Oh dear.
LR: Gangs of them. There was a union called the [?] which was, which meant the Brotherhood of the Wagon and, particularly in Johannesburg and Pretoria, and they used to watch out for airmen on their own and they would go and beat them up. And this happened regularly.
TJ: Oh dear.
LR: It happened to us. To my friend and myself. We happened to wander in, in, we were on the transfer down from Rhodesia down to East London. We spent a week in the transit camp between Johannesburg and Pretoria and we went, we got in to Pretoria to have a look around and we happened to wander into an area which was, we heard later, was noted for being [?] territory and my friend got slashed across the top of the eyes with a bicycle chain which was quite nasty. And err
TJ: Were you all right?
LR: I got off with a few bruises fortunately but I was, I was ok.
TJ: So let’s get you on the ship out of Cape Town. Is that right?
LR: Yes.
TJ: Yeah. To? Where did the ship go to?
LR: Went to Southampton.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: We arrived in Southampton and went from there. There was a party of us of course and we came back fairly quickly because we came back on an armed merchantmen.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: But we weren’t in convoy coming back. Going we were in convoy but coming back we weren’t in convoy and we landed at Southampton. On to Bournemouth and after a few days in Bournemouth we were sent up to Finningley which is now the Robin Hood airport.
TJ: That’s right. Yeah.
LR: And to start Operational Training Unit.
TJ: Did you get time to go and see your mum and dad?
LR: Oh yes, yes. We did get leave.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Yes. I had a nice pleasing incident actually because a very good friend of mine at home, we used to play in a band together um, he had been in Rhodesia as well and we ran across one another occasionally and we’d spend a lot of time together actually and while we were in Cape Town waiting for transit he came and in the meantime he’d passed the pilot’s course and he came and the day before we sailed and when I got home I was able to, I went to see his mother and she said, “Oh” she said, ‘Roy’s over in South Africa you know. Did you manage to meet him?’ And I said, ‘Not just meet him,’ I said, ‘I saw him just before we sailed,’ I said, ‘And he’s on his way home.’ Oh she was absolutely [laughs]
TJ: Lovely.
LR: Knocked out. Absolutely knocked out. Anyway when we got to OTU and when we got there the navigation officer got us all in his office and he said, ‘Now which half of you are navigators and which half are bomb aimers?’ And we said, ‘Well we’re all navigators and bomb aimers. We’re observers.’ So he said, ‘Oh well,’ and he counted us all up and he said, ‘you half there are navigators and you half there you’re bomb aimers.’
TJ: So it could have gone either way.
LR: It could have gone either way and err the big laugh of that was in my log book, on the results of the navigation there’s all the exam results in my logbook and the remarks at the bottom said recommended for specialist training after further experience. That was in navigation. They made me bomb aimer [laughs]. Rather typical.
TJ: So after Finningley then?
LR: After Finningley we went on a commando course on Barkston Heath for a week to toughen us up a bit and then we went to a Conversion Unit at Wigsley which is just outside Lincoln of course. In Nottingham I think or in Nottinghamshire err we did err I was with, oh excuse me. My pilot was on his second tour and he’d done his first tour on Hampdens and then later Manchesters. Now the Manchester was the forerunner of the Lancaster so all he had to do on the conversion course was not get used to the Lancaster but to get used to four engines and it didn’t take him long at all. And in actual fact I joined 50 squadron on the 1st of February of 1943 and I was there most of 1943 then.
TJ: Ahum so I understand you were a prisoner of war. What year did you, so you crash-landed in Germany.
LR: Yes we were shot down over Germany and I became a prisoner of war.
TJ: Tell us about, I read something about after when you were actually caught [guten morgen]
LR: Oh when I was, oh when they picked me up?
TJ: When they picked you up in the in the road.
LR: Yes well I’d been walking the day before. When I was shot down it was evening of course around about 8 o’clock - 7 o’clock, 8 o’clock time at night and I walked most of that night, or I tried to, I’d damaged of my leg.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: When the aircraft blew up and I damaged my leg and err.
TJ: How many of you got out?
LR: Only two of us.
TJ: Ahum
LR: I thought I was the only one but there were two of us and I walked as best I could that night and towards when it was just getting light I found myself in a small town, a big village if you like, and I was walking along and people were going to work and saying good morning to me.
TJ: Did they not look at the way you were dressed?
LR: Well they didn’t take too much notice. It was dark and I think they were used to uniforms and things like that and it was just a sort of mumbled ‘morgen’ or the way we would do is – ‘mornin’, you know and so I just ‘morgen’ and carried on and I managed to get my way out of there and on to the banks of a river and it was on the banks there were some thick bushes and I hid up in these bushes all during the day and it wasn’t very comfortable because it was, of course it was January err it was December and it was a bit cold and the next night I started to walk again and I was well on the way and I was way out in the country.
TJ: Where were you heading for?
LR: West. Generally west.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: To get towards France but not much hope mind you. I didn’t have much hope but at least you’ve got to try and the main problem was food and water of course. I had my escape kit which was just horlicks tablets. I, I was walking along this road and I heard a voice shout, ‘Halt.’ So I sort of tried the old ‘morgen’ but it didn’t work and it was three soldiers I think it was, two or three soldiers came up, and one of them shone a torch over me and I heard them say, ‘Oh Englisher flieger’ and of course rifles came off the shoulders and my hands went up and that was it.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: I was a prisoner.
TJ: Did any of them speak English?
LR: No. None of them.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: When I got -
TJ: Were they ok with you? They weren’t rough or anything?
LR: Oh yes, yes.
TJ: They were polite.
LR: They were ok. Yes. No violence at all. No.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: No. Not until I got into that place. I got the um they took me to a house and, where they were billeted obviously, and there was an officer sat behind a table. There was a stool at this side of the table which I sat on and he started to question me in very, very poor English so I pretended I didn’t understand him but then I caught, I was sat there and I got an almighty clout around the back of the head and knocked me off the stool, and there was a German stood there and he spoke perfect English. It turned out later that he’d spent a lot of time working in London and he, he started to question me and he said, He said, ‘You stand up when you talk to a German officer.’ and I thought, I stood up and he said, ‘Name, number, rank.’ I told him the rank at that time was flying officer and he said, ‘You’re not an officer.’ So I said, ‘Yes I am.’
TJ: Oh.
LR: “No you’re not,” he said. ‘Where are your badges of rank?’ So, I was wearing battle dress of course at that time and the badge of rank were on the shoulder. He said, ‘No, no, no,’ he said, ‘the badge of rank are worn on the arm.’ So I said, ‘No they’re not. Not with this uniform,’ I said. They’re worn up there.’ He said, ‘Where are your papers?’ I said, ‘I don’t carry papers.’ So he said when the Luftwaffe went over England he said they used to carry papers. I said, ‘Yeah but I’m not in the Luftwaffe. I’m in the RAF.’
TJ: [Laughs] Good for you.
LR: So he said, I might say that by this time I was beginning to get on talking terms with them. Once he’d found, not, not just quite then, he said um, I said what I do have is identity discs so I took out these identity discs to show him and they were stamped on the back – ‘Officer’., ‘So‘ he said, ‘you are an officer.” So I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh right”, he says, ‘you’ll be hungry and thirsty no doubt,’ he said, ‘I’ll go and get you something to eat and drink.’ And he went off and came back with a slice of black bread which was horrible.
Ahum.
LR: And a glass of lager which I’ve often said since was the best glass of lager I’ve ever had [laughs] it was, it was lovely and then from then on he and I got on very well together. He started talking about the rations and things like that. He said, ‘Oh the people, the people in England they’re rationed,’ he said, ‘they haven’t got any food. I said, ‘don’t talk rubbish.’ I said, ‘of course they’ve got, of course they’ve got food.’
TJ: Ahum
LR: He said, ‘But you’re rationed for your food.’ I said, ‘Oh that’s just a precautionary measure,’ I said, You want your pound of sugar, or you want two pound of sugar you go in and buy it [laughs] a quarter or half pound of butter yes, oh yeah, just go in and buy it,’ I said, ‘the rationing’ I says. ‘oh yeah it’s a precautionary measure.’ I said, ‘it’s your propaganda people that are trying, are telling you this.’
TJ: Do you think he believed you?
LR: I had him doubting. I like to think I had him doubting [laughs].
TJ: [laughs] So -
LR: So -
TJ: What sort of thing did they, did they try and get information out of you?
LR: Oh yes. Yes.
TJ: What sort of things did they want to know?
LR: Well while, while I was in, unfortunately the, the central interrogation centre for RAF personnel was in Frankfurt where I’d been shot down so I was sent straight to, to this interrogation centre Dulag Luft and put into solitary confinement. This was a psychological ploy that the Germans employed because when you’ve been in solitary confinement for a while when you come out you’ll talk your head off.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: You know and while I was in solitary confinement the chap came and said he was from the Red Cross and he wished to get news that I was safe to my relatives in Britain so if I’d just give him a few details and so he asked for my name, number, rank which was normal and then he said what squadron were you on. ‘I can’t tell you that’ I said, and then he started to ask me what aircraft were you flying, things like this. And this, he wasn’t Red Cross at all.
TJ: Yes I think you started to suspect he wasn’t Red Cross.
LR: Yes so this was one way of getting but then of course after a while they took you off for interrogation and they started asking me all sorts of questions. I gave them name, number and rank and wouldn’t give them anything else and the [noise off]. Oh that’s the post. They said, ‘Right, well, tell me,’ he says, ‘How was Squadron Leader Parks getting in to his new rank?’ Squadron Leader Parks was a flight commander on the, on the um squadron.
TJ: Your squadron.
LR: My squadron, yes. He’d been a flight lieutenant up to the day before I was shot down. He was now squadron leader. He’d been promoted to squadron leader.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And they knew.
TJ: Interesting.
LR: Yeah. And he then he shot several other little items to me and you know the idea was to shock you into saying, well and in fact he actually did say yeah we know all about you, you know. So I said well if you know all about me then you know I’m not a spy. This is what they were implying that you must be, you could be a spy you see. If you know all about me you know I’m not a spy and anyway I went off and I went back into the cell and then because it was nearly Christmas instead of being in solitary confinement for about seven days or a week or something like that or ten days they let us out early on Christmas Eve and put us, all the prisoners they’d taken, put us in a big room all in together and err -
TJ: Were you all British? Or
LR: Yes.
TJ: Other nationalities? Mostly British were you?
LR: Mostly British yes. Oh excuse me
TJ: So this was about 1943. Is that right?
LR: This was 1943. This was December 1943. As I say it was just before Christmas
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And then shortly after that we were transferred from there to Stalug Luft III. Crossed Germany in cattle trucks.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And that wasn’t a very pleasant experience.
TJ: I’ll bet.
LR: Because you get locked in these cattle trucks and there’s no sanitation or anything like that and most unpleasant.
TJ: How long did that take? That journey?
LR: That took just over a day. I can’t, I can’t really remember.
TJ: No. No.
LR: But you know the time went by.
TJ: Ahum. And then you pitched up.
[New person arrives in room interrupting interview]
TJ: So then you got to Stalag Luft III.
LR: Stalag Luft III.
TJ: Three. And did your heart sink when you saw it?
LR: Well it was more or less what we expected.
TJ: Was it?
LR: Yeah. We were greeted by all the prisoners that were already there. It was a new compound which I said before and they’d sent, I think we were the first, we were the first actual prisoners, new prisoners to go in there. They’d sent a group of prisoners from the other Stalags, from the other compounds to open this one up to get it ready for us for the new influx of prisoners and they were all old hands. A lot of them were people that the Germans suspected of trying to escape and err =
TJ: And yes which we all know from the film The Great Escape which is -
LR: At the cinema.
TJ: Was from that same prisoner of war camp.
LR: The main one was Wing Commander Tuck, you know, the great Battle of Britain flying ace. He was one of them.
TJ: Did he, was he one of the ones that escaped?
LR: No he was one of the ones who was in the camp when we got there.
TJ: Oh right.
LR: He was one of the ones who’d been transferred because of his activities I think. So
TJ: I understand that as you were officers they didn’t give you any work to do.
LR: No.
TJ: So you would spend your whole time trying to work out how to get out and working on escape plans.
LR: Well yes unfortunately the camp that we were in, the compound that we were in was all sand underneath and water. We tried digging a tunnel and we ran into water and we we couldn’t get a successful tunnel going under because of the water.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: But it did have one outcome. A tale which I’ve told a few times. The, we had a wireless. Now this wireless -
TJ: Where did you get that from?
LR: It was made up of parts. We had some very clever men in there you know.
TJ: Sounds like it yeah.
LR: And um it was taken to bits every evening, every day and then at six, oh to get the news at 6 o’clock at night it was assembled in secret somewhere with [?] all over the place.
TJ: Ahum
LR: And we got the 6 o’clock news from the BBC and then it was taken to bits again and the parts distributed among various men so if any part was discovered we could perhaps replace it and they wouldn’t find the whole lot. So this happened. There was a vital part went missing and we had these goons, the Germans, we called them goons, we had them, we were friendly with them more or less and we used to bribe them with cigarettes and soap to bring stuff in for us, odd little items like you know bring an egg in, a couple of eggs or something like this. Some onions or, odd things they’d bring in. So we approached one of these and said would they bring this wireless part in. No, no too dangerous, you know, so I must explain that some of these guards were special. They had, they went around the camp, they didn’t do any actual guarding. What they did, they went around the camp looking for trouble. They would walk into a room and look around to see if everybody, nobody was doing anything clandestine you know.
TJ: Right.
LR: And so we approached one of these and if they found something important they were given a week’s leave and promotion so we approached one of them and said could he bring this wireless part in and he said, ‘No, no.’ So we said you show us where, you bring that part in and we’ll show you where there’s a tunnel. So oh alright. Oh, ‘yes, yes.’
TJ: Bribery.
LR: So off he went see and we bodged this tunnel up, the one that had flooded, bodged it up like the real thing and showed him this when he came in with the part, showed him it, he went off and brought the camp commandant and the camp commandant was a recent addition, of course, to the camp. He was a new one and he came in and he was all cock a hoop oh he was going to find us and the usual sort of palaver and so he was happy, the goon got his week’s leave and he was happy, we got our wireless part so we were happy so everybody was happy all around. [laughs]
TJ: That’s a lovely story isn’t it? And I expect he got his promotion as well.
LR: Yes.
TJ: Yes yeah so I mean life in the prisoner of war camp it must have been a bit boring was it?
LR: I was fortunate in as much as I played guitar.
TJ: Oh right.
LR: And we had a camp band. A very good camp band in actual fact. We had some very accomplished musicians. The leader of the band used to play with Billy Cotton.
TJ: Really?
LR: Before the war, yes. He was lead trumpeter with Billy Cotton and we had some other good, really good musicians and when I first got there I was in hospital with my knee for a while and the same night that I was shot down our wing commander was shot down and his navigator who I was friendly with was in our camp and he was actually saving a bed for me in the room that he was in and he told this band leader that I played piano, which I did, for sing songs.
TJ: Ahum
LR: Sort of pub piano type playing you know, and I’d taken lessons and that but I wasn’t very good. So the band leader came to see me and said you know, he said, the pianist is not very happy in the job, you know, would you take over and I said well I’m not a band pianist, I said. I’m a pub pianist, I play for singsongs and things like that. I said no. I said, but I do play guitar and he said oh we’ve got two guitarists in the band now so he says you know that’s it and then the next day a gentleman came to see me, West Indian and he said. Oh he said I understand you play guitar, you know, and I said yes and he said, band guitar and I said yes. And he said well I’m the guitarist lead guitarist in the band but I don’t like playing in the band very much he’s says I’m more for calypsos and West Indian rhythms and he said if you would like to take over in the band he said I’d happily hand the guitar to you but I would like to borrow it every now and then just to keep in practice you know and I said well that’s fair enough then, that’s good and so I went into the band and that gentleman was Cy Grant.
TJ: I know that name.
LR: Have you heard of Cy Grant?
TJ: I remember Cy Grant.
LR: It was Cy Grant.
TJ: Wow.
LR: And occasionally I would take the other guitarist’s guitar, Cy would take mine and we would go and find a quiet spot to sit and I would show him the band rhythms and he would show me calypso rhythms and we’d have a bit of a sing song together but you know with playing but it was a case of how long you could do that without somebody coming along oh that’s great, can you sing this? Do you know such and such a tune? So it absolutely took -
TJ: When you had, when you played the band did the guards come and watch as well? Come and listen?
LR: Who?
TJ: The guards.
LR: Yes, they did. They did. They used to invite the commandant to the band shows that we did.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Oh he was invited. We used to do, we used to put shows on regularly and we would invite them along and very often some of the sketches lampooned the Germans and they laughed as much as anybody [laughs]
TJ: Really.
LR: Oh aye yeah.
TJ: So they do have a sense of humour.
LR: Oh yes, yes.
TJ: Did you -
LR: A funny sense of humour but -
TJ: Yeah.
LR: They would laugh at some -
TJ: Just out of interest did you have any contact with Cy Grant after the war was over?
LR: After the war was over I went to see him. You know he was touring with oh, Stop the World I Want To Get Off. That -
TJ: Ahum.
LR: That show. He was going to Nottingham and I took my daughter.
TJ: Yeah.
LR: She was about sixteen or seventeen at the time and oh she was absolutely thrilled to bits and I went and saw him there at the, went to the stage door and he came out and we had, we had a good long chat.
TJ: Lovely.
LR: And another incident with that was while I was at work I was telling someone about this and this chap came to me one day he said I was in such and such a station he said, I just forget which it was and Cy Grant was on the station, he said, so I went to speak to him and I went and told him that I worked with you. He said, you know, he told him that I work with Les Rutherford and Cy said, ‘Oh Les how’s he doing?’ and you know all this sort of thing and this chap thought he would say Les Rutherford, who’s he?
TJ: Yeah. That’s great that’s great. Interesting. So we’d better go back a bit um Stalag Luft III and how long, how many months were you there altogether?
LR: I got there in about the January.
TJ: January ’44.
LR: Of ’44 and -
TJ: And you were liberated by the Russians.
LR: We were liberated by the Russians
TJ: When would that have been then?
LR: In April of ‘45.
TJ: Right so -
LR: So just over a year.
TJ: Just over a year.
LR: Just over a year.
TJ: About fourteen months.
LR: And then they held us for a good long while.
TJ: Really? They wouldn’t let you go.
LR: They wouldn’t let us go no. I don’t know why.
TJ: But then were you held in the same sort of conditions? Did they, did they take over the role of jailers?
LR: More or less. More or less. When they, when they took over, they promised us all sorts of things. Oh we were going to get wireless sets and food and all sorts of things but none of it materialised. We still relied heavily on Red Cross parcels.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And um which weren’t very forthcoming in actual fact because I mean the German transport was in chaos so um no we were still virtually prisoners of war.
TJ: So when you did leave, was it organised? Did you all get on coaches and leave the area and -
LR: Coaches? [laughs]
TJ: [laughs] Right. I mean buses.
LR: No.
TJ: Or cattle trucks.
LR: That’s more like it. The um the Russians took us in their lorries to the, to a river. I think it was the Elbe. To a bridge. We got out of the lorries, walked over the bridge and there were American lorries waiting on the other side and the American lorries took us to their camp. It was an old German airfield and we had to wait there till, there were a lot more people there of course a lot more prisoners and we had to wait our turn for an aircraft to take us back home. In the meantime we were living off American rations and that it was absolutely wonderful.
TJ: I bet it was
LR: We got in there and oh white bread. White bread and bacon and eggs things like that.
TJ: Did they have any chocolate?
LR: Chocolate oh yes and films and you know, everything.
TJ: So you were quite happy with that?
LR: We had about, about a week there. We were itching to get home.
TJ: I bet yeah
LR: We had about a week there and then they were flying the Dakota aircraft from there to Brussels and we landed in Brussels and then they said, there some official came, and said if you want to spend the night in Brussels and go and see the town there’s money available to give you, to give you pay. Give you money. But if you want to go home there are some aircraft, a few aircraft waiting on the airfield and they’ll take you. I opted to go home and got onto a, it was a Lincoln bomber actually, the sort of bigger version of the Lancaster and they flew us back to this country.
TJ: Where did you land? Do you remember?
LR: I think it was Cosford but I’m not, I’m never quite, I’m never quite been sure about that.
TJ: Ahum
LR: I think it was Cosford but we had misgivings about what our welcome was going to be because we’d had two or three letters had been published. We used to have a camp newspaper and we used to publish excerpts from letters.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And um some of them were like one in particular I remember was a girl who wrote and said that she was getting married and she said, ‘I’d rather marry a 1944 hero then a 1942 coward.
TJ: What did she mean by that exactly?
LR: We were cowards. We were cowards because we were prisoners of war.
TJ: War.
LR: We’d given up you see.
TJ: Well she obviously didn’t know what she was talking about.
LR: There were several letters in that vein.
TJ: That must have been devastating.
LR: It was.
TJ: For you.
LR: So as I said we wondered what the reception would be when we got back home. We needn’t have worried because we stepped on to the tarmac and there were a crowd of WAAFs waiting for us. It was about, I think about 10 o’clock or so at night. It was still light of course it was June [by the time it got quite dark] and we sort of marched across the tarmac with a WAAF on each arm and went in there to be, to be fed and the other nice thing was there’d been a dance on and the band were just packing up by the time we’d eaten and what not it was about 11 o’clock and the band was just packing up and somebody told them about us being there and they put their gear back up together again and played for another hour so we could have a dance.
TJ: Oh how lovely.
LR: Yeah.
TJ: People can be lovely can’t they?
LR: So that was, that was nice.
TJ: And did you, so you were around Cosford area you think.
LR: Yes.
TJ: And then how long before you were allowed to actually go home?
LR: About the next day I think. Very quickly. The, we had experienced German, Russian, American and now English efficiency and the English was far, far superior to all the others.
TJ: Well that’s refreshing to hear.
LR: There was no red tape. We were given, we were deloused, put a tube put down with powder and stuff and deloused and we were given passes and things and shoved on the train and off home like. Just like that.
TJ: So was that the end of the war for you or did you have to be debriefed or anything like that?
LR: Oh I had to be debriefed. Yes
TJ: Before you went home or did you come back for that?
LR: I think we came back for that.
TJ: How long did you have at home then?
LR: Oh I was home for about six weeks or something like that.
TJ: I bet your parents were pleased to see you.
LR: Not particularly. They [laughs] no don’t get that wrong. On the way home, when I was stationed down here I had an aunt and uncle in York and my aunt was the pastry cook in the De Grey Rooms at York which were very famous reception rooms and I used to stop at York, get off the train and go and see her, go and have a word with her. I used to go down the back way in to the kitchens and she would get a meal on straightaway. The bacon and eggs went on as soon as she saw me and then I would pop back and get the next train up to Newcastle and so this time I did the same. She sat me down for the meal and then she said, ‘How long is it since you heard from home?’ Oh I said I hadn’t heard since about you know about the middle of last year. I said letters weren’t coming through. So she said, ‘Oh you won’t know then.’ Now, I knew then that my mother had died because she was seriously ill with cancer.
TJ: Oh how sad. How sad for you to find out like that.
LR: Yes but at least it prepared me.
TJ: Yes.
LR: For getting, for going home. I was able to get myself composed a bit.
TJ: Yeah.
LR: And, of course, while I’d been away my mother and father were separated. So my father wasn’t there. He was away somewhere else. So -
TJ: A bit of an anti-climax for you coming home then.
LR: It was.
TJ: Not what you’d expected.
LR: And the -
TJ: Not what you’d envisaged.
LR: And the thing was, you know I said we’d had the business?
TJ: Yeah.
LR: Well my mother had appointed two so called friends as executors and they’d fleeced the whole lot and the place was bankrupt so I didn’t have a very good homecoming.
TJ: No.
LR: Really.
TJ: What about your siblings? Your younger brothers and sisters.
LR: Well my younger brother was um, he was killed in the RAF. The next sister down was, she had a mental breakdown. She had epilepsy I think although they didn’t say that at the time.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: In those days and she was in a home. The next sister was just turned eighteen and she’d joined the WAAFs, not the WAAFs, the WRNS and the younger sister was trying to run the business and that was where these executors stopped in and took over. So I had quite a mess to sort out when I got home.
TJ: I bet you did. Yeah.
LR: And I had two younger brothers. I had four brothers and three sisters. That was right. Not the other way but
TJ: And were they still at school.
LR: They were still at school but without any supervision or anything like that they’d been allowed to run wild and one of them was actually on probation. He’d acted as a lookout for some kids that were burgling somewhere and he’d been caught. He was on probation. Well I nearly went mad over this you know. I went, I went up to see the welfare officer eventually. I couldn’t do anything with them. They were absolutely wild. They’d got in with this wild crown. One was ten. One was ten, the other one was eight and they were absolutely wild so um as I say, no one was eleven that was it, eleven and ten, eleven and ten. I went to see the welfare officer and said look if I don’t get these kids out of this environment they’re just going to end up in jail. I said what can I do? Have you got any advice? I said could I send them to a private school somewhere away so they said well you couldn’t afford it. So with the fees for the school but he said but there is a scheme started by the old Prince of Wales for a farm school but it means sending them either to Canada or Australia and he said it means that if you sent them you probably wouldn’t see them again cause in those days the travel wasn’t what it is now so you probably wouldn’t ever see them again so he said it’s up to you.
TJ: So what did you do?
LR: I sent them.
TJ: Where?
LR: To Canada.
TJ: Canada.
LR: And they both did remarkably well.
TJ: So it was a good thing to do.
LR: Yeah the, the elder one, he joined the air force. Went as a navigator in the air force and then became one of Canada’s leading aviation artists. And the other one he joined the air force and actually he was a mechanic with the Canadian equivalent of the Red Arrows.
TJ: And did you see them again?
LR: Well I’ll come to that. And he became a master carver. You know they’re great on these wild imitation ducks in Canada. You know where you’ve got to make them sort of sit on the water and everything like that and he won prizes all over the place and became a master carver and he did some wonderful carvings of birds and things like this and he used to send me photographs of them. And he got married and then divorced and then he got married again and the elder one phoned me up and he said, ‘How do you feel about being best man for George?’ This was the younger one. At his wedding? So I said, “Oh I don’t know I really can’t afford the fares over there at this time. “ He said, well he said if you come over he said I’ll pay your fare over, so.
TJ: What year was that?
LR: 1985. So I said well I will have to talk it over with my wife first because I won’t come without her and we’ll obviously have to raise her fare, you know and we’d only just moved in to this house in actual fact or were in the process of moving. So anyway, my stepson heard about this and said, ‘You must go and I will pay my mum’s fare.’ So both fares were paid for so we were very lucky because we were struggling a bit I must admit. Anyway we went over there and they kept it away from my younger brother. They didn’t tell him that I was going and the day after we got there they’d arranged a party there what they have in a local pub sort of thing a little bit different from ours well they’d arranged a meal there and it was my nephew’s 21s t birthday and they said it was a party for him for his birthday. So they got there, all bar my wife and myself and my nephew and they were all sat down and the elder brother John lent over to him and said, ‘I’ve got some news for you.’ he said, ‘I can’t be the best man at your wedding.’ Well the wedding was the following Saturday and he said oh God why not ,why not and by that time I was walking to the end of the table and he said well I thought maybe this guy could do it instead. ‘Jesus Christ it’s Les.’ He leapt over the table and -
TJ: Lovely.
LR: It was. A very emotional moment actually.
TJ: I bet it was yeah.
LR: It was good. It was good yeah.
TJ: Was that the first time you’d seen him since.
LR: The first time I’d since him since.
TJ: 19
LR: 1946 yeah. Nearly forty years.
TJ: Did you write all this time?
LR: Oh yes I got regular reports from various farm schools about their education and what they were doing and general behaviour and things like that and then when they reached sixteen they were fostered out to families and they took up reputation, took up a positions not necessarily farming but took a job. As it happens they went into the air force and
TJ: And you corresponded all those forty years.
LR: Yeah.
TJ: With them direct. Yeah. Actually to be honest we ought to go back a bit. Actually Les just back pedal a bit to before you were shot down over Germany to your time with Bomber Command. So how many I think they call them sorties don’t they? How many did you fly? Do you have a number?
LR: Yes. I flew, I was shot down on my twenty third.
TJ: Twenty third. Right. And was that a good number?
LR: Yes fairly good. Fairly good.
TJ: And were you always going over, was it always over Germany?
LR: Not always. I did some over Italy.
TJ: Oh right yeah.
LR: And a couple in , a couple in the beginning I did in France over the u boat pens.
TJ: Yeah.
LR: And a couple of mine laying trips as well.
TJ: So, do you keep in touch with old comrades? Apart from Cy Grant?
LR: Well of course he died.
TJ: Yes.
LR: Yes I was, the only one that I was really in touch with was our old rear gunner. But I wasn’t with my own crew when I was shot down.
TJ: Oh.
LR: I was flying, the bomb aimer had got sick and I flew in his place.
TJ: Right.
LR: And got shot down. So, which happens. But my old rear gunner he finished his second tour actually and he went to live down in Budleigh Salterton in Devon, near Exeter and we used to caravan, my wife and I, and we used to take the caravan and we used to take the caravan down there and go and visit him and also when we got rid of the caravan we used to go self catering and we’d make a point of going once a year down to Devon and seeing Frank.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Now when I stopped driving of course I couldn’t go anymore and we sort of just used to get odd phone calls and that was all and then gradually his phone calls began to get odd. His wife died and from then on he began to get bit funny and he began to get dementia I’m quite sure and we were nearly frightened to call him up because we’d called him up and he didn’t know who we were, you know.
TJ: Oh.
LR: He said, ‘Les? Who’s Les?’ You know, and he didn’t know who we were and then quite suddenly out of the blue we got a call from him quite lucid, chatting away quite merrily so we don’t know what to make of it.
TJ: What did you do for work after, after the war?
LR: Well I tried a couple of jobs. Travelling. Took a job travelling the whole of the south of England from the Humber down and that’s how I came to Lincoln. My first wife was Lincoln. We came to Lincoln as a centre so she could be at home and whatnot because I should be travelling a lot. And the travelling, I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t -
TJ: What were you selling or something?
LR: Fancy goods.
TJ: Oh right yeah.
LR: I didn’t get on with it. I wasn’t a salesman.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And then I took a job with Lincolnshire only, with United Dominions Trusts the merchant bankers and I wasn’t doing too bad with that but then they sent for me at head office and said they were going to move me down to Worthing. And I said well I don’t want to go to Worthing. They said oh you know you’ve got to move we’ve made our minds up and I said well don’t I have a say then?
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And they said, oh no you’ve got to go. I said, oh I said, now, I said, when I was in the services they said I had to go away then but since I came out of the services I said I do what I want to do.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And they said well it’s a case of either move or resign so I said, ‘Right, I resign as of now.’ Which I did. So on the way down I was going down the lift with the head clerk and he said I should think again because they’ll not change or anything like that. He says, what has happened is one of the directors sons has come out of the army he says and Lincoln is a rich prospect for him he said and they want him to take it over so I said I’m not having anything to do with that.
Ahum.
LR: So I came back. I was on the dole for about oh I should think five or six weeks. I applied to go back in to the air force. Didn’t hear anything and I was absolutely fed up. Somebody told me they wanted men on machines at Clayton Dewandre’s, a local firm. So I thought right well I’ve got to do something and I went down there. They trained me on a machine and I worked there for the rest of my working life. About -
TJ: What were they making?
LR: Mainly brakes. Power brakes and car heaters.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Mostly.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: Power brakes for lorries and things like that before power brakes came in to cars and things.
TJ: So you told me you’ve been married twice and how many children have you got?
LR: I had one.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: And my wife had one. I had a daughter Marion who unfortunately died about six years ago and my wife’s son is doing very well. He’s the chief engineer up at the, chief maintenance engineer at the university. He’s got a good job. His wife is a midwife sister at the hospital working her socks off.
TJ: Right. So do you have any thoughts on the way Bomber Command was treated after the war? Did that -
LR: Oh yes.
TJ: Is that something that struck a chord with you?
LR: Yes it did indeed. We were completely ignored after the war. When Churchill made his speech of congratulation, thanking the people he thanked all the armed forces except Bomber Command and all the chiefs of staff all got knighthoods and what not. Sir Arthur Harris got nothing and we were absolutely ostracised and people called us gangsters and, you know, air gangsters and all this sort of thing and we were absolutely horrified.
TJ: I’ll bet.
LR: In fact I say now even the government can’t give us even now but they’ve been forced more or less in to giving us a clasp as recognition for Bomber Command you know the clasp that goes on the medal.
TJ: Yes.
LR: It’s a cheap bit of tin. You know the clasps that they have on medals -
TJ: Yes.
LR: They’re usually nice silver sort of things engraved, all the lot.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: This is a cheap bit of well it just looks like a cheap bit of brass.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: With Bomber Command written on it, stamped on it.
TJ: Why exactly, I don’t know too much about it but why do you think Bomber Command -
LR: Largely because of Dresden.
TJ: Ahum.
LR: You know because of Dresden was bombed after the -
TJ: Yeah.
LR: But then so were a lot of other cities.
TJ: Coventry.
LR: They said Dresden was such a lovely city and all that sort of thing but Dresden, they bombed it because Stalin asked them to because Dresden was the main jumping off point for all the troops from Germany going on to the eastern front.
TJ: Yeah, carry on.
LR: And also there were a couple of munitions factories there. So in actual fact there was a legitimate target but they were saying, what these purists are saying is that there was no need to bomb it to such an extent. After the war, as what we did.
TJ: You were following orders.
LR: Just following orders. I mean.
TJ: Yeah.
LR: Churchill ordered it, he actually ordered the bombing when all’s said and done. When Stalin requested it it still had to go through Churchill hadn’t it?
TJ: Of course.
LR: And he just washed his hands of us altogether.
TJ: Not good. It must have -
LR: But members of Bomber Command feel very bitter about that.
TJ: I’m sure. Well thank you very much for sharing all these memories with me Les.
LR: Quite alright.
TJ: I think I can finish here and say goodbye.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ARutherfordL150605
PRutherfordRL1501
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Les Rutherford. One
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:18:12 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending OH summary
Description
An account of the resource
During this interview Les describes his experience as a despatch rider in France in 1940 before escaping from Dunkirk and returning to the United Kingdom, eventually joining the Royal Air Force. He also describes his training in South Africa and his experience of being shot down, interrogated and imprisoned in Stalag Luft III.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tina James
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-05
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
South Africa
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Oberursel
Poland--Żagań
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943-12-20
1944
1945
50 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bomb aimer
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Dulag Luft
entertainment
Lancaster
Manchester
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Cosford
RAF Finningley
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Wigsley
Stalag Luft 3
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/188/3512/PWardC-M1609.2.jpg
f90d4fbaaa1556accc59969f06af006b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/188/3512/AWardC-M160219.2.mp3
fd12fd656fedc1f1c9c5db125ddaf11e
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
Ward, Charles and Margaret
C W Ward
M Ward
Margaret Pratt
M Pratt
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with cipher operator, Sergeant Charles William Ward (7015946, British Army) and wireless operator, Margaret Ward née Pratt (17546, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry). Both served in the Special Operation Executive in North Africa, Italy and Greece. The collection also contains a diary, British Army paperwork, and four photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Charles and Margaret Ward and was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-18
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Ward, C-M
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chis Brockbank and its Friday the 19th of February 2016 and I’m in Aylesbury with Charles and Margaret Ward, both of whom were in the SOE, the organisation people weren’t supposed to know about but, er, was dealing with clandestine work not just in Europe but elsewhere. And I’m going to start talking with Charles with his earliest recollections and how he came to join the SOE and what he did. So Charles what’s the starter on that?
CW: I was born in Yorkshire in a mining village and, um, eventually went to school at, a grammar school, and eventually I — there was no, very much work around up there but eventually an uncle and aunt came to visit us, who lived in Dartford in Kent, and they said where he worked it was a printing firm in Dartford, and where he worked they needed an apprentice, and I was fifteen at the time and they said if I would like to I could come and live with them and be trained as a compositor. So, I jumped at the chance and so I moved down to Dartford in Kent and, er, was being trained as a compositor. When the war clouds were gathering around, er, the Government decided that twenty-year-olds would be called up and trained ready for war and I received papers to join the Royal Artillery on Salisbury Plains but before the due date to report I was — war was declared — and I was called up to the London Irish Rifles and had to report to a station in London and, um, reported there. From there, from there we then trained onto the London Underground and taken to Southfield Station in South West London, um, marched down the road to Barkers Sports Ground, next to Wimbledon Tennis courts, where we were to do all our square bashing and training. And this happened for several weeks, er, before we were fully trained and then from then on we were stationed in many parts in England, various places, and eventually the battalion was training new recruits to go and be transferred out to other units and, um, I got fed up with the repetition that this was giving us [slight laugh] and by that time the Bat— the Battle of Britain had started and they were running short of pilots so they said they’d like volunteers from the Army to join the Air Force, so I volunteered. I was taken down to London, interviewed and passed all the tests and they said, ‘We’ll train you as a pilot. Go back to your unit and then you’ll hear from us.’ Having got back to my unit the, um, we was — then a few weeks later I — they stopped all transfers to the Air Force. We were taken up to Scotland to join a special unit being formed of tanks and artillery. This was prior to being shipped out to North Africa. So we went out to North Africa and landed at Algiers. From there we moved forward up into Tunisia where we had over a year of fighting the Germans in North Africa. It was quite a horrendous time really. We lost quite a few of our people and I have been out since to visit the graves of three of my men that got killed out there. And then, stop, I don’t know where I’ve got to.
CB: So we’ve talked about Charles joining in 1940. Then he moved around a lot he said. What, what were you doing in that time specifically?
CW: We were doing guard duty on airfields and RAF records office and things like that. I distinctly remember my twenty-first birthday was on guard duty at the RAF offices in the snow [laugh] and, er, after that we were training up people being drafted in to us and then once they were trained they were drafted out to other units. And this was getting too boring so I volunteered for the RAF and got accepted and, having got accepted, they then decided that our unit would join a special unit being assembled in Scotland ready to go out to North Africa of tanks and artillery.
CB: So which year are we in now?
CW: That’s 1942.
CB: Right. Operation Torch.
CW: Yes.
CB: Right, OK. And where did you land?
CW: We landed in Algiers. It was a troop carrier just in, in the port in Algiers. We were then trained and taken up the coast to towards Tunisia where we were then taken into the mountains, er, as a defence ready for attacking the Germans.
CB: And were you at this stage on tanks or were you on anti-tank weapons or what were you doing, infantry?
CW: We didn’t see the tanks in, on that occasion apart from on the plain, the Gudlat [?] plain in front of us. You could see the tanks moving but we were stationary until we did an attack one day on hill 286 and, um, we had we had to move from our position in broad daylight to get into positon to start an attack the next morning at dawn and this was in full view of the enemy and I said to my people, ‘As soon as we get in the middle of this area we’re gonna — all hell will break loose. We shall be bombed.’ Which we were and the only casualty we had was our platoon commander got shrapnel in his back and we eventually dropped into a wadi, which I thought would be quite safe, and we moved down this wadi and — to get to the position where we would form up for the attack the next morning. And, er, moving down this wadi what I heard from nowhere, I don’t understand where it came from, which is probably my guardian angel, one word which said, ‘Run.’ So I shouted to my chaps, ‘Come on!’ Ran down the wadi, turned the bend and no sooner got round the bend then a shell fell right in the wadi, injured three of my people. I went back, patched them up as best I could and stayed with them until the stretcher bearers came, er, then continued on to do the attack the following morning. The following morning we did this attack, um, because we’d lost our platoon commander the, the other two platoons were in advance and we were in reserve and we went over the hill and nothing happened; over the second hill, nothing happened; over the third hill and all hell broke loose and they, they were just machine-gunned. We lost about seventy-five per cent of our personnel during that battle [sniff] and then we were formed up in, dropped into the wadi again, for protection, stayed there overnight but at dawn the next morning there was a counter attack, so we just had to get out of it and, er, we all retreated and after that battle we were rested, er, and [sniff] can you stop a minute? [background noise]
CB: Right, we’re just getting a bit more detail on this [clears throat].
CW: When the attack went in and the two platoons in front were machine-gunned, um, the rest of us were left in a large depression in the ground being shelled and I suddenly discovered with us was a, a Royal Artillery observation officer with a wireless set and he, he ordered me to the top of the hill to find out where the gun was firing from. So, off I went to the top of the hill, saw that it was coming from a farmhouse down on the plain, got back to where our positon was and found out a shell had dropped exactly where I had been lying.
CB: Wow.
CW: So, um, that was —
MW: Smokescreen.
CW: Yeah. He then ordered a smokescreen and we were then able to get back to the wadi and then —
CB: He got his guns to fire a smokescreen?
CW: Yeah. He radioed back and got the guns to put a smokescreen down so that we could get out. So, off we went and back to this wadi and from the wadi we had the counter-attack. So we had to retreat and reform up eventually with only twenty-five per cent of the battalion.
CB: Amazing. OK. So then you rested a bit, then what?
CW: We, we were rested and re-enforced and we did an exercise, which was a ten mile march and, er, did a mock attack of house clearing, during which I banged a knee, which had been damaged in football previously, which began to swell and we did a ten mile walk, marched back and half way back I was limping with this knee problem. The CO drew up in a truck beside me and said, ‘What’s your trouble?’ [slight laugh] And I said, ‘I just banged it and, you know, it’s swollen up.’ He said, ‘On the truck. Report sick when you get back.’ Which I did and, er, we had hot and cold compresses and [unclear] on it, which had no effect whatsoever and eventually they said, ‘Well, you’re no good to be infantry. We’ll have to down-grade you.’ So, from being A1 I was downgraded to B1, sent back to a transit camp at Philippeville. There with — I couldn’t walk about because it was painful, I had nothing to read and it was so boring [slight laugh] I was just going mad. I then was transferred to another transit camp at Algiers, just outside Algiers, and same thing, nothing happening, nobody took any notice of us. We just stagnated there until one day on the notice board there came a notice to say that an education unit would be arriving and anybody could volunteer and they would try and find you something to do. So, I was top of the list and they came. Education test in the morning: English, maths, geometry [?], starting from the simplest and going up as far as you can, even Pythagoras and beyond if you could. And whilst they marked the papers in the afternoon they would give us a mechanical aptitude test. They threw you a locking piece and said, ‘Put that together and then you’re going for an interview.’ And, um, the officer said to me, ‘What would you like to do?’ And I said, ‘I’d heard they were starting an Army newspaper in Algiers and I was a compositor. I would go on the army newspaper.’ And he just laughed and said, ‘I don’t think there’s not much chance of that. What else would you like to do?’ So I said, ‘I don’t care as long as I do something. I’m going mad just doing nothing.’ He said, ‘I think you’d make a good cipher operator’. I said, ‘Suits me.’ [slight laugh] A week later I’m called into the office and given a move— moving order. There were six of us on this moving order and I walked outside, quickly looked to see where we were going to — no destination. So I shot into the office and said, ‘There’s no destination on here.’ ‘You’re being picked up,’ he said. So, the driver came and I said, ‘Where are we going?’ And he said, ‘I’m not allowed to tell you.’ [laugh] So, I wondered what I’d landed myself in for. Off we went in the truck and the other side of Algiers it was a, a large holiday home complex built on the sands, villas all on the sands, being surrounded by barbed wire, guards on the gate, and in we went. Going inside there was Army, Navy, Air Force, civilians, and everybody including girls [augh] and this was a radio station which was — belonged to SOE, working to the agents in France and Italy and Yugoslavia. There I was trained as a cipher operator and worked there for quite — a year, worked there for a year. During that time the sergeants’ mess decided that for entertainment we would do dinner dances about every fortnight and invite the FANY girls who were on the camp. They were radio operators and secretaries and, um, there we had these dinner dances. I teamed up with a Margaret, a different Margaret, I teamed up with a Margaret as a dancing partner until such time she went on leave and then I teamed up with Margaret, who’s now my wife, and we had a year working together on the same camp until such time I got a moving order to say I had to go to Yugoslavia. We exchanged addresses and said, ‘If you’re my way pop in, you know, it would be good to see you.’ And, er, off I went to the airport. We had to fly to Bari, then down to Taranto and then get the boat over to Yugoslavia. Having got to the airport there was the most violent thunderstorm. The plane couldn’t take off so a twenty-four-hour delay. Took off the next night. Halfway across the Med, er, one of the twin engine, one of the engines of this twin engine Dakota, started misfiring so the pilot said, ‘We’ll never make it over the mountains to Bari. We’ll have to land Naples.’ So, down we went to Naples, another delay. Eventually we got to Bari, walked into the office in Bari and they said, ‘Oh, sorry. We’ve sent people from here to Yugoslavia. You’ll have to take their place here.’ So, er, settled in at Bari. So, a month later I’m de-ciphering a message which said the following FANYs will be joining your unit so I quickly looked down and fou— found Margaret Pratt was on the list. And I quickly made contact with Margaret and we had another year together in Torre al Mare, just below Bari, in Italy. There we got engaged. Can you stop there?
CB: So, we’ve talked about you being in Algiers and then going to Bari in Italy. At this time you’re a trained cipher operator but what exactly did a cipher operator do?
CW: He made plain language into codes which could be transmitted by wireless and we started off with the agent had, um, a book, a book and we had to copy exactly the same and they, um, used pages and lines and the number of words in the line on squared paper. And then the A in the line was numbered 1 and second A, 2 and all through the alphabet. So we had numbers on top of the lines and then you read down and wrote across for a second identical one. So it’s a double transposition and, um, this was then transmitted by wireless and the agent could reverse the process the other end to get the plain language out but it had to be exactly right because if they made a mistake or if you made a mistake it was indecipherable. So, we had a number of indec— indecipherables obviously and when we weren’t busy with doing traffic at the time we had to work on the indecipherables to see — and we got to know that some agents did certain things so we could remember and do exactly the same to get them back to plain language. And then eventually we moved on to one-time pads which were figures, er, which were just ad-lib figures, you know, nothing about them. So, you had a one-time pad and the agent had a one-time pad and they had theirs on silk, printed on silk, which was easily got rid of if, er, if they had to if they were captured.
CB: So, here we are in a situation where you’re in the home station and the agent is, in this case, Yugoslavia, how did they get out there, the agents, and the, other staff?
CW: They had submarines and boats, um, which went across at night and this is one of the things that we decipherers had to send the night recognition signals and the places where they were going to be landed so that was — and if, if they didn’t get the recognition signals by flashlight they would— they wouldn’t row ashore.
CB: Right, and to which extent were aircraft used in this job from Italy?
CW: They, they were used as well to drop agents in, er, mostly dropping them rather than landing them. All the landing I think was done by sea.
CB: So, would they take any equipment with them or would that be a separate sortie in order to supply them?
CW: Mostly they took their wireless sets with them but, er, if they got damaged or anything we had to drop others by parachute.
CB: OK, and did they stay they all the time or were they plucked out every so often?
CW: They came back for reports occasionally.
CB: They did? Right. What was the survival rate like?
CW: We don’t know really because it never, the news never got to us.
CB: Right. I’ll just pause there a mo. It’s just worth stating here that this isn’t a regular Army operation, this is SOE, so you had a reporting line that wasn’t directly in the Army was it?
CW: No it wasn’t but before the SOE this is, I was on a football match, um, when we — after the North African campaign finished, um, on the touchline watching the football, and the CO came round and pulled me out and he said, ‘I understand they accepted you for training as a pilot two or three years ago?’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s right.’ He said, ‘They want to know if you’ll volunteer as a glider pilot.’ Which was obviously for the invasion of Sicily of Italy and I politely refused. I really didn’t fancy not having an engine with me.
CB: Yeah. Interesting so this is your CO? How did the rankings go? I mean, that was the same as a military rank but you were kept separate, same as an army rank.
CW: Well this is Army, before the SOE.
CB: This was before, sorry, right. So, now going to SOE, what, how were you categorised there in terms of — because you were separated, how did that work?
CW: We were still Army ranks and obtensibly in the Army, what they call it? Signals unit. The stations had various names. The one in Algiers was called ISU6 or Massingham. We had an air, an aerodrome at Blida, inland, where the dropping containers were filled for dropping in southern France.
CB: So, Massingham is the, the station code name for North Africa in Algiers?
CW: Yeah. That was the station called Massingham, yes.
CB: Yeah. So, was there a dedicated airfield for your people?
CW: Blida. Well it was at Blida but because it was so secret [slight laugh] it wasn’t, er, common knowledge. We also had a submarine in the harbour at Algiers.
CB: Oh did you?
CW: That went over to France and surfaced and rowed people ashore, yes.
CB: So, you were training people, were you? To go to Blida, the aircraft, Air Force station before being delivered or were they trained before they came to you?
CW: They were trained on the camp at Massingham.
CB: They were? Right. Yeah. And this is really for supplying France before you got, before the North African war finished, is that it?
CW: No, that’s after the war had finished.
CB: It had finished. OK, so when you went to Italy, to Bari, that was well after the invasion of Italy?
CW: Yes. The war was going up. Po valley was still a war zone, up in the Po valley.
CB: Right up in the north, yes, so they had capitulated anyway but we’re talking about 1944, are we?
CW: Yes that’s right. It was at the tail end of the war.
CB: OK, so how did it progress after this supply you were talking about, Yugoslavia. How long did that go on for and what happened afterwards?
CW: Well, that was quite involved because, um, you had Mihailović they backed to start with and eventually they moved over to Tito and —
CB: Mihailović was the loyalist, royalist? Yeah.
CW: I think most of the people were more concerned with what happened after the war rather than what was happening during the war.
CB: Right, so Tito was the communist and he was the one you were backing then?
CW: Yes, that’s right.
CB: OK, so we’ve come to — have come to the end, have we reached the end of the war yet or did you go somewhere after Bari?
CW: Yeah, when the war finished —
CB: What did you do?
CW: I did, er, a quick course on Typex machines, which is a keyboard, and then transferred to Athens where I spent a few months before being shipped home for demob.
CB: And what did you do in Athens?
CW: Well, basically enjoyed ourselves [laugh]. There was nothing much to do really. The war was over and we just had various messages to transmit, encipher and decipher but not many.
CB: Right, right. So, just going back a bit on the SOE front, the ordinary forces didn’t know about SOE?
CW: No.
CB: And how did you explain away that you were separated from them and why?
MW: We never mixed with them did we?
CW: Yeah. It didn’t occur. The only time we had any trouble really, if any of our people were picked up by the military police and then they were [laugh] had to be got out of gaol, as it were, by people from our camp, to go and say well, ‘These are our people. You’ll have to let them go.’
CB: But not knowing, not telling them why?
CW: Yes. ‘Cause the Unit said they didn’t know about ISSU6 and Force 399 and Force 133 —
CB: OK.
CW: All odd names they had.
CB: Yeah. So mentioning those, in sequence, what were they? So, ISSU6 iss MI6?
CW: ISSU6 was at Algiers but it was also called Massingham.
CB: Right. OK.
CW: And then going to Italy it was Force 399.
CB: Right. OK. Technically a signals unit as far as you were concerned?
CW: Yes.
CB: OK. Then what, what else were there in titles? What were you called when you went to Athens?
CW: I was back in the Army then. I was transferred from SOE back into the Army.
CB: Oh were you?
CW: After the war was over and trained on Typex machines and doing enciphering and deciphering for the Services.
CB: Right, so in the light of the fact the SOE was the “invisible force” you couldn’t talk about it. How did you assimilate back into the army without people tumbling to what you’d been doing?
CW: Nobody ever asked any questions, just assumed that I’d been transferred from a different army unit.
CB: Right. Right. OK. [background noise]
CW: Initially training on rifles.
CB: In the Army.
CW: In the Army on Rifles, Bren guns, and the PIAT, the projector [?] infantry anti-tank gun, but with the SOE there was no need to carry arms at all.
CB: So you went, after the end of the war in Europe, you returned, you reverted to the regular Army. Was that the point at which you did?
CW: Back, back into signals.
CB: VE, on VE Day.
CW: Yes.
CB: Right.
CW: Yes, into Signals and posted to Athens.
CB: Yeah, and what happened in Athens? Did you stay there right until your demob in 1946?
CW: Yes, I was demobbed from Athens, back to Taranto all the way up to Italy.
CB: By train.
CW: Up the French coast by train.
CB: Then after the war what did you do Charles?
CW: After the war, interestingly enough, um, I made straight for somewhere I’d only been once before which was Southfield Station, where I marched the other way down Wimbledon Park Road to where Margaret’s parents had a house [laugh] met her [laugh] and where we got married. So, having started the war there I ended it there.
CB: That’s where you met Margaret in the first place was it?
CW: No, Algiers. I met her in Algiers where I met her in the first place.
CB: Oh you didn’t meet her until then even though she was on the doorstep. Right. So, you’re out of the Army, what did you do then?
CW: Continued my training as a compositor for, er, six months before I was fully qualified, worked at two or three printing offices before joining the News, Chronicle and Star newspapers.
CB: And how long did you work there or what did you do there? Did you always do compositing or did you do something different later?
CW: I was a Lerner type operator and I —
CB: Which is a type of printing machine.
CW: Yes, it does the metal from which you print the newspaper from and, um, I did this and until such time as the owner of the News, Chronicle and Star decided to sell the newspaper and we were made redundant. From there I went on to the Daily Mirror as a Lerner type operator until such time photo composition came in. And I’d done some teaching at the London College of Printing and kept up with technology so I knew a little bit about this. So I was one of twenty people who were training the rest of the staff at the Daily Mirror in the new technology, um, until such time everybody was trained up and they employed another hundred people while we trained them and then when these, they’d all been trained they asked for vol— volunteers for redundancy so I retired two years early.
CB: And in retirement what have you been doing?
CW: In retirement [laugh] we bought —
CB: Well, its some thirty years ago.
CW: We then bought another nine and a half acre smallholding [laugh] which was basically to help our two sons out. They bought a business with agriculture machine and they had nowhere to store it so we decided this, this [cough] could be where they could store it but we didn’t bargain on nine and half acres with thirteen triple-span greenhouses [laugh] so, so we worked there, we filled these with strawberries which was a nightmare because, um, we had to employ many people, picking strawberries, and because they were in greenhouses they had to be very careful they didn’t touch the strawberries themselves. They had to pick them by the stalk and, of course, we had to employ all sorts of people and this went on until such time as the Ministry of Agriculture asked us to do, to do an experiment with a new variety they’d brought in from Holland. So, they supplied us with the plants for a whole greenhouse and these we grew until such time they were ready for harvest and, er, Margaret went out one day and these nice looking strawberries were all flopped and this was vine weevil. They’d got into the plants and as they — it spread so quickly everywhere we had to have the whole of the greenhouses sterilised and, um, and then we, then we went over to the production of asparagus. We filled them with asparagus.
CB: Less temperamental.
CW: [slight laugh] And didn’t need so many people to harvest.
CB: Yeah. Right.
MW: We did that for twenty, twenty-seven years.
CB: So asparagus worked as well as a good earner.
MW: Oh yes.
CW: Well, because it was early we got it in early in the greenhouses it commanded a good price and we took it, had it shipped down to Convent garden
MW: And Spittalfields.
CW: Yeah and one day, um, the wholesaler phoned up and said, ‘That lot you sent today, we want the same lot tomorrow. It’s going to the, um, the Queen’s banquet when Lech Walesa comes over.’ [laugh] Which was rather —
CB: All the way from Poland.
CW: Yeah.
CB: Gosh. Right. What did you do? Did you sell it or the kids ran it?
CW: Well, we ran it until — how long ago is it? Ten years ago now?
MW: Ten, yes.
CW: And then we sold it and retired.
CB: Aged eighty-six. Yes. Very good. We’ll stop there a mo. [pause] So, we’ve talked about the fact that when you were in the war your unit was quite separate from anyone else so there wasn’t a temptation to get into conversations with other units [clears throat] about what you did. But after the war, we’re now in civilian life, people tend to be nosy. To what extent did the, er, history of your experiences in the war come up in conversation and how did you avoid indicating anything about SOE?
CW: By and large for myself because I done quite a bit in the army proper, as it were, I could say what there was to be told about that and keep quiet about SOE.
CB: But did you have to be on your guard all the time?
CW: Not much. I don’t remember people, you know, delving deep about these things at all.
CB: No. So, why didn’t people talk about their experiences in the war?
CW: I think they were just happy that the war was over —
MW: And they wanted to forget it.
CW: They’d had a tough time, er, rationing was still in being. So I think they were just happy to get on with their lives and rebuild the —
MW: And we, we started a family straight away didn’t we?
CW: Yes.
MW: And you just put the rest all behind you. I mean they, they like, they like the fact now that we have kept records and they’ve got it all down now.
CB: Yeah, but in the earlier time when children are younger children have a huge curiosity so to what extent did they try to prompt you to tell you, tell them.
CW: I don’t remember them ever asking about the war. It’s not until you get into the teens or older that people begin to enquire.
CB: So at what stage do you think it was the wraps came off and you were about to talk about SOE freely.
CW: Well, it was after sixty years.
MW: Yeah. Once there started being publications. I mean I’ve got, I’ve got one that’s got my —
CW: Photograph in, yeah.
MW: Yeah, one, er, that the FANY officer did. The book “In Obedience To Instructions” is the title of the book, um, and the other girl who was at university [background noise] who got, got us to supply her with information. And I mean in the thing, you know, they put at the back, people that have contributed information —
CB: The credits at the back
MW: But that was well, well on.
CB: We’re talking about the ‘90s?
CB: Before the sixty years were up, um, certain publications began coming out by the higher ups more than we did. [background noise]
CB: Yeah, OK. Right. Thank you. So, after talking with Charles we’ll move to Margaret —
MW: Yeah, I’m going to move out to the bathroom, OK?
CB: That’s alright. What was the thing that was most memorable in what you did then Charles?
CW: [slight laugh] A message from Mr Churchill to his son Randolph, who was in Yugoslavia, to say, ‘Congratulations on your birthday’ [laugh] and one going back the other way from Randolph to Mr Churchill saying, ‘Congratulations on your last speech.’ [laugh]
CB: Which you could take how you like. [laugh]
MW: When you got the phone call from, from Gubbins you didn’t know it was him.
CB: And the other, other funny one, yeah — Gubbins being the top man.
CW: Top man in SOE.
CB: Yeah.
CW: In Algiers I was on duty, on night duty, and the phone rang and I picked up the receiver, ‘Will you come down to villa number so-and-so?’ I can’t remember the number. ‘I’ve got an urgent message for London.’ ‘I’ll send someone down,’ I said. ‘You’ll come down yourself.’ Bang went the phone [laugh]. When I got down there [laugh] it was Colonel Gubbins, head of —
CB: And you didn’t know he’d come there?
CW: Didn’t even know he was on the camp.
CB: Such was the secrecy of what you did that nobody knew who was anywhere I suppose.
CW: Obviously he’d been the Cairo.
CB: And he was on his way back.
CB: One final thing, did you have a code name?
CW: No but agents did.
CB: Right. Now we are going to talk with Mary, er, Margaret about her experiences. Now Margaret started earlier on. Can you start with the earliest recollections you’ve got and how you came to join the FANY and SOE?
MW: Right, er, I was born in Southfields, South West 18, in London, and went to the local school and eventually progressed Greycoat Hospital Girl’s School in Westminster. The present Prime Minister’s daughter goes there now. All the girls in our family went to Greycoat Hospital. When the war broke out I was fifteen and I was on holiday with my mother in Ireland. My father was head of Ministry of Pensions and because of the threat of bombing if the war started they’d already evacuated up to Blackpool. My father contacted us and said under no circumstances were we to return to our home in London. We had to come straight to him in Blackpool, which we did. My father had always wanted one of the family to be a civil servant and he was delighted when he was able to get me a job as a part-time civil servant, the lowest grade there was, so low that it is recorded in Hansard that I earned thirteen shillings and sixpence per week less four pence for a stamp. It became very evidence that the landlady looking after these civil servants who’d moved up there was not keen on housing relatives as well, so we were able to persuade my father to let us go back to London, on condition that we moved out if bombing got serious. So this we did and I did one or two jobs. I think one was with a printing firm and then, er, I was just coming back from work and the sirens were going. I was on my bike and I got back in, quickly got under the stairs with my mother and a friend and the house began to shake and, er, the next thing we knew, or discovered afterwards, a land mine had fallen in the street backing onto us and blown out our back door etcetera. So, as we promised my father, we moved out to Leatherhead and the old, what would have been the old Hoover company there was being used as a, as an arms, you know, what do you call it? For making arms and I had to test the strength of shells. A most boring job.
CB: This is an ordinance factory?
MW: Yes, whatever it was called, um, but I also helped at the, what had been a blind school normally in peace time but it had been taken over from one of the London hospitals that were being cared for, mostly diabetic children, and I enjoyed the work there and I, I admired the way the, the si— the sisters, the ward sisters, cared for people and I began to think this is something I would like to do. At sixteen I was allowed to get a job at Epsom, er, in a hospital there but I was longing for the day when I was eighteen and could start training properly. Unbeknown to me, my mother who hated being on her own had gone off to Guildford RAF Recruiting Office and said she would like to join the WAAF but knew she was over age but the officer there, the recruiting officer said, ‘Well, you don’t look over forty so you won’t have to give me a birth certificate. Just fill in this form.’ When my mother looked at the form, my brother who was nine years older than me was al— already a Fleet Air Arm pilot, my sister, six years older than me, was in a res— reserved occupation as a qualified physiotherapist and English teacher. So my mother realised that the mathematics didn’t add up, that this was possible, if she put their ages in. And the officer said just put in ‘of age’ for your more older children and put my true age which she did because she didn’t want to stop me from doing what I wanted to do, was do full training as a nurse in London. So, that was her off, off into into the WAAFs and she knew she couldn’t at all attempt an, an officer’s post because she’d have to produce her birth certificate. She did her square bashing funnily enough at Fleetwood which was just next door to where my father had got his Ministry of Pensions job in Blackpool. I did a year’s training and was on, put on skin ward and as a result of that, handling ointments and various medication, my hands both broke out in bad eczema so I was given six, I was given a month’s sick leave and when I got back they said, ‘We’ll put you on the wing, the where you don’t have to do scrubbing up and what have you, diabetic wing.’ That’s it. And, er, within a month it was all back again so they said, ‘Well, we’re very, very sorry but I’m afraid you’re going to have to finish your training. We can’t keep you on.’ So, I rang a friend who I knew had to give up and I said, ‘What am I going to do? I won’t get through the medicals for Army, Navy, Air Force, I’m no good for the land army and I don’t want to have to finish in a munitions factory after what I’d had to do with these wretched shells. So she said, ‘Go to this address in Baker Street. I can’t tell you any more but you won’t have a problem.’ So, along I went and the first thing they said to me was, ‘Well before we can talk to you need to sign the Official Secrets Act and you will be bound from conveying anything that you’re told here. You won’t be able to speak about it.’ So, I thought, ‘Oh gracious, what have I got ahead of me here?’ So, I did that and then had an interview and they said, ‘Well it will mean we think you’ll make a good wireless operator but it does mean joining the FANYs which is the First Aid Nurses Yeomanry.’ So I went along with all this so went to Henley to train with Morse code and after some months the sergeant came in and said, ‘They want volunteers for overseas. I’ve got forms here. Put your hand up if you’re interested.’ So I stuck my hand up and he said, ‘If you’re under twenty-one you must have parental consent you know, I’ve got the forms here for you if you want them.’ I then wrote a letter to my father, um, not thinking, you know, it was anything special, just to say, ‘Please can you sign the enclosed form? I want to go overseas.’ It was a time when all the troop ships were being torpedoed in the Med and yet, bless him, he agreed to sign it. Then, um, I’m trying to think what happened then. Yes, I — I’ve just written all about this to the — do you want to see?
CB: We’ll just stop for a mo. [background noise]
CW: An account I’d written of my embarkation and I thought the FANYs might be interested in it because the so-called colonel had taken over the, all of the other information. I had this embarkation letter and it’s amusing reading it all. I mean I don’t know if this would be useful.
CB: That would be useful. Just keep rolling. Can you tell us please?
CW: So, this was all about the embarkation and a disguised description of how we got to Liverpool and got on the dock and most of the group went off somewhere but another girl and myself were put in charge of the luggage. And we were standing on the port side and the troops all up on the ship. I never realised how big the ship would be and it was the Monarch or Bermuda (I’m allowed to say that now). And the chaps on board were throwing pens down, pens, pennies down to us and my friend and I were gathering all these up and luckily found a Salvation Army chap we were able to hand them over to. And then once our luggage was dealt with we were able to join the others and go on board and that was when the next thing we knew we were in Algiers.
CB: OK. So on the boat you’ve got lots of people, literally thousands?
MW: Yes the FANYs were allocated some very nice accommodation, about ten in a cabin. There was a little bit of controversy with the Queen Alexandra nurses, who thought we were in their cabin and they were in ours, but we got that sorted out. I was absolutely amazed when we went for our first meal to see beautiful white cloths and white bread which I hadn’t ever seen for years with rationing and the way you couldn’t have white bread in England and when we had time to go round the ship I was horrified to see how all the ordinary soldiers just had to sleep on, on slings just tied up.
CB: Hammocks.
MW: Mm?
CB: Hammocks.
MW: And we were in complete luxury really. I got a top bunk with a porthole window beside it and, you know, we just enjoyed the journey really.
CB: So you’re on the boat and you find yourselves —
MW: We arrived at Algiers and we were transported to this wonderful camp, if you can call it a camp, it was a long expanse of lovely sand dunes, right adjacent to the Mediterranean, which had been a holiday place for French people with these beautiful —
CW: Villas.
MW: Villas, um, dotted all along it. So about six of us shared a villa where we could just run out of the front of it, straight into the water. We were even able to swim on Christmas Day which was wonderful. And that side of things was fine. We had a team of wireless operators like myself and we used to work on schedules, day and night schedules. I hated the night schedules because when you wanted to get back to your bungalow at night in the pitch darkness you’d got troops patrolling all the time and most of them were, were troops that that been, were found they couldn’t cope with the sev— severity with actual fighting so I was always afraid that one of them would suddenly turn round and think I was an enemy approaching. Other than that I think was all quite straightforward. There was these dinner dances that the sergeants’ mess ran and that’s where I came in contact with my husband Chas. The —we were supposed to have meet with the officers’ mess but we found the sergeants’ mess a far more lively place to be and we worked on our schedules and you had to be very, very carefully because the Germans were always trying to van— to jam the air lines and you’d got to be careful that you listened intently so that you didn’t make mistakes and avoid asking the agent to repeat anything. And one strong rule was that if ever you were on the air and — contacting an agent and he put in Q U G IKAK, which in ordinary language, is ‘I’m in imminent danger, close down.’ And you weren’t allowed to put another pip on your key and then the rule was for weeks and weeks afterwards you still kept trying to contact the due schedules for that agent in the hope that he hadn’t been —
CB: Compromised one way or the other.
MW: And I was delighted the once it happened to me, it was about six weeks later the agent came up in his due schedule, his or her, because we never knew whether it was a man or woman that we were contacting.
CB: And what country was he in?
MW: In, in France.
CB: He was in France. Right, OK. So, all of yours were in France at that time?
MW: Yes.
CB: Not Italy?
MW: Not so far as I was aware.
CB: No. OK. So, just taking a step back, when you were in the FANYs what rank were you and how did the promotion go?
MW: You just went in straight away as a cadet ensign.
CB: You did, right. And would you like to describe what is an ensign is in those days?
MW: I haven’t a clue.
CB: It’s an officer’s rank isn’t it?
MW: Mm?
CB: It’s a woman officer rank.
MW: Nobody every explained it to us. That was what we were and that was it.
CB: OK.
MW: The actual bases which is just out of Bari.
CB: So, you’re in Massingham and you’re there for how long?
MW: A year.
CB: And then what?
MW: And then transferred to Italy.
CB: And what did you di there?
MW: Carried on the same way, sending and receiving messages.
CB: Where were the agents of yours then?
MW: They could have been anywhere. They could have been in Italy. They could have been in Yugoslavia?
CB: But not France?
MW: I think we, had we finished in — you’d better switch off.
CB: So, in your perception Mary you’re dealing with, as a radio operator, which is different from doing the other side that Charles was doing, so the agents you, you saw them did you at Massingham before they went?
MW: Yes, you know, they had all the agents there obviously.
CB: And they, when they then went from Massingham to the airfield, which was where?
CW: Blida.
CB: Blida and then they were flown. Do you know what planes they were flow in?
MW: No idea.
CW: No. We were never told.
CB: The security worked so tightly you didn’t know the simple steps because that would compromise what was happening?
MW: We knew that some of them were going over in our little subs and going ashore there.
CB: And the others were parachuted in?
MW: Yes.
CW: And the arms and ammunition and uniforms and things were done up in containers and dropped from Blida.
CB: That was done separately was it?
CW: Yep.
CB: So you would know what the signals were. Were you telling them, when you were doing the radio part?
MW: Well this was the part that was disappointing in a way because he knew what the message was but it didn’t mean a thing to the wireless operator so you’ve no idea what message you’re sending them.
CB: No. So you got the boring message which is vital but Charles has got the detail which is being coded?
CW: Yes. The recognition signals, the coordinates where you dropped he agent or supplies or what have you. Yes it was all —
CB: Yes and how did you make contact with the agents yourself Margaret?
MW: Well, by schedule. You were given a schedule, at a certain time you were given a code that you’d got to put in, you know, in Morse code to make contact with that agent and what to expect.
CB: And you’d wait for a reply would you?
MW: Reply, yes.
CB: Was it like the nine o’clock news or did the contact time change? So, what I’m saying is did you always contact the agent, each agent, at the same time or would it vary?
MW: I think it varied but we, you know, were told what the schedule was, what time we were supposed to be on to that person.
CB: Right. How often did you meet agents yourself?
MW: Well, they were around all the time at Massingham weren’t they?
CW: I never met any personally.
MW: Not to talk to did we?
CW: There were a lot trained on the camp but they were all separate, you know, we never got —
CB: So on the camp there were cells effectively cells of operation was there, so there was just to do with radio, one that was to do with cipher, different hats?
CW: Well, it was a radio station, you know, the, they all worked together, you know, on the thing but the agents were trained there and I never got contact with any of the agents. I just knew they were being trained.
CB: What nationalities were the agents Mary, Margaret, sorry?
MW: All sorts weren’t they Chas? Very difficult to know.
CW: Well, a lot were English, French-speaking English. Men and women. French people as well. One, a special one was an Indian, Khan, he was —
CB: Khan is a famous one actually, isn’t he? Yes, yeah, right, OK. So, after Italy, so you’re there in 1944 and ‘45, what happened when the war stopped? Where did you go from Italy?
MW: In, in Italy I, it’s again quite a comical thing, family thing, that my father had always said, ‘By the time you’re twenty-one they’ll be nothing left for you to do.’ What it turned out to be on my twenty-first birthday we were due to fly up to Sienna up to the north of Italy, um, a group of us, and there was fog and problems. So, the plane couldn’t take off so we had to go back to our billets and try again the next day and I thought well now my father can’t say there was nothing left for me to do when I was twenty-one because that was my first trip in an aeroplane. When we got to Sienna there was very little, um, messaging going on. We were just pursuing hobbies and needlework and various things to pass the time until, of course, the end of the war came. During that time I was in Sienna obviously I was missing Charles very much so I got some leave and I did a hitchhike down to Naples, stayed at the YWCA overnight, and then asked them where I ought to get a vehicle to take me across the mountains to Bari and they said, ‘Well, go to this filling station, get an American or a British truck. Whatever you do don’t get on an Italian truck and you must be mobile by 10 o’clock otherwise you won’t be over the mountains before dark.’ It got to 10 o’clock and no American or British truck had come in and I thought when you’re twenty in those days you didn’t know the sort of things that go on now. I thought, ‘Oh blow it. I’ll chance an Italian truck.’ I was sitting up between these two Italians driving up the mountainside where the drop was absolutely sheer on the right and if it went over it would be completely down the bottom and we got flagged down by an American despatch rider and he was horrified when I got out the cab. ‘What on earth are you doing there?’ ‘It was the only vehicle I could get.’ And so, he immediately flagged down an American jeep that had got one soldier in it and said, ‘Where are you going?’ And he said, ‘Right down the toe of Italy.’ ‘Well then in that case can you take this young lady? She wants to go to Bari.’ And I got in there as happy as Larry.
CW: But he flagged it down because it was badly loaded.
MW: Yes, the — that’s why he flagged the lorry down because he said any minute he could go down the mountainside because it was so badly loaded so obviously that’s why they told me not to get in an Italian truck.
CB: Fascinating. So, when did you learn about your demob?
MW: When we were up in Sienna. It was sort of November-time wasn’t it, when —
CB: November ‘45.
MW: Yeah, and there again he was very crafty, my husband. He got some leave and came up to officially in quotes “see me off” and he got very friendly with our commandant, and he duly shook hands with her and said, ‘Goodbye.’ And away we went. At our first comfort stop who should bail out of the luggage truck was Charles. So that we had another evening in Naples before I embarked for home.
CB: Fantastic and from Naples did you take a boat?
MW: Yes.
CB: Where did that go? Marseille, Southern France, was it?
MW: Yeah. Must have done. I can’t remember where it went,, I just knew i was going home.
CW: It was home back to England.
CB: When you got back to England then what?
MW: Well, then I went back to Southfields, to where my mother and father’s home was and waited, got the — oh, that’s another thing. I did get a job there while I was getting ready for the wedding. We were going to get married as soon as he got back and I took a job in a day nursery, looking after little toddlers, and the cook there was a very ample lady. She said, ‘I hope your husband’s got a good job because you won’t manage on less than ten pound a week.’ And I thought, ‘Horrors, he’s got his, his apprenticeship to finish. There’s no way he’s going to get ten pounds a week and he’s got to get to Dartford every day from Southfields.’ But I didn’t dare tell anybody that there was no way going to afford it. But we managed, didn’t we? We got all sorts of second hand stuff and we got though.
CB: So how long did your job going on for or it didn’t last?
MW: Oh once we were married because we wanted a family.
CB: And your mother came out of the RAF?
MW: Oh she came out. She did about three years I think but as I say all the different officers she worked with said you ought to ask for a —
CW: Commission.
MW: Yeah but she didn’t because she knew she’d have to find her birth certificate. We were crazy.
CB: Right. What would you say would be your most memorable point of your service in the SOE?
MW: I don’t know that there was — I suppose the most memorable point was that we knew, I knew, we were going to go where he’d gone.
CB: To Bari.
MW: Yeah. That was the highlight.
CW: Yes because I, having supposedly gone to gone to Yugoslavia, I was in Bari and I wrote to her that I was in Bari and not Yugoslavia. [laugh]
CB: Right. So that made you feel better.
MW: Yeah.
CB: Right. So, we’re back talking with Charles a bit more about the delivery of agents into places like France. So, how do did that work then?
CW: Hughenden Manor worked — did maps for the pilots, detailed maps for the pilots, as to where they had to go to, which was absolutely brilliant, and this went on all through the war.
CB: And, er, the pilots that delivered, this is where they’d land but not just that but it’s where they were parachuting dropping as well?
CW: Yeah parachute drops and dropping agents and dropping agents up, not only dropping agents, Government people as well.
CB: Oh were they? Yeah. Any prisoners?
CW: No. I don’t think they brought any prisoners back as far as I know.
MW: But they brought agents back didn’t they? Picked up people as well as dropping humans.
CB: Yeah, and what was the major activity really of the, of flying people? Was the delivery of arms, ammunition and stores in general pretty busy?
CW: It, it was especially in the last bit of the war where —
CB: From D-Day.
CW: Yeah, where the Mace [?], yeah after D-day the Maces [?] were all organised and armed and used to delay German troops coming up to the coast.
CB: Right, so doing you cryptography, your coding, then you were seeing all the instructions?
CW: Yes. Yes.
CB: And the detail must have been quite fine in terms of finding the places?
CW: Yes it was all coordinates for exactly where they were but really and truly it didn’t mean anything unless you’d got a map where you could sort it all out but we didn’t have the opportunity.
CB: Right. Good
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWardC-M160219
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Charles and Margaret Ward
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:18:11 audio recording
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Description
An account of the resource
In 1940 when Charles was twenty he received papers to join the Royal Artillery and went into the Royal London Rifles. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force and was accepted but instead of joining the RAF he was ordered up to Scotland to join a special unit of tanks and artillery, then posted to North Africa in 1942. Charles describes a battle in Tunisia in which seventy-five per cent of the battalion were killed. While confined to camp with an injured knee an education unit arrived and, after taking a number of tests, he was posted to Special Operations Executive and worked in Algiers and Italy as a cipher operator. Charles describes his work as a cipher operator including giving coordinates for planes to drop agents and supplies. He met his wife, Margaret while in the Special Operations Executive and Margaret gives an account of her work as a wireless operator. She also describes how her mother joined the WAAF even though she was over forty.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
British Army
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Algeria
Algeria--Algiers
Italy
Tunisia
North Africa
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
aircrew
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
ground personnel
Special Operations Executive
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/122/3534/ATaitJT160610.2.mp3
9f0edd1b79ed6f88dccec2e22a8097de
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Tait, John
John Tait
J T Tait
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Warrant Officer John Thomas Tait (1923 - 2019, 175522 Royal Air Force), his service and release book and four photographs. John Tait flew 34 operations with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe as a wireless operator / air gunner.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Tait and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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
2016-06-10
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tait, JT
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by [name of the lender] and catalogued by [name of the cataloguer].
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MC: This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewee is John Tait and the interviewer is Mike Connock. The interview is taking place at the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archives at Riseholme College on Friday 10th June 2016. Also present at the interview are Alan Tait, Mrs Beryl Tait and Ken Tait. OK John, what I want you to do is just tell me a bit about um, when and where you were born for a start.
JT: Well I was born in America in Helena, Montana and my mother was English and my Dad was Scottish. Anyway my mum had had enough of travelling abroad so she wanted to come home. So when I was five she brought me to England and that was fine. Took a while to get used to people, people getting used to me actually. But anyway, when the war started we —
MC: Yeah, go on John, it’s just, what did your parents do? What was —
JT: My dad was, he was a retired cattle farmer and my mother was a retired school teacher.
MC: So how old were you when you came to —
JT: I was five.
MC: Five.
JT: Five, yes.
MC: So you started school in the UK?
JT: I started school in the UK, yeah.
MC: And that was? What year were you born?
JT: 1923.
MC: 1923, yes. So this would be ’28 when you came to us.
JT: It was, yes.
MC: And, so what about school days in those days, what was that like?
JT: Well school days, well I went to a local school, I didn’t start until I was six but it was very good, a local school, I enjoyed it and then when I was eleven I went up to, oh hell where did I go, oh God, isn’t it awful. Temple Road Central Boys School in Birkenhead. It was a secondary school and I went there and very good, I was accepted even though I was from the outer districts because they were nearly all lads from the city. But we got on ok, I did very well. In fact I played football for their team, but anyway I went to school there ‘til I was fourteen and then I took me O levels, except they weren’t O levels then but it were whatever. Anyway then I went to work in an office to train as a cost accountant, me dad knew someone who had an office and he would train — so I went to train as a cost accountant. Anyway, when the war broke out I was eighteen years of age and I didn’t like being in an office all day so I volunteered for the RAF.
MC: What made you choose the RAF?
JT: Well there were two pals of mine, lived in the same road as me and they were both wireless operator air gunners and neither of them came back, they both lost their life. One was Derek Jones and the other was Bob Christie, Bob Christie, yeah. They both lost their lives as it happened, but I was the only one of the three that came back. But anyway I volunteered for the RAF —
MC: So that was when you were eighteen?
JT: Eighteen yes.
MC: Oh right.
JT: I went to Padgate for six weeks, square bashing and then we went to Black — [pause] While I was there I volunteered for air crew and um, I went to Blackpool on a wireless operators air gunners course.
MC: Hmm.
JT: I forget how long it was but anyway I did a tour there and then I went to Stormy Down to do an air gunners course and then I qualified for that and I was posted to a place called Bruntingthorpe which, where they trained lads straight from school
MC: Was that an operational training unit?
JT: Pardon?
MC: Operational training unit?
JT: Operational training, yep. So I —
MC: Do you remember which one it was?
JT: Bruntingthorpe.
MC: Bruntingthorpe.
JT: Bruntingthorpe yep. RAF Bruntingthorpe yeah. Anyway, I did me tour there and the next thing was to go to a higher, err, higher course for wireless operators up north. So I went up there and while we were there they were sorting out the air gunners. Well I got picked to go down to Stormy Down to do a six week air gunners course, which I did and I enjoyed. Anyway, having finished that we then went to Market Harborough, I think. And the skipper was there . Dougie Milligan came round, he was picking his crew for the Anson.
MC: And that was where you crewed up, at Market Harborough?
JT: That’s were I got picked by Dougie Milligan to go with him, yeah. That’s right. We went, we did, we went from there to —
MC: Market Harborough, that would have been the OTU I suspect.
JT: Sorry?
MC: Was the Operational Training Unit at Market —
JT: That was, the OTU at Market Harborough, OTU, it was yeah. And we went from Market Harborough to um, —
MC: Can I just interrupt you there. Um, at Market Harborough was that just the five crew?
JT: We hadn’t got, yes it was. We hadn’t got a full crew then.
MC: Because that was on, oh, what aircraft was that?
JT: It was on Wellingtons.
MC: Wellingtons, yeah.
JT: Because we were on Wellingtons yeah. Anyway, we picked up a oh, um, bit of a gunner [?] I think there.
MC: And a flight engineer?
JT: And that’s what we did. We were on Wellingtons. We hadn’t got a flight engineer, [coughs).
MC: Where did you pick those up?
JT: Picked them up at Market Harborough, picked two up at Market Harborough.
MC: Oh you did pick them up at Market Harborough did you?
JT: We didn’t pick the [pause] flight engineer, we picked him up later because they hadn’t got flight engineers on Lancs. But anyway, as it happened when he joined us and we went to um, from there to, oh, somewhere in North Lincoln, I don’t know. Oh I know, we went to go on Stirlings, that’s right at Scampton. We went to Scampton.
BT: Oooh.
JT: That’s right. And the skipper converted on to Stirlings and we picked up a, oh, [pause]
MC: Flight engineer?
JT: Flight engineer.
MC: Yup.
JT: And his name was Jimmy James and he came from Liverpool, funnily enough but he was a good lad. He’d been, he came from South Africa actually. He’d been a mechanic out there for years, he was, and he wanted to join air crew to bring him back home to train so he joined us and they brought him back to train as a flight engineer which he was delighted and he was with us until the end of our tour.
MC: So was that at a Lancaster finishing school or a conversion unit?
JT: Oh yes, it was Stirlings, Lancs finishing school yeah.
MC: Yeah, oh yeah, it was a heavy conversion unit.
JT: It was a conversion school.
MC: Yeah, yep, hmm.
JT: They were horrible things, big [laughter]the Stirling but we flew quite a lot of trips, not operations but flights. And then we went from having completed our course on Stirlings, we then went to [pause] we went on the squadron, that’s right.
MC: Did you not, you must have gone and converted from Stirlings to Lancasters?
JT: We converted to Lancasters, we didn’t convert to Lancs until we got to the squadron.
MC: Oh didn’t you?
JT: No I don’t think so. I’m just trying to think —
MC: You went to the Lancaster Finishing School I think, was that, um did you not go to —
JT: It was Scampton [unclear] converted on to Lancasters at Scampton, that’s right, yes we did, yeah. And err, that was when our crew was formed, we’d got a full crew.
MC: Yep.
JT: [pause] I’m sorry if it’s a bit bitty.
MC: Oh no, no it’s not. It’s fine, it’s no problem and so you got, so um, I mean up until then you got posted to your squadron but all the crew was made up.
JT: That’s right. There was, Dougie Milligan picked us up from, originally from Bruntingthorpe, that was it. [pause]
MC: Just going back slightly, back to when you joined up, um, as a teenager what was life like growing up just before the war. I’m sorry to have —
JT: It was fine, well I used to, I enjoyed football, I played a lot of football but of course when the war started we were classed as aliens.
MC: Oh!
JT: Because I was an American citizen, and we used to have to report to the police station once a month and that’s why I said ‘blow this I’m going to join the RAF’ so I did. [laughter] Yeah.
MC: So having been to the err, operation training unit, conversion unit, you were then posted to err, —
JT: Skellingthorpe
OTHER: Skellingthorpe, 50 Squadron.
JT: Yeah, that’s right.
MC: Can you remember arriving at Skellingthorpe, much about the station?
JT: Aah, we thought it was a bit out in the wilderness but err, yeah, we did no it was great, when you‘ve got a crew around you, you were quite happy.
MC: Yeah by that time they’d got the concrete runways and things like that.
JT: Oh yes, that’s right.
MC: Hmm, yeah. So, can you remember much about your first operation, all your operations, your first one for instance?
JT: No.
MC: Did it not stick with you.
JT: Doesn’t ring a bell. As I say, I did thirty three all with Dougie Milligan and I did one as a spare bod with a skipper named Mike, oh Pete Stockwell.
MC: What was his name? Pete?
JT: Peter Stockwell. He was a flight sergeant, he’d gone with me from Skellingthorpe to there, to train and they didn’t just trust him on Wellingtons so they put him on the Stirling. He would fly, flying a fighter, that’s right flying Spitfires 'til he pranged one and they told him to get off the squadron and get back to the squadron so he asked me would I go back with him and I said ‘of course I would’. So we formed another crew up and that was it.
MC: I mean you did some hairy operations. Does anything stand out in particular?
JT: Um, no, err, [pause].
OTHER: You said that, you know —
JT: The Ruhr Valley was the worst.
MC: Rurh, yeah, yeah [unclear]
OTHER: Well some of the operations you did were, you know, you did Munich –
JT: Pardon?
OTHER: You did Munich didn’t you?
JT: That was the longest, the longest trip was Munich I think.
OTHER: Yeah, Munich.
OTHER: Did you do Berlin?
JT: No.
OTHER: Yes, at the time, ‘cos at the time you were joining it was the lead up, leading up to D-Day.
JT: That’s right.
MC: So you would, did you do some, you obviously did some invasion support operations?
JT: Well we did some in France, we did a few trips in France, that’s right, that’s right yeah.
MC: Yeah, so the actual raids themselves you don’t remember much about?
JT: The operations? No. Ah, well —
MC: How did you feel, I mean did you err, —
JT: Probably scared stiff to start with, but err, —
MC: Yeah.
JT: But you got used to
MC: That’s what I’m trying to get at, you know, how did you —
JT: That’s right the first trip I always remember the first trip. I can’t remember where it was but I couldn’t believe it and I looked out of my rear window and I could see the fires down below and I said to Jimmy Marlow, ‘Jim come and have a look’. ‘Not bloody likely’ he said, ‘I’m sitting here’ and he was sitting on the table drinking his tea. He wouldn’t have a look out of the window.
MC: And Jimmy Marlow was the?
JT: He was the, he was the navigator.
MC: The navigator, yes.
JT: He was a sergeant or a flight sergeant then. Yeah. He’d worked for the Air Ministry and he wanted to get a commission so they could give him a position to go back to, when he went back from the RAF. Which he got in the end.
MC: So I, I gather Doug Milligan was a good skipper then?
JT: Oh, Dougie, yes.
MC: He got you through thirty three operations.
JT: He was dead on, he really was, he was.
MC: And you all had a good crew, you all got on well.
JT: Very good. We were lucky with the crew.
MC: Yeah, what about —
JT: We lost our rear gunner for a while at the end because he got frostbite and he was invalided out of the RAF and we got another, just for a couple of trips, but err, yeah we got on great.
MC: Yeah, what about socialising in the area round Lincoln?
JT: Oh.
MC: Don’t give too much away.
JT: You know Lincoln was a wonderful place to socialise, people were so friendly, it was great, they really were.
MC: You used to go out most evenings?
JT: Most evenings we’d be down the pub, local pub. In fact there was one night we were all out on the booze and they decided to put an op on and they sent the RAF Police round Lincoln calling for all members of 50 Squadron to come back and we went back to the squadron but we, some of them were half canned. Dougie Milligan wouldn’t bother, well he wasn’t a great drinker. He liked a drink but he wasn’t a great drinker, but the rest of us were [laughter].
MC: [laughter] you made full use of the local hostelries.
JT: That’s right, there’s a lot of nice people in Lincoln.
MC: So what, which, where did you used to go? Can you remember?
JT: I can’t remember the name of the pub. There was a pub down the road from Skellingthorpe and there was a lady there, she invited us in one night. Her husband works, he was working away, working on a job or something and she had two or three daughters or nurses who visited and she invited us to join them for a party one night and um, the night they put the operation off we were in Lincoln, she was sat in the back kitchen with me feeding me coffee to sober me up before we went back [laughter]. She was great, a lovely lady and she was, oh what was her name? No, it’s gone. She was lovely, the people were lovely they really were.
MC: So you got around in Lincoln?
JT: Oh yeah, no complaints
MC: Yes. It’s err, you were a wireless operator?
JT: Wireless operator, yes.
MC: Can you, I mean [pause] so you was a WOP air gunner, so I mean I gather you had your 21st birthday while you was on the squadron?
JT: Oh yes.
MC: So um, how did you celebrate that?
JT: [laughter] down the pub [laughter].
MC: [laughter] So they looked after you did they on your 21st?
JT: Oh yeah, had a fabulous time.
MC: So what did you get up to on that then? Anything special?
JT: Nothing, well apart from going for a drink in the pub, that’s about it, that’s all we did anyway.
MC: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JT: We hadn’t got enough money to go buying it or wining and dining but we went for a pint, yeah.
MC: Can you remember much about your C — Commanding Officer? Whoever your CO was?
JT: I’ll tell you who he was, not the Commanding Officer. Marshall of the Royal Air Force, Sir Mike Beetham.
MC: Uhuh.
JT: He, I think he was a flight lieutenant on our squadron and he was a flight lieutenant a very, B Flight, no sorry, I was on B, he was on A Flight. Yeah, Mike Beetham was on A Flight. He was a great bloke, very approachable, very pleasant chap.
MC: Did you know any of his crew?
JT: Well I did at the time but I don’t now. But —
MC: Sir Michael Beetham, so as I say, Reg Payne was Michael Beetham’s wireless operator. So you may know him.
JT: Oh well that’s somebody I’d perhaps recognise.
MC: How’s your morse these days then?
JT: Sorry?
MC: How’s our morse these days, morse code?
JT: I haven’t done any, dit dah dah. I can do it though.
MC: I’m sure you can.
JT: Yeah.
MC: Yeah. So you, obviously you finished your tour, you say you did thirty three?
JT: I did thirty three and then I stayed on, we were all, the crew was then dispersed, they was —
MC: Yeah?
JT: And I stayed on and did one trip with Pete Stockwell.
MC: Yeah? [pause] Yeah, and then where did you go from there?
JT: We went from there to um, I think we went to Market Harborough with Pete Stockie.
MC: Back to Market Harborough.
JT: Yep. He was told to get himself a crew and get back on the squadron, he was a bit of a lad was Pete, [laughter] flight lieutenant [laughter] but we have got a [unclear]
MC: So he finished up as a flight lieutenant then did he?
JT: Pete did.
MC: Yeah?
JT: Yeah. Well, our navigator Barney, he was a navigator with Pete, he was a flight lieutenant too. But we were, the rest of us were senior NCOs, yep.
MC: So how long were you at Market Harborough then on the OTU?
JT: Probably, maybe a year, a couple of years.
MC: As long as that?
JT: Well what they did, they asked, 35 Squadron was formed to do formation flying, twelve Lancs in formation and we were on that, Pete Stocky was on that so we went with him, formation flying. We used to do all over the country and then we went to America to celebrate Army Air Corps Day. We did six weeks tour in the States formation flying.
MC: So that would have been in ’45 then?
JT: That would be yeah, maybe ’46 I don’t know.
MC: How long were you over there?
JT: A long time ago.
MC: You was over there a long time?
JT: Well six weeks. We did six weeks.
MC: You enjoyed that?
JT: We started off in New York, went right down to the south coast and round about. We were the first crew to fly over the White House. They allowed aircraft to fly over the White House and the Lancs flew over there. But, oh we had a six weeks tour [unclear]
MC: And that was with 35 Squadron?
JT: 35 Squadron. We were entertained, taken to Hollywood, we were entertained in Hollywood shown the people doing the rehearsals and acting. We had a wonderful time really. Couldn’t, couldn’t do any wrong. [laughter] We came back and I asked to do me time after that. I only had about a fortnight to do when we came back. I got demobbed and that was it. But we had a wonderful time.
MC: So when were you demobbed?
JT: Uh —
MC: Because you stayed in —
JT: Before, I signed up for six months. I didn’t actually do the full six months I don’t think. They let me out early. I forget now to be honest.
OTHER: Indeed, probably late ’45.
MC: Yeah. So having come out the Air Force, what did you after the Air Force then?
JT: I needed a job obviously. I didn’t want to go, I didn’t want to be a cost accountant, there was no way. And a pal of mine worked for McAlpines, he was in the office at Sir Alfred McAlpines so I got a job, he got me a job in the office Sir Alfred McAlpines and I started there off as a [pause] stationery assistant then I was posted, I got asked to go out on site, I became a timekeeper then I became office manager and then became an area office manager and then while I was doing that I was doing a lot of the work that surveyors were doing and the chief surveyor said to me ‘John,’ he said ‘why don’t you take up surveying?’ he said, ‘you know more than these buggers’. So I applied and I went to the college of building for about six years I think, five years and I studied to be a quantity surveyor and became a chartered surveyor and I finished up my time in Cheshire County, yes I worked for Chester City, Cheshire County.
MC: So when did you meet Beryl then?
JT: Oh, I met Beryl way back, that was when —
BT: [laughter] Ah, when was that? I was —
JT: Where was I working then?
BT: Seventeen or eighteen, whenever that was because I’m eighty five on Sunday.
JT: Aye, that’s not good. Where were you, you were working at McKagan Barnes (?) weren’t you?
BT: Sorry?
JT: You were working at McKagan Barnes (?)
BT: Yeah, and I was in the accountants office.
JT: She was training in the accountant’s office.
MC: So that, you met before the war?
JT: Sorry?
MC: You met before the war?
JT: Oh, no.
BT: Oh no, after that.
MC: After the war?
BT: I used to see him very often going back off leave in his RAF uniform and I used to think, oh he looks alright and you know, [laughter] not realising I’d end up marrying you [laughter]. But um, no we just met virtually at a dance at the local dance hall.
JT: That’s right.
MC: Yes.
BT: He came in, we spent that whole night dancing. I was going out with the drummer in the band and I said to — when John said ‘can I take you home?’ and I said ‘well, see the chap playing the drums, he is my boyfriend so you’d better come with me to tell him’. So he did and, told him and I got a phone call from the chap the next day and he said ‘I can’t believe you did that’. I said, ‘well I’m sorry’ I said, ‘I’ve now met somebody else so we’ll just have to call it a day’.
MC: You must have been a bit of a lad in those days.
BT: I thought, well I could have just —
JT: I was a bit of a lad.
BT: I could have just walked out but I thought no, I’ll do the right thing and tell him.
JT: Thank you.
BT: And the fact that he didn’t like it well, you know [laughter].
OTHER: [unclear]
MC: Going back to the operational times.
JT: Well once you, sitting there with a [unclear] the searchlight picked you up as you went in and the skipper had to do evasive action which was climb and roll and—
MC: Corkscrew.
JT: and climb and roll. That happened on many operations.
MC: Yeah.
JT: But it was something you used to —
MC: Any close mishaps with other aircraft then?
JT: Oh, aye. Many a time. [laughter]. And our foreign friends but err —
MC: So you, you had a few escapades with some fighters then?
JT: Yep.
MC: Yeah. And managed to get away unscathed?
JT: That’s right.
MC: Obviously a good skipper.
JT: Thanks to the skipper. Yep, that’s right. Oh yes every, there was always other things with somebody on one of the ops.
MC: Did you always get them back to base at the same, you know?
JT: Yeah we did, we always got back, we, the last time we were, aah, the skipper was advised to make a landing in the South of England and we agreed. We were going on leave the next day so we said ‘come on we’ll give it a go’, so we went back and we got back and when we got back one of the aircraft engines packed up as we landed but err, the skipper got a remand for it. No we were cheering. Yeah. There were all kinds of little incidents but they were well, sort of part of the daily routine, or night routine.
MC: For you, yes.
JT: It was.
MC: [laughter] So, yeah, I mean it’s, you talked about it, I mean you say there were lots of incidents. Can you remember other incidences? Did you ever get diverted coming back, apart from that one incident when you didn’t go back?
JT: I think that’s the only occasion, which we didn’t — What they did, they sent a fighter out from Tangmere, which we ignored [laughter] and went back anyway, but err, that’s the only time.
MC: You ignored the fighter. What was he there to do?
JT: Pardon?
MC: What was the fighter from Tangmere there to do?
JT: It was a, oh bloody hell, I don’t know.
MC: No, what, why did they send him out?
JT: To guide us into Tangmere.
MC: Aaahh.
JT: But we didn’t take any notice. We went back, yeah. What was it, I forget the aircraft now, I knew it —
MC: So you never got any problems with coming back in bad weather, to Skellingthorpe then?
JT: Oh we did have rough times. From time to time you came in you could hardly land because of the weather but we made it. We’d got a good skipper in Dougie Milligan, he really was. He was a, he wasn’t, he was just going for it as much as I should have been, but err, he was on the ball and a good skipper.
MC: Yeah. So the flight engineer, he was?
JT: Oh Jimmy James was a great lad, oh yeah.
MC: A name like Jimmy James? [laughter]
JT: Yes, well he had a garage in Liverpool and I tried to find out about him and I found out about a week after he died. I used to belong the Aircrew Association, I think it was. And I asked them to fish out for any documents and they said the only one we’ve got is Jimmy James and he died a week ago and he was our flight engineer. Our bomb aimer, the one I would like to get in touch with is Ronnie Pugh, ‘cos Ronnie Pugh came to our house. In fact there’s a picture of him at our house, he came to our house, he was a great lad was Ronnie. He was a professional pianist before the war, he played for Maurice Winnick and wherever we went, on the piano, we always had a gang round together. [laughter] No problems with drinking with him.
MC: So, he was the navigator you say?
JT: He was the bomb aimer.
MC: What about the navigator?
JT: Jimmy, was very —
MC: Jimmy, this was Jimmy James, no Jimmy James was the flight engineer.
JT: Marlow. He was one of two who were married. He was married, a lovely wife, a young lady. He’d just got married and she came with us a couple of times, not on train journeys, elsewhere, and Jimmy, he never came out a lot. He didn’t go on the binge like us so much but he was a great bloke, Jimmy. He, he was the one who worked for the Air Ministry before the war and he wanted to get a commission so it would stand him in good stead when he got demobbed. But he did get it just before we finished, he did get one. He was only a, Robbie Pugh already had one, he was a pilot officer when he joined us.
MC: And your mid upper? That was —
JT: Jock Bryman [?] he was a flight sergeant.
MC: Yeah.
JT: Big Scotsman, a canny lad. [laughter]
MC: You don’t know what he did before the war?
JT: No I haven’t got a clue.
MC: No, no. And in the tail, rear gunner?
JT: Johnny Austin, but I don’t know what he did before the war but he got frostbite and he was invalided out of the RAF, Johnny Austin was. We had a spare gunner for a couple of trips, I think.
MC: Did you, [unclear] did you know much about 50 Squadron when you were posted there? Had they told you much? Did you know of it?
JT: No, I didn’t know anything about it at all. Not the slightest, no. It was a good squadron, and I’ll tell you what, we had a good mob.
MC: Hm. [pause] Yeah, as I say, you talked about your birthday, and so your raid on your birthday was that railway junction.
JT: Yes, well I sort of [unclear]
MC: You couldn’t celebrate it in the air could you eh? Or did you?
JT: No, no, no we didn’t.
MC: [laughter] A successful operation though, um. So you probably, so I mean, it wasn’t um, it wasn’t 16th April you were on operations?
JT: We must have gone down the pub.
MC: So you must have been down the pub.
JT: We would do, yes.
MC: That’s a good excuse, but you didn’t need an excuse in those days.
JT: [laughter] Hardly.
MC: So I mean, if, if I guess you’re looking at your first tour was um, your first operation even was er, was marshalling yards at Tours.
JT: That’s right. I don’t rem — I remember going to the marshalling yards but I don’t know where it was. That’s when I got Jimmy Marlow to try again to get him to look out of the window but he wouldn’t look. He said ‘no fear’.
MC: And then you did the GVC, UVC marshalling yards, you did lots of the marshalling yards?
JT: That’s right. [noise of door closing]
MC: Even Paris, even, your third trip was to Paris.
JT: I don’t remember that.
MC: Marshalling again, marshalling yards.
OTHER: There you go, that was, was that leaflet dropping you were saying you were doing at the time? That’s the one, that‘s the Paris trip.
JT: Paris, yeah.
OTHER: ‘Cos you went from [unclear] Paris and then you went, started, you seemed to go to Germany and Munich.
JT: [unclear]
OTHER: [unclear]
JT: But I was in the Ruhr Valley.
MC: You went to Cologne?
JT: Oh yes and somewhere else, I forget.
MC: Cologne and —
JT: Two or three trips to the Ruhr Valley. Yep, they were always a bit hairy.
MC: Yeah, because of low level defence —
JT: The thing was you’ve got a battery of searchlights and the second you got near to them, the searchlights were on you and you were dodging the searchlights all the way through.
MC: Did you, I mean did you get hit, you never got hit any time by flak?
JT: Sorry?
MC: Did you get hit any time by flak?
JT: I think we did but err, nothing to, well nothing to put us off keeping going.
MC: Yeah.
JT: Although that was, always took the length of the runway. According to the skipper you had to hold it down to make it, take itself off.
MC: It took a while to get off with a full load?
JT: It did yeah.
OTHER: So that would have been, you know especially if you had long trips, with a full fuel load as well.
JT: That’s right he would hold it down to the end of the runway to make it fight to get off, yeah.
OTHER: Is this a —
JT: Poor old Johnny who was in the rear turret was wondering when he was going to leave the deck. [laughter]
MC: Were there many times when you came back —
JT: Yes we did get a recall once.
MC: You had to bring the bomb load back?
JT: . We had to go out to the North Sea, there was a dumping area out in the North Sea, we used to have to go and dump them there and we’d say ‘ah flippin’ heck’. Or sometimes you’d get a hang up with a bomb and in theory you still had to go out to the North Sea but in honesty, disconnect the camera, get rid of it [laughter]. We didn’t do it that way, we did go sometimes but sometimes we didn’t.
MC: What sort of dumping area, you dumped it elsewhere?
JT: We’d just disconnect the camera, pull the toggle and away we’d go [laughter]and put the camera back on [laughter] get a picture of cloud.
MC: Yeah, yeah [laughter] So did you have to bring many bomb loads back did you?
JT: Sorry?
MC: Did you have to bring many loads back or was there —
JT: We never brought one back, only, we dumped one but we never ever brought any back.
MC: Oh you always dumped them?
JT: Yeah, yeah.
MC: What sort of bomb load was it you were carrying?
JT: Probably thousand pounders, [unclear] in cans. Four thousand pounders with cans.
MC: Four thousand.
JT: Four thousand pounders with the cans, well, a load of thousand pounders with the, oh bloody hell what are they called, not flares. Oh I can’t think.
MC: Incendiaries?
JT: What you say?
MC: Incendiaries?
JT: That’s right.
MC: Yeah, yeah and were there many mishaps, did you experience any mishaps?
JT: Pardon?
MC: Did you experience any mishaps at Skellingthorpe while you were there you know?
JT: No we didn’t actually, we didn’t get any hang ups, no.
MC: No, I meant did you have any accidents at Skellingthorpe or anything like that?
JT: Aahh, not that I can recall.
MC: So what did you personally think about the bombing raids then, about the —
JT: I thought they were a great success really.
MC: Yeah. And the morality of it, what did you think about that?
JT: I think Bomber Harris had it right. The only thing was he put a raid on once, I think Winston Churchill insisted and they lost a lot of aircraft that night but err, I thought they did a good job.
MC: Were you on that raid?
JT: No.
OTHER : That would be Nuremburg?
JT: Yep, That’s ninety six or ninety five.
MC: Yeah.
JT: Yeah, well that wasn’t going to go ahead but Churchill insisted that it did and we lost ninety six aircraft that night.
MC: Hmm, yeah.
JT: I mightn’t have been here now. [laughter]
MC: You didn’t do Dresden then?
JT: We’d finished.
MC: What did you think about Dresden then, you were aware of the Dresden raid?
JT: Well, it’s hard to say really. We never had to encounter the problems they had when they got there so we don’t know. I mean they said it was a walkover[?] for them. In fact a pal of mine who was a navigator in another squadron said he didn’t like, he regretted it said he was ashamed of going there but having said that and he came back but some people didn’t so it’s all right talking if you got back. Yeah. That was Ken Boxon, [?] Ken went to Dresden yeah.
MC: So what did you think about the way Harris was treated after the war?
JT: Sorry?
MC: What did you think about the way that Harris was treated after the war?
JT: I thought he had a very despicable treatment. I think for what he did during the war I think it was a crying shame. If it hadn’t been for him Bomber Command wouldn’t have been the force they were, I thought he was great.
MC: Good for Bomber Command.
JT: Absolutely, he was yeah, Butcher Harris. [laughter] But he didn’t get the justice he deserved.
MC: Yeah. And did you get your clasp, Bomber Command Clasp?
JT: Yes.
MC: You did get your clasp?
JT: I don’t think it’s worth a light. Little tiny thing, not worth a light. I don’t know why they bothered to make it to be honest. I think I brought it with me.
BT: In the box is it? Is that the one?
MC: So, yeah you did apply for your clasp and you got it. That’s um —
JT: No it’s not there.
MC: You said there was a lady at the end of the runway. She used to wave you off.
JT: Sure, she did. She came down, she’d wait for us to come back. She was the lady who used to treat us to coffee. She was the lady who gave me coffee that night when they called us in from Lincoln to go on ops.
MC: What was her name?
JT: Mrs Cook.
MC: Mrs Cook.
JT: Mrs Cook. She was a lovely lady and she’d come down and stand at the end of the runway and she would wait until we got back to the air traffic tower. She was lovely, really was.
MC: I suppose there would have been a few people waving you off?
JT: Sorry?
MC: I suppose there would have been a few people waving you off at the end of the runway?
JT: There were, that’s right there were, but she never, she never missed a trip that we were on, no.
MC: So did you mingle with the other crews much during the day?
JT: Well we did obviously but when we to, we had specialist briefing, nav briefing, WOP briefing, pilot briefing, but then, but at night you did OK, I mean we’ve got, if they were in the pub, the same pub as we were we’d mix in there but we never had, we had our own gang.
MC: Were you very conscious of the losses? I mean you know, were you aware of some of the aircraft that didn’t return?
JT: Well, the thing was, the following day there were empty beds. This was it.
BT: Yeah.
JT: That’s when you knew how many had been lost.
MC: Hmm. But it was never you.
JT: No. When you lose five out of eleven that’s a lot of [unclear]. We were, we were always there. We was very lucky.
MC: Is that what you put it down to?
JT: Yeah, it was luck, pure luck.
MC: And the skill of the skipper.
JT: And Dougie Milligan’s skill. Yep, yeah. He was [emphasis] skilful. When he got back he used to get, he got reprimanded once for taking his time coming in to land. He always complied with the instructions [background noise] for landing. Other air traffic come back ‘cos they went before him and they used to play hell about the, but Dougie never did, he always complied with them. [background noise]. The rules of landing. He was a good skipper.
MC: Which contributed to your success.
JT: Oh he did, without a doubt, yeah.
MC: So when you got your medals after the war did you? When did you get, collect your medals, did you apply for them straight away or —
JT: Ah. Did I? I can’t remember now whether in fact they —
MC: So what medals have you got?
JT: I’ve got the France & Germany, the Aircrew Europe, the Victory Medal and another but I don’t know what it is.
BT: Have you got them there John?
JT: They’re there somewhere.
OTHER: They’re in your blazer pocket.
JT: Ahh.
MC: Yeah, I was just asking you know about your medals, what you’ve, when you got them?
JT: I’ve got the Aircrew Medal at the end of it as well. I still put that on.
MC: Yeah. Then you’ll be err, France & Germany Star?
JT: France & Germany.
MC: That’s the one, I think it’s, that’s the one the clasp goes on.
JT: I don’t know, I don’t, didn’t go on, I never put it on anywhere. And then the Aircrew Europe.
MC: Yep.
JT: And then the Victory Medal and then err, I think I’ve forgotten what the other was. There’s certainly four of them. [unclear]
OTHER: No, no.
MC: So when you —
OTHER: They apologised to him.
MC: Talking about America, going back to when you were flying in America.
JT: That’s right.
MC: You say you flew in formation?
JT: Twelve Lancs in formation. Oh we were tight, it was a tight form, I could look out of my Astrodome and see the bloke in the next jar alongside me and we did that in tight formation over America. When we got to Army Air Corps Day the Yanks had three Superforts in formation. They were miles [emphasis] apart, they were absolute bloody rubbish and the commentator said ‘Ladies and gentlemen, don’t you think this is the best bit of formation flying you’ve seen today?’ and he had to apologise for it. Yeah.
MC: You’ve obviously [laughter]
JT: Three miserable bloody Superforts.
MC: You had twelve in tight formation?
JT: Twelve in tight formation.
MC: So you saw a fair bit of America then did you?
JT: Oh yeah we did.
MC: Whereabouts did you get to then?
JT: We started off at New York and Wash —, um, down to down south, oh I forget where it was and then we went to Hollywood, that area and then we went to Texas and we came back to Washington and somewhere else on the coast and then back to err, New York.
MC: So you flew the Lancs across did you?
JT: Oh yeah.
MC: You flew all twelve?
JT: Twelve yeah.
MC: Twelve Lancs across —
JT: That’s right. We stopped off in the middle of the Azores. We had to land in the Azores to refuel.
MC: The Azores?
JT: Yeah. And then we carried on from there to the States and one of our lads nearly wrote the Reception Committee off. He came up too tightly on the front and he had to pull up and the Reception Committee were lying on the deck [laughter] yeah.
MC: You got a good welcome from the Americans then?
JT: We got a wonderful, wonderful welcome, incredible. Really did. But err, I wouldn’t have liked to stay there. Having been born there I wouldn’t go back there, no, no.
MC: Yeah, well, whereabouts were you born?
JT: Helena, Montana.
MC: You did say, yes.
JT: That’s right, yeah. [pause]
BT: We’ve been over there.
JT: Ken and Al have taken me back there and Beryl —
BT: And me.
JT: All the four of us went. They took us over there.
MC: You [unclear] you back yeah.
JT: When did we go?
OTHER: We went on your 80th.
OTHER: Yeah, yep, just as, well I’ll tell you when it was because we stood under the Twin Towers and three months later they weren’t there.
JT: That’s right.
OTHER: They were —
BT: That’s right.
JT: We beat a path between the Twin Towers.
MC: What’s this?
JT: Flying Fortress, fifty thousand feet, bags of ammunition and a teeny weeny bomb.
[laughter]
OTHER: That’s what they said about the Yanks because they were flying so high [unclear]
JT: [unclear] little tiny bomb and we had a four thousand pounder on and a load of ammo. [laughter] In fact we took a crew one night with us and they couldn’t believe it before we got off and where we were going how much bomb, how many bombs we’d got on board. They could not believe it. They did just one trip with us, only one, that was it.
MC: This was on an operation was it, you took a —
JT: Oh yeah.
MC: You took an American —
JT: Took the Yanks one night, I think we took three of the crew [sound of door closing] on the rear gun, one by the skip and one alongside the nav and me. They couldn’t believe where we were going and what load we’d got on. Yeah.
MC: Amazing. ‘Cos they, they didn’t have such a big bomb load.
JT: Well that’s where this little song came from ‘Fly fly a fortress, fifty thousand feet, bags of ammunition and a teeny weeny bomb’ [laughter]
MC: You did two spells at EHB, that was your, wireless operator?
JT: Wireless operator, yeah.
MC: Yeah.
JT: We went from Blackpool to EHB and then we went back for a refresher later on when I’d done my gunnery course, yeah. EHB.
MC: So at that time, there was, what was the living accommodation?
JT: When I went the first time I was an AC2, when I went back the second time I was a sergeant. [laughter] Different approach altogether.
MC: Absolutely yeah. Well thank you very much John for your time.
JT: It’s been a pleasure
MC: Some interesting stories and err, —
JT: It’s nice to talk to you.
MC: and it’s been great talking to you [emphasis].
JT: Thank you very much.
MC: Thank you very much.
JT: It’s a pleasure.
Dublin Core
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 John Tait
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mike Connock
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
2016-06-10
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.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:42:42 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ATaitJT160610
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
John Tait was prompted to join the Royal Air Force, as he was American by birth and therefore he had to report to the police station once a month because he was considered an ‘alien’. He was a wireless operator and gunner, flying in Ansons, Wellingtons, Stirlings and Lancasters. He was based at RAF Skellingthorpe, enjoying the social life in and around Lincoln, flying bombing operations over the Ruhr Valley as well as various marshalling yards in France. At the end of the war he joined 35 Squadron who flew Lancasters in formation both in the UK and the USA. He was on the first aircraft that was allowed to fly over the White House after the war.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Wales
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Bridgend
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tina James
35 Squadron
50 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
entertainment
Goodwill tour of the United States (1946)
Lancaster
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Padgate
RAF Scampton
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Stormy Down
searchlight
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/371/6124/SCavalierRG1264567v10008-0001.1.jpg
2b7d4dd4e778702227b970a0c477a2d8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/371/6124/SCavalierRG1264567v10008-0002.1.jpg
00e3d3a8554b4e113b8f499ac5348b53
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
Cavalier, Reginald George. Album two
Description
An account of the resource
35 items. The album contains service material, Christmas cards, and propaganda leaflets in German, French and English.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-10
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cavalier, RG
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.
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
1000 Bombern
Description
An account of the resource
Propaganda leaflet aimed at the German-speaking population. Page 1 announces that the first two 1000 bomber attacks have taken place and promises more. Page 2 gives quotes from allied leaders outlining the rights a defeated Germany could expect from the Allies and calls on Germans themselves to defeat Hitler and end the war.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two sides of a printed sheet
Language
A language of the resource
deu
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SCavalierRG1264567v10008-0001, SCavalierRG1264567v10008-0002
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription. Other languages than English
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
perception of bombing war
propaganda
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/371/6129/SCavalierRG1264567v10013-0001.1.jpg
1bd4c540ec332a506b4afbb37cb8114f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/371/6129/SCavalierRG1264567v10013-0002.1.jpg
b366f38f446181df20495feb778d85c7
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
Cavalier, Reginald George. Album two
Description
An account of the resource
35 items. The album contains service material, Christmas cards, and propaganda leaflets in German, French and English.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-10
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cavalier, RG
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.
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
Fuhrer Worte! (Leaders' words)
Description
An account of the resource
Propaganda leaflet aimed at the German-speaking population.
On one side, this leaflet repeats promises from Nazi leaders about Germany's clear air superiority. On the reverse are quotations from Allied leaders about the justice that Germans can expect if they actively renounce the Nazi regime. The Allied leaders also promise punishment for proven Nazi criminals.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two sides of a printed sheet
Language
A language of the resource
deu
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Artwork
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SCavalierRG1264567v10013-0001, SCavalierRG1264567v10013-0002
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription. Other languages than English
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Goering, Hermann (1893-1946)
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)
propaganda
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945)
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/371/6134/SCavalierRG1264567v10018-0001.1.jpg
091d7af5f84d85d8e6463c13b0a02faf
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/371/6134/SCavalierRG1264567v10018-0002.1.jpg
c4a356022036e4e6a5759479c4d3eff4
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
Cavalier, Reginald George. Album two
Description
An account of the resource
35 items. The album contains service material, Christmas cards, and propaganda leaflets in German, French and English.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-10
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cavalier, RG
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.
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
Wir Schlagen Zuruck! (We are hitting back!)
Description
An account of the resource
Propaganda leaflet aimed at the German-speaking population. The leaflet explains Churchill's intention of striking back with RAF bombing attacks on strategic targets in retaliation for Germany's indiscriminate attacks on 11 countries.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two sides of a printed sheet
Language
A language of the resource
deu
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SCavalierRG1264567v10018-0001, SCavalierRG1264567v10018-0002
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription. Other languages than English
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)
propaganda
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/376/7301/PHouriganM1804.1.jpg
710d60d65d0d6dc0948b05c33ec1e73c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/376/7301/AHouriganM180416.2.mp3
e72ccdc7eb2d57d68e893377766b8057
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
Hourigan, Margaret
Margaret Hourigan
M Hourigan
Description
An account of the resource
158 items. An oral history interview with Margaret Hourigan (1922 - 2023, 889775 Royal Air Force) and 156 target photographs taken by 50 and 61 Squadron aircraft during 1944. Margaret Hourigan served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as a plotter with Fighter Command before being posted to RAF Waddington and RAF Skellingthorpe with Bomber Command.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Margaret Hourigan and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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
2019-04-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hourigan,M
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So, a quick introduction, this is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre. My name is Dan Ellin, today I am interviewing Margaret Hourigan nee Parsons it is the 16th of April 2018, we’re at the IBCC Digital Archive, Riseholme and also present in the room is David Hourigan. So, Margaret, could you start?
MH: Start yes.
DE: Start by telling us a little about your life?
MH: Yes, my childhood. If I start, I remember 1926, I remember the Great Strike. And my father was a miner when he came back from the War, the only job he could get, he was very badly wounded in the first World War. And I remember the, standing on the front step of our little house on Lowmoor Road and a man ran in toour front door. And the police outside, was it police or a soldier? On a black horse reared up and the man ran under the horse’s legs into our house and out the back door. And I don’t know what happened but police everywhere. I think the miners were striking, maybe they were being a bit angry, I don’t know. But my Dad was a safety man and so he was down the pit so it was OK. I remember that very plainly, I think it was 1926. I would have been four. And then, my Dad was very, very ill after that he got badly burnt at work. I remember [unclear] to think he was going to die. We were too little to know that. Anyway, he didn’t die, eventually he recovered. And I can’t remember moving but we moved to another house and my Nanna and Grandpa left and they had a fish and chip shop which we took over so my Dad worked there. He also worked at the pit, he also worked as a gardener for a doctor, and he also had his own allotment. So, he repaired our shoes and cut our hair when we had no money. And we were always well fed through the Depression years but I remember terrible scenes of children with no shoes in the snow. Awful things we saw at Kirkby. And I think then the miners didn’t get any help if they were injured at work. I think they went home and had to suffer. I can’t, I know we were all very Labour, when the Daily Herald paper came out we all thought we were in heaven, and all very Labour. I’m not now [chuckles] we were then. And we used to go to, when I was a little bit older, we used to go to Hucknall Air Display. There was a little aerodrome there, and they had Tiger Moths. I used to think ‘One day, God I’d love to fly them.’ And every year we visited until I went to work and then I decided that I would join up as soon as war was declared. Oh, belonged to the Labour Party League of Youth then and we were very hostile little bunch and when Mr Chamberlain came back from Berlin waving his bit of paper we all went mad and got very angry. And the Labour Party said they were going to disband us if we didn’t shut up. One of our trips was to go to the pictures and we sat down when they played God Save the Queen or King or we walked out according to our mood. Anyway, soon as war was declared whoosh we all joined up except one poor man who was a true conscientious objector. He never did join up and he had awful struggle, but he never gave in. We were all wimps, as soon as war was declared.
DE: What happened to him do you know?
MH: I don’t know. I know he was penalised and punished and treated like dirt. I don’t know. He didn’t die because one day David answered the telephone, somebody in Canberra saying ‘Anybody from Kirkby in Ashfield?’ And David rang up and said ‘Yes, my mother is.’ So he chatted I said ‘I remember his Dad he was a conchie.’ We never heard from him again. I mean I didn’t mean to be derogatory, I thought he was a wonderful man.
DE: Um. But you, you, you joined up?
MH: We joined the WAAFs yes. And I went to stay with my Auntie Margaret. She had a shop on Highson Green at Basford in Nottingham. And early hours of the morning I trotted off to Nottingham station. I went to St Pancras, how I got across London I don’t know. I’d never been before and I went to Kingsway and there was a male clerk there and a doctor. And they talked to me all morning and then the male clerk took me to the pictures at lunchtime. You know they had those newsreel places then, and I shut my eyes the whole way through because I thought if I can’t see, if my eyes aren’t good enough, they won’t take me I was sitting there [chuckles] [unclear] a right nutcase. Anyway, took me back to Kingsway afterwards and must have had a cup of tea or something. And the doctor said ‘You’ve got a heart of a lion.’ Always remember that.
DE: Um.
And then I had a medical, went home and I think it was very early January 1940 I got the call up. Freezing cold winter. I don’t know how I got to London, I suppose I did. And went to Watford, think it was Watford. And it was freezing cold there and a dirty, dirty billet the men had been in, and nobody had been in for months, anyway it was really dirty. And the water froze in the pipes, we couldn’t have a wash. The girls had water bottles that froze in bed. I woke up the next morning and I went to the sick bay, and I was covered in big red blobs. And the doctor said ‘Haven’t ever seen flea bites before?’ I hadn’t. Anyway, they must have gone away because we started marching up and down, up and down, and round and round, got our uniforms and then I was posted to Leighton Buzzard. I found I’d been enrolled as a clerk,special duties, so I must have talked well and got a very high classification. And went to Leighton Buzzard, started plotting. And then one day they said ‘You and two other girls are posted to Bawdsey Manor.’ It’s down near Felixstowe where Watson-Watt invented the radar. [unclear] arrived late at night, remember crossing water but it actually wasn’t an island, it was just a little inlet to get across to the house. And a man rowed the boat over and somewhere I met some soldiers. I don’t know how because they said would I ask the girls at the base if they would like to come to a dance? I thought they’d all be too posh to go but they ‘Oh yes.’ So, we went to the dance with the sailors, the soldiers and it was a huge house. Lots of rooms, lots of cockroaches. And in the morning I woke up and they had kedgeree for breakfast. I’d never seen it before. I was just used to cornflakes or porridge and they had this great big thing of kedgeree. Anyway, the Indian educated girls all loved it. A lot of girls had been brought up by their families living in India, they thought it was wonderful, I didn’t. Anyway, we started on the radar and we had a green screen, like a television screen, with a green line wavering line that went across it really quickly. And echoes, a big echo would be an aeroplane, and wiggle, wiggle so many in the group. I couldn’t do it, I hated it, made me feel sick. Anyway, I persisted and the other girls just had a little green handle, they could turn it and illuminate the echo and say ‘Twelve plus’ and ‘twenty thousand feet.’ I could not do it. So, I went to the WAAF officer in the end and I said ‘I hate it, I can’t do it.’ And there was a man in the office with her. He said. And she said ‘Yes, yes.’ I couldn’t go, he thought I knew too much. Anyway, outside was the big pylons, you know?
DE: Um.
MH: And one interesting day before I left we were walking, a WAAF and I, were walking along the edge of green grass and the Channel was here in front of us. And I could see ships out at sea and big black birds flying all round it. And I thought they were big huge seagulls. And as we were walking along we saw the Coastguard. He was dancing up and down, waving his arms at us. We thought ‘Oh, he’s gone mad.’ And when we caught up with him, just as we caught up with him, a low flying German aeroplane went over. It would only be a hundred feet, we could see the pilot laughing. And he said ‘I was trying to warn you.’ Well where could we go? Nowhere to lie down and hide. Anyway, he was laughing. The German pilot must have thought it was a bit of a joke. We were both in uniform.
DE: Um
MH: Anyway, he flew inland for a little while and he came out further down the coast, we could still see him. He wasn’t laughing when he came back out. And he went back. The black birds were the first attack on a convoy.
DE: I see.
MH: So that was that. Nearly written off before I started. And then I went to Fighter Command Headquarters at Bentley Priory in the ops room there, started plotting.
DE: And what was that like?
MH: Huge, and down, down, down underground. We lived in huts opposite and I remember I Winston Churchill coming in. I remember King George coming in, looking down on the plots. And must have started bombing. I remember Dunkirk about that time. I asked, anyway I got a bit lonely, the girls were all very posh shall we say. One girl’s father signed the pound note, I know that. If you told me who it was I’d tell you that was so but I can’t remember. But I know her father was high in the Government. They all came along with their gold braid to pick their daughters up in big cars and here’s poor little me from Kirkby. I had nobody to pick me up. And I decided to have my photograph taken. So, I went along to this photographer and I had a black velvet dress I remember and I said ‘Would you take it with me smoking a cigarette?’ He said ‘Indeed I won’t!’ I thought I’d be a film star. He said ‘Indeed I won’t!’ He did a lovely ‘photo. Anyway, I asked to go to 12 Group, I went to 12 Group headquarters then in Hucknall and I stayed there all through the Battle of Britain and the night bombing. I was plotting the night Coventry was bombed and there were so many plots on the table but we couldn’t relieve each other. We used to take time off, two people standing beside each other plotting and grabbing plots off. You plotted five minutes red, five minutes yellow and five minutes blue. Then you snatched the red off and started plotting red again and they knew the time upstairs, they could tell how old the plot was. And when they were over land the Observer Corps did all the plots. Out at sea we got the plots from the radar.
DE: Um.
MH: And the men who were plotting that night from Coventry, not one of the them left their posts. All of their houses were bombed, not all badly but all stayed with us. Thought that was rather wonderful. Didn’t get much praise at all really when they talk about the war now nobody remembers the Observer Corps do they?
DE: No, my grandfather was in the Observer Corps.
MH: Was he?
DE: How did, how did it feel then seeing, watching the plots of the German aircraft coming in?
MH: We were too damn busy to bother. We wrote a poem about it. I wrote it down somewhere I know. ‘A bloody raids coming roaring in, kicking up a bloody din. Who can spot their bloody game? Bloody seven, two and four, these and bloody thousands more. Across the bloody coast they came, bloody Jones is up above , he a bloody man we’d love. No bloody smoking says the cad, enough to drive us bloody mad.’ Because we knitted or sewed or read but the men got so bored they cracked up.
DE: Um.
MH: In the end, when we started we’d be half and half. By this time, this time, they’d might be two men left who were C3, they couldn’t go anywhere else.
DE: Right.
MH: So then after all that bombing I had trouble with varicose veins and I was going to hospital, hilarious story. Going to hospital for treatment. And one day I woke up, I didn’t know, somebody knocked on the door, I’d stripped my nightgown off, standing there stark naked and a big policeman walked in the door. And I stood there [exclamation noise], and I stood there and he shut the door and went out. I still stood there. And he came in again and I hadn’t moved. And I ran. He said ‘I’d never seen anything as pretty in all my life as your little bum waddling down the hall.’ He didn’t know it was me but I went to get the bus to go and have my injections for my varicose veins and he was there and I cut him dead. He said ‘I knew then it was you.’ Otherwise he didn’t. So that was all over the camp. ‘A WAAF’s been caught in the nude.’ And it was me. He said ‘Why didn’t you put some clothes on?’ I said ‘I couldn’t think.’ Anyway, Wing Commander Woods was the CO there and he said ‘Why don’t you put in for Bomber Command, there’s a sergeant’s job going there?’ So, I did and took me to Grantham for the interview and I marched in, polished up to the hilt, [unclear]into the hall, turned round and they were sitting at the table there. Whizzed round, slipped on my bum. And I tried to carry on, I couldn’t. Anyway, we all started laughing then that was OK, we were all at ease. And I got accepted and I was posted to Swinderby and then I went to Waddington. And then 44 Squadron left Waddington, the Rhodesians. We had no squadron there we had put in concrete runways. I don’t know why they keep saying that there were squadrons there, there weren’t. They put in a concrete runway.
DE: Yeah it was closed for a while.
MH: It was closed for quite a while.
DE: We interviewed a chap who was there when they were putting the runways in.
MH: Yeah, yeah. We had Irish labourers come in. They were awful, we hated them. I damn near got raped one night. They were so drunk luckily they couldn’t catch me. But we had to walk home from Waddington. I was with an Aussie sergeant, Bill. That’s all I know. And we walked up the hill, you know you get to the top of the hill? All the nice houses were. Over the top was flat. That side’s green,this side’s airfield. And we heard these men saying ‘No, no, no you hold her, you hold him and I’ll have her. No, no, no, no, you hold him and I’ll have her.’ I thought ‘What’d they say?’ And I said to Bill ‘There going to rape me!’ and as we were passing by, I don’t know if it was an ack ack army unit but there was a five barred gate and a shed. I knew there were soldiers in there, and I put my hand on top of that gate and I cleared it. And I ran into the hut, the men were all in the ‘jamas, laughing and talking, and I said ‘Those men are going to rape me.’ And a couple of them got dressed and then Bill arrived. He said ‘I couldn’t get over the gate.’ But I cleared it. Olympic runner honestly. Anyway, they took us back to camp and that was that. But we had lots of trouble with the Irish then, always drunk, always fighting. Anyway, I trained as a watchkeeper and then sometimes I went to Bardney, sometimes I stayed I went to Skellingthorpe. The first time I was at Skellingthorpe I was under flying control, little tiny ops room. All the room was full of men. Officers, group captains everybody. And the raid was coming through on my little telephone . And I never learnt French at school and the route was coming through in French. I couldn’t do it. I know what, one was [unclear]. On one of those photos we’ve taken upstairs. I can remember that. Anyway, I struggled and did it and you know your degrees, I put in sixty three degrees and all that. And I made, I did it alright. Anyway Flight Lieutenant Williams said ‘You did a good job Maggie.’ He helped me, sorted it all out. But that was my initiation Eventually, we moved to a big ops room at the Doddington end of Skellingthorpe and had a great big table in the middle. I had a little office and Squadron Leader Quinn was at that end in his little office. He was a station navigation officer. And intelligence there in another little room. Daddy, Squadron Leader Dodd, we called him ‘Daddy Dodd’ ‘cause he was in his thirties. Daddy Williams was in his twenties and I know Daddy Quinn was twenty-nine. We thought he was old. And I worked there from then on. I remember a Lanc’ crashing at the end of the runway and blowing a great big hole and all the windows in Lincoln High Street were broken. And this air gunner was still sitting on the hole. He must have been mad, never, ever heard of him again.
DE: Um.
MH: But that was, we used to go to the end of the runway and watch the boys go. Not so much coming back ‘cause they came back early in the morning. But I’d walk round the perimeter track and they’d be lying by the aircraft on a nice summers day waiting to take off. I never dared say ‘Good luck or God bless you.’ Thought they’d think I was putting a jinx on them, but I wanted to say something, but I daren’t, never did.
DE: Um.
MH: But in the, when we went to lunch mess at lunchtime they’d all say ‘What’s the petrol like Mag?’ It worked out, you know long or short trip. Or ‘What’s the bomb load?’ they’d know if that was a big one that was a short trip. Or a little one was a long trip. And they knew I knew. I knew they knew I knew but I couldn’t say anything to them. And we had Group Captain Jefferson there who was a very, very posh gentleman. It was all ‘Do, do, do,do you think Maggie. Do you think you could?’ I can’t tell you what he said, it’s too rude. But he always sat with me at night when they were off flying and Daddy Dodd used to go to Lincoln and stay at the hotel with his wife and we had a code that I had to tell him, if somebody was coming back early or something like that. He’d ring me and say, I can’t remember what the code was but ‘Yes, come back’ or ‘No, you don’t need to.’
DE: Right.
MH: We had a great rapport. And that’s pretty well it I think. I often went to Bardney and worked there. And I remember meeting the nicest man I’ve ever met in my life. A Flight Lieutenant Dennis Irving. He was a very Catholic gentleman who went to mass, said the rosary, prayed. Everybody knew, we all knew and yet he wasn’t a bit shy about it. Was a real Christian gentleman. And the funny thing was they all had to wear civilian clothes when they went home to Ireland. I worked with a WAAF who had to go home in civvies. And yet when my husband went in Ireland he said that he had to wear civvies there were U boat men in the pubs in full uniform. They weren’t happy.
DE: No, I can imagine.
MH: Anyway, I pretty well went along like that was escorted to station dances and pictures. I remember once going to the pictures, Casablanca. We all sang ‘You must remember this.’ The whole theatre was singing and really the rapport, you can’t imagine and the friendship. It was just something.
DE: Um.
MH: Sometimes I’d go to a meal and they’d be one sergeant sitting there, I can remember him. And I thought ‘I should talk to you.’ But how do you talk to a stranger who’s looking a bit grumpy? Anyway, I thought you’re not going to come back. And he didn’t. Sometimes things happen like that. I remember being madly in love with a boy. And I was hanging around the flying control and in the end the girls said ‘For God’s sake Maggie, clear off.’ [unclear] I had to go home. Anyway, he did his tour and went back to Australia. That was that. He was killed afterwards anyway. And one day Daddy Quinn said to me ‘Maggie, I’ve got good news for you. Mentioned in dispatches.’
DE: You were mentioned in dispatches?
MH: Um.
DE: What was that for?
MH: I suppose because I was a good girl, did my work well. I lost the citation, I’ve got the box, the packet that it came in but my son that went to America took everything, I never got it back. I’ve got the envelope and I’ve got the thing it came with.
DE: Right.
MH: It said.
DE: Well we could probably look it up and find it [unclear].
MH: That’s what came with it. You can’t look it up, it’s all gone.
DE: No, we can look it up in the Gazette. It says it’s dated the first of January 1946.
MH: [Rustling of paper] What this is? That’s what the citation was with.
DE: Yes.
MH: Yes, they said you could look at the what’s its name? The magazine.
DE: The Gazette?
MH: Yes, the Gazette. It’ll be in there. That’s what we did, a plotter.
DE: Yes. So what was your job like?
MH: In the operations room?
DE: In the watch office. What was your job in the watch office?
MH: Oh the – the ‘phone would ring in the morning. We had to get to work at nine o’clock. I was always late. And the ‘phone would ring and a voice would say ‘Ops on tonight, maximum effort.’ Or they’d say ‘Nothing on tonight.’ Soon as they said ops were on I rang the group captain and I rang both wing commanders from the squadrons and then flight commanders and then the bombing leader and engineer officer, flying control, intelligence. And they all started their work then and then we had teleprinters bringing all the information later on in the war so Groupie Jefferson used to come in and read it and the route and Squadron Leader Quinn would come in. He’d plan the route from that we were going to fly. Height, target. Then I had to look up the colours of the day and they had to fire those across the coastal path the naval ship or whatever when they were coming in.
DE: Um.
MH: And eventually they’d have to announce they briefing times and would have to announce the meal times. And then I would go off duty at five, five thirty. Would go down to the runway then and watch them going. And then one time I went off in the morning and it was terribly misty like it’s been here for the last week. Very low cloud. And Jock McPherson was in the control in his little black and white van at the end of the runway firing a Very cartridge. I said ‘Can I have one?’ He gave me one, we were doing one each. And fire it and the Lancaster would come out of the mist. Over the waafery, down to the end of the runway. If it had been three foot short we would have been killed. But nobody did they all landed, bang on the runway.
DE: Wow.
MH: I think they had a bomb load on too, I think they were coming back with a bomb load.
DE: Crikey.
MH: Anyway, they were hilarious things.
DE: Ah ha.
MH: Another time we were sleeping naked outside. There was a little garden, I think it was an officer’s garden, somebody lived there. A nice little garden of roses. We used to go out then take our clothes off and a bit of low flying went on [chuckles]. Anyway that was that I think. When the invasion was on that night I went out to the toilet, about five o’clock in the morning, or six. It was just turning light. The sky was black with aircraft. Couldn’t, could not believe so many aircraft and I thought ‘I’ll remember this as long as I live.’ Which I have.
DE: Did you know what it was then when you saw?
MH: Well, I knew when I saw it what it was. I didn’t know, didn’t know it was on until then. But we had two accidents. Another time a bomb went off in the dispersal. All of the Lancs were loaded and windows again went in the High Street. But the people were lovely to us. One of the girls that, a big store, don’t know what it was. Just above the Stonebow she always gave me silk stockings. They were very hard to get.
DE: Um.
MH: Um. And then one day the war was over. And 50 and 61 just disappeared. Groupie Jefferson just disappeared and a Group Captain Forbes came. And he was a very nice man, we always thought about him. He’d come back from Japan and his wife was interned. We could never work out how that happened, not Japan, Singapore.
DE: Um.
MH: Anyway, 463 came and they were being briefed to bring the prisoners back from Europe. And I was on, I went early and WAAF said ‘’I knew you’d come early tonight when they were here.’ All the officers were in the ops room being briefed. And I saw this blonde one leaning on the table at the back. I thought ‘Oh, he looks alright.’ I can’t remember him coming up to me but he must have ‘cause I went out with him that night and I married him. (chuckles). Two months later I married him and went to Australia.
DE: OK. Well why not?
MH: Um. It’s silly. Silly, silly, silly. I didn’t know if he had a job, didn’t know if he was a layabout or what. I mean they were all handsome in uniform, I never looked further than that. Anyway he went to uni, the Government paid for them all to go to uni if they wanted to and they’d matriculated, so he did. Did an economics degree and a commerce and he worked in the Government all his life. And I got presented to the Queen Mother when she came and had a good life.
DE: So, you met him after D-Day?
MH: After the war was over.
DE: Yeah.
MH: He was on 463 Squadron.
DE: And did you marry him in the UK?
MH: Yes I did.
DE: When did you both go to Australia?
MH: He went back that Christmas. We married in October, October the 30th He went back to Australia then Christmas and I went back the next August on the Orbita.
DE: What was that like?
MH: They divided all the first-class cabins for in about six. And there was hardly any water to wash yourselves. We were taking all our clothes off and going standing in a draughty doorway it was so hot. And when we were going down Suez Canal we were passing all the British ships coming home with all the troops. And they were ‘Where are you going?’ and the Aussies were shouting ‘We’re going to Australia, we’ve got all the girls.’ And the Englishmen ‘ Have they really got all the girls?’ We felt miserable then. The Aussies were awful. When we got to Port Said the people came along the boat, beside the boat, hauling up handbags and things for us to buy.
DE: Um.
MH: And the Aussies put hoses on them.
DE: Right.
MH: I know my husband said when he arrived back in Australia all the big dignitaries came out to meet the ships coming in and cheering the boys. My husband always called them ‘The Cheer Company’, cheer you when you go and cheer you when you come back. They put the hoses on them as well. And anyway then I had a horrible time. My mother in law hated, me she was Irish and blamed me for all the stuff going on in Ireland. I’d never heard of it. We were never taught at school anything about that.
DE: Um. So where did you live in Australia?
MH: We lived in Enfield, it’s not a terribly good area really. But they lived there, my mother in law lived there with her second husband. My husband’s father came back from the first World War with a, what did he have? Military Medal, and I think he was a bit shell shocked. He cleared off and left his family and never, ever heard what happened to him again.
DE: Um.
MH: Anyway, we’ve got his medal and he got a write up on. You know you can look it up on David’s mobile and he’s got all his citation.
DE: Yes. Never, ever heard from him again. Shame wasn’t it?
DE: Um.
MH: They had lovely grandchildren. I had eight children, three sets of twins, and two single girls. David’s a twin. I’ve lost three.
DE: Oh dear.
MH: Um. Anyway, that’s that. I think that’s told you everything.
DE: If it’s OK I’ll ask a couple more questions?
MH: Yes.
DE: What did your husband do after the war in Australia?
MH: He was an, he started off as an auditor and then he worked for the Leader of the Opposition who was a Labour man. Mr O’Halloran Giles, he worked for him. And then Mr O’Halloran-Giles.
DH: Mr O’Halloran?
MH: Um? O’Halloran Giles. Mick O’Halloran that’s right. And then he died and Frank Walsh was the second one. My husband worked for him and they were elected into office but my husband couldn’t go with him the Public Service wouldn’t let him transfer to the Premier’s office. So he stayed in the Public Works Committee and he worked for them for thirty odd years.
DE: Right, OK. Did you have a job?
MH: No.
DE: No.?
MH: Too busy. I beg your pardon I did have a job when I first went to Australia. My mother in law insisted that I went to work. And I was pregnant with twins, sick as a dog, morning sickness. And I went to work at [Myle?] Emporium, which was a bit like [TJ’s?] sort of place, and they were so sorry for me they put me in bed every day. They said I was the worst saleswoman they’d ever had. How could I go from my job to that?
DE: Quite.
MH: And [Lloyd?] used to meet me at the railway station on his way home and take me home. I couldn’t face his mother. And they drank and swore and called all the English ’Pommies bastards.’ And it was after the Bodyline cricket series when Ray Larwood was there, who was born, lived near where I lived in Nottinghamshire.
DE: Um.
MH: And were all Bodyline killers. She used to go on about it. Anyway that was that, eventually they left and sold us the house and left. We could never afford to move anywhere else then ‘cause all the children went to private schools. We had some nuns opposite our house. I had a knock on the door one day and they said ‘Can David and Diane come to school?’ I thought ‘Go to school with nuns, no.’ I said ‘No, we’re moving.’ Couldn’t think of anything else to say. I thought afterwards said to my husband ‘They looked, had nice faces.’ ‘Cause he was a Catholic, I didn’t know. Anyway they knew and anyway I went and said ‘Yes, they can come.’
DE: Um.
MH: They started off. And David and Diane went to school. Sister [unclear] had about a hundred children didn’t she David? All in one room. When I went there [hissing noise] they all had their front teeth missing. ‘Mrs Hourigan’s here, Mrs Hourigan’s here.’ Anyway I heard them talking one day and teaching them saying about Jesus and Jesus was God when he came to earth. And I said ‘What’s she saying? Jesus wasn’t God.’ So I said to her ‘Don’t agree with what you’re saying.’ So she said ‘Well the mother sets the religion, if you don’t like it.’ She said ‘Have to give it up, but.’ She said ‘Before you do that go for a retreat,’ I went for a retreat at Canberra College and I fell in love with it. What they were telling me, and the singing and the hymns and the incense. I was in heaven and I converted in 1954.
DE: Right, OK.
MH: Never regretted it. And with losing three children I can tell you I needed my faith.
DE: Um.
MH: David’s my right hand man. And when I came here for this reunion I had these photographs to give all these years. I’ve rung Bomber Command time and time again in London and they took a message once and I said that bombing photos and no idea, absolutely no idea what I was saying and then it’d only be a couple of months ago I rang my daughter who lived in Dorset died and my other daughter moved into her house. And I was telling Elizabeth and she said ‘Mum I’ll fix it.’ So she rang and she got Nicky Barr, is it Nicky Barr? Who said ‘I’m thrilled, thrilled, thrilled. We’re opening the memorial.’ She said ‘I’d love your Mum to come.’ So Nicky rang Annette who’s done the Australian contingent and Annette rang me and said ‘Do you want to come with us?’ I said ‘Oh, I’d give my right arm to come with you.’ So I did. And then when we were at? We were David, where I fell in love again?
DH: Coningsby.
MH: Coningsby. I saw the Millikin name on the wall. I said ‘I knew a Millikin.’ And Wing Commander Millikin’s in 61, 619 now.
DE: Ah ha
MH: And he said ‘You knew my, that would have been my grandfather.’
DE: Wow.
MH: He hardly believed me at first but when I told him things I knew about his grandfather he knew I was genuine. And he said ‘Did my grandfather kiss you?’ I said ‘I wish he would, he didn’t, he was married.’
DE: Well.
MH: But anyway he was really happy. And he was a lovely man his grandfather was. A happy one like this one, happy and kind.
DE: Um.
MH: We had all those events, I could tell you hundreds truly, things come back to me. I’m lying in bed at night, cor. Is the lake still at Skellingthorpe?
DE: Um, I’m not sure. Skellingthorpe has changed an awful lot because –
MH: I know it’s a town, village now.
DE: It was built on virtually all of the, all of the old RAF station yeah.
MH: I know the school’s Lancaster school isn’t it?
DE: Um.
MH: Where the watch office was they said, and the waafery was in the rookery.
DE: Oh right, yes. What was the waafery like?
MH: Oh, a few huts. I had to walk across an empty block to get in have a bath. Get your clothes off. You can imagine in the middle of winter going to have a bath?
DE: Did they have plugs in the baths?
MH: No, took your own plug. We found that everywhere we travelled, it all went to Ireland, there was never a plug in the bath.
DE: So what did you do?
MH: Put a plastic bag over it.
DE: Aha.
MH: And that sucks in stops the water flowing away. There was plenty of hot water.
DE: But it was a long walk from the?
MH: Not really a long walk, a cold walk.
DE: Cold?
MH: And being an NCO I had a room at the end of the hut. So all the girls were there, open beds, but I had a little private room. And a little stove and I used to fill it with flowers, from the. What’s those flowers David?
DH: Cinerarias??
MH: No, those big bushes, rhododendrons. Rhododendrons.
DH: Rhododendrons.
MH: Yeah.
DE: OK. Did you have any trouble with the girls in the rest of the hut?
MH: Never, never, no. One girl surprised us. She was sitting knitting baby clothes and suddenly they said ‘She’s gone.’ We didn’t know. Was pregnant. She’d gone. We had, some of the English airman used to be a bit snobby. When the Aussies came and the Rhodesians they were really, and the Canadians, they were really you know, didn’t care whether you were a sergeant or what. They were officers there agreeable but some of the British. One man I met, and he used to come in the ops room. They all came in the ops room at night when ops weren’t on and I had a kettle and a toaster and the NAAFI used to send me over a big lump of butter and a lot of bread and make toast. And anybody would turn up and have a slice of toast and a cup of something. And this man used to, flight lieutenant somebody or other, used to come and have a cup of tea and toast with me and Bill. Familiar yes, ‘Maggie fa, fa, fa’ and a couple of days later I went into town and I was walking up towards the Stonebow I remember on the right hand side. Met him with this civilian woman and of course I chatted to him like I had in the ops room the night before and he just cut me as dead as dead. I thought ‘You pig.’ The next time he came for cups of tea I tell you he didn’t get it. Hung his head. I thought ‘Don’t bother coming here.’
DE: I can’t say I blame you, that’s –
MH: No, no. But I found that, and they used to call the WAAF’s ‘camp bikes’ or ‘officer’s ground sheets’ was the pet one.
DE: Do you think that was justified or?
MH: No, [emphatic] no, no, no. When I look back and think how hard the girls worked. The MTT, the girls in the mess, and the equipment. And my friend used to drive the bomb trolley and people in the office, and teleprinters, telephone exchange, intelligence, meterology. We all worked so hard and we all believed we were shortening the war.
DE: Um.
MH: I never heard anybody say anything else. And David will laugh. I meant to tell you this story about David’s friend. When they were about eighteen, they were at Uni. And the man remembers to this day, he’s a professor now. Monash University but he knows Mrs Hourigan was angry with him. He said, what was it we were talking about? Bomber Command, we talk about Bomber Command the whole time my husband and I when we got back. We lived what had happened. And we were talking. And he said ‘Oh, they all went off.’ He said ‘They thought kill a few Germans tonight.’ And thought that of Bomber Command, and I said ‘Nothing of the kind.’ And David saw him recently and he said ‘Your mother still remembers then does she?’ He said ‘Yes, she does.’ I’ll never forget, I was so upset, so angry. And when I was in hospital last year the doctor said to me ‘I’ve heard that when they woke up in the morning they threw a dart at the wall. Wherever the dart landed they said ‘That’s where we’ll bomb tonight.’ I said ‘Nothing could be further from the truth.’
DE: So do you think in Australia Bomber Command has got an odd sort of reputation?
MH: I think it, I thought it was general because here for a long time we were wanted for being war criminals weren’t we?
DE: Um. Some people think that yeah. I just wondered if you thought it was different in Australia because you know I think.
MH: I think in Australia a lot of the people thought that the Bomber Command boys had been having a good time in England and they were being bombed by the Japanese. And when they went back it was ‘Oh you’ve been having a good time overseas, we’ve been suffering the Japanese.’ In fact when the War was over the squadrons were ordered to come back to fight Japan.
DE: Um.
MH: Only lucky that the Americans dropped the atomic bomb in August or they’d all have been coming back for that.
DE: Um.
MH: But I don’t think that they understood the War ‘cause they hadn’t been in it. ‘Cause when we’re lying in bed hearing the doodle bugs going round, buzz, buzz, buzz, and then the engine stop you think ‘Oh God, where’s it going to land?’ They had none of that.
DE: Quite, no.
MH: I remember being in Nottingham one night when Nottingham was bombed and I was with my Auntie. And she was a little way out of Nottingham and remember seeing all the incendiaries in the fields. We could see the bombs going down. And one night, we used to hitch, when we were in Fighter Command, we used to hitch hike to London on our days off and one night I remember being on top of a building and mines were coming down on parachutes. How I got up there I don’t know and the men were running around. What do you call them? Air raid wardens were running around with buckets and hoses and we’re up there laughing and dancing about, the WAAF’s and me. We never were in any danger ever when we were in uniform. Except those Irish men. Never forget them. But nowhere else, we went in, we were wandering around looking for a pub we could get a drink. [unclear] some places I can tell you wouldn’t go in. We’d open the front door awful, people with black eyes and black and they’d just look up, we backed out again. I don’t know what sort of den on iniquity it was, didn’t even know where we were.
DE: Um.
MH: But we’d hitch. And when we met the Canadians we cut all our buttons off and swapped with them. We came back to Nottingham without a button on our uniform. And they went off without buttons on theirs. I’ve still got Canadian buttons on mine somewhere. Don’t know where it is, my uniform is now. Think Michael took it to America
DE: Aha.
MH: So, that’s it I think.
DE: Okey dokey
MH: Are you happy with that?
DE: I’m absolutely very, very much so. I’m just having a look to see if I’ve got any questions I wanted to ask. Just going right back to the very start when you joined the.
MH: Um. WAAF’s.
DE: Did you, did you volunteer or were you?
MH: I volunteered.
DE: Why did you choose the WAAF’s? Why did you volunteer?
MH: I liked the air force. I used to read the Biggles books when I was a little girl.
DE: Um.
MH: You know Biggles and his second pilot was Algy and his engineer was Ginger, and I lived those books. And I just wanted to join the air force, thought it was wonderful.
DE: I was just wondering how volunteering during the war sort of fitted in with your early political beliefs?
MH: Forgot all about them. Voted Liberal ever since I came out, out to Australia. No, I remember in Hucknall a man, some officer I’ve forgotten who it was, he used to pick us all up, bit of a ratbag I don’t know. And he took us, this bunch of WAAF’s up to his house, he was filling us with gin I remember that, we were all merry. And he was asking us questions about politics and we were slamming the government, slamming this and that and he couldn’t believe his good fortune. We were telling him everything that was going to happen after the war. What we were going to do, burn the place down I think and start again. And then the next night he asked us to go back to his house again, we didn’t have any gin, he had another man there. He said ‘Tell him what you told me last night.’ Of course, we were all dumb, needed a gin to get us going again. He was very disappointed. We wouldn’t be wound up.
DE: Who do you think the man was?
MH: I don’t know who he was, he was some somebody, some politician I bet you. But when my husband worked for the Labour Party I was happy with them. Then we had a man who was a bit nasty, but he was openly gay and he was a nasty man as well. Had nasty habits and my husband had to work with him. Some of the time he really didn’t like him and I sort of went a bit off the Labour Party. And then I changed my mind.
DE: OK.
MH: And I thought in Australia the unions were running the show and my daughter’s husband, married a sailor, who was in Vietnam and the waterside workers wouldn’t ship any arms or food or anything over, and that put me off.
DE: Aha. OK.
MH: And one of the men asked me the other day, on one of the interviews what I thought about when people died. I didn’t always react you know, you saw missing, missing, missing, missing, missing. I know they were all terribly upset when Dambusters went and Henry Maudsley was a man from 50 Squadron who everybody loved. Oxford Blue and very educated. Lovely young man. And when we went into the chapel in Lincoln the candlesticks and crucifix are dedicated to Henry Maudsley, supplied by his family. So yesterday we put a poppy on him on the memorial. I forgot should have done one for Guy Gibson, I couldn’t think. ‘Cause I didn’t lose anybody.
DE: You didn’t?
MH: No.
DE: No.
MH: Not personally. But it was hard, I mean you knew that they’d been shot down. You knew the worry that they were going to be shot down. And some of them you looked at them and you knew they were going to get it ‘cause they were a bit –
DE: Bit shaky?
MH: They had a twitch or. And you always thought ‘Oh they’re going to cop it.’ And they did. And the mad ones, the ones you thought ‘You’re going to die.’ They survived ‘cause they were realistic, ‘We can’t possibly live.’ So.
DE: Um. Did anyone ever talk about lack of moral fibre?
MH: One man, one man, lack of moral fibre. It was awful. Ripped everything off him, all his ensignia, in front of the whole camp. I was reading about Group Captain Cheshire yesterday on David’s mobile. I saw ‘Group Captain Cheshire – Unknown Story.’ And read about him and he said with lack of moral fibre he had to be very strict because it could taint the whole lot of them.
DE: Um.
MH: He said he was very strict with it.
DE: So did you, did you see that actually happen with people having their?
MH: It did happen. It did happen.
DE: Where was that? Can you remember?
MH: Oh, I think it was at Skellingthorpe we had one. But they got sent away quickly because they’d taint everybody else. I know my husband said when he was flying his bomb aimer said ‘I can’t press the tit, I can’t press the tit!’ My husband said ‘You’ll faffing well press the tit or you’ll go with ‘em!’
DE: Your husband was a pilot?
MH: Yeah.
DE: How many ops did he do?
MH: About fifteen. He only came at the end of the war, he was only eighteen in 1942. I was two years older than him.
DE: Um.
MH: Never let me forget it. I was a cradle snatcher. [chuckles] But they looked so old the Bomber Command men, they all had grey faces. And there hair seemed to get colourless somehow they looked. Fighter pilots always looked gay and young and laughing. I know in the Battle of Britain I bet they didn’t but otherwise they were always gay and young. But the Bomber Command pilots always looked old.
DE: Why was that do you think?
MH: I don’t, because in the morning they’d know, ‘I might die tonight.’ And friends, people all around them were dying and I think that they knew how dicey their life was. And they’d live in a hut and come home and half the beds would be empty.
DE: Um.
MH: And sometimes when they took off in the morning they’d go to Germany and come back at say midnight and they’d be an intruder in the circuit. And one time was dropping bombs on the Waddington bomb dump. We thought it was hilarious at Skellingthorpe, bombing Waddington. They had Air Commodore Hesketh, we hated him. And he was a very bossy man, all his gold braid. And we didn’t have any of that at Skelly, only had the Groupie. They didn’t go around polishing boots and looking and making a parade and all like they did at Waddington.
DE: So do you think there was a difference between the permanent stations and the wartime stations?
MH: Yeah, I reckon. Well the Aussies were very casual. I remember one raid when the war began they handed, not when war began, when the D-Day began they handed the air force over to the army. It was the silliest thing they ever did. The army would call up, ‘Come and bomb this.’ And they’d get the bombs on the ‘plane. ‘No, don’t come now, we don’t need you.’ And then ‘Come and bomb this.’ They’d all get ready again, ‘No, don’t come we don’t need you.’
DE: Um.
MH: And in the end they said ‘Either take us off or the bombs sink in the ground.’ Anyway one time they said ‘We don’t need you, stand down but don’t leave the station.’ Course all the Skellingthorpe mob stayed around but the Waddington mob all shot into Lincoln. And within half an hour they called ops on again. And the police and SP’s were racing around trying to round the Aussies out of the pubs. We were all ready but they, they were very undisciplined like that.
DE: What was Lincoln like? Did you go out in Lincoln?
MH: Oh, incredible. At night when the bombers had taken off you just heard this roar, you can’t imagine. Well we had thirty six take off at Skelly, there were thirty six at Waddington, sixteen or seventeen at Bardney and Scampton and Woodhall Spa and East Kirkby all of them. All take off, all go over. They used to meet at Beachy Head and, or Reading sometimes and amalgamate there and then start flying out to Holland. But they’d just all roar over. Massive noise.
DE: Um. And of course working where you did you knew before they did where they were going?
MH: Absolutely. And when they did the Berlin run, I think it was 1944, they went to Berlin about five nights in a row. And Nuremburg was another one, they lost about ninety ‘planes that night. None of them liked going up the Ruhr, Cologne or. Some of them, I know they had fish names for targets and we had a [unclear] ‘phone scrambled if you wanted to talk privately you pressed the scrambler.
DE: Yes.
MH: I remember Air Commodore Hesketh rang one day. I didn’t know it was him. I picked up the ‘phone, I said ‘Hello, hello, hello.’ [loudly] ‘Air Commodore Hesketh here.’ ‘Oh,[long drawn in breath] beg your pardon sir .’ ‘I want Group Captain Jefferson.’ I suppose he said to Groupie Jefferson ‘She’s a right one in there.’ He would have defended me. I know he would. But we had a lot of fun, used to laugh a lot. And I never, ever worked out the bomb load. I could not do it.
DE: OK.
MH: I had to have one cookie, one thousand pounder, twelve SPC’s of incendiaries. And each Lancaster carried that. We had thirty two, thirty six whatever and I couldn’t do maths at all. I always rang Waddington the girls and said ‘How much bomb load have we taken off?’ And she would tell me. And I had to phone 5 Group and say ‘This much has gone.’
DE: Um.
MH: Once Groupie, Daddy Quinn came in with his slide rule. ‘Just do this Mag, just do this.’ I told him not to bother me. Can’t be bothered. I couldn’t cope, my little failing.
DE: You found a cunning way of getting round it.
MH: [laughing] We had, one night we had a camp concert. I was with this sergeant sitting there and a man who did tricks. What do you call ‘em? A conjurer. And he said ‘Two come up on the stage.’ He spotted us two sergeants sitting. ‘You come up.’ I had to get up and hold ropes and get things and next thing I kept dropping mine. Everybody was cheering, it was awful. Oh dear.
DE: Was that an ENSA concert?
MH: Yeah, yeah. And once we had some old ladies come, oh they were terrible. You had to sort of play a little tea thing in the afternoon. Fancy getting a bunch of airmen and airwomen and these old, fat old ladies with a cello, a big thing, and a piano and they’re all big stout old things in [silk?] dresses. We had to sit and listen.
DE: Not the sort of entertainment that you were after?
MH: No, no. No, no, no, no. Sometimes they were pathetic. I remember when I was young one of the WAAF’s in Skellingthorpe, not Skellingthorpe, [Waddington?] and this girl was singing. A pilot was sitting there she was singing at him and he was looking at her. Oh, they were so in love and she was really singing at him. She had on a pretty dress. All WAAF’s. We were slightly envious because in Fighter Command we didn’t see a man.
DE: Right, so Bomber Command was an improvement then?
MH: Bomber Command wall to wall men. But in 5 Command and 12 Group and Bentley Priory were just headquarters and Air Commodore um, you know the man who had his big wing and was always fighting? What was his name? Oh, can’t think. Anyway 11 Group fought with 12 Group because we had Douglas Bader and he wanted the big wings and [unclear] aeroplanes taking ten minutes to get off. He said ‘it goes in formation then.’
DE: Um.
MH: You could shoot them down. And he said, he said ‘if they drop after they drop their bombs it doesn’t matter.’ And 11 Group mostly were dropping them on my airfields. Anyway I can’t think, can’t think of the name. There was um. It’s gone, gone, it’s gone. It’ll come back to me, float back to me. My mind’s like a computer [unclear]. Anyway they had a lot of arguments about that. [unclear] once Douglas Bader came into the ops room we nearly all swooned away.
DE: Really?
MH: Um, um. See somebody with wings and young.
DE: Right. Yes.
MH: Never did get posted to ops in Fighter Command. I had this poor lover. David will laugh. What was his name? [unclear] and he followed me everywhere, he was a Canadian, and I did not want him. I never went out with him and they kept saying ‘He’s at the guardroom.’ And I wouldn’t go and talk to him and if I ever met a group of Canadians they’d say ‘You’re not Maggie are you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh, awful person.’ And in the end I asked one of them what happened to him. Killed, he flew into a hill.
DE: Oh dear.
MH: I had to pray for him all my life.
DE: Um.
MH: I didn’t want him though. He was about six foot six, he was, and I was only little. And this great big thing standing beside me. Only a little thing. Anyway that was, would have been about 1944 I suppose.
DE: Ah.
MH: Look at it now, 2018. He’s still on my conscience. You can’t make yourself fall in love though can you?
DE: No. And for you it happened with your blonde Australian from 463 Squadron.
MH: Um. All my babies were premature. I had nobody to help me. No mother, no sister, no aunties. No sisters, nobody. [rustling of papers]There’s my MID thing, is that good enough? Defence Medal, yeah MID. Ha, ha, ha.
DE: Well unless you can think of another anecdote to tell me?
MH: No, don’t think I’ve any more.
DE: I’m sure.
MH: We used hitch hike and sit on the tanks and drive to London. Never got into any harm. Just hop in the truck and it’s ‘Hop up love.’ And take us to London and drop us down, we stayed at the Waterloo Bridge. There was a Sally Army hostel nearby, we used to stay there.
DE: This was when you were on leave?
MH: On leave or weekends off. We worked night shifts we’re on, have a couple of days off. And what were those, Lyons Corner Houses then, they had like a restaurant. And they used to wheel a big trolley full of jelly cake, sort of like layers of cream and jelly. Could have a cup of tea and a slice of cake. Like being in heaven, used to have a slice of cake and a cup of tea.
DH: What was the story of your flight down the Ruhr after the war?
MH: Oh yes, yes.
DH: Oh, OK. Tell us about.
MH: Oh yes, we did a cook’s tour after the war. And I had two flights. I had one flight with a person just flying around over Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. And when we got back he said that he hadn’t filled his logbook in because I’d been sick on his log, which was a dirty lie and I was really angry about that. And then we did a cook’s tour down, what they call a cook’s tour, down the Ruhr when the war was over. Oh, the damage was awful. And we were going round Heliogland and the ‘plane was going like that. [chuckling]
DE: You felt a bit airsick [unclear]?
MH: I felt sick.
DE: How many people went on an aircraft trip, cook’s tour?
MH: Oh, I think a lot of people went on if they wanted to.
DE: Aha.
MH: And you were lucky enough to get someone that would take you.
DE: So where did you stand on the aircraft?
MH: I stood behind the navigator some of the time.
DE: Aha. So you could look out and?
MH: Um.
DE: Yeah.
MH: I was scared though. I was really scared.
DE: Of flying?
MH: Um. To say I’d wanted to be an airman all my life I was really frightened.
DE: Um.
MH: Once we got in the thick cloud I remember flying over Nottingham in what they called cumulus nimbus, real thick black cloud. And I thought ‘If anybody else is in the cloud with us what’s going to happen?’ But there wasn’t anybody in with us.
DE: No.
MH: And then when you’re going down, to [makes vomiting noise] I don’t mind now, I fly on all the big ones.
DE: Yeah. They’re a little bit different aren’t they?
MH: Absolutely. We flew home in the, what’s it David? sleeper. It was non-stop.
DE: The Dream Liner?
MH: Dream Liner, non-stop from Perth to London.
DE: Um.
MH: Horrible, too long.
DE: Yeah.
MH: Can you think of anything else I’ve told you David that I’ve forgotten?
DH: I just noticed you said you flew home on the Dream Liner but your home’s in Australia.
MH: Oh I forget yeah [laughs]
DH: Her heart’s still in England.
DE: Fair enough.
MH: My heart’s always been in England.
DE: Um. Well thank you very, very much for coming here and telling me these stories.
MH: Thank you. Thank you for listening.
DE: No, my pleasure.
MH: Um.
DE: I shall press stop. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Margaret Hourigan
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-04-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHouriganM180416
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:13:32 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Margaret Hourigan grew up in and around Nottingham. Despite holding Labour principles she volunteered for the WAAF’s as soon as War was declared and was called up in January 1940. She Hourigan served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as a plotter with Fighter Command before being posted to RAF Waddington and RAF Skellingthorpe with Bomber Command. She met and married an Australian pilot, and emigrated to Australia after the war. Margaret and her husband had eight children.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dawn Studd
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
44 Squadron
463 Squadron
50 Squadron
61 Squadron
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
control caravan
control tower
Cook’s tour
entertainment
faith
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
ground personnel
lack of moral fibre
memorial
military ethos
military living conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
operations room
perimeter track
radar
RAF Bardney
RAF Bentley Priory
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Waddington
runway
service vehicle
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force